Serie di articoli "Pandemic of Control"; l'articolo è dello scorso aprile.
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*Introducing the ‘Pandemic of Control’ series*
Andrew Lowenthal
5 April 2022
https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-intro/
COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated the authoritarian use of digital
technologies. Digital surveillance has radically increased, with
governments tightly tracking the movements and associations of their
citizens. Physical spaces became digitally gated – from cafes and
libraries to even whole countries – with ordinary citizens recruited to
ensure compliance. In-sync, unsecured databases have become bloated
with more and more personal health information.
To manage the pandemic, governments and other vested stakeholders have
unleashed their own pandemic of control. Officials, medical experts, the
mainstream media, and Big Tech pushed the narrative that COVID-19 could
be tightly controlled, and that citizens everywhere had a responsibility
to abide, with no questions asked, to achieve that aim.
The “approved” pandemic response was defended at all costs. News media
ridiculed alternative viewpoints as fake news and misinformation
<https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/media-will-not-call-big-tech-censorship?utm_source=%2Fprofile%2F25226076-paul-d-thacker&utm_medium=reader2>,
and social media platforms took down contradictory views from their
feeds, silencing voices that questioned vaccine passports, lockdowns,
and other controls.
And while restrictions continue to be eased in most countries, in others
they are not. In addition, much of the infrastructure remains at the
ready, and the population itself is now well-groomed for the new sets of
demands, from digital IDs to central bank digital currencies and beyond.
The pandemic is not yet over, but a new chapter has begun, one with more
space for the digital rights community (which has been unusually quiet
throughout), journalists, and the wider public to question this pandemic
of control.
Questions could include why governments released check-in apps prone to
data breaches
<https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/sensitive-business-addresses-among-500-000-published-in-covid-data-breach-20220214-p59wal.html>,
or how fact-checkers and content moderators reportedly worked with
digital platforms to remove information that has since been confirmed
or, at the very least, worthy of further investigation. For example, why
was the hashtag #naturalimmunity considered so dangerous that it had to
be censored by Instagram
<https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/17/instagram-fueling-conspiracy-theorists-by-banning-naturalimmunity-hashtag-15275249/>?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently updated its
guidelines
<https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/cdc-now-says-covid-19-prior-infection?r=c8qcg&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web>
to acknowledge the protective value of prior infection. Why was
discussion of this previously disallowed? Where were the progressive
voices of opposition, the voices that question power?
Most concerning is a general trend among citizens, including
progressives, to sacrifice civil liberties and free speech and
expression in favour of an authoritarian and top-down, “trust the
experts” model. This has resulted in a lack of accountability for
government and corporate leaders (for example, the former Australian
Prime Minister appointing himself secretly to 5 ministries
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-24/scott-morrison-secret-ministries-what-next/101363602>),
protecting the powerful from scrutiny that might have resulted in better
solutions for society as a whole.
To generate further public discourse, EngageMedia in partnership with
CommonEdge <https://www.commonedge.com.au/> invited writers,
researchers, and changemakers in the Asia-Pacific to respond to the
growing digital authoritarianism accelerated by COVID-19 and the absence
of critical questioning.
The result is the Pandemic of Control
<https://engagemedia.org/pandemic-control/> series, a modest
contribution toward a more critical citizenry. In this collection, you
will find pieces from Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Nepal, and Australia. The authors question the how and the why of their
respective countries’ pandemic response, and shed light on more
rights-respecting paths moving forward.
This digital reader includes 10 pieces that were published between April
and August 2022. We felt it was important to create this compilation so
the responses to the pandemic-driven digital authoritarianism be
distributed more effectively as a collection.
We plan to publish 6 more articles between October and December 2022,
and these pieces will be added to a second edition of the Pandemic of
Control digital reader.
If you are interested to engage further with the authors, EngageMedia,
or CommonEdge, please contact us <https://engagemedia.org/contact/>
through our website.
Thank you,
Andrew Lowenthal, Co-founder and Senior Advisor, EngageMedia
Sam de Silva, CEO, CommonEdge
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read the Pandemic of Control
<https://engagemedia.org/projects/pandemic-control/> series:
* PeduliLindungi: To Care for and Protect?
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-pedulilindungi/>
* In Sri Lanka, state-sponsored disinformation and suppression of
dissent taint COVID-19 response
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-sri-lanka/>
* Vietnam’s Zalo Connect: Digital authoritarianism in peer-to-peer aid
platforms <https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-vietnam-zalo/>
* How the economically marginalised navigate digital adoption in India
amid the pandemic
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-india-digital-adoption/>
* Risking health for mobility? Limitations of Indonesia’s pandemic
management tool
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-indonesia-health-tool/>
* Policing the pandemic: Australia’s technology response to COVID-19
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-australia/>
* A COVID-19 power grab: Looming digital authoritarianism in Indonesia
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-indonesia/>
* Digital authoritarianism in Bangladesh: Weaponising a draconian law
to silence dissent in the pandemic era
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-bangladesh/>
* Disruptive Technologies, Surveillance as Governance: Data
(Un)Democracy in India during COVID-19
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-india/>
* Towards digital authoritarianism in Nepal: Surveillance, data
collection, and online repression
<https://engagemedia.org/2022/pandemic-control-nepal/>
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/>
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