
Governments Haven’t Shown Location Surveillance Would Help Contain Covid-19 - panarky
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/governments-havent-shown-location-surveillance-would-help-contain-covid-19
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The_Amp_Walrus
> those measures must be scientifically rigorous, and based on the expertise
> of public health professionals.

This claim ("must be scientifically rigorous") isn't backed up by any further
argument in the article, and I think that it's required to take the rest of
the piece seriously. How could anybody make a scientific statement about the
efficacy of mass surveillance? It's not possible to do a randomised control
trial, and as far as I know the only data point we have is China.

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smichel17
You could trial it in a smaller community before rolling it out nationwide, is
what I can think of off the top of my head.

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The_Amp_Walrus
I think that's a reasonable thing to do under normal circumstances. There are
currently 27k confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the USA, and I expect that to
double or more in the next 5 days (increase in infected, wider testing), so I
don't think a small pilot is a reasonable thing to do under current
circumstances.

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odessacubbage
seeing as how the pandemic started and spread disastrously in one of the most
authoritarian and highly surveilled states on the planet, it's hard to see
these measures as anything other than attempt to further whittle away at the
bill of rights while everyone is looking in the other direction. are we
willing to give up habeas corpus and any semblance of a private life
indefinitely if this turns into a seasonal illness?

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tbrock
The Israelis recently passed an emergency law for tracking everyone with even
suspected covid-19 infection:

[https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818327945/israel-begins-
track...](https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818327945/israel-begins-tracking-and-
texting-those-possibly-exposed-to-the-coronavirus)

We’ll see how it works out. Imagine trying this in the US?

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woofie11
So it makes sense to have these systems sunset in a year.

