Kitchin, Rob (2020) Civil liberties or public health, or civil liberties and public health? Using surveillance technologies to tackle the spread of COVID-19. Space and Polity, 24 (3). pp. 362-381. ISSN 1470-1235

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Abstract

To help tackle the spread of COVID-19 a range of surveillance technologies – smartphone apps, facial recognition and thermal cameras, biometric wearables, smart helmets, drones, and predictive analytics – have been rapidly developed and deployed. Used for contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, travel permission, social distancing/movement monitoring, and symptom tracking, their rushed rollout has been justified by the argument that they are vital to suppressing the virus, and civil liberties have to be sacrificed for public health. I challenge these contentions, questioning the technical and practical efficacy of surveillance technologies, and examining their implications for civil liberties, governmentality, surveillance capitalism, and public health.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	COVID-19; surveillance; civil liberties; governmentality;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Institutes > Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute, MUSSI
Item ID:	16339
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2020.1770587
Depositing User:	Prof. Rob Kitchin
Date Deposited:	20 Jul 2022 13:49
Journal or Publication Title:	Space and Polity
Publisher:	Routledge
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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