Pandemic Surveillance. David Lyon
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animals to humans, in particular – that have such obvious relevance to the outcomes of the pandemic in general, and pandemic surveillance in particular. Another relates to the political economy of pandemic surveillance, in which corporations as well as government play a vital role in what sorts of surveillance occur, who benefits and who is negatively affected. The role of surveillance capitalism should not be underestimated.23
A third is what might be called a “biopolitical” perspective that emphasizes the ambiguity of power in pandemic surveillance. The power involved may be quite repressive, but it is also productive. Pandemic surveillance may lead to life-and-death decisions – who is “disposable?” asks Achille Mbembe.24 But one cannot necessarily tell in advance what sorts of effects will be produced. Then a fourth perspective is “socio-technical,” which looks particularly at the interplay between social and technical factors – especially the socially significant ways in which algorithms are produced, and also how they in turn have impacts on social situations.25
In what follows, I introduce some key themes of pandemic surveillance, chapter by chapter. I should say that, while I am convinced that what follows is a vital exercise – and I have learned a lot from my research – I also stress that what I have done is based very much on secondary sources, and on talking with those with expertise, as well as from personal participation in and observation of the pandemic. The pandemic is ongoing and some of its features, and responses to them, change over time. Nothing is fixed or solid.
I should also note that I write as someone who is a salaried white male, living in a city that has, to date, mainly been but lightly brushed – not brutally bombarded – by the pandemic. I acknowledge that this is a position of privilege and that I write having no first-hand personal experience of the desperate circumstances of many millions, worldwide, especially the colonized, racialized, the oppressed and the neglected. Talking and emailing with colleagues and friends in Australia, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Israel/Palestine, Singapore, as well as closer to home in Canada and Europe, has given me some feel for others’ realities.
Road-map to Pandemic Surveillance
“Disease-Driven Surveillance,” chapter 2, takes us straight to what many think of as the heart of the issue: “contact tracing.” While we do look carefully at such digital location tracking systems, set up to aid contact tracing, other apps, wearable devices and data systems have been used in the pandemic. For instance, vaccine passports – they go under various names – are being rolled out to enable access and travel for those who have received appropriate doses of one of the available vaccines. And then there are wearables, from electronic bracelets to an array of small devices such as Fitbits and Apple watches for checking body temperature and other data such as daily steps and sleeptime, that can detect pre-symptomatic cases of COVID-19.26
Then, much less visible but highly significant kinds of digital surveillance – health data networks – have been built for modeling what is happening within a given jurisdiction, so that trends may be mapped and resources targeted appropriately. These use massive databases, some set up for the purpose, for crunching numbers to track and monitor the spread of the virus and to predict its movement and the proportions likely to be affected. All these and more make up the panoply of digital surveillance that has proliferated since COVID-19 was identified.
Those directly “disease-driven” forms of surveillance are only part of the picture, however. The pandemic phenomenon touches all areas of life, spawning surveillance within each. Chapter 3, “Domestic Targets,” discusses the dimensions beyond the obviously disease-driven. Residents of Kingston, where I live, were told to “stay home, stay safe” and that’s just what happened. An astonishing domestic drift occurred, and suddenly our homes – already digitally wired in the global north – became surveillance sites as never before.
As well as the massively increased use of highly data-hungry platform companies that we use to keep in touch with those from whom we were suddenly separated, there were other modes of surveillance for monitoring employment, schooling and shopping at home. US companies Amazon and Walmart increased their profits by 56 percent in 2020, to total $10.7 billion. So far from the familiar notion that the home is a haven from prying eyes, providing a secure threshold from unwanted outside agencies, it became even more of a data-rich target.
Chapter 4, “Data Sees All?,” dives into the world of data to discover why this abstract-sounding entity is so valued today. The pandemic hit in an era when data has become central to almost every facet of contemporary life. We explore how data is universally used as a “way of seeing” – while reminding ourselves that it is also a way of not-seeing. In this context, data is used to make our lives visible to others. Understandably, epidemiologists wish to know who has been with whom, where and for how long, and the data they collect and analyze allows them to “see” the lives of those in each community. But what might be missing from this?
Though many surveillors – especially platform companies – are not very transparent about what exactly they are doing, they make our lives very transparent to them. It is impossible for ordinary citizens to keep up with what data is being collected on them, especially now, with so many other pandemic preoccupations to deal with. It is not just a question of “collecting” data either. How that data is analyzed, using algorithms, is also crucial for outcomes. And those outcomes include being treated in a particular way, following the analysis. In China, if your color-coded situation obliges you to stay home, facial recognition camera surveillance or drones buzzing outside your apartment window make you even more visible to public health authorities.
These kinds of issues definitely raise questions about privacy, and they have to be faced squarely. But there are other sorts of questions here, that have to do with how populations are sorted into different categories – for example, for knowing which age-groups or work-positions should be vaccinated first. In Chapter 5, “Disadvantage and the Triage,” these questions are investigated. When you go to an emergency department, you have to go through a “triage” process. The nurse on duty must sort out, on the basis of available information, which patients are in most urgent need of attention and care. Surveillance works like this – it sorts between different categories in the population so that different groups can be treated differently.27
COVID-19 has not only exposed how some populations are more vulnerable than others, and that there are inequalities of access to testing and vaccines. Pandemic surveillance also leads to variable treatment such that some experience very negative discrimination. Inequalities that have become very apparent – the disadvantages faced by people in poverty, migrant workers, visible minority groups – are sometimes also made even worse by pandemic surveillance. Questions of civil liberties and other rights are raised, nationally and globally.
Such issues prompt questions about power and how it is distributed. Chapter 6, “Democracy and Power,” explores an upsurge of pandemic-prompted state surveillance, of which issuing “vaccine passports” is a good example. But we also have to face the fact that “state surveillance,” which has for so long been the main worry for privacy advocates, is not the only kind evident in the COVID-19 global pandemic. Today’s surveillance reveals itself in public–private partnerships – as is clear from the “contact tracing” apps that are nearly all products of both government and corporation, whether Huawei in China or IBM in the United States.
Of course, state and market can still be distinguished, but increasingly they are intertwined – including in their surveillance activities. The platform companies have ramped up their data-gathering during the pandemic. Many of these developments occurred in understandable haste, sometimes without adequate preparation – for public health initiatives, monitoring and checking on citizen compliance, and for