On 17 September 2020, the policy blog Ideas for India published a study reporting on rates of domestic violence and cybercrime during India’s lockdown, which started on 23 March. The study shows that domestic violence complaints have increased by 131 percent in May 2020 in districts with the strictest lockdown rules (“red zone”). It also reports on a survey that asks, separately to men and women, whether “a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife in a number of circumstances, including neglect of the house or children, improper cooking, disrespect for in-laws, and refusal to have sex”. Results show that districts where a greater proportion of husbands report that hitting or beating his wife is justified, experienced greater increases in domestic violence complaints in April and May 2020 in COVID-19 “red zone” districts relative to “green zone” districts. Such results sit within scholarship on the effects of lockdown on domestic violence and their measurability, calling for inclusive data visualisation as this blog has emphasised earlier this year.

As activists on domestic violence awareness, we leverage data to pass clear, effective messages to our audiences. Domestic violence statistics, as well as femicide data – where femicide defines as “”the intentional killing of females (women or girls) because they are females” and all too often contextualises within family or relationship situations, offer a powerful synopsis of the horror of living with abuse, and of the tragic culmination of situations where abuse is not recognised or addressed. Narrating abuse is hard ot only for the narrator but also for the listener. By way of example, in multiple occasions the author of this post has had persons asking her to “stop” or to “refrain from talking about abuse”(in some particular social or professional situations from members of her own family, acquaintances and colleagues. And still, for those – survivors and not – involved in the mission of helping people recognise the signs of abuse, statistics provide a numeric anchor to start sensitisation, to prevent people from turning the bling eye to the subject matter. So in that respect, statistics serve as a tool for sensitisation and awareness-raising.

But for us as survivors, the limits of statistics emerge in all their strength.

The twisted meaning of domestic violence statistics

Statistics are merely about reported abuse. And we know, in some national/institutional environments more than others, that reporting of domestic violence (physical, psychological, economic, or of any form) is discouraged more or less actively depending on context. In societies across the world abuse is stigmatised, silenced, blamed on the victim (as someone notified in a seminar recently, “you will never put your name and face on such a claim”). The author of this post, a survivor from a southern European country, has been actively advised not to report her abuser, for fears of retaliation, triggering memories, the renowned inaction of the national judiciary. We report, if we really want to. But we are ignored, laughed at, scorned and discouraged when we do so. As a result, many of us do not report domestic abuse.

Can you see now why we are so confident in arguing that domestic violence statistics, as powerful as they are, are likely to seriously underrepresent the phenomenon?

Silent silencing

But attention, nobody will openly silence a domestic violence survivor. Nobody will ever openly tell you “it is not acceptable to talk about survival”. Silencing, as we experience it in our everyday existence, is in itself… silent. Nobody says “do not talk about it”. They will say, “not here. This is not the place, not the right occasion”. Do not talk about it to colleagues, it will undermine your position of power. Do not talk about it in social occasions, it is inappropriate. Do not talk about it to the extended family, you will make them worried without a reason. In a nutshell, overall, survive if you can, but do not talk about it, do not tell us.

We survive, those of us who do. But the byproduct of survival, us, is not socially accepted. As mentioned above, one month after reporting my abuser, a close family member told me to “lower my voice” while talking about it in a social occasion. We are allowed to survive, if we manage to. But then, silently, we are forbidden to talk.

I spend substantial times collecting the most accurate statistics and reports to talk about survival. Statistics go beyond grabbing the listener’s attention, they offer a photograph of the issue that numerically is the most accurate we have. But when it is life, we are silently silenced, encouraged to stay put, to lower our voice. Because it is ok to survive, yes. But it is not professional, or socially acceptable, to live as a survivor. It is not acceptable to talk about it either.

Read statistics, use them. Build on them to bring the ongoing, pandemic-induced sharp rise in domestic violence to attention, to break the silence that still dominates in most parts of the world. But when you read statistics, just think that many of us live in silence, those of us who live, with the responsibility of being the voice of those whose abusers have silenced forever. Just think that we cannot put our names and faces to these voices, for the safety of our own loved ones and our very selves. And we cannot talk, because it is not “socially acceptable”. So please do use statistics. But when you do, remember our silently, socially acceptably silenced, voices behind them.

 

About the author

I am an academic professional and a recent survivor of intimate partner abuse. I am the anonymous pen behind SurvivorChrisalis, a blog about my life as survivor and the importance of activism to spread awareness of the early signs of abuse.

Technologies to track COVID-19 spread with data generated by mobile devices bring the discussion about responsible use of data to a global level, creating an opportunity to push for regulatory frameworks.

 

by Peter Füssy

 

Although the Covid-19 outbreak is known since December, the first images of the virus were published in late January and more detailed captures came only in mid-February. The reason for this is that the majority of viruses are much smaller than a bacteria and cannot be seen with an ordinary light microscope, only with a more sophisticated and expensive electron microscope.

Another method to make the virus visible is by following the hosts, or rather, the “smart” devices carried by the hosts everywhere. These devices display and generate data, which have been mostly used by corporations to predict and steer human behavior for profit. The same data repurposed can be used to see the movement of the disease at different levels, from populations to individuals, but not without generating other risks to the hosts.

These visualizations are not accurate pictures of the virus, but probabilities converted into coloured areas, dots or maps overlaid with statistics. However, they are powerful tools to support decision-making in medical practices and health policies. In addition, these infographics can create high scale awareness when available to a broader audience: they can show how far the virus is from you, sometimes with staggering precision.

Tracking the virus (and people)

In China, for instance, the two largest telecom operators, covering 80% of the market, provided data about the number of mobile phones travelling from Wuhan to other regions before the lockdown. The data was used to estimate a better latent infection ratio (transmission before symptoms) in the pandemic epicenter, and can be visualized in an infographic from The New York Times.

Private mobile carriers are also sharing data with health authorities in countries like Italy, Germany, Austria and Brazil to monitor social distancing measures and detect people agglomerations. In those cases, the visual representation shows concentrations and movements of large groups. Examples that handle much more personal data are not difficult to find though – and are even seen as models to limit the virus spreading.

In Pakistan, some residents of Karachi received text messages saying that they may have come in contact with someone diagnosed with COVID-19. According to local reports, authorities are using call detail records (CDRs) from telecom operators to find phone numbers that were recently near a phone owned by someone infected. In Australia, the police said the “threshold” that legitimizes phone tracking of specific individuals – a practice usually restricted to criminal investigations – have been met in the case of a Chinese couple who allegedly carried the virus from Wuhan to Adelaide.

In Taiwan, people under mandatory quarantine are “geofenced” in real-time by their cell phone signal – they cannot even let the battery die risking to have police officers knocking on the door. In the same direction, Hong Kong created a map of the city where you can see in which buildings the virus have been spotted along with the infected person’s gender and age. In those cases, each SIM card represents a human being who is a possible host for the virus.

The list of states adopting digital surveillance methods to picture where the virus is could continue for several paragraphs. Those methods for visualizing the virus are shaping actions to “flatten the curve”, controlling citizens in quarantine, detecting social distancing levels and performing contact tracing.

As the emergency of the situation calls for, the arrangements for the data sharing are done fast and, in most cases, with lack of transparency for users and public, which raises questions about future consequences on privacy and freedom. To prevent that, researchers, activists, institutions and NGOs have been building on past experiences to come up with guidelines for responsible practices.

Data sharing and epidemics

The role of visualizations during pandemics have grown in importance since British physician John Snow plotted fatal cholera cases into a map of London’s Soho in 1854 and assumed the source of the disease were the water pumps. During the twentieth century, the introduction of computer-assisted analysis and development of tools for visualizations further increased the reliance on data and graphics to prevent and control infections. More recently, the popularization of mobile phones allowed a new range of possibilities to predict or track the spread of diseases.

Given the sensitive and commercially valuable data that cell phones generate, including call and location history through triangulation of cell towers position, mobile operators are generally reluctant to share this information. Nevertheless, exceptions have been made in research and humanitarian responses during outbreaks of dengue, cholera, malaria and ebola in low- and middle-income countries at the beginning of the decade.

Similarly to the current COVID-19 crisis, in those cases, the perceived benefits from the data sharing have overshadowed potential risks, uncovering an optimistic perspective of technological solutions. As McDonald argues, the push for experimenting with mobile data for contact tracing in Liberia overlooked data protection laws, undermined the coordination ability of local actors and raised tensions with the government, resulting in “big data disaster”.

Potential risks

From the medical viewpoint, call detail records (CDRs) and contact tracing can be somehow helpful to control the virus, but data alone does not solve anything and after shared data do not disappear with the virus, putting in risk privacy and human rights. Even when the data is aggregated and anonymized, researchers have demonstrated that four points (e.g., home address, workplace address, or geo-localized tweets or pictures) are enough to identify 95% of the individuals. If used to political interest, it is possible to track separatists, migrants or dissidents.

Personal data sharing puts in evidence not only the disease but the private life of the host. For corporations, sharing data is not only a matter of doing public good but a decision that is based also on economic and strategic issues. Once data is out, it can be misused by other companies, for instance, private health insurance can determine or deny coverage combining different datasets. This is why we need ethical sharing of data to protect citizens from unintended outcomes of well-meaning initiatives.

In this direction, the Responsible Data community is one of those groups trying to draw a global framework that includes social, legal, privacy and economical-related issues. According to the collective, projects that involve data sharing should consider power dynamics (how the least powerful actors are affected?), have a strong justification, care not just about speed, include diverse perspectives and re-evaluations to understand possible harms and create checks and balances to alert for unexpected effects.

Global opportunity

So far, economic interests, political contexts, local legislations and cultural differences have been a challenge to implement responsible guidelines for data sharing. As a global issue, the COVID-19 crisis could be an opportunity to pressure for regulatory frameworks. In this regard, more groups have come forward with suggestions for technical and social evaluations of actions to track the virus.

The EU Commission recommended a coordinated approach for the use of tracing apps which includes an intermediary (the Joint Research Centre) for processing and storing data from European mobile operators as long as the COVID-19 crisis is ongoing. In addition, the institution that represents the interest of mobile operators worldwide (GSMA) released a privacy guide to deal with data requests. The document recommends operators to proactively implement best practices, encompassing transparency to the public, the prohibition of re-identification of individuals, limits to the scope of use and accountability.

In the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a white paper which discusses the limits and the effectiveness of location tracking in epidemics, while another group of researchers suggests that an open-source app and crowdsourcing the data with user consent might the most effective way to slow the spread of the virus with the publication of less sensitive data.

The inclusion of big tech companies like Apple and Google certainly brings another dimension to the discussion, raising both the capacity of development and the amount of data collected but also the stakes in place if something goes wrong. In a partnership, Apple and Google announced a system for contact tracing using Bluetooth which will be embedded in the operational systems (iOS and Android) and promises to keep data anonymized.

The responsible data debate has never gained so much attention than now. It is time for legal and regulatory frameworks “to caught up to the real-world effects of data and technology” (Responsible Data). It is also a time when mistakes can have global consequences.

About the author

Peter is a journalist trying to explore new media in depth, from everyday digital practices to the undesired consequences of a highly connected environment. After more than 10 years of reporting for the most relevant digital outlets in Brazil, he is now second years Research Master’s student in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam.

In a world in constant evolution, Latin America is probably the region where the COVID-19 pandemic has most changed the way we communicate as a society, and technology is at the core of this change. This post reviews the cases of Argentina and Brazil as examples to illustrate how the use of technology can create different scenarios of resistance and alterity.

 

by Julián Cordoba Pivotto

 

La situación del COVID-19 ha cambiado la manera de comunicarnos como sociedad. No importa en qué país y situación nos encontremos, algo ha cambiado para cada uno de nosotros a partir de las consecuencias de esta pandemia y uno de los factores principales y más presentes en este cambio es el uso de la tecnología. Gracias a ella, entonces, es posible prolongar y continuar con ciertos aspectos de nuestra vida como el trabajo, el estudio o el encuentro con amigos y familiares. A la vez, también es interesante ver cómo la tecnología nos permite vincularnos de nuevas y diferentes maneras con los gobiernos, que juegan un papel fundamental en esta situación, debido al poder de decisión que tienen.

Sucede que, poco después de que el contagio se esparciera en primer lugar por Asia, Europa, y Norteamérica, llegó el turno de que los mandatarios y líderes de América Latina se enfrenten a los desafíos que trae esta cuestión, adaptándose y concentrándose en las características propias que tiene esta parte del mundo. Así, en un lugar donde se encuentran alteridad, resistencia, subversión y creatividad -como lo sugieren  Milán y Tereré-, los líderes han tomado posiciones y estrategias muy disímiles entre sí, como en el caso de Argentina y Brasil. Como resultado, los habitantes de esos países han respondido de maneras distintas a cada una de estas estrategias. Mi propuesta es revisar estas estrategias y estas respuestas, para encontrar cómo se dio el uso de la tecnología en cada ocasión y pensar en cuales situaciones se distinguen las características que hacen de la región un lugar tan particular. Para eso, creo que es conveniente revisarlas caso por caso.

 

Argentina

Este país fue uno de los primeros en decretar un aislamiento obligatorio, que aplicó para el total del territorio nacional y sólo tuvo como excepción a aquellos considerados “personal de servicio esencial”, como el personal médico o aquellos ligados a la producción y comercialización de alimentos y medicamento. La tecnología jugó un rol principal para la gestión del gobierno: cada transmisión en televisión para comunicar las medidas elegidas se vio reforzada por una fuerte campaña de concientización en redes sociales, con indicaciones sobre qué podían hacer los ciudadanos para evitar los contagios. Un dato interesante es el aprovechamiento de la emergente red social Tik Tok: allí, la cuenta del Ministerio de Salud de Argentina publica consejos para evitar el contagio con un mensaje simple y sencillo, mayormente dirigido a jóvenes, que es el grupo que mayor actividad tiene en esa red.

El gobierno argentino también utilizó la tecnología para desarrollar una aplicación para smartphones, como sucedió en otras partes del mundo. En este caso se trata de CuidAR, una aplicación de descarga obligatoria para quienes requieran el permiso de circulación, que da un autodiagnóstico basado en los síntomas que indique el usuario. Sin embargo, ante la aparición de esta aplicación, los expertos explican que podría no tener el resultado esperado, ya que no queda claro qué hace el gobierno con los datos que se recolectan, o cómo se usan. Además, como la aparición de síntomas podrían restringir el permiso, algunos usuarios podrían optar por simplemente mentir al ingresar esos datos. Falta ver cuál es el futuro de la aplicación, que ya es blanco de críticas por vulneración a la privacidad, pero su diagnóstico no es muy optimista.

Por otro lado, los argentinos y las argentinas también supieron aprovechar la tecnología. Gran parte de la población, aquellos que cuentan con un dispositivo con acceso a internet, aprovecharon este medio para continuar con sus trabajos, clases, reuniones y obligaciones. Sin embargo, no sólo se usaron para eso, sino también para mantener contacto con el gobierno y expresar tanto su apoyo como su disconformidad. Un ejemplo de esto es el uso de Twitter, que se convirtió en el lugar principal para organizar muestras de apoyo hacia el personal de salud: así nacen los aplausos desde los balcones, cada día a las 21 hs como hora pactada.

Pero esos balcones también fueron escenario de otro tipo de expresiones, como las manifestaciones en contra de la misma decisión del gobierno. Sucede que, pasados más de 70 días desde la declaración del aislamiento, cierta parte de la población decidió manifestar quejas y malestar, alegando la defensa de cuestiones como la actividad económica y la caída del consumo. El modus operandi de la organización fue la misma que para el agradecimiento al personal de salud: otra vez las redes sociales en general y Twitter en particular fueron protagonistas. En la actualidad, esta movilización ha tenido respuesta, las demandas fueron escuchadas y se han flexibilizado algunos sectores del país para que parte de la población pueda volver a trabajar.

 

Brasil

El país vecino tuvo una respuesta institucional y poblacional distinta a los efectos de la pandemia. Desde el gobierno, la respuesta fue totalmente distinta a la argentina: su presidente ha calificado al virus como “un resfriadito” y no ha decretado ningún tipo de aislamiento, explicando que priorizaba la actividad económica en su lugar.

El gobierno hizo una campaña con este posicionamiento: con el hashtag #oBrasilNãoPodeParar, justificaba su postura por la negativa de detener la producción y la actividad laboral. La idea del gobierno, al parecer, era que la base de apoyo de Bolsonaro reproduzca y comparta el hashtag para demostrar apoyo a esta incitativa, apoyo que no se dio en redes ni por medio de la tecnología, sino en las calles, del modo habitual y sin respetar el aislamiento social. Allí también, el presidente se hizo presente.

Pero el uso del hashtag no fue solamente por parte del oficialismo brasileño. Del otro lado, también hubo -con mayor expansión y éxito- cierto activismo: con el slogan #ForaBolsonaro, que ya había sido usado anteriormente, alentado y difundido por referentes sociales, líderes de opinión y figuras opositoras, se dio respuesta a la campaña oficialista.

De un modo diferente, otra gran parte de la población de Brasil tuvo una respuesta distinta ante esta (in)acción por parte del gobierno nacional. Se trata de los habitantes de las favelas, quienes habitan zonas donde viven los sectores más económicamente empobrecidos de la sociedad brasileña. En Rocinha, Río de Janeiro, los habitantes empezaron a comunicarse por servicios de mensajería, como WhatsApp, para organizar una cuarentena “autogestionada”, que consistía en un horario límite para la circulación por la zona. En Paraisópolis, São Paulo, se creó la figura del “Presidente de Calle”: un vecino voluntario que se encarga de vigilar y dar apoyo a las 50 familias de su entorno más próximo, quien debe alertar si alguno de los habitantes que vigila presenta alguno de los síntomas, para así hacer más inmediata la atención médica.

En ambas zonas, además, los mismos vecinos junto a algunos voluntarios de distintas organizaciones entregaron los llamados “COVID-19 kits”, que incluyen tapabocas y jabón. La comunicación por servicios de mensajería sirvió para orientar y mejorar su distribución, fundamental para estos habitantes que -en su mayoría- tienen empleos informales y debido a esto la imposibilidad de continuar con ellos o recibir ingresos.

Teniendo en cuenta las características de este tipo de hogares, en los que suelen vivir 10 personas en construcciones de hasta 3 habitaciones -como menciona una activista en este reportaje-, sumado a la falta de información y reacción por parte del gobierno nacional, es necesario actuar. Así lo consideraron los voluntarios y vecinos, quienes decidieron compartir información sobre medidas de distanciamiento social y prevención de los contagios en un contexto en el que proveer información es de vital importancia. Aquí, nuevamente los servicios de mensajería jugaron un factor fundamental.

 

En conclusión

En conclusión, los casos de Argentina y Brasil nos permiten ver cómo la población suele responder, dentro de los vínculos gobernante-gobernados (es decir: los funcionarios en el poder y la ciudadanía), de distintas maneras ante las decisiones que tome el gobierno. A veces apoyándolo, a veces manifestándose en contra, pero siempre reaccionando, lo que demuestra que existe una ciudadanía involucrada.

El apoyo y el rechazo como expresión desde la población hacia los gobernantes varían en consecuencia de las decisiones que tomen y las acciones que elijan los mandatarios. De esta manera es posible notar diferencias ideológicas entre los grupos que las realicen, diferencias que se acentúan con más firmeza al analizar el contenido de las expresiones.

En Argentina, el descontento se manifiesta en demandas de carácter predominantemente económico. En Brasil, por otro lado, las demandas son por mejoras sanitarias. Lo destacable de la comparación entre ambos, es la forma en la que se involucran sus poblaciones: la ciudadanía se preocupa, decide comunicar y actúa en consecuencia: todo eso debido a la pandemia y gracias a la tecnología. El nuevo desafío es que, una vez superada esta situación, esa involucración y ese compromiso se mantenga. Ojalá así sea.

 

About the author

Julián Cordoba Pivotto is currently studying for a Political Science BA at Catholic University of Córdoba (UCC) in Córdoba, Argentina. He intermittently writes about comparative politics and federalism. Contact: juliancordoba11 [@] gmail.com

Although Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines have pursued different approaches to address the COVID-19 pandemic, they have all had a disproportionate impact on marginalised groups. This article discusses the effects of COVID-19 measures on migrant workers in Singapore, the LGBT community in South Korea, and rural and Indigenous peoples in Indonesia and the Philippines.

 

By Irene Poetranto and Justin Lau

Countries around the world have taken different steps to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The more developed economies of Singapore and South Korea have utilized technology to help trace, test, and isolate cases at a greater extent compared to emerging economies like Indonesia and the Philippines. Even though variations in measures undertaken exist, they share one thing in common: a disproportionate impact on marginalised groups. This article examines COVID-19 strategies implemented by these countries, and outlines their consequences on vulnerable groups, including migrant workers, the LGBT community, and rural and Indigenous peoples.

Outbreak among Singapore’s migrant workers

With only 266 cases and zero deaths by March 2020, Singapore was seen as a model for other countries to follow in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its success in curbing the coronavirus’ spread was attributed to lessons-learned from the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak and the fact that the city-state is technologically advanced. The Singaporean government launched an app to determine if potential carriers of the coronavirus have been in close proximity with other people, used a robot “dog” to patrol parks and ensure physical distancing, implemented a digital check-in system, and is giving out wearable tracking devices for reporting health conditions and tracing proximity between users.

Despite its high-tech profile, Singapore’s exceptionalism ended in early May 2020 when 23,000 COVID-19 cases were reported —ninety percent of which were linked to crowded migrant workers’ dormitories. Researchers and activists had warned for years that low-wage migrant workers, who play an integral role in Singapore’s booming economy but live on the fringes of society in precarious conditions, suffer disproportionately from environmental, health, and safety risks. Yet they were largely ignored until COVID-19 cases spread rampantly. This development revealed the dangers of overlooking marginalised groups during a health crisis. Singapore is now seen once again as a model, only this time for other countries not to follow.

The Itaewon cluster and South Korea’s anti-gay backlash

The backlash against South Korea’s LGBT community also illustrates the impact of COVID-19 on marginalised groups that are vulnerable to discrimination. South Korea uses a contact tracing regime that involves surveillance camera footage, cell phone location data, GPS tracking from both cars and phones, QR code entry logs, and credit card purchase records. But as part of tracing efforts, it has disclosed online the personal information of COVID-19 patients, including age, gender, nationality, and occupation, which are also sent to residents via cell phone alerts.

Online attacks and offline harassment against LGBT persons increased when COVID-19 cases that resulted from a man who visited nightspots in Seoul’s Itaewon district, including several popular in the gay community, were made public. Contact tracing in this instance was also problematic, as people in this conservative country were afraid to be associated with the LGBT community or to have their sexuality outed, or both. Excessive disclosure of personal information combined with stigma around LGBT issues may prevent individuals exposed to the virus from getting tested, which compromises public health measures.

Health and security concerns in Papua 

The impact of COVID-19 is even more pronounced for marginalised communities with inadequate healthcare services. Indonesia’s Papua region is double the size of Great Britain with roughly four million people, yet only has five hospitals designated to treat COVID-19 patients, and only two isolation rooms available that meet the World Health Organization’s standards. More than 300 of its Indigenous tribes have small populations, which are threatened with extinction when faced with a pandemic. Papuans lack access to clean water and basic healthcare even though the largest copper and gold mine in the world, called “Grasberg,” is in their resource-rich territory. Run by the U.S.-based mining company Freeport-McMoran, Grasberg, like other mines, initially did not restrict operations even as workers tested positive for the coronavirus. Mine sites have thus become a vector for the spread of COVID-19, with the risk of infecting local communities and Indigenous peoples. When Grasberg became one of Papua’s worst COVID-19 clusters with 150 cases in mid-May, it finally reduced its workforce size to prevent further infections.

The conflict in Papua complicates the COVID-19 response. The Netherlands controlled Papua until 1962 and Papua was temporarily transferred to Indonesia until an act of “self-determination” was completed. Approximately 1,000 Indonesian government-selected participants voted in the referendum, who unanimously opted for Papua to remain with Indonesia. The illegitimacy of the vote, the often violent and arbitrary crackdowns by Indonesian security forces, as well as media restrictions and Internet shutdowns help explain Papuans’ demands for secession. This conflict has been ongoing for over five decades, and in May 2020, an armed group allegedly shot members of a local COVID-19 response team.

Mining operations in the Philippines

Resource-rich areas in the Philippines are also increasingly under threat. Considered the most dangerous place in the world for land and environmental defenders, the Philippines had the highest number of murdered defenders of any country in 2018 and environmental protection remains challenging. The Nueva Vizcaya Province, for example, is the site of a dispute with a mining company, OceanaGold, a Canadian-Australian public company that has been accused of human rights violations. OceanaGold’s permit to run the gold and copper mine known as “Didipio” had expired in June 2019. The local government wants the mine shut due to environmental concerns, yet it continues to operate.

In April 2020, locals opposed to the Didipio mine erected a “peoples’ barricade,” but they were violently dispersed by the police for violating COVID-19 lockdown measures. Meanwhile, despite a province-wide lockdown covering Homonhon Island, the central government allowed a China-bound ship to dock there to load chromite ore. This incident was in defiance of local authorities who denied its entry for fear of COVID-19 infections, as Homonhon has no health facility, no sea ambulance, and no functioning community hospital.

Similarities and differences between the four countries

Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines have faced different challenges in responding to the pandemic, but they share commonalities. Singapore’s and South Korea’s technologically-driven solutions have sparked national and global debates on balancing public health and the right to privacy. Singapore’s launch of a wearable device that may be issued to every resident has resulted in fears of surveillance and privacy violations. South Korea’s pervasive collection of personal data has also surfaced privacy concerns and social stigma concerns that are feared more than the disease itself.

Unlike Singapore and South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines have weak healthcare systems and rely on security-heavy strategies. Indonesia’s COVID-19 task force chief is an Army lieutenant general and the Indonesian military and police have been ordered to enforce physical distancing, while in the Philippines, the Defense Secretary heads the national task force on COVID-19 and has sought full military and police support to implement its pandemic plan. Indonesia and the Philippines have also launched contact tracing apps that use the centralised model and have been criticised for providing insufficient data protection. Trust issues have thus impeded the widespread adoption of the government’s official contact tracing app in both countries.

Conclusion
Despite the four countries’ varied approaches to COVID-19, they nevertheless disproportionately and negatively impact marginalised communities. It is clear that, although the virus does not discriminate, its consequences do. Therefore, as governments around the world strive to tackle the pandemic, it is imperative that they do so in a transparent and rights-respecting manner, and in ways that are inclusive of local communities.

 

About the authors

Irene Poetranto is a Senior Researcher at the Citizen Lab and a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto.

Justin Lau is a research assistant at the Citizen Lab and a student in the Munk School’s Master of Global Affairs program, University of Toronto.

This article addresses the role of data in efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. Drawing on multiple state examples, it discusses the ethical questions posed by datafied public health surveillance and the importance of harmonising national data protection systems.

 

By Oarabile Mudongo

COVID-19 presents a dynamic overtone of an African society encountering digital data transition in almost every aspect of human activity, from digital contact tracing to surveillance, all initiated by governments to help control the spread of COVID-19.

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Africa remains comparatively low, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO) there are over 200,000 confirmed cases as of 1st June. However, these numbers are growing. A newly published report by the Partnership for Evidence Based Response to COVID-19 (PERC) exposes some of the alarming findings of the devastations of COVID-19 across Africa, with the head of WHO cautioning African states to prepare for the worst.

As African governments continue with their efforts to track people exposed to coronavirus and combat its spread, several countries in the continent have adopted various techniques such as digital contact tracing technologies (mobile apps using Bluetooth), data mining and sharing of aggregated geolocation data from mobile operators. In South Africa, for example, researchers at the University of Cape Town are developing a COVID-19 app to assist the government track COVID-19 positive cases, and also mobile operators are sharing phone location data about movements of people. While on the other hand, the government through a partnership with Telkom and Samsung alongside the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are developing a novel track and trace system that identifies infected people.

Furthermore, the Botswana government has also announced a contact tracing app that centralizes people’s data in the government-owned database whereas in Kenya the state is surveilling mobile phones of individuals who are on self-quarantine and detaining those who contravene the restrictions imposed on movements. In general, it is still unclear which countries in Africa are utilizing technology-driven disease surveillance tools except for a few countries mentioned above. If ignored and remain unchallenged, this adopted measures and tools being used have the potential to fundamentally violate personal privacy and other human rights.

In addition, these measures are likely to exacerbate unlawful discrimination and may disproportionately cause harm to minority groups. For instance, Telkom and Samsung are reportedly in talks with SA authorities to track those with COVID-19. The South Korean technology company Samsung, which recently faced some questionable ethics problemson its AI surveillance technology is now proposing to develop a big data analysis tool for the government which claims to track the spread of COVID-19 by tracing people’s movements. The problem with some of these tools deployed is that they use obscure algorithms, which may influence biased decision-making and contribute to discrimination.

At the helm of a datafied society is the amount of digital footprints people leave behind while accessing the internet, from monitoring movements of people and state output to targeted advertising online and the digital contact tracing apps developed to track COVID-19. Though many people may not remember every place they’ve visited, governments have the capacity to use digital trails to fill in the missing information on COVID-19 infected patients’ activities. For instance, in South Africa the government is working with mobile operators that are sharing cellphone data to trace people’s movements in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

Although these may be well-intentioned efforts by African governments, some COVID-19 surveillance and data mining interventions have been implemented with limited oversight structures. In addition, this has sparked debates around the ethics and legality of disease surveillance, and WHO has developed guidelines on ethical issues in public health surveillance. These guidelines must be considered to assist policymakers and health practitioners navigate the ethical issues presented by public health surveillance.

While Africa’s data protection landscape is somewhat evolving, on a regional level, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted a Supplementary Act on Personal Data Protection and in 2013, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) published a Model Data Protection Act. Additionally, in 2014, the African Union adopted the Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (the Malabo Convention). These measures demonstrate and support the adoption of data protection laws in the continent. Despite the regional organizations’ efforts, the overall legislative framework is not fully harmonized.

Nevertheless, COVID-19 has continually revealed the existing lack of collaboration and communication amongst states, intergovernmental organisations and mobile operators about the role technology plays in shaping public policy during COVID-19 pandemic. This is a complex issue that has proven a disconnect between society and governments exacerbated with suspicions and mistrust. Going forward, African governments need to scrutinize these concerns while acknowledging extraordinary circumstances that require stakeholder engagement.

Surveillance or monitoring measures should adhere to national laws and be limited in their scope to fulfil the aim of public health protection. These measures should be established as temporary and be limited as required to meet the needs of the public health emergency, with safeguards to protect human rights and any misuse of technologies by either private corporations or governments who may use the data for unlawful purposes.

Human rights principles reinforce the effectiveness of global efforts to combat COVID-19, creating a balance between the right to health and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms is the best approach to fighting the pandemic. These principles are in fact intertwined. If human rights are protected and well respected by authorities, user confidence is also gained and the ability to contact tracing tools to provide support for public health authorities achieves the intended goals.

 

About the author

Oarabile Mudongo is a technologist and a Ford Foundation / Media Democracy Fund Technology Exchange (Tx) fellow. He works with Research ICT Africa as a Research fellow on the Africa AI Policy Project (AIAPP) mapping Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage in Africa and associated governance issues affecting the African continent.

COVID-19 from the Margins was launched at the beginning of May 2020 as a multilingual blog platform, with the aim to give voice to narratives on the pandemic from social groups and individuals invisibilized by mainstream coverage and policies.. Two months down the line, we reflect on the core threads emerged so far, with a look to the future of South-based narrations of the first pandemic of the datafied society.

by Silvia Masiero, Stefania Milan and Emiliano Treré

 

Since the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020, narratives of the virus outbreak centred on counting and measuring have became dominant in public discourse. Enumerating and comparing cases and locations, victims or the progressive occupancy of intensive care units, policymakers and experts alike have turned data into the condition of existence of the first pandemic of the datafied society. However, many communities at the margins—from workers in the informal economy to low-income countries to victims of domestic violence—were left in the dark.

This is why our attention of researchers of datafication across the many Souths inhabiting the globe turned into the untold stories of the pandemic. We decided to make space for narratives from those individuals, communities, countries and regions that have thus far remained at the margins of global news reports and relief efforts. The multilingual blog COVID-19 from the Margins, launched on 4 May 2020, hosts stories of invisibility, including from migrants and communities living in countries and regions with limited statistical capacity or in cities and slums where pre-existing inequality and vulnerability have been augmented by the pandemic. In entering the third month of this initiative, a reflection on the main threads emerged from the 28 articles published so far is in order to devise our look to the future. In what follows, we identify four threads that have informed discussions on this blog so far, namely data visualisation, perpetuated vulnerabilities and inequalities, datafied social policies, and digital activism at the time of the pandemic.

Human invisibilities: Counting at the time of the pandemic

The inaugural piece of COVID-19 from the Margins pointed to the widening data divide that communities in the Souths are subjected to. In a strong exemplification of this problem, the blog hosted a contribution exploring conditions of (in)visibility affecting migrant communities during the pandemic, raising concerns about a just data management applied to populations on the move. As it became publicly noticeable in this global health crisis, data visualisation has important implications for data interpretation and management: a recent post from Italy narrates how local communities make sense of data, building collective learning experiences in the process. Consequently, the blog has turned to those communities whose vulnerability results in particular needs for visibility and visualisation.

Feminist data visualisations, giving visibility to statistics on impacts of COVID-19 on domestic violence and female education rates, offer a means to deal with one such vulnerability. Children from families affected from poverty and precariousness, as well as communities working in the informal sector of countries affected by the pandemic, need to make themselves visible to the state to become the recipients of social policy measures such as subsidies that are vital in situations of crisis. Through multiple narratives from the world, posts published on this blog have revealed the key role of (good) data visualisation in times of crises, and its consequences on governments’ ability to cater effectively to vulnerable groups.

Perpetuated vulnerabilities and inequalities

Authors writing for the blog have illuminated the situations of perpetuated vulnerability affecting a variety of communities during the COVID-19 emergency. In a post on the struggles experienced by the LGBTQ+ community it has been noted that, as “stay at home” becomes the new normal, ingrained societal prejudice may result in leaving LGBTQ+ community members without a home to stay in. An article on the struggles of digital economy workers, specifically ride-hailing workers in Brazil, has observed the perpetuation of uncertainty under COVID-19, leaving workers unable to hold public and private entities accountable for the health and economic risks suffered under the pandemic. A post on the emergency in São Paulo, Brazil, has illustrated the perpetuation of socio-economic inequalities under the pandemic, with historically poor and disadvantaged areas of the city suffering the most serious consequences of the health crisis.

Along these lines, one of our opening posts had already noted that, in times of global crisis and vulnerability, ordinary measures of social assistance acquire special importance for those affected. In this light, the narratives of perpetuated vulnerability and inequality unfolding under the pandemic become crucial, as they highlight critical situations that—crystallised under the context of the global crisis— require ad-hoc forms of intervention to limit the profound socioeconomic impacts of the health emergency.

Datafied social policies: A new importance under COVID-19

As national lockdowns, translating into different measures across the world, took hold of civil societies during COVID-19, vulnerable groups including below-poverty-line households, refugees, internally displaced persons, and workers from the informal sector whose income depends on the outputs of daily work, have been disproportionately affected by the crisis. Stories from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, India, Peru and Spain have highlighted the importance of social policies in emergency, as well as the consequences of datafication on such policies in the current time. While portraying different country cases, these narratives find at least two common denominators. Firstly, they point to the importance of information in devising social protection policy, and primarily, information on who is entitled to emergency assistance and on the size of such entitlements. Datafication reifies existing determination of entitlements and, in the cases of narrow targeting narrated on this blog, it exposes the consequences of making social assistance conditional to strict entitlement criteria.

A second theme exposed by the blog points to the problematic consequences of making social welfare conditional to digital identification, in a time at which vulnerability is heightened by the crisis. In India, where security concerns have emerged around the national contact-tracing app, a pre-existing ecosystem of digital identification centred on Aadhaar (the largest biometric database worldwide) has revealed the perils of perpetuating biometric access to social protection during lockdown. Such perils pertain to the use of biometrics as a means to combat inclusion errors rather than wrongful exclusions, contributing to ban access for the non-entitled but not to ensure access or data justice to the wrongfully excluded. The reshuffled priorities of the global emergency posed by COVID-19 powerfully illustrate such issues, effectively questioning the ethics of targeting and its impact on social assistance programs.

Digital and Data Activism during COVID-19

Narratives of digital power from multiple contexts, including China and Russia, have been explored in relation to COVID-19. These narratives have been key in formulating questions around digital activism during the pandemic, interrogating the affordances of extant platforms on providing information and support to vulnerable groups during the crisis. A post from Argentina explored the usage of the instant messaging service WhatsApp in coordinating solidarity groups catering to vulnerable people, while a post centred on Latin America provided context on the anatomy of biopolitics experienced during COVID-19. In continuity with such discourses, one of the most recent posts published on the blog discusses citizen sensing as an affordance of activism in the datafied society, exploring the implications of such a practice under COVID-19.

In appraising the perpetuation of socio-economic vulnerabilities under the pandemic, understanding the affordances of digital platforms in catering and giving voice to the excluded is crucial. It is also of primary importance to understand the risks posed by datafication in the current scenario, and to balance considerations of privacy and security with such affordances. In the present situation, the devising of novel means of digital activism respectful of social distancing measures—such as the digital march of Desaparecidos’ mothers in Mexico—exposes the new facets that activism may acquire under the predicaments of COVID-19.

Looking forward                                                                  

As the blog enters its third month of activity, reflecting on the medium and long-term consequences of the pandemic—with lockdowns progressively being eased in many corners of the globe and yet more vulnerabilities unfolding for the communities narrated here—will be crucial. In this rapidly evolving scenario, we remain committed to giving voice to global, multilingual narratives about the effects of the pandemic on the Souths, in the hope of consolidating the blog as a space for the multiple, different untold stories of COVID-19 from the Margins to be narrated, amplified and circulated.

by Marie Petersmann and Anna Berti Suman

 

Read Part I, published on June 30th

Citizen Sensing: From Sensing Radiations to COVID-19

In the immediate aftermath of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on 11 March 2011 and the subsequent meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, accurate and trustworthy radiation information was publicly unavailable.

Against this backdrop, a volunteer-driven non-profit organization called Safecast was formed to enable individuals ‘to monitor, collect and openly share radiation measurements’ and other data on radiation levels. The initiative ‘mobilized individuals and collectives’ in response to risks that were perceived as extremely urgent to monitor, namely the post-Fukushima radiations burdens. Safecast can thus be regarded as a ‘shock-driven’ initiative that constitutes a ‘successful [example of] citizen [sensing] for radiation measurement and communication after Fukushima’. As this initiative grew quickly in size, scope and geographical reach, Safecast’s mission soon expanded to provide citizens worldwide with the necessary tools they need to inform themselves by gathering and sharing accurate environmental data in an open and participatory fashion. Through a form of ‘auto-empowerment’, Safecast participants were able to monitor their own homes and environments, thereby ‘free[ing] themselves of dependence on government and other institutions for this kind of essential information’. As described on Safecast’s website, this process gave rise to ‘technically competent citizen science efforts worldwide’.

Reaction

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the Safecast collective engaged in a rapid response to the virus by setting up an information platform on the evolution of the crisis and a map of COVID-19 testing that provides a picture of where to obtain testing options in various locations (see covid19map.safecast.org). Over the years, Safecast had accumulated much experience and insights on ‘trust, crisis communication, public perception, and what happens when people feel threatened by a lack of reliable information’. Yet, the Safecast collective still struggles to be heard as ‘many scientists ignore their data’. Despite this scarce official recognition, Safecast took advantage of its experience and societal impact to rapidly respond to the current pandemic.

As observed by Safecast volunteers, ‘[w]e find ourselves again trying to better understand what is happening’. In a webinar on ‘Lessons we are learning from the COVID-19 pandemic for radiological risk communication’, Azby Brown (as volunteer at Safecast and director of the Kanazawa Institute of Technology’s Future Design Institute in Tokyo) drew several links between the nature of ionising radiations and the COVID-19. By alluding to the invisible presence and constant risks posed by such hyperobjects, the invitation to the webinar started by highlighting that ‘[y]ou can’t see, smell, or taste it, but it may be a problem’, which applies equally to radiations as well as viruses. Elsewhere, Brown observed that:

Fear of the unknown is normal, and radiation and viruses are both invisible threats that heighten anxiety. Most people have almost no way to determine for themselves whether they have come into contact with either of these threats, and they find themselves dependent on specialists, testing devices, and government and media reports. If the government and media do not provide clear, credible explanations and prompt communications, misinformation and mistrust can easily take root and spread.

For Brown, Safecast could provide a relevant risk communication perspective in the current COVID-19 context based on the experience gained after the Fukushima disaster. Despite major differences between ionising radiations and COVID-19, similarities in risks communications are worth exploring. 

Analogous governmental failures on risk communication were observed regarding, for example, shortcomings in rapidly conveying clear messages to the public and communicate strategies based on non-conflicting expert and policy opinions. The ambiguous and incomplete information received from the authorities generated a sense of uncertainty and distrust for many citizens dependent on single sources of official information. Against this backdrop, initiatives such as Safecast that enable people to control and monitor the presence and degrees of certain risks provide an alternative source of credible crowdsourced information. Beyond the immediate informational benefit for sensing citizens, such tools can further enable holding governments and officials into account.

A global phenomenon

At the time of writing, citizen sensing initiatives tackling COVID-19 are multiplying around the world (as listed here and here or exemplified here). Such citizen sensing practices ‘constitute ways of expressing care about environments, communities and individual and public health’ (Gabrys, at 175). As argued by Gabrys, these practices ‘are not just ways of documenting the presence of [threats]’ but are also ‘techniques for tuning sensation and feeling environments through different experiential registers’ (Ibid, 177). Granular monitoring by sensing citizens is seen as particularly valuable in times of emergencies, when governments are faced with urgent, massive and systemic risks of spatial and temporal scales that defy immediate control – such as the current pandemic.

Civic ‘sentries’ can both offer relief to affected people through solidarity networks and provide resources to policy-makers and scientists through wider access to grassroots-driven and situated information ‘from below’. Citizen sensing initiatives also enable lay people, turned into ‘sensing citizens’, to retain a greater degree of agency over the production and use of the data assembled. Against the ever-increasing rise of ‘bio-surveillance states’ and the development of ‘symptoms-tracking’ and ‘contact-tracing’ apps, ‘bottom-up innovations’ might help to counter the acceleration of ‘digital surveillance’ that may be hard to scale back after the pandemic.

Open access citizens’ sensed data may be considered more transparent and trustworthy by the public and convey important information on widely shared everyday lived experiences. By rendering data about real but invisible threats (and how these are perceived and felt) available through the intermediary of sensing citizens, a redistribution of (access to) information and agency in knowledge production is enabled. Finally, the increased ‘(datafied) relational awareness’ and ‘forms of correlational sight’ (Chandler, at 130) that are produced can create new appreciations of inherent yet invisible connections between human and non-human coexisting lifeforms.

Concluding thoughts

As hyper-objects, both the COVID-19 and climate change defy not only our understanding but also our control. Their causes and effects are so massively dispersed across space and time that they evade unmediated appearance. The impacts of hyperobjects operate through forms of ‘slow violence’, which are ‘often attritional, disguised, and temporally latent, making the articulation of slow violence a representational challenge’ (Davies, at 2). Only partial, local and deferred manifestations can be captured through experience. Our way of relating and responding to such hyperobjects depends on temporal, spatial and emotional predicaments. The more temporally immediate, spatially proximate and emotionally tangible the threats of hyperobjects are, the greater and quicker our responses tend to be. Temporal, spatial and emotional scales are central to our ability to sense the presence of invisible threats such as viruses and changes in the climate.

While socio-ecological threats posed by climate change have been present for decades and increasingly materialized across the globe in recent years (for certain peoples more than others), responses remained relatively marginal in light of the risks at stake. Conversely, while the (health) threats posed by the COVID-19 are of a relatively shorter-term (leaving aside the longer-term consequences of the socio-economic crisis it engendered), those risks triggered immediate and radical responses. The fact that the COVID-19 is sensed as a ‘direct risk’ to individuals or vulnerable relatives prompts instant reactions. The sensed proximity (both temporal and spatial) of the invisible threat points to important questions.

The current pandemic brought to light what climate activists deplored for long, namely that we tend to care more for risks posed to our individual conditions. A sense of emotional distance is generated by spatial and temporal gaps. This self-centred sentiment is reinforced by an anthropocentric appraisal that limits our ethics of care to the sole concern for the human species, instead of striving to ‘support the flourishing of other animals and natural things’ with which we are intrinsically entangled. While pessimistic projections on climate change have often been framed as triggering a sense of denial, paralysis or aporia, the current pandemic shows how emotions such as fear, anxiety and dread can also lead to mobilization, collective concern and action.

Emotions are, ultimately, about social movement, stirring and agitation: the root of the word ‘emotion’ is the Latin emovere, which implies both movement and agitation. Despite serious risks of strategic exploitation of fear or despair by political actors instrumentalizing a ‘state of exception’, such emotions can also unleash an enhanced sense of solidarity and cohesion through increased awareness of our fragile state of coexistence and new forms of collective attachment. This is true at the human level – as we saw emerging a myriad of new forms of ‘social proximity’ – but also at a ‘more-than-human’ level, by inviting to be alert and attentive to ‘humans’ impact on and interdependence with the ‘natural’ world we are part of. Such sensibilities can give rise to a sense of cross-species shared vulnerability, where hope and grief enable to re-envision different forms of ‘collaborative survival’ (Tsing, at 4). In this short blogpost, we did not tackle any of these ethical questions in depth.

More modestly, we explored how citizen sensing initiatives can help bridging the temporal, spatial and emotional distance between human (re)actions and present, yet invisible, threats through self-production of independent knowledge and agency. As Gabrys reminds us:

These practices are not just ways to rework the data and evidence that might be brought to bear on environmental problems. They are also ways of creating sensing entities, relations, and politics, which come together through particular ways of making sense of environmental problems (Gabrys, at 732).

We argued that, by recasting the actants and subjectivities involved, the technological and data-based sensors used by ‘sensing citizens’ have a world-making effect by facilitating awareness and intelligibility of certain threats. While physical isolation is being implemented (almost) globally, this doesn’t mean that we need to feel isolated and powerless. Daily citizen science is all about re-imagining scales and the potential of working together to provide a sense of connection and purpose. In reconfiguring the ‘distribution of the sensible’ – as a ‘system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it’ (Rancière, at 12) – new avenues are opened up for citizens to foresee, understand and visualize threats, and ‘(ac)count’ the damages caused (Bettini et al., at 6 and 8).

Beyond the realm of immediate perception and individual or collective (re)actions, decentralized, grassroots-driven and cooperative sensing technologies may also redistribute agency to challenge more ‘official’ monitoring infrastructures and hold actors into account to galvanize appropriate political responses. Politics, ultimately, ‘revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time’ (Rancière, at 13). These configurations of the sensible, we argue, provide an important terrain for rethinking the politics of hyperobjects such as the COVID-19 and climate change.

 

About the authors

Marie Petersmann is postdoctoral Research Fellow (Swiss National Science Foundation) based at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Anna Berti Suman is NWO Rubicon postdoctoral researcher at the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society, seconded at the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC) – Digital Economy Unit.