Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-03-02)

 POLITICS Businessweek

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student was overwhelmed by calls and visits from

health officials, police officers, and other author-

ities; doctors came to take his temperature daily

for two weeks. He hadn’t contracted the virus.

Overwhelmed, the student turned off his phone.

Mobile phones—which, like social media

accounts, are linked to Chinese citizens’ national

identity numbers—are an integral part of China’s

surveillance. Now they’re a key part of its virus-

containment efforts. China’s Big Three state-owned

phone carriers have responded to the call last

month by the Ministry of Industry and Information

Technology to contribute data to fight the outbreak.

As of Feb. 12, China Mobile Ltd.’s 300-strong big-

data team had fulfilled more than 400 government

requests for information on people’s movement.

China Telecom Corp. has helped 24  provinces

install a system that lets officials and medical staff

record and monitor people’s personal, health, and

travel information. It’s also adding systems at office

buildings that track people’s identities and health

through facial recognition and infrared tempera-

ture scanners.

Technology from Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s

WeChat and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Alipay

is also helping the government monitor people’s

movements. The companies developed a color-

coded health- rating system to identify people as

high-, medium-, or low-risk. The system scans peo-

ple seeking to enter offices, malls, and subways and

allows or denies them access based on their rat-

ings. Hubei and other provinces are requiring any-

one selling cough or fever treatments to report the

buyers’ identities.

The new tools are intensifying the paranoia

that’s setting in as some of China’s 1.4 billion peo-

ple isolate themselves at home, with little to do

but search the internet. Baidu Inc.’s map function

now shows how crowded a neighborhood is so

people can avoid congested areas, while WeChat

has added functionality so users of its social net-

work can see if they’re in the proximity of con-

firmed virus cases. WeChat and microblogging site

Weibo have set up online services where people

can report friends, family members, and neigh-

bors who might be sick or who aren’t taking proper

quarantine precautions.

Since late January, spreadsheets and lists iden-

tifying people living in or returning home from

Wuhan have been circulating around social media,

including on Weibo. A Wuhan resident included in

one of the lists says he recently received an influx

of strange calls. The resident, who asked to remain

anonymous to prevent further harassment, says

he quarantined himself alone at home for 14 days

because his parents both testedpo

for the virus. His mother recovered

spending four days in the hospital,whi

father remains at a local hospital.

Across the country, scores of neig

committee members have beende

take people’s temperatures eachday

their whereabouts. Earlier in February,a groupof

young women in red down jacketsandflimsysurgi-

cal masks went door to door in Beijing’sShichahai

neighborhood with clipboards to record residents’

temperatures, ID numbers, and recent travel. One,

a party member who says she oversees 500 house-

holds, told a Bloomberg reporter that as a disease-

prevention measure, the community would now

restrict outsiders from entering—including grocery

deliverymen—on orders “from above.”

The panic and fear that blanket surveillance

creates could actually undermine efforts to

contain the epidemic. China had come under

criticism for silencing doctors in Wuhan who sus-

pected early on the virus was serious, and the

suspicion facing people thought to be potentially

ill could discourage the transparency needed to

engender trust and fight an epidemic, says Stuart

Hargreaves, a law professor at Chinese University

of Hong Kong who researches surveillance and

privacy issues. “If you had an approach that

encouraged the reporting of ‘negative’ informa-

tion, rather than punishing it, then this outbreak

might have been limited at a much earlier point,”

he says.

It’s also not clear that the use of mass surveil-

lance will be effective. While it might seem useful to

have full oversight of citizens’ movements and vital

signs, making use of data on that scale requires

manpower and training that China’s police force

lacks, says Suzanne Scoggins, an assistant professor

at Clark University. Scoggins, who researches polic-

ing and authoritarian control in China,saystrac-

ing the spread of a virus is different fromtracking

the movements of dissidents or criminals.

still relatively new technology that is likely

used in a way that is different from its origin

design,” she says. “It may help some, butw

shouldn’t expect it to contain an outbreak

Blanket surveillance is differentfr

so-called contact tracing, a practic

goes back centuries to map a disease

most famously when Dr. John Snow

find the source of the 1854 cholerao

London—a water pump. The usefuln

tech surveillance tools will be limitedu

identify the incubation period ofthenewcoro-

navirus and develop rapid diagnostictestsand

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