https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-fighting-covid-19-shouldnt-mean-abandoning-human-rights/

Governments around the world are racing to adopt new surveillance tools in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many are green-lighting dragnet monitoring systems, seeking real-time location data from mobile providers or deploying facial recognition and other emerging technologies.

These steps may usher in a long-term expansion of the surveillance state. Covid-19 has arrived after two decades of rapid technological change, in which both the public and private sectors exponentially increased their capacity to incorporate surveillance into various aspects of governance and commercial activity. Many democracies have tried, not always with success, to build legal barriers that constrain authorities’ ability to access and exploit the personal information collected by private companies. Coronavirus surveillance could dismantle these structures.