When a virus changes governance arrangements - and Israel becomes a surveillance state (and why that's good)

The researcher of the future Dr.Roey Tsezana says that tracking through cellular tracking may help to limit the outbreak of the corona virus, provided that transparency is maintained, and it is guaranteed that the tracking will not continue in the future to minimize the harm to privacy 

In recent days I have been asked how to deal with the corona virus effectively. I answered (without too much humility) that the solution to the problem is technologically simple. The virus spreads from person to person, so all we have to do is prevent the carriers from getting close to others.

Say - "Great sage, the isolation is supposed to do exactly that!" And that is true, except that the isolation is also harmful to the economy and the economy. The technological solution I proposed was to activate an automatic system that would track all citizens in real time through their smartphones. From the moment one of the citizens is identified as a carrier, the system will reconstruct his path in the last few days, and identify every person who crossed that path. And behold, you will immediately send an automatic message to the smart phones of all those people, and warn them that they should go get tested or - at the very least - go into isolation. After that, she will also follow them to make sure that they did go into isolation and did not leave the house where they are staying.

Similar systems - at a lower level of sophistication, for the most part - were used by the authorities in Taiwan, China and probably also in Singapore. These are three countries that managed to eradicate the spread of the virus in their territories (also) thanks to the sophisticated monitoring tools they used. That is, we have good evidence that such systems fulfill the role they were intended for. But what? It was immediately made clear to me by those who understand that there is a 'small' problem from a legal and ethical point of view in the proposal. The laws in the State of Israel have not yet advanced enough to deal with such advanced digital technologies, and it is not clear whether the government can receive a mandate to run such large-scale monitoring operations.

In short, the idea was pretty much thrown aside as clearly implausible. Not from a technological point of view, but from an applied point of view.

Then, one day later, the Prime Minister announced in consultation with a committee that he intends to use technological means of monitoring - that is, tracking the location of people - on the civilian population. These are technologies that were previously only used to fight terrorism, and now they are going to be applied to everyone.

Corona and surveillance

I want to thank the Prime Minister from the bottom of my heart at this point. Really, no sarcasm at all. I swear It takes real courage to use surveillance technologies - the kind that the entire western world loves to hate, and for good reasons - on the civilian population. We need to show real leadership in the face of the counter arguments that the lawyers and the people entrusted with the protection of citizens' privacy have certainly raised, and at some point knock on the table and say - "We are in an emergency! You will find a legal way to make this possible, and the responsibility is on me!"

I choose to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu wants, like the rest of us, to advance the State of Israel and get us out of the pit into which we have fallen. To do this, he is willing to use surveillance technologies on citizens whose legality is borderline, at best. And that's great. In dramatic emergency situations, it is necessary to use extraordinary tools. If the surveillance of the citizens leads to stopping the spread of the virus in Israel, then we will all see that Netanyahu made the right choice.

But - and this is a big but - we must ask one critical question: what will happen in the days after the virus?

about power and responsibility

In the hands of the states today is given enormous power: the power to track their citizens. This power was always there, but it was limited. The Stasi - East Germany's Shin Bet - in its heyday collected information on a third of the country's citizens, but couldn't really track everyone. It employed more than 390,000 agents, and still didn't have enough.

In the new age, you don't need all that. All citizens carry a small 'agent' on their body - the smartphone - and the government can extract information from it. At a minimum, it can obtain information on the location of every citizen. In the more extreme cases, it can also track citizens through various popular apps.

Such power almost inevitably leads to the corruption of virtue. Every government wants to protect the citizens of the country, and by the way - also itself, as the true representative (in its opinion) of the people. It is very easy - too easy - for totalitarian governments to track all their citizens through social networks and the smartphones in every pocket. They can listen to any person - at home or outside. They are able to understand how people think and adapt for each of them messages that will convince him that the government cares especially for him. In this way, no one can bring about change, and the whole system is stuck with one person at the head: Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Luvchenko in Belarus and so on and so forth.

Israel, clearly, is not in that place. These surveillance measures do exist, but they are well controlled by the appropriate authorities, and directed against terrorists. The problem is that procedures of this type are of a volatile nature, and can be easily hacked. In Russia, for example, there are laws to protect privacy, but the security agencies can violate them - and justify it only after the fact, if at all. In Trump's United States, we have seen how he replaces the most senior officials in the government systems with panchayats whose loyalty is solely to him, and threatens individuals in the US Senate to avoid the legal consequences of his actions.

The process in which a democratic-liberal state slides down the slippery slope towards a dictatorship is not new. In their book "How Democracies Die", Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explain that the new dictators - Putin, Erdogan, Orban in Hungary, Maduro in Venezuela and others - are not trying to change the constitution or the basic rules, and control the citizens with tanks in the streets. Instead, they change political norms in ways that distort the original laws. And so, little by little, a country with democratic norms becomes one where the leader rules without real opposition.

Giving the government the ability to spy on the citizens inevitably gives enormous power to the person at the head of the system, and allows him to change the existing norms more easily. This is the reason that in every democratic country there is a whole system of restraints and brakes designed to make sure that only in the most extreme situations is this ability used.

And this system has been violated in recent days by the Israeli government, for good reason. But now it is necessary to make sure that the new situation - in which the government can spy on the citizens - is strictly monitored to prevent spillover in the totalitarian direction.

How do we do it?

Transparency, security, time

How can we make sure that there will be adequate supervision of the power we give in the hands of the government? The answer is simple: sunlight reveals all corruption. We must make sure that the surveillance system on the citizens is completely transparent. The government must publish a clear explanation regarding the goals of the system, its methods of operation and its capabilities. Is it intended to enforce the isolation on the carriers? To trace back in time to identify the path a patient took? Can it automatically notify people that they are at risk of infection?

Without transparency, the system could be abused to spy on citizens. No less serious, citizens will lose faith in democracy because they will fear that they are indeed under constant surveillance, even if this is not the case. Because of this, the government is obliged to provide transparency regarding its intentions already in the coming days, and once the surveillance system begins to operate, it must release an account regarding the nature and scope of the surveillance on a regular basis.

In addition to this, a committee of privacy and good governance experts should be established - these can come from the Authority for the Protection of Privacy, as well as from the various universities in Israel and around the world - to make sure that the surveillance system does not collect more information than it needs, and that only proper use is made of the information.

The second requirement is security. Such a tracking system stores a huge amount of data. If you were worried about the biometric database, congratulations: you have a new issue to worry about. There is an obligation to develop the highest level protections for the system, and to integrate the most advanced cyber experts in Israel and the world into the development. Without such protections, the information will be intercepted in a short time by foreign countries.

Last but not least, it is important to set a limited time to activate the tracking system. There is a real chance that the corona virus will stay with us not only in the coming months, but also for many years to come. There is a real danger that the government will continue to monitor all citizens at the same time. Because of this, it would have been appropriate for the Prime Minister to clearly indicate an end date for the system's operation, or at least some boundary condition. Since this has not happened, we must demand that the administration make it clear until when the surveillance system will operate.

I am happy to say at this point that today - just one day after the Prime Minister's statement - A number of leading researchers in the field of privacy and governance have already sent a letter to the Prime Minister and all relevant government officials. The authors include some of the greatest researchers in Israel in these fields, such as Prof. Karin Nahon, Dr. Tahila Schwartz-Altschuler and Prof. Michael Birnhack. They all want to understand the meaning of the new measures, how they were received and how they can be monitored. And to paraphrase what they wrote: An emergency, sure, but you can't throw democracy away.

The potential for the future

Not everything is bad about the constant surveillance of the citizens. Health systems, for example, can constantly collect information about each person and run sophisticated algorithms on them to identify early signs of illness and send the patient to treatment before he himself knows he is sick. The police can easily locate criminals and arrest them. Terrorists are almost completely neutralized. In short, it is clear that there are many advantages in monitoring the general public, but there are also great and justified concerns about giving power to the state without adequate supervision of its use.

Benjamin Netanyahu took a big and important step: he ordered the activation of a system that could save many lives in Israel, thereby going against the opinions of many experts on privacy and data protection. The hour of emergency justifies such dramatic measures, and part of the role of a real statesman - not a petty politician - is to know when to take them.

But, right at the same time, it is important that he also take the second critical step, and define clear rules to limit the power of the surveillance system. If he does not do this, then the system will remain in operation even after the corona virus has passed from the world, and will undermine Israel's democratic character.

The most important thing that can be done to promote this second step, is to clarify its importance to the public. People need to understand that laws that have been reinterpreted to allow such surveillance, and surveillance systems that have been established with great effort, are not going to disappear like that - just as soon as the crisis passes. We all need to mobilize to demand from our politicians - on the right, the left and the center - to define ground rules for the surveillance system, determine who will protect it and how, and make the whole system transparent.

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More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Corona has been declared a worldwide epidemic - what is the difference between a disease outbreak, an epidemic and a global disease?
• The new corona virus: the last epidemic to hit the human race
• The future of the corona virus - in the world and in Israel
• The Corona epidemic - the full coverage on the science website