The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic allowed governments to roll out higher surveillance systems without pushback from citizens.
Such emergencies “can be moments where governments roll out new invasive forms of data collection and it just becomes the new normal, because in moments of crisis there’s a deeper allowance in terms of public trust and legal authority,” assistant professor Ben Green said. “There’s less of a sense of pausing for reflection, because there doesn’t feel like there is time when dealing with a global pandemic.”
