Covid and the surveillance state

It's been more than a year now since reports about what we now call the coronavirus/Covid pandemic first reared its ugly head in Wuhan, China; and even with the understandable fear of the unknown that was projected, in terms of health consequences, and merely the confusion around the disease (what it is, and what exactly to do about it - which in many ways persists to this day) - one of the early fears online and offline civil liberties activists have had, and to their credit continue to have - is how all this might morph from a mere struggle to contain a healthcare crisis, into affecting our basic freedoms in the long-term?

And how, justified or not, a fight against a disease might metastasize into a threat to vast swaths of populations, thanks to their governments using, or abusing, the moment to introduce and then keep in place some draconian mass surveillance measures.

From Edward Snowden's explosive 2013 revelations, we learned exactly the level of thirst some of the most powerful governments have for keeping a very close - often unlawful or at least unjustifiable - eye by pretty much any means necessary on every aspect on their own, and other countries' populations.

In relatively peaceful and business-as-usual times, the "unjustifiable" factor throws something of a wrench in the works of the legitimacy of these grinding machines. But a global health crisis like Covid, with all the associated uncertainty and panic stemming from it, provided the perfect ground for all sorts of government/security agencies' overreach to flourish unchecked.

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