I was interviewed by the @BBCArabic team for this piece on privacy violations & surveillance capabilities in #COVID19 contact tracing apps, in states like Bahrain & Kuwait, and Norway. A few thoughts https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇🏾" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten (durchschnittlich dunkler Hautton)" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten (durchschnittlich dunkler Hautton)"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQGyXtxFIFs&feature=emb_logo">https://www.youtube.com/watch...

Worldwide, not just in the Gulf, we& #39;re witnessing the deployment of mass surveillance systems to track the spread of #COVID19, and that has come with the rapid erosion of civil liberties and privacy. And those systems deployed as a safeguard against covid19 will probably remain

Historically, there have been no incentives for governments to limit their overreach into people& #39;s privacy, on the contrary. If you take a look at 9/11 and its aftermath, it ushered a new era of surveillance in the name of protecting citizens, and this time is no different.

This wave of public health crisis will re-wire people& #39;s sensibilities about digital privacy, and will normalize surveillance. Govs didn& #39;t ask permission or receive consent before rolling out these practices, and this type of overreach in times of crises will become the new normal

It& #39;s been really disheartening to see hard-fought privacy wins and defenses against global surveillance systems being dismantled one by one without any sense that they will come back.

For a while now, the Gulf has been pushing a new wave of digital surveillance to track citizens, from the Oyoon program, to cellphone hacking and other high-tech surveillance measures to monitor and intimidate folks. And now, they can do it under the guise of public safety.

When a repressive state is equipped with the means to surveil an entire population, whether it& #39;s in the name of public safety or not, you can bet it will only enhance their means of control and repression of those they deem to be a "danger," aka activists/human rights defenders