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

Worldwide, not just in the Gulf, we'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'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's sensibilities about digital privacy, and will normalize surveillance. Govs didn'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'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'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