The Fight for Privacy is a Fight for Democracy

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua e qua)

By now I imagine everyone has heard that one of the indispensable tools for emerging from the lockdown period is digital contact tracing. In brief, this refers to mechanisms — whether personal apps or centralised systems, the substance does not change — for recording who one comes into contact with, in order to alert them to a possible infection. The problem is that this activity is a serious invasion of privacy and exposes citizens (in the personal app version) to security risks. It also has significant implications for social relationships.

Solutions of this kind should only be adopted, as both the Italian Data Protection Authority and several international organisations have pointed out, after evaluating their merits through a cost-benefit analysis. To my knowledge, no such analysis has been carried out, and the decision to proceed down this path was taken directly. This alone should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who is genuinely committed to democracy.

But "what's the problem?", argue colleagues and acquaintances. Between doing nothing and using an app with potential privacy risks, isn't it better to do something rather than let people die?

This is a false dichotomy: the state resources committed to this could instead be used to strengthen the national health service, carry out manual contact tracing, conduct intensive testing, and properly implement and communicate preventive health measures to citizens (masks, gloves, distancing, hygiene habits). And let us not be told that companies will provide digital tracing for free "out of solidarity" — we are grown-ups and no longer believe in fairy tales.

Another objection: "people don't care about privacy anyway." True — they use Google and Apple services without realising the constant stream of digital traces — locations, interests, contacts, addresses — they leave behind on their servers. So what? Rather than educating them in the "healthy" use of digital technologies (something all governments have promised and none has delivered), should we seize this opportunity to attack their privacy still further? Some time ago I asked: "What would we call rulers who sold their own citizens to foreign powers?"

People already surrender their personal data in their use of digital devices, largely out of ignorance. This is considered normal, but it is not. Even a few decades ago it was considered normal for the government of a country to be the business of a qualified minority. Then it was understood that universal suffrage led to a more representative and more equitable democracy.

My techno-enthusiast colleagues retort: "it's too late now" and "there is no alternative." Personally, I have always found these two expressions to be a reliable sign of a trap. Perhaps it is because I am by nature an optimist; perhaps it is because my mother used to say "only death has no remedy" — but reading (and understanding) a couple of history books makes it clear that scenarios can always change, and what seems obvious today may not be so in a year's time.

This is true in the present case as well, regarding the adoption of digital contact tracing: in France and Germany, where for historical reasons sensitivity to personal freedoms is far more alive than it is here, there have been numerous public positions that are weighing on government decisions. These can be read here and here for France, and here and here for Germany. The future, then, is one that we as citizens will help to shape.

There is also the dismissive appeal to foreign example: "let's follow the lead of the countries that have adopted these solutions and succeeded." Well, if we look closely, China is not exactly a society aligned with European democratic standards. In South Korea, people are paying a very high price in terms of social shaming (as reported in the Wall Street Journal). And in Singapore, the digital tracing app was downloaded by barely a fifth of citizens and did not work — after which they resorted to lockdown anyway. One can also read the reflections of the team leader behind "TraceTogether," Singapore's much-lauded app: "the Singapore experience suggests that contact tracing should remain a human-led activity."

The real reason for adopting such a solution without debate is, to my mind, clear: to use the coronavirus as a pretext for establishing mass surveillance on a general scale — a pervasive control infrastructure that can subsequently be deployed for other purposes. From a technical standpoint, I consider it practically extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement digital contact tracing without putting privacy at risk (I have discussed this here and here), and I regard it as my duty as an expert to flag this threat to freedom and democracy.

Why does defending privacy matter? Because it means defending democracy. Without one, there is no other: in the "glass house" where only one opinion is permitted and no dissent is possible, democracy is dead.

Let us continue with the analysis of the techno-enthusiast positions, which, in the management of this health emergency, see above all the opportunities to be seized for the country's digital development, while minimising the dangers.

It is also said that "in these difficult times we need solidarity, and we must all contribute to the common good by allowing ourselves to be traced." First, I note that what exactly constitutes this "common good" has not yet been sufficiently debated — at least not in Italy, where we have seen and continue to see decisions taken without parliamentary debate, in the wake of government measures which some legal scholars argue are on the edge of unconstitutionality. Notice also how a statement of this kind effectively amounts to the outlawing of dissent — that is, of those who do not wish to be traced. The voluntary nature of the system, cited as a "lifeline" for those who disagree, is in reality a fig leaf: if use of the system becomes a mechanism for controlling access to public spaces — offices, shops, restaurants, cinemas, schools, and so on — then compulsion becomes the de facto norm and a potential source of discrimination.

There is no ethical dilemma here between the common good and individual rights, because this is not a choice between privacy and health. We simply need to reject choices that sell privacy short and are not genuinely necessary to support the public health response — which above all needs the resources that the mantra of "less State, more Market" has stripped away from it over the past decade.

My assessment of the motivations behind the intention expressed by many European governments to press ahead in this direction coincides with what was stated by an anonymous source working within the French government's digital strategy group: "the government knows that this app has a very low probability of being effective, but it needs to show that it is doing something to bring the lockdown to an end." Moreover, such a choice offers a convenient escape route: if it fails, the blame will fall on the citizens who did not use it — once again pushing the marginalisation of the "dissenter." It is remarkable that, rather than preserving the dignity of the human person — already severely tested by the lockdown — responsibility for solving the problem is being shifted onto individuals, at the risk of unleashing social hostility. What should be provided is medicine, medical assistance, and economic support for those reduced to destitution by the economic crisis triggered by the health emergency.

The point is that "afterwards," even if entirely useless for its stated purpose, the surveillance infrastructure risks remaining present on millions of devices, ready to serve other ends. Its scope can be progressively extended over time — from coronavirus to other viruses, to other diseases — and gradually expanded, through successive automatic updates (as happens with the many apps on our smartphones), to cover other objectives (always in the public interest, of course). The very fact that there is so little awareness of how we wander unknowingly through a digital world for which we have no sensors makes this not a paranoid scenario but a plausible reality. To say nothing of our data potentially being sold for commercial purposes, given the enormous value it has acquired — above all for the major industrial groups working in Artificial Intelligence.

(from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, 1927)

And there is more. Some go so far as to argue: "a fifth of the population doesn't have or can't use a smartphone? Then let's give them a smartphone or an electronic bracelet that does everything automatically." I find myself wondering: would these people have cheered on the iceberg for making the passengers of the Titanic understand the importance of knowing how to swim? I am genuinely alarmed by people who express opinions of this kind. When one points out that this is hardly the best way to make all citizens digitally competent, they respond that such positions are Luddite — though the Luddites, it should be said, were expressing class struggle demands with solid foundations.

We need to understand that handing a weapon to a potential adversary in the belief that one can always persuade them not to use it is not a winning strategy when they hold more power. There is no point pretending otherwise: despite all the appeals to solidarity and goodwill, power conflicts exist. Those who have the power to do things and also have the means to do them will do them.

Some solutions must not be permitted. Full stop. Michel Foucault's analysis of "invisible surveillance" as a means of compelling the prisoner to internalise prison discipline is entirely applicable to this "digital surveillance" — a perfect incarnation, precisely because it is invisible, of the Panopticon, the ideal prison conceived in 1791 by Jeremy Bentham. It risks being the first step toward dystopian scenarios of wholly obedient, conformist citizens, as in the film Metropolis.

Addressing social problems through technological solutions rather than through political debate, the strengthening of public services (the only ones that need not be driven by profit), and the funding of evidence-based research and discussion into possible tools to help decide how to intervene — this is the most glaring manifestation of that "digital solutionism" that will kill democracy, if we do not push back.