Ambassador Ron Prosor
The Covid-19 pandemic broke into our lives amidst challenging times for liberal democracy. According to all leading global indexes of democracy, 2020 is another year in which political freedoms and civil liberties across the world are in decline, continuing more than a decade-long trend. The sense of crisis prompted by the pandemic is a fertile ground for more democratic backsliding, as public health and economic concerns mount pressures on policymakers to come up with fast, effective and reliable solutions to counter the virus.
Governments (and private companies) around the world have answered the call by resorting to technology. Digital surveillance measures have been adopted for contact tracking, quarantine enforcement, monitoring the virus spread etc. These measures vary on their level of effectiveness, oversight, transparency and their negative impact on privacy, liberty, and the separation of powers.
This project aims to develop a roadmap, based on comparative analysis of the technological strategies and tools employed by different leading states, to provide an empirically based picture of how to appropriately harness technology to counter Covid-19 (and other global epidemics) in a democracy-preserving ecosystem. The project, led by a team of researchers with expertise in policy, cyber, law, and Asia studies, will gather and analyze data comprising of measures and tools adopted around the world, to suggest policy recommendations for effective, rights-protecting digital tracking.