Dr. Alisa Rubin Peled
In April 2020 Israelis celebrated Passover, also known as the “Holiday of Freedom,” commemorating the exodus from slavery and the universal human aspiration to be free. Ironically, this holiday was celebrated during an unprecedented, total lockdown during which citizens were forbidden to move more than 100 meters from their homes and following a March 2020 unprecedented decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu to authorize Israel’s internal security service (the “Shin Bet”) to use cellphone location data to track the movements of COVID-19 (coronavirus) carriers—information previously restricted to use in counter-terrorism operations. Moreover, the Prime Minister initially issued this policy through an emergency order with no parliamentary ratification or judicial oversight, a move that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel called: “a dangerous precedent and a slippery slope”.
Mass surveillance can save lives by enabling governments to trace and track coronavirus spread during the current pandemic. However, emergency powers often outlive their emergencies, and, once surveillance is put into place, its uses inevitably expand. Liberal democracies face a serious threat of turning into surveillance states where civil liberties, the cornerstone of this system of government, become relics of the past unless preventive measures are taken right now.
This project aims to examine the current rapid expansion of citizen surveillance in liberal democracies in the name of public health during the coronavirus pandemic. It addresses a number of crucial questions, namely:
How can the legitimate emergency need for surveillance data to control the spread of coronavirus be balanced with the erosion of civil liberties including privacy which are the cornerstone of liberal democracy? What is the optimal balance between public and private sector involvement in this surveillance and what are the most effective oversight and regulation measures of this process? Will this surveillance become entrenched and, if so, what are the possible long-term effects on liberal democracy (particularly in Israel), including a contestation of legitimacy between authoritarianism and democracy?