A Matter of Life and Death

Abstract

This chapter addresses the life of COVID-19 data, how it has been used to reshape our daily lives by directing intervention measures, and how new data-driven technologies have been deployed to try and help tackle the spread of the coronavirus. Specifically, it examines infection and death rates and the use of surveillance technologies designed to trace contacts, monitor movement, and regulate people's behaviour. The use of these technologies raised questions and active debate concerning the data life cycle and their effects on civil liberties and governmentality. Indeed, most of the critical analysis of contact tracing apps focused on its potential infringement of civil liberties, particularly privacy, since they require fine-grained knowledge about social networks and health status and, for some, location. The concern was that intimate details about a person's life would be shared with the state without sufficient data protection measures that would foreclose data re/misuse and ensure that data would be deleted after 14 days (at which point it becomes redundant) or stored indefinitely.