But What If Big Brother's Surveillance Saves Lives?--Comparative Digital Privacy in the Time of Coronavirus

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|By April 2020, a significant portion of students from across the globe were taking classes online instead of learning with their friends at school. Most working-age adults found themselves at home, many unemployed. Everyone worried every day about the safety and health—the most fundamental needs—of loved ones. Across public spaces, “no entry” signs and posters reminded individuals to stay six feet away from each other to strictly enforce social distancing at all times. Bustling restaurants and bars were ordered to shut down, save for a few diligent takeout and delivery locations. Streets were virtually empty. Travel was effectively out of question, as were weddings, honeymoons, Easter get-togethers, and graduation ceremonies.

As dystopian as these portraits of society may sound, they were, in one way or the other, the new normal as the world confronted a new common enemy in 2020: the novel coronavirus, “COVID-19.” Although these curtailments to one’s civil liberties appeared extreme and the social changes were drastic, especially in liberal democracies such as the United States, new policies and laws imposed by governments worldwide in response to COVID-19 became the necessary evil to mitigate the consequences of the pandemic and to rid the world of this highly contagious and fatal virus as promptly as possible.