The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life as we knew it. Lockdowns, self-isolation and quarantine have become a normal part of everyday life. Pandemic surveillance allows governments and corporations to monitor and surveil the spread of the virus and to make sure citizens follow the measures they put in place. This is evident in the massive, unprecedented mobilization of public health data to contain and combat the virus, and the ballooning of surveillance technologies such as contact-tracing apps, facial recognition, and population tracking. This can also be seen as a pandemic of surveillance.
In this timely book, David Lyon tracks the development of these methods, examining different forms of pandemic surveillance, in health-related and other areas, from countries around the world. He explores their benefits and disadvantages, their legal status, and how they relate to privacy protection, an ethics of care, and data justice. Questioning whether this new culture of surveillance will become a permanent feature of post-pandemic societies and the long-term negative effects this might have on social inequalities and human freedoms, Pandemic Surveillance highlights the magnitude of COVID-19-related surveillance expansion. The book also underscores the urgent need for new policies relating to surveillance and data justice in the twenty-first century.
In this timely book, David Lyon tracks the development of these methods, examining different forms of pandemic surveillance, in health-related and other areas, from countries around the world. He explores their benefits and disadvantages, their legal status, and how they relate to privacy protection, an ethics of care, and data justice. Questioning whether this new culture of surveillance will become a permanent feature of post-pandemic societies and the long-term negative effects this might have on social inequalities and human freedoms, Pandemic Surveillance highlights the magnitude of COVID-19-related surveillance expansion. The book also underscores the urgent need for new policies relating to surveillance and data justice in the twenty-first century.
"Since future pandemics will undoubtedly occur, it is essential that we establish trustworthy institutions to conduct public health surveillance. Hopefully Lyon's insights will help shape the hard conversations that lie ahead...By integrating some of the core insights from privacy theory, data justice, and care ethics, he creates a novel conceptual toolkit that's a solid theoretical starting point for critically analyzing pandemic surveillance."
Evan Selinger, LA Review of Books
"This is a timely contribution that highlights the global amplification of surveillance in the pandemic age and recognises its likely long-term consequences."
LSE Review of Books
"Pandemic Surveillance provides a much-needed overview of how the surveillance landscape has evolved and a synoptic vantage point from which to guide further analysis...it is a timely intervention, setting out key issues and raising important warnings about the pandemic's surveillance legacy."
Surveillance & Society journal
Evan Selinger, LA Review of Books
"This is a timely contribution that highlights the global amplification of surveillance in the pandemic age and recognises its likely long-term consequences."
LSE Review of Books
"Pandemic Surveillance provides a much-needed overview of how the surveillance landscape has evolved and a synoptic vantage point from which to guide further analysis...it is a timely intervention, setting out key issues and raising important warnings about the pandemic's surveillance legacy."
Surveillance & Society journal