The Economist is reporting that Covid-19 is “testing the European Union’s unofficial religion: privacy” as there is resistance to government #surveillance such as tracing apps and other invasive measures.
Who wants to live in South Korea where officials root through everything from taxi receipts to credit-card records to trace the infected and possibly infected?
Recently, Steve Paikin asked University of Toronto professors to imagine what the ”new” workplace may look like as the shutdown ends:
“There’ll be rigorous testing of employees,” says Anita McGahan, professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “And employers may be asked to administer those tests.”
“Inevitably, our employers will become agents of the government,” predicts Nicola Lacetera, associate professor of strategic management of the University of Toronto Mississauga and at Rotman.
“There’ll be a whole new set of questions about what’s appropriate for employers to request of their employees,” says Tiff Macklem, the dean at Rotman and a former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, adding that he suspects employees may be prepared to give up certain privacy rights in exchange for safer workplaces.
🏛The nature of relinquished rights is that they are not returned—not without a fight.
😈 The nature of unchecked power—whether it be governmental or relational or an employer—is that it is tragically abused.
It is not just Europeans that are being tested. It is all people living in democratic nations, which are designed by their very nature to resist tyrannical governance forms and seek alternatives that respect #privacy, #liberty and human #dignity.
🙏Covid has damaged our health, devastated our economy—it’s up to us to decide what lasting impact it will have on our #democracy.
Illustraction: Peter Schrank @theeconomist
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