Coronavirus: individual freedoms undermined by emergency measures in Europe

Text by: Romain Philips Follow

Many European governments are stepping up new measures to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. This is causing concern for organizations defending freedoms.

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In an attempt to stem the Covid-19 pandemic, of which Europe has become the epicenter , the measures taken by certain countries of the European Union are worrying.

In the name of the right of exception and the health crisis which affects the whole world, the use of mass surveillance tools, such as geolocation data from smartphones or drones, is causing a lively debate. Even if the health argument can be justified in the context of a global pandemic, these measures must be " limited " and " proportionate ". It is in any case in this sense that Ursula von der Leyen pleads.

In Europe, the question is debated

Tuesday March 31, the day after a vote in Hungary giving almost unlimited powers to Prime Minister Viktor Orban , the President of the European Commission alerted to these measures. In a statement, she said that decisions made by EU member states should be " strictly proportionate ", " limited to what is necessary " and that they " should not last indefinitely ".

. @ EU_Commission will closely monitor, in a spirit of cooperation, the application of emergency measures in all Member States. We all need to work together to master this crisis. On this path, we'll uphold our European values ​​& human rights. This is who we are & what we stand for.

Mass surveillance measures, put in place in China, Taiwan or South Korea and which would surely never have been accepted by the European population in normal times, find their place in the debate today. Faced with the daily increasing number of deaths, some European democracies are ready to take unprecedented measures. If Hungary is a unique case in Europe, the other European countries are developing other methods.

► Read also : The Hungarian Parliament confers full powers to Viktor Orban against the coronavirus

Drone surveillance, geolocation data control… the health crisis context is " legitimizing the use of surveillance technology with a power that we had rarely seen before ", believes Martin Drago, lawyer for Quadrature du Net , a member organization of the Liberties and Digital Observatory (OLN).

For its part, the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, reacted cautiously, indicating that " the European Commission assesses the emergency measures taken by the Member States with regard to fundamental rights ".

Innovation against Covid-19

Several European countries are already using the use of geolocation data in the fight against the pandemic to track the movements of their population. However, they must be anonymized in order to comply with the ePrivacy directive, which regulates the use of telephone data at European level.

Italy, the country hardest hit by the Covid-19 in Europe, was one of the first states to set up a population monitoring system in the region of Lombardy in the north. Telephone operators have made available data from smartphones to control the passage from one telephone terminal to another. Thus, the authorities were able to determine, not the displacement of a person, but that of the population in general and to check if the confinement was respected.

►Read: Coronavirus: police checks frowned upon by populations

The same is true in Bulgaria, where the police have been granted absolute authority over digital tracing, reports our Sofia correspondent, Damian Vodenitcharov . On simple request, mobile operators may be required to provide the data available to them. The police will not have access to the content of the data online, but the judicial control of the digital tracing and the geolocation of the mobile phones is completely absent. According to the majority in power in Sofia, these enlarged prerogatives are necessary to enforce the confinement and quarantine regulations which concern 24,000 people. Before the vote, Minister of Justice Danaïl Kirilov however asked Strasbourg for a derogation from the human rights convention to avoid possible trials by Bulgarian citizens.

" At the level of European law, of the GDPR, it's unclear in terms of legality "

In Poland, the government has launched a mobile application to monitor compliance with containment measures using selfies to be sent several times a day to the authorities. " When a country creates an application to check if you respect confinement, with facial recognition to see if it is you, at the level of European law, of the GDPR, it is vague in terms of legality ", analyzes Martin Drago .

In other countries, such as France or Germany, the question remains but provokes strong contestation. Invited to France 2 on March 26, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner assured that the government was not working on digital plotting. " I trust the French so that we do not need to put in place these systems that achieve individual freedom for everyone, " he said.

However, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron created two days earlier a research and expertise analysis committee which must, among other missions, advise the government on “ backtracking practices (digital tracing) which make it possible to identify people in contact with those infected with the Covid-19 virus ”. A method that wants to set up the European Commissioner responsible for the internal market, Thierry Breton. It wishes to recover data from eight European telephone operators in order to anticipate the next propagation peaks by studying the movements of the population. Like what is done in France by Inserm, in partnership with the operator Orange.

Several French companies also seek to promote this type of device and offer the French State " automated recognition software in the street to see if distances are respected or if people respect confinement ", explains Martin Drago. Another example, the France IA Hub proposes to create an application using artificial intelligence which would be able to warn people going to risk areas.

The fear of trivialization

What is also feared is that the experimentation with these new measures does not " trivialize ", in the eyes of the population, " new surveillance practices ". " Drones are a striking example because once we are used to seeing drones flying over the city of Paris, tomorrow, when the crisis is over, we will wonder less ," fears Martin Drago. In addition to France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and even Spain use drones to enforce containment.

A trivialization that would generate the use of these measures once the health crisis is over? This is feared by several organizations, including the OLN. But the French Minister of Justice excludes it. Asked about France Inter on March 26, Nicole Belloubet swore that "there is no question that these provisions enter into common law. The measures which have been taken and which are intended to offset the effects of this health crisis will soon cease . "

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