Chronicle: "Covid-1984 or the way out of the crisis?"

" Of course, you could never know at what moment you might have been observed ".

On the one hand, it is already George Orwell's dystopia where no one escapes Storebor. In China, the cameras in some areas have moved inside the front door. In Moscow, a quarantined man who went out with the garbage was visited by the police half an hour later. How did you come to me? "Face recognition!", They replied briefly.

In Israel, the security police uses the same tools as surveillance for suspected terrorists: a direct line into mobile operators' computers to monitor how individuals are moving. In Western Australia, police have been granted the right to install surveillance equipment at the home of those who have quarantined, with the threat of 12 years in prison for a new violation.

Electronic footwear in Hong Kong, drones over parks in Brussels, selfie app in Poland to prove that you are in quarantine and ... the list can be infinitely long on surveillance that has been speeded up to assist in the work of limiting and tracking the infection. Methods that most citizens would instinctively backtrack against a few months ago. But as the instinct to survive now has made us accept.

On the other hand, technology delivers tools to dare to open society again. Like the mobile apps that automate infection tracking. However, no country in which it is voluntary to participate has reached sufficient use for it to be effective. But when there is wide access to safe antibody tests, and the question of immunity is clarified, there is no lack of volunteers to download "immunity passports" to the mobile.

To earn their living again, go to the pub and travel. But those who get red guy in the app may continue to live with limitations. An A and B team in the virus community.

So the headline is probably wrong. It's not either or. Corona-tech can give us an Orwellian nightmare AND tools to restart society. The challenge is to find a sustainable balance between the freedom of individuals and the safety of the collective. And that exceptional methods for an exceptional time do not happen to remain.

In Storebror's society where "war is peace", constant surveillance by the Thought Police had become the new norm. Nothing can accelerate on a sloping plane, like an external threat.