An ambitious pilot project will soon be launched by South Korea, which will do extensive use of artificial intelligence, face recognition software, and thousands of cameras on the streets and other points in order to record the movements of people infected with it coronavirus and their close contacts. The design, which is somewhat reminiscent of Orwellian “Big Brother”, has created concerns about possible breaches of citizens’ privacy, but the South Korean government considers that in a pandemic such a thing is justified for reasons of public health.
More specifically, the program, developed by the Ministry of Science & Technology Information and Communication, in collaboration with the local government, will begin in January in a densely populated city (Bucheon) near the capital Seoul, according to Reuters. The system will use artificial intelligence algorithms and face analysis technology from videos they have collected almost 11,000 cameras, with the aim of tracking the movements of a person infected with coronavirus and anyone who comes in close contact with him, as well as whether they wear a mask or not.
Other governments during the pandemic have used new technologies to limit the spread of Covid-19. THE China, the Russia, the India, the Poland, the Japan and several US states have adopted such programs or have experimented with digital face recognition and digital tracking programs.
Coronavirus: How will the system implemented by South Korea work?
According to a South Korean Bucheon official, the goal of the new system is to reduce the burden on overburdened tracking teams of people diagnosed with or suspecting Covid-19 infection in a city of more than 800,000, and to help these teams they do their job faster and more accurately, as broadcast by APE-MPE.
The system can track at the same time up to 10 people in five to ten minutes, when the corresponding work by human trackers for a single human requires almost an hour. The “smart” system, funded for its development with about two million dollars, will be staffed by a group of about 10 employees who will be installed in a public health center.
South Korea generally has one Aggressive high-tech contact tracking system which collects and evaluates data from credit cards, cell phone location data, video cameras and other personal information. However, so far he continues to depend on a large number of epidemiological researchers, who often work in 24-hour shifts, recording every possible case and his contacts.
As the mayor of Bucheon stated on Twitter, who asked for national funding to implement the pilot program in his city from the beginning of 2022, “sometimes it takes hours to analyze a single video of a camera. However, the use of visual recognition technology will allow this analysis to be done instantly “.
Still, the system is designed so that to “catch the leech” those Covid-19 patients who lie to tracking teams about where they are, who they see and what they do. However, the Ministry of Science and Information Technology and Communications stated that at present it has no plans to expand the pilot program to a national level and, in an attempt to “lower” the issue, stated that the aim of the new system is simply to do to some extent digital the work required by human trackers.
How South Korean society reacts
In general, South Korean society shows high acceptance rates for such monitoring / tracking programs (contrary to what would be expected in a European country), but there are still some human rights activists – lawyers, parliamentarians and activists – who have expressed concerns, including that the government will keep the data collected far beyond the needs of the pandemic.
The Member Park Dae-chuThe main opposition party said in a statement that “the government’s plan to become a Big Brother under the guise of Covid is a neo-totalitarian idea. “It is completely wrong to monitor and control the public through cameras using taxpayers’ money and even without the consent of the public.”
A Bucheon City Council spokesman said there was no question of a privacy breach, as the system automatically blurs the faces of anyone who is not under investigation. The Korean Office for Disease Control and Prevention said the use of the new system is legal if it is used under the National Infectious Diseases Control and Prevention Act.
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