Governments Around The World Are Tracking Their Citizens' Movements To Prevent The Spread Of COVID-19

Privacy

from the our-new-pervasive-overlords-etc. dept

In an effort to turn an unmitigated disaster into something a bit more mitigated, governments around the world are heading towards the “drastic” end of the scale to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Cities and everything in them have been effectively shut down. Preventing the spread of the virus depends a lot on the voluntary cooperation of citizens to self-report and self-quarantine. Meanwhile, no one has any toilet paper. What a time to be alive, at least temporarily.

How do you enforce “voluntary” quarantine without filling cities with cops and/or soldiers? You turn to the tracking devices nearly everyone carries. Extreme times/extreme measures and all that, so every bit of location data hoovered up by carriers of phones and/or viruses is now apparently fair game.

It’s already happening in the countries we expect it to happen in. China is still being China, except moreso:

In China, SenseTime, a highly valued AI firm, is being deployed in multiple cities in order to identify people with elevated temperatures, as well as those who aren’t wearing face masks. On its website, the company touts its “Smart AI Epidemic Prevention Solutions.” The company calls it a “quick and effective system in screening and detecting individuals with elevated temperature in a crowd.

You don’t erect a massive surveillance infrastructure if you don’t plan to exploit every bit of it. This new deployment might be one of least nefarious uses of China’s massive camera network, but that doesn’t make it any less frightening. China’s government has given itself a lot of power and every new iteration of its surveillance network shows just how pervasive its surveillance of its own citizens is.

Over in Hong Kong, every new arrival is being tracked from the moment they set foot in the country.

Hong Kong has made it mandatory for all new arrivals to wear an “electronic wristband” that links to a smartphone to provide location-tracking services, so that authorities can be sure they’re observing COVID-19 quarantine requirements.

This sounds very intrusive. But, rest assured, it actually isn’t because the government has clearly explained it is not intrusive.

[T]he city-state insists its privacy commissioner has signed off on the idea because it “does not pose privacy concerns.”

Oh. OK. I guess it’s not a location tracker because it does not constantly track location, only any “changes in the location.” This is the equivalent of a parolee’s ankle bracelet, except it’s on people’s wrists and escapees will be hit with fines rather than jail time. That could change in the future. In fact, it probably will if enough suspected carriers wander around too much. The government will also be making “surprise video calls” to wristband-wearers to verify they’re in the places they’re supposed to be.

There’s no wristband system in Israel. But that’s because there’s something worse.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has authorized the country’s internal security agency to tap into a vast and previously undisclosed trove of cellphone data to retrace the movements of people who have contracted the coronavirus and identify others who should be quarantined because their paths crossed.

Information harvested for supposed national security reasons is now being used to track non-security threats and everyone they’ve come in contact with. It’s a scary new version of contact chaining that treats everyone as some sort of public health criminal for moving around the country in the proximity of other people. The plan is to sort through the data to find people who have come in contact with known carriers and send them text messages telling them to immediately isolate themselves. They will become the new “targets” and everyone they’ve come in contact with are the next links in the chain. And so on.

None of this was discussed with the public, who will now be receiving unsolicited texts from their government, which is using data citizens were previously unaware was being collected en masse. The consequences of ignoring the Israeli government are dire: six months in prison and the authorization of police use-of-force to break up any gatherings of ten or more people.

This virus is unusual and unpredictable. Responses from world governments have been just as unusual and unpredictable. But once a new domestic surveillance baseline is established, it’s tough to roll all of it back after the virus is contained and treatable.

Filed Under: china, covid-19, hong kong, israel, privacy, surveillance, tracking

Blizzard Confirms It Won't Rescind Blitzchung's Suspension

Say That Again

from the keep-digging dept

We had just talked about the apology that Blizzard’s President J. Allen Brack issued at the opening of Blizzcon this past week. In that apology, Brack accepts responsibility for “moving too quickly” in banning Blitzchung for his mild statements of support for the ongoing protests in Hong Kong and states that Blizzard hadn’t “lived up to the high standards” that Brack apparently expects out of the company. Notably absent from the apology was any reference to altering Blitzchung’s six month ban from competition, or any changes to other bans over Hong Kong speech the company had handed out.

And now Brack has explicitly stated in a recent interview that Blitzchung’s 6 month ban will stay in place, further calling into question what the point of his “apology” was at all.

In explaining that decision,Brack reiterated the message that Blizzard supports free speech and encourages employees and players to say what they want in “all kinds of ways and all kinds of places.” The one exception to that, he said, is “official broadcasts,” including Blizzard-sponsored esports events, which the company wants to be “focused on the games.”

“Again, it’s not about the content of Blitzchung’s message,”Brack said, echoing previous comments from Blizzard. “It’s about the fact that it was not around the games. If we hadn’t taken action, if we hadn’t done something, you can imagine the trail that would be in our future around doing interviews. They would become times for people to make a statement about whatever they wanted to, on whatever issue. That’s just a path that we don’t want to go down. We really want the content of those official broadcasts to be focused on the games, and keep that focus.”

Which lands us pretty much right back to Blizzard’s original policy. So what was the apology for? Simply banning too quickly? Banning for a year instead of six months? None of this addresses what people are actually angry about. Brack went on to state that Blizzard competitors were free to express their political thoughts outside of Blizzard stream, though there is evidence to the contrary.

Brack went on to make even more confusing statements suggesting that Chinese pressure had nothing to do with the ban due to Blizzard not really operating in the country, before then going on to say that they work in close concert with their Chinese broadcast partner.

Brack also reiterated in the interview that Chinese regulations and business pressure has nothing to do with the company’s decisions regarding Blitzchung. Though Hearthstone is available in China,Brack stressed that it was only through local publishing partner NetEase, and that Blizzard itself is “not legally allowed to operate or to publish games in China.”

Elsewhere in the interview, though, Brack says that Blizzard Taiwan, Hearthstone leadership, and Blizzard’s “esports team” were all “in conversation [with NetEase] around the issue.” Together, Brack said, those groups “acted very rapidly and we acted very quickly” in handing out Blitzchung’s initial ban, using an amount of haste that Brack now calls “the failure of this story.”

Very little is clear in any of this, save for the simple reality that Brack’s apology was corporate nonsense. If any of this was supposed to tamp down the fervent anger at Blizzard’s actions, I can’t imagine it working.

Filed Under: allen brack, blitzchung, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, j. allen brack, suspenssion
Companies: blizzard

Blizzcon: Blizzard Apologizes For Banning Blitzchung, Keeps Him Banned, More Fallout Ensues

Failures

from the keep-digging dept

The fallout from Blizzard’s complete bungling of several eSports competitors taking public stances in support of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong has been both brutal and ongoing. As a reminder, professional Hearthstone player Blitzchung made relatively mild statements on a Blizzard stream backing the protests, leading to Blizzard yanking his prize money from an event and then issuing him a 1 year ban from competition. Others joined him in those comments afterwards, resulting in more bans. Soon after that, Blizzard returned Blitzchung’s prize money and reduced his ban to 6 months, apparently believing the outrage that had ensued was over 6 months of the bans, rather than the fact that Blizzard would ban players for this kind of speech at all. Congress started making noise, calling on Blizzard to behave better, while at least one advertiser bailed on Blizzard entirely.

That’s what has occurred basically over the last month or so. This past week, of course, was the start of Blizzcon, the convention that is supposed to be one enormous celebration of Blizzard. Instead, Blizzard President J. Allen Brack was forced to walk onto the stage at Blizzcon’s opening ceremony and issue an apology.

Before Blizzcon’s opening ceremony, Blizzard president J. Allen Brack somberly addressed the crowd with an apology for Blizzard’s harsh punishment of Hearthstone esports pro Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai. “Blizzard had the opportunity to bring the world together in a tough Hearthstone esports moment about a month ago and we did not,” said Brack.

“We moved too quickly in our decision-making and then, to make matters worse, we were too slow to talk with all of you,” said Brack. “We didn’t live up to the high standards that we really set for ourselves.”

Brack went further: “I’m sorry and I accept accountability,” he said.

You might assume that he then immediately announced that Blitzchung’s 6 month ban and the other bans issued for Hong Kong comments had been rescinded. But you would be very, very wrong about that. Blitzchung’s ban remains. And, as far as official Blizzard policy goes, political comments on Blizzard streams and during events are still very much forbidden. In other words, it’s difficult to see what’s actually changed to go along with Brack’s “apology.”

Outside of Blizzcon’s front door, there is a group of people who also don’t seem to be particularly placated.

Protesters, some in cosplay, are holding signs and chanting slogans like “People over profit” and “Free Hong Kong.”

This particular protest has been facilitated by multiple groups, including Los Angeles-based pro-Hong Kong democracy collective Hong Kong Forum, another pro-Hong Kong group called Freedom Hong Kong, an activist organization called Fight For The Future, and the Protest BlizzCon subreddit, the latter two of whom announced their protest intentions well in advance of the convention.

The protest continued into the afternoon, featuring speeches from guests like two of the American University Hearthstone players who held up a “free Hong Kong” sign during a Blizzard-hosted broadcast and ultimately received a punishment similar to Blitzchung’s.

This isn’t the celebration of Blizzard the company hoped would greet convention goers upon entering Blizzcon, you can be sure. It’s worth remembering at this point, again, that Blitzchung’s comments in support of Hong Kong were incredibly mild. Blizzard massively overplayed its hand, when it could have shown some spine, no matter the pretend hurt feelings of Beijing.

Hell, even Hearthstone’s developers are publicly commenting that they don’t support Blizzard’s actions.

During an interview at BlizzCon, Hearthstone game director Ben Lee and creative director Ben Thompson admitted that they wished Blizzard execs had handled the Hong Kong powder keg with more care.

And yet the rage continues, as do the protests, all because Blizzard kept tripping over its own feet in handling all of this.

Filed Under: allen brack, blitzchung, blizzcon, free speech, hong kong
Companies: blizzard

Blizzard Loses First Sponsor Due To Stance On Hong Kong Speech

Free Speech

from the in-the-pocketbook dept

Just a quick update on Blizzard and the ongoing backlash against the company over its attempts to muzzle its eSports competitors from making “political” comments about “politics”, which mostly means not pissing off the laughably thin-skinned Chinese government over the fact that Hong Kong exists. It started when the company yoinked away prize money and issued a 1 year ban to a Hearthstone player, continued as it then issued more bans, then got weird when it decided to try to appease the backlashing public by halving that original ban, all of which led to basically everyone other than Beijing remarking on how totally shitty Blizzard is.

There has been a sense thus far that Blizzard believed it could lighten its punishments and run out the clock on the backlash, as the public moved on to whatever the next outrage would be. How is that going? Pretty fucking terribly, given that Blizzard just lost its first corporate sponsor due to its anti-speech actions.

When Blizzard decided to take action against a pro Hearthstone player for speaking out over the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, they ate a lot of shit from fans. They also, it turns out, lost a commercial sponsor in the form of Mitsubishi Motors.

The Taiwanese branch of the Japanese auto giant had been a sponsor of all of Blizzard’s esports events, but just two days after Blizzard’s decision to sanction Blitzchung for his actions, Mitsubishi Motors withdrew its support.

That this came from a Japanese company’s branch in Taiwan is probably not without significance. At the risk of sounding ignorant through over-simplification, the status of Taiwan and Hong Kong share similarities. Indeed, Taiwan’s President has spoken in solidarity with the protesters in Hong Kong.

More interesting is whether this is some kind of a one-off or a sign that the boycott floodgates are about to open. If this initial exodus of an advertiser triggers more advertisers to leave, suddenly the calculus for Blizzard on the cost and benefits of bowing to Chinese pressure may change. And change quickly. If that occurs, it will be fact that Blizzard will have painted itself into a corner. After all, it can’t suddenly now reverse course and encourage its competitors to speak openly and maintain credibility. It also won’t be able to dig its heels in further, or it risks losing even more advertising revenue.

I imagine there are several Blizzard executives shivering in their offices at the moment, all because they wouldn’t allow their company to back up competitors speaking their minds.

Filed Under: advertising, boycotts, china, e-sports, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, sponsorship, taiwan
Companies: blizzard, mitsubishi

In These Partisan Times, The Only Thing That Gets Bi-Partisan Agreement Is That Blizzard Sucks

News

from the crossing-aisles dept

We live in partisan times. The left and the right might as well be cats and dogs, mostly incapable of living together and the subject of fascination by the public when they manage to work together in the slightest way. The country needs a rallying cry. Something to bring both sides of the aisle together to demonstrate to all that they can actually agree on things.

Blizzard appears to be that something. In the wake of the backlash against Blizzard for its actions taken to silence and punish eSports competitors that chose to voice support for the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, it seems that everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Marco Rubio agrees that the company needs to do much, much better.

Today, United States Senators Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio signed a bi-partisan letter with support from Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mike Gallagher, and Tom Malinowski addressed to Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, over the recent suspension of professional Hearthstone player Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai.

“We write to express our deep concern about Activision Blizzard’s decision to make player Ng Wai Chung forfeit prize money and ban him from participating in tournaments for a year after he voiced support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,” the letter reads. “This decision is particularly concerning in light of the Chinese government’s growing appetite for pressuring American businesses to help stifle free speech.”

Now, it’s true that this particular letter is toothless. It’s also true that Blizzard has already reduced some of the penalties it levied on Chung, even though such a reduction was entirely besides the point and lowered the temperature on this controversy not at all. Still, what this really should highlight for the reader is that the public backlash against Blizzard has reached a volume that Congress critters are making public statements about it, and in a bi-partisan way. That’s no small thing.

There is a great deal for one side or the other of the political aisle to be angry about these days. For Blizzard to unify that anger against itself should really inform the company’s assessment as to how beneficial it is to bow to Chinese demands to stifle the speech of its competitors.

Again, this is a toothless letter…for now. But if it changes the calculus on future decisions Blizzard might take, that’s a good thing.

Filed Under: alexandria ocasio-cortez, blitzchung, free speech, hong kong, marco rubio, mike gallagher, ron wyden, tom malinowski, video games
Companies: activision, activision blizzard, blizzard