Alberta may use tracking bracelets, smartphone apps to enforce quarantine
Alright, well, it’s time to address the limits of privacy in adverse situations, we guess. Yesterday, Premier Jason Kenney mentioned that the Government of Alberta was considering introducing tracking measures for the general public.
This is super interesting, and we’re going to unpack it for you. But first, let’s talk about logistics. Basically, the simplest approach is wristbands connected to smartphones, which will alert some authority or something if you go against public health orders.
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Ok, that’s the gist of it. But, we guarantee that there will be two camps reacting to this. On one side, there are people who are going to say that constant government tracking is a violation of privacy and infringes on their rights.
The other side is going to say why worry about being tracked if you’re doing nothing wrong? Both have merits, but guess what, they don’t matter right now. Here’s why.
Both of the arguments assume that society is functionally normally. And as you can see, COVID-19 has definitely knocked us all a few steps away from normal right now. When the low estimate of deaths is almost 30 times smaller than the high estimate, people need to understand that their behaviour right now affects their community in the future.
Once the dust settles, that’s when we can go back to privacy laws and their limits (by the way, we are pro-privacy). Until then, we are going to (warily) accept the concept as part and parcel of the situation.
You can check out Premier Kenney’s press release right here.
