our cosmetic 6 sir. unfortunately, a system that's far more broken. and at the end of the day we have to step back and ask ourselves, well, how does instagram make money? and i think it's important to look at their toxic business model that at the end of the day, is about hooking users for as long as possible to run as many ads as possible. i'm on there for you to generate as much revenue as possible. so when they propose a simple fix, like taking a break, i think they do that because they know they have the ability to hook users and lower them back to the platform. ultimately, i think it's incumbent upon governments to look at how it is we can better structure on the incentives behind companies like facebook on that rely upon this toxic business model surveillance advertising. ah, and our reminder of the top stories on al jazeera, britain's prime minister, has tightened corona virus restrictions in england just hours after apologizing for

a video showing his staff joking, but holding a christmas party during last year's lockdown. or, as johnson has promised that inquiry into the incident, but repeatedly denied that any rules were broken, allegro stratton, the senior adviser, seen in the video, has resigned. the new corona virus measures include encouraging people to work from home and expanding the use of face masks and covet health passes. while johnson was asked if public anger over the reported party will result in fewer people following the new rules. i think the overwhelmingly, the, the public see the importance of the, the messages that they are getting by this medium. it is imperfect. we do what we can to explain what we think is, is necessary. i know it's contentious. i know it's difficult and i know that sometimes the, the messages are confusing, or we do our absolute best to make it as,

as clear as possible. and we do everything that we can do to protect public health . that's what we're, we're, we're driven by love showed signs being sworn in as germany's new chancellor assuming power after anglo merkel historic 16 years. his leader chauffeur's central left part. he will govern alongside the greens and the free democrats that coalition has vowed to step up. efforts against climate change and depend demik. india is the fence chief who lead one of the world's largest military has been killed in a helicopter crash, general beeping and what died when the russian made helicopter he was in, came down and told me not to state or what the wife and 11 others were also killed and dozens of people have been killed after gunmen set fire to a bus in northwest nigeria, it was traveling from a village and so called to state to could do the state. local governors spokesman says 23 people were killed. but witnesses say they recovered the remains of at

least 30 people. those are the headlines. stay with us. people and power is next one use from though high in half an hour. it was supposed to be a refuse, but so cruelly as brothers home was allegedly the scene of torture, rape, and even murder $11.00 east investigates the crimes and those settings behind them on odyssey. oh, be the hero, the world needs right. ah, marsha, in the for 2 years the world has been wrestling with the damage that has cost millions of lives and affected billions more of us through economic contraction and restrictions on our movements as people have reported here in 2021. it's also

prompted claims that measures taken in the name of defeating, could have damaged civil liberties. no, was governments response to the oma kron very into the virus where sharing that episode again. i the, the corona virus pandemic has fullest governments around the world to take extra ordinary matches closing cities, banning travel and making people stay at home a month at a time, ah, in the race to defeat the disease. they've also had together huge amounts of data

about our whereabouts and our state of health. digital contact, pressing tools offered the opportunity to try this larger numbers of contacts in a short period of time. and to provide real time picture of the spread of the virus . but privacy campaign is now asking if all the new laws, technology and data gathering has been strictly essential. the way i like to frame what's been going on since the initial stages of a panoramic husband. first government panic and they panics because they recognize that they didn't have the infrastructure being needed. and so what did they do? they use the infrastructure they had, which was intelligence agencies, policing. and in the absence of any capability of testing, they thought, is there a way for technology to solve this problem? well, we know christ dish is the ground on which long tiny raisins of our liberties see

that it can feel really difficult, making several agencies arguments in the context of a crisis. you know, whether that is 911, which we've all learned an awful lot from whether that is dependent because you're often painted out, you don't care about public safety or public health. but exactly how about civil liberties being eroded? what's been going on under the cover of cove it and where me. back in march 2020. the high tech city state of singapore was one of the most enthusiastic is of using mobile phones for contact tracing. play your part in fighting cobit 19 with just 2 simple steps. one, download 3 together and have those around you to set it up to turn on your bluetooth and it is as simple as that. as in many countries, the government said the app was voluntary,

worked entirely on anonymized aidid and is only tracking the virus, not the user. and that's really it. no g o location or other personal data is collected. but digital rights activists like li ting weren't taking their word for it. well, tech experts examined the cold for it. they found that it wasn't doing all the things that it said it would do. so for instance, had said that the data would not be shared would be totally a non mares and so on. they found that the data was shared more widely than it was supposed to. was certain government agencies at 1st take up with low until the app was made mandatory to access public areas like shopping malls. now it's used by nearly 80 percent of the population. but in january 2021, the government admitted the police had accessed the data for a murder investigation. your police force is empowered under the criminal procedure

court, locked in any data. and that includes the chose to get a data for criminal investigations, even in normally quiescent singapore, there was concern. i also brought up as a questions for people. so what their data has been used in what types of investigations can we trust that this is the only time that this has happened? at the time, i was volunteering quite heavily with us ex, work as fight organization. and one of my concerns was that the data on content tracing could be used to identify sex workers in their clients. this has your trace together history. so over the $25.00 these out the number of times that the devices spits traced together have been painted. and given that textbook as criminalized and singapore largely, i was, i had some concerns. there is evidence to suggest digital contact rating can be more effective, the manual tracing,

but privacy campaign as they these methods of surveillance will outlive their initial use. that's going to be one of the legacies of cove and the whole idea that your mobile phone and an app and the telecommunications infrastructure design for you to enjoy spending your time communicating with others will be used to enforce your own detention in the future. in israel, the government also employed mobile phones for contact tracing, but used a method that raised even more privacy concerns. while ordinary people struggled on the heavily police locked downs. the pandemic like prime minister benjamin netanyahu divert public attention from fraud and bribery allegations, but demonstrations against corruption and the government handling of the pandemic erupted anyway. ah, oberon was a regular protest. during one of the lot downs went outside meetings were permitted

. she met up with fellow activists. this is what we were doing that night. there was a party, a birthday party of a one of my friends then the police just came. it were starting to harass and just wanted us to leave a few days later i got the text message, but it says the date and the hours you are near someone who was tested positive for her on a virus. you have to immediately starts occurrence in this might seem normal for many countries, but an emergency regulation had allowed the shin bad israel secret service to run it, track and praise program in the midst of love. but she actually sheet laneesa. so, fil a hockey pavilions cannot opt out, they can't even off it. it's just the secret service tracking all civilians, anybody with in israel, they are the only democracy in the world to this day that was using their secret services to do this. the shin best are often accused of breaching human rights law

in their treatment palestinians, but the revelation showed that they don't only operate in the west bank and occupied territories. the reason this happened is because the shouldn't bet already is tracing people instead of waiting for something new to be created. they already have a tool within the shin bet. the 2 was a secret years long program to monitor telecommunications across israel and palestine. i felt really angry because i had the feeling that because we were there, like many people from the process, it happened just about this event. it's an open question whether she was forced into quarantine because the state was targeting protesters or maley, protecting citizens from a deadly disease. but civil rights campaign and say that with shin bet, doing both. nobody would know in a democracy, it can't be that there's a surveillance fate in the sense that a government contracts,

certain people. this can lead to a situation where the government knows about your sexual orientation about your political orientation. and what it can do is lead to a freezing effect, the phenomenon where people don't want to go outside and do certain things, but they protest because they have a fear of being trapped after several legal challenges. the government says the shouldn't bet. surveillance has now been scaled back, but the scandal opened at least some israeli eyes to the way palestinians are routinely monitored. i think that we finally have to fight against it in all areas . a doesn't matter if it happened to and he's rarely, citizen are to sound l to buy territories. this is really, really bad, is it's a slippery slope act worth violating human rights in the early stages of the pandemic. other government also experimented with electronic mass tracking, but with only marginal success. ultimately, it was recognized that this level of mass surveillance doesn't actually help you

with a pandemic. so they decided to resort to what they do often as a next step, which is rely extensively on industry to sell them toys. your system shows of your health lady. i would recommend you to think of the industry. many governments tend to with biometrics, which uses unique personal traits like a face iris, or fingerprint to identify people for china, which was already openly using facial recognition in its big cities. the pandemic turbocharged, the rollout in smaller towns across the country. the claim that biometric and contactless transactions a safer has obvious appeal for airlines. keen to get people back into the air. says the c e. o of quantas col tankless, travel capable. now we see a huge move to that's 8 years milch. and the space of a few more ab, wait,

think that is changed. i will stay there forever. it's also a change coming to retail. this leading russian supermarket has teamed up with visa, so you can pay, feel shopping with your face. a lot of if, if it's a form of tech solution as them, which is the idea that technology because it's showing me because it's me, contains all down from tools are problems. and in many people for the unquestioningly, you know, trust technology or theme that it's gonna be the most efficient or the best solution. but critics say biometrics is an industry with a check to pa, around the pre $911.00 where facial recognition was being touted by police, particularly in the united states as the great solution to producing problems without recognizing that their own forces. i turned off the tech because it wasn't actually working. then $911.00 happens just months later, and all of a sudden governments are reaching for facial recognition and fingerprinting. so we

deployed them at borders. you put them in passports without ever asking who does it work for? when does it work? when does it fail? what happens to somebody who it fails for today to get detained because something doesn't match. the biometric industry, same says, goes where the areas of opportunity, money, and few questions a few years go by industry is looking for a new market and a then decide to go for the next great domain of policy making where we don't care what happens to people and that was in the migration sector and refugees in refugee camps. so refugee agencies and, and governments for sponsoring refugee agencies and the deploy fingerprinting iris scan facial recognition. and again, i got a close up view of some of these in the, in refugee camps. the only people who didn't realize that the technology didn't work where the policymakers, everybody else knew the technology wasn't working, but it didn't stop to fail the reliance and the shaping of people's lives based around yes, no. did the system say you're allowed and or do the system deny it?

because it failed campaign to say these systems are often 1st tried out away from criticality in the west like biometric voting, which has been trial in afghanistan, uganda. and here in iraq with a panoramic, maybe we can use facial recognition with people's faces covered. maybe we can use cameras to attract people across cities to do contact tracing. and in a post pandemic your, we can use facial recognition at borders. we can use facial recognition shops, we can use facial recognition everywhere. and then we've forgotten why we deployed it with by checks and by a survey that is there is a real risk that our kind of personal identity theft in our faces are fingerprints irises. we can't change those, they will be locked into a system forever. they can be voice by hackers. they can be forced by on 3 because governance. and then when it was stock has no way of resetting your face. it felt like a pamphlet. this is a kind of a permanent solution to

a temporary problem with the temporary, becoming permanent is just one of the concerns campaign of fab. around the n h s data store, a giant computer system failed using the personal data held by britain's national health service. where do you live and have you suffer from any allergies before? the any chance old personal information on over 60000000 people often going back decades then it has has one of the biggest stores of patient records going back through time. globally, it says standouts in terms of the nowadays it has and it's worth billions of pounds . and data is the new oil. as we know, data is money. normally in a chest data can only be used by those treating a patient. but when the pandemic struck, the rules were loosened. in march 2020, and a chest announced that they were setting up something called the cove at 19 data still . and that they'd entered into 5 contracts with different tech companies. and that,

that data store was going to be the kind of single source of truth about the pandemic. for the m f. the data store pulls together information from across the vast and h s, including confidential details given to the 111 helpline, and even tech company location data. this would supposedly help ministers allocate resources by providing them with a real time dashboard of all aspects of the pandemic. but from the outset, almost every element of a worried privacy campaign as it was extremely vague. we didn't know, states was going into it. we didn't know how is being used. it was, you know, very secretive and emerge. stop the 1st contract had gone t pounds here he had built that for this for just one pound, which obviously soundcloud for thick. helen to foundry is a software platform that allows organizations to bring their teachers together and then enable se uses to conduct sophisticated analytics and operations on top of the

unified data. talented have been criticized for providing its data mining capability to the cia and the u. s. board of force, division, ice, responsible for detaining an expelling migrants. they are not particularly well known for health. they are much more well known in relation to their defense contracts. they're spy tack b u. s. police force as they are not company, that certainly we would immediately think would be appropriate. and indeed, we don't think are appropriate for an h has contract. but the british government didn't seem that concerned when asked by a technology journalist, what talented my hope to get from a one pound contract. the secretary of state for health replied, the honest truth is, there is no way we would have been able to cope with this plan demick and deal with in the way that we have been able to without the support of the tech companies that have been absolutely brilliant,

i put together the platforms that we need and lots of them gave over their time. and their capability for public benefits provide i rosa curling organization. foxglove, a u. k. law firm set up to challenge big tech, took legal proceedings which forced the government to reveal the contract, which was for a pilot or trial project. the contract also detailed the types of data being used. what we did see was that the covenant they thought was collecting data on political affiliation, religious beliefs, that was correcting information about criminal sections. and i think dates her employment dates her does no understanding of why political, religious faith was needed for in a cave at 19 date. still, and much of this information is irrelevant to scientists. battling the pandemic doctor pul. mckay works on britain faxing program. we have no interest in a box,

people by or less affiliation or any of that type of thing. or we're just interested in the virus. how many cases are being picked up in a certain place. i'm done using not data to try to target interventions. if may me begin on sequencing that is guiding what we do, privacy campaign is also worried about mission creek. the one set up this huge system would continue in operation off to the pandemic and expand into other areas . the government promised it was temporary, and then palin to assigned a new deal for 23000000 pounds. rosa went back to cold and was allowed to see the new contract. the pay flat made clear that the mission crate is bad. so the contract itself says how unconfirmed, that purpose of the day to store was going to be increased and widened. and the other issues began to also be looked at. so the e u. x,

it's business monitoring as usual, whatever that may mean relevant pandemic. so the flavor, the government decline to respond to us directly. but as the story was unfolding the enact, jeff said strict state rules apply to everyone involved in helping in this critical task. companies do not control the data and on not misses to use or share it for their own purposes. at the end of the health emergency, their work will either be deleted or returned to be in a chest. in april 2021 palin to became an official u. k. government supplier. they were also signed contracts without european governments, including greece and the netherlands. the health ministries of the world are, are just, you know, they're such prime targets for this industry. that is, um, they're sitting on a lot of data. don't know what to do with that. and then suddenly a sales person's knocking on the door saying, hey, we have experience from building policing systems, border systems,

immigration systems, on taking mounds of data, mining it, and finding something interesting, why don't use us and we will help you. but it's our most sensitive and personal, there are health data and it's being used to essentially go the next generation of profiling technology. but it's not just governments that are accused of monitoring people under the cover of coated. good afternoon, you're from to brian hotel, assist you today as millions around the world. and now working from home like brian unions raising concerns about the new phones with surveillance. so i'm just gonna get the billing note and see what we can find to. brian's employ a required into a town for every 2nd of his day. so when i go to click into what's called code, it's basically notify them where i am and i think there's about going to the bathroom for me. i'm going to ask. so when i get back, there's a few messages going. where are you? when's your time get back and calls so good,

absolutely. be monitored and we'll pay the cool thing to work has long been heavily monitored, but it's intensified with the moods of working from home without a mental thing that we would all be getting it on a list of who state as mandatory reasons. i don't want people, i've never met to see my, my hedge, which i think is reasonable. the social agenda element. i don't know if i was a woman. i wouldn't necessarily want some man, i've never met and being able to just randomly view my webcam. and in a university, strathclyde survey, 45 percent of old people working from home in the u. k. and said they are remotely watched in the face of the prospect union. andrew pay is worried. what we've seen in the last year is that hand reach out from traditional industries where micro management is more common into full walks of life and whether it's office workers working at home, whether it's other phones professionals that study by digital rights organization. top 10 vpn showed us sales of surveillance software increased by 51 percent during

the pandemic. you've got software now that can measure your key strikes, how fast you're typing on your laptop, or what word you're typing. it is easy now for employees to check your e mails for key words, whether you're chatting to different workers and you know, something to brian gives us a flavor of what they feel like we have, i guess, an employee for them when the web are and that was a few times people were right angry, and there was a thread that disappeared. so that just vanished suddenly. and it was in a 2nd fed on those people with enough fed saying i've been told i should call the pitch is the analytics allow companies to improve staff productivity, thus increasing profit. but brian thinks employers benefit in other ways. it's also a sort of repressive measure. i think workers are much less likely to organize are much less likely to get industrialized. we can speak to each other. this tracking

is a global phenomena and amazon closed up roll when announced the rollout of a i enabled cameras in the usa, the monitor neighborhood, and their drivers pressing and holding the driver alert button for 5 seconds. we'll turn the driver facing camera off. so you could have privacy while taking a break turn of ours has been the opportunity for businesses and governments to massively increase their power to increase a surveillance to increase their kind of control of every kind of minute area of our lives. and to roll that back is going to be very difficult on these things orange juice for the greater good for our safety, for our health in the guise of public health. civil rights advocates the. this surveillance will be extended by the same measures. many countries hope will allow

travel to review health passports. many leaders see them as a key to normality. the almost empty results at southern europe have helped convince the european union. with this digital certificate, we aim to help member states reinstate the freedom of movement in a safe, responsible and trusted israel has reopened gyms and hotels with its green pass. currently a q r code showing vaccination state many including vaccine scientists think they are inevitable elsewhere. i don't personally like the idea of faxing passport, but obviously of another country and that we, they did want to go to their country. we would have to have a passport obviously for local us. i think it's a terrible, i get it would discriminate against people. but for civil rights campaign is the dangerous go much deeper discrimination wouldn't be

a side effect of discrimination is the whole point of the whole point to the co. the hospital would be to crate to tear society where the wealthy with that shiny co passes. can you know, go to the special vaccinated only hotels, like say sony restaurants, like the airplanes and liver kind of continued privilege life. while those who are unable to show the right digital paths are locked out of society permanently. in fact, critic fair all of the intrusive new technology, the da paid during the pandemic, is here to say, you don't build all that tech to then just easily shut it down. the moment that the w. h o, it says it's no longer a pandemic. 911 allowed for the use of identification at borders and for transport in a way that we've never had. and what governments have never had the capacity to do before with the add the next desirable layer, which is health,

medical and personal detail, personal information answer will build the infrastructure for all of that. and all of a sudden you have the perfect identity system involving biometrics, modern software, smartphones, all the fight, a panoramic, that one would hope that if you deploy the vaccine sufficiently, you don't need a passport anymore. but you'll have an identity system as the end result of this entire initiative the it's the political debate, so that's challenging the way you think. have agencies fail hating the situation is worse than it was before the after. it's in the found bites and digging into the issue is a military advancement. going to stop the family to get i is under complete surgery, i had to help people out of die. how will climate migration differ for those who

have in those who don't have lot of countries see, we will pay poor countries to keep refugees there. a park with me, mark lamond hill on al jazeera, and talk to al jazeera. we ask, how would you describe taliban relationship with the us? we listen copies. one kid is not told for coffee. 19 has been terrible. demonstration of the failure of human stories that we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on al jazeera. ah boris johnson titans, england's clothing restrictions just hours after apologizing for a video of his staff. joking about 40 a christmas party during that last he's locked down. ah,

hello, i'm emily anglin. this is al jazeera live from dough house are coming up.