Wednesday 27 May 2020

Covid-19 and Tech roundup - May 27

How we act in times of crises defines us.

The world has been brought to its knees. Too many people are using it for profit. Is crisis profiteering not the worst that humanity has to offer? Whether it be war or natural disasters or this awful disease, making money from human death is despicable. It doesn't matter if you are a legit business or a criminal enterprise, it is all the same evil.

Maybe worse than profiteering, though, is actively interfering with recovery efforts, like cyberattacks on hospitals, which has gotten so bad that the Red Cross had to beg governments to take action to clamp down on hackers.

Or what about being the chair of an organization that exists to promote computer science in schools and calling a security researcher a criminal because he brought to your attention a potentially devastating security flaw in your website, and you are also governor of a US state and your website is a pandemic unemployment assistance site and that security flaw exposes people's bank accounts? (Why hide the flaw if you aren't benefiting from it in some way?)

Uganda has used Covid as an excuse for further censorship it imposes under the guise of a social media tax. The tax undermines the fight against the disease.

And what of those who use this pandemic as an excuse to inflame ethnic hatreds and oppress those who are different than them, such as the Rohinga at refugee camps in Bangladesh or the people of Jammu and Kashmir? Internet shutdowns, especially in a time of crisis, endanger lives.

Then there are those using the pandemic as an excuse to surveil us and collect our data.
الصحة العامة واحترام الخصوصية: توصيات أكسس ناو فيما يتعلق بتطبيقات تتبع مُخالطي المرضى بفيروس الكورونا (كوفيد-19)

Let's do better, so we can all recover from this pandemic with some human dignity intact.