Pandemic Surveillance

by David Lyon

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life as we knew it. Lockdowns, self-isolation and quarantine have become a normal part of everyday life. Pandemic surveillance allows governments and corporations to monitor and surveil the spread of the virus and to make sure citizens follow the measures they put in place. This is evident in the massive, unprecedented mobilization of public health data to contain and combat the virus, and the ballooning of surveillance technologies such as contact-tracing apps, facial recognition, and population tracking. This can also be seen as a pandemic of surveillance.

In this timely book, David Lyon tracks the development of these methods, examining different forms of pandemic surveillance, in health-related and other areas, from countries around the world. He explores their benefits and disadvantages, their legal status, and how they relate to privacy protection, an ethics of care, and data justice. Questioning whether this new culture of surveillance will become a permanent feature of post-pandemic societies and the long-term negative effects this might have on social inequalities and human freedoms, Pandemic Surveillance highlights the magnitude of COVID-19-related surveillance expansion. The book also underscores the urgent need for new policies relating to surveillance and data justice in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509550319
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	03/07/2022
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Lyon is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Law and Former Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University, Canada.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements



Chapter 1: Defining Moments

Chapter 2: Disease-Driven Surveillance

Chapter 3: Domestic Targets

Chapter 4: Data Sees All?

Chapter 5: Disadvantage and the Triage

Chapter 6: Democracy and Power

Chapter 7: Doorway to Hope



Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Since future pandemics will undoubtedly occur, it is essential that we establish trustworthy institutions to conduct public health surveillance. Hopefully Lyon’s insights will help shape the hard conversations that lie ahead...By integrating some of the core insights from privacy theory, data justice, and care ethics, he creates a novel conceptual toolkit that’s a solid theoretical starting point for critically analyzing pandemic surveillance."
Evan Selinger, LA Review of Books

"This is a timely contribution that highlights the global amplification of surveillance in the pandemic age and recognises its likely long-term consequences."
LSE Review of Books

"Pandemic Surveillance provides a much-needed overview of how the surveillance landscape has evolved and a synoptic vantage point from which to guide further analysis...it is a timely intervention, setting out key issues and raising important warnings about the pandemic’s surveillance legacy."
Surveillance & Society journal

“David Lyon, in his excellent new book, 'Pandemic Surveillance,' might say that public health surveillance, despite its temporary pandemic utility, is here to stay. … Although 'Pandemic Surveillance' leaves the reader wanting more detail about how to fix a nuanced, complex, multifaceted problem addressed in the majority of the book, Lyon offers us the intellectual scaffolding to consider how fear can lead to the erosion of important human interests.”
Lawfare

“Pandemic Surveillance is well-written, has clear prose, and is well structured. It will surely resonate with those who have experienced COVID-19. That is, almost everyone. … All in all, this reader found Pandemic Surveillance well worth the read and then some. It is an important book, teasing out several ethical and moral dilemmas and issues.”
National Library of Medicine

From the Publisher