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By\u00a0Aaron Kesel<\/a><\/p>\n The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be the Trojan horse that justifies increased digital surveillance via our smartphones.<\/p>\n All over the world, starting with China \u2013 the suspected origin of the COVID-19 outbreak \u2013 governments are increasing surveillance of citizens using their smartphones. The trend is taking off like wildfire; in China citizens now require a smartphone application\u2019s permission to travel around the country and internationally.<\/p>\n The application is AliPay by Ant Financial, the finance affiliate controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma, and Tencent Holdings Ltd.\u2019s WeChat. Citizens now require a green health code to travel,\u00a0Yahoo News<\/em>\u00a0reported.<\/a><\/p>\n China isn\u2019t the only country looking towards smartphones to monitor their citizens; Israel and Poland have also implemented their own spying to monitor those suspected or confirmed to be infected with the COVID-19 virus. Israel has gone the more extreme route, and has now given itself\u00a0authority<\/a>\u00a0to surveil any citizen without a court warrant. Poland on the other hand is requiring those diagnosed with COVID-19 ordered to self-isolate to send authorities a selfie using an app. Which, if Poles don\u2019t respond back in 20 minutes with a smiling face, they risk a visit from police,\u00a0Dailymail\u00a0<\/em>reported.<\/a><\/p>\n Singapore has asked citizens to download an app which\u00a0uses Bluetooth to track whether they\u2019ve been near anyone diagnosed with the virus<\/a>; and Taiwan, although not using a smartphone, has introduced\u00a0\u201celectronic fences\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which alert police if suspected patients leave their homes.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, here in the U.S. as\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, smartphones are being used by a variety of companies to \u201canonymously\u201d collect user data and track if social distancing orders are being adhered to. Beyond that, the mobile phone industry is\u00a0discussing<\/a>\u00a0how to monitor the spread of COVID-19. If that\u2019s not enough, as this author\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0The Mind Unleashed<\/em>, the government wants to work with big social tech giants like Google, Facebook, and others, to track the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n A\u00a0new live index<\/a>\u00a0shows the increase of the police state by Top10VPN, a Digital Rights group. Top10VPN lists a total of 15 countries which have already started measures to track the phones of coronavirus patients, ranging from anonymized aggregated data to monitor the movement of people more generally, to the tracking of individual suspected patients and their contacts, known as \u201ccontact tracing.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the only live index, a company called\u00a0Unacast<\/a>\u00a0that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data also launched one. Except this is a \u201cSocial Distancing Scoreboard<\/a>\u201d that grades, county by county, monitoring who is following social distancing rules.<\/p>\n As\u00a0Activist Post<\/em>\u00a0previously\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0while discussing the increase of a police surveillance state, these measures being put into place now will likely remain long after the pandemic has stopped and the virus has run its course. That\u2019s the everlasting effect that COVID-19 will have on our society.\u00a0 The coronavirus is now classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, and it may very well be a legitimate health concern for all of us around the world. But it\u2019s the government\u2019s response that should worry us all more in the long run.<\/p>\n At the time of this report the COVID-19 virus has infected 458,927, killed 20,807, while 113,687 have recovered\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to the Johns Hopkins map.<\/p>\n