More than a Million Rush to Accept Government Surveillance in Australia: COVIDSafe

Based on similar software introduced in Singapore, COVIDSafe is a smartphone application that uses a Bluetooth wireless signal to exchange a “digital handshake” with another user when they come within 1.5m (4.9ft). This interaction is then logged and encrypted, according to BBC who reported on the Australian application shortly after it was released. It continued that, “Users will be notified if they have had more than 15 minutes of close contact with another user who tests positive [for the virus],” and that despite cases slowing in recent weeks, the country has reported 6,694 confirmed coronavirus cases and 80 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Even after over a million users joined the app within hours of its release, which was announced on Twitter by Australia’s Health Minister Greg Hunt, the continent’s government continued actively encouraging its people to use the invasive application, arguing its supposed benefits. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said “social restrictions could be eased if enough people use the app,” according to the BBC, the news source continuing, “The government has said that for maximum effectiveness, some 40% of the population would need to download it.”

The app’s growing popularity encouraged privacy concerns regarding who would have access to stored data, prompting the government to confirm that only state health officials would qualify. “The data will be stored in Australia, and the health minister said ‘not even a court order’ would allow other authorities such as the police to access it.” However, the BBC reports that these protections have not yet been put into legislation, as Australia’s parliament is not sitting regularly.

The app asks users to supply their age range, a mobile number, a post code and a name - which can be a pseudonym. BBC reports that, “The government said all data would be wiped after 21 days, or when someone deleted the app from their phone.”

That Australia has released this app at all is significant, that so many downloaded it so fast is even more striking, but that the Government is suggesting that by using this app its citizens are guaranteeing a swifter end to the lockdown and state of danger that so many people are struggling in is proof that people in positions of power will take any means necessary to surveille, no matter the cost. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-52433340?fbclid=IwAR0z8FNDWevQ8dz4un1EXtQ3vaZ6fuvcZxdpfPn7TbV-6gpKoEo8Z9ZMWD4


How Corona Made the TSA Instagram Surveille Less

How many followers would you expect the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) to have on Instagram? Let’s put this in perspective with similar organizations also under the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Secret Service has 105,000 followers. The U.S. Coast Guard has 537,000 followers. The TSA has 1,000,000. To be clear, I’m one of them. This is because their account isn’t run like that of a normal government agency. It’s witty, awkward, and edgy. But it’s also invasive, off putting, and makes you question whether it should exist at all. 

Before Corona, there was a very typical theme to the posts of the TSA Instagram. Pictures of the most notable confiscated objects that came through national US airports, accompanied by long captions explaining why the item had been confiscated, often in the form of a pun or cultural reference. The items were often weapons, and were often disguised in creative ways. For example, there was the August 15th, 2019 post, showing an umbrella whose handle doubled as a knuckle punch. The caption of the post opened with, “It’s raining...it’s pouring..The old man was...sparring?” Other posts showed lipstick containers that opened into knives, and guns that had been snuck into personal baggage. It is indicated nowhere on the account that individuals passing through the airport gave their consent for these confiscated items to be posted.

When the page wasn’t publicly shaming citizens for their (admittedly illegal) choices, it was often posting pictures of cute K9 dogs, which, while fun, seemed an attempt to make the government (and owners of the account)--surveillers-- seem more ‘innocent.’ This tactic is also apparent in the sense that followers of the account can message it with questions about TSA, which are posted to the page, and also answered in pun/joke format. 

However, this all changed with Corona. With the extreme dip in travelers frequenting airports, the TSA Instagram page no longer had the large influx of content it once did. The page resorted to posting more vaguely about Corona, making general connections to the airport when possible, and keeping with their familiar format. An April 6th post showed a picture of a man in a face mask with the caption, “Let’s face it...face coverings and masks are a great way to protect yourself and others,” and reminded people that face coverings are allowed at security checkpoints. I realized that this post had gone in the complete opposite direction, as the once invasive posts had been replaced by a man who was completely unrecognizable, accompanied by a caption entirely that was both vague and related to airport information. Many posts didn’t show people at all, and were simply infographics. Another showed a picture of a stuffed animal wearing a mask, holding a passport and a boarding pass, while another showed a man holding up his driver’s license, with his head cut out of the picture. All of these posts were purely informative, though still making jokes and puns. A surprising, niche, and modest positive to Corona: the TSA Instagram is surveilling less. 

His Impact is Yuuge: New York Nico’s Accent Challenge 

He calls himself the unofficial talent scout of New York City. But he is so much more than that. Nicolas Heller is everything that is great about New York. He knows the best people, and helps everyone see why they are so. He’s rough around the edges, but just barely. You smile when he smiles. He’s a masterful storyteller. He’s got that particular sense of humor you can only acquire when living among an eclectic, fabled group of people. And followers of his Instagram account, @newyorknico, are always on the edge of their seat, or, homescreen, waiting for what he’ll come up with next. 

Recently, that came in the form of the accent challenge. I was personally introduced to the accent challenge on April 5th, particularly, in a submission from Sienna from Staten Island. The video showed an 8 year old girl wearing medium sized hoop earrings and an oversized Adidas shirt twirling her hair and loudly chewing gum. Someone off camera (@giiiii1226), in a thick accent herself, prompted “I think you got the best New York accent, what ‘ya say?” To which Sienna  responded, “Ok, well all these Southerns are like ‘dog,’ I don’t know what a ‘dog’ is, I know what a ‘dwog’ is. They say ‘coffee’ I don’t know what ‘coffee’ is, I know what ‘cwuhfee’ is.” I can’t even say it the way they say it (because I’m from) New York. Like, what the hell is that? I don’t even know what that is. And they say Staten Island, like, I don’t even know what that is. And when they chew gum?! I can’t even hear them! Are they even chewing?” I was immediately hooked. These are what kids from New York are like. They have personality. They are riled up. They have opinions. 

I clicked on Nico’s page and saw that ten other accent challenge videos were already posted. There was Emilia Ortiz (@ethereal.1), the mental health and cannabis advocate from Brooklyn who said “I walk, I talk, I live, I breathe I am New York.” There was Lisa Marie (@onefunnymommy), the court stenographer who said “Of course I have the best New York accent, I’m fucking born and raised in Brooklyn, you don’t get more real than that, people. This is authentic. Not something you learn, it’s something you’re born with.” And there was Jackie (@theblondenomad) from the Bronx, who, alternatively, said, “I’m not gonna lie, I don’t feel like I’d be a great contender, because I’d worked really hard to tone down my New York accent. I want to be professional. I was in the middle of Slovenia and some woman asked me if I was from the Bronx and that shit hit hard.” 

Between April 4th and April 9th, 62 videos were posted to the challenge. People of all races, genders, and ages submitted to Nico’s page. After a couple days, celebrities came into the mix. Princess Nokia and Michael Rapaport were judges, and big NYC stores were offering prizes. Alec Baldwin started his video by making sure we knew that “I am Alec Baldwin, I’m from Massapequa,” and continued by reading a scene from Julius Caesar. Katherine Narducci submitted, as did Debi Mazar, Chazz Palminteri, The Kid Mero, and John Joseph from the Cro-Mags. Comments immediately began pouring in that a celebrity couldn’t win the contest, but everyone knew that Nico wouldn’t choose a big name (and that the celebs weren’t submitting so they would win). The winner ended up being Charlie da Wolf, whose Instagram dubs him “Williamburgs Oldest Bad Boy,” and follows that “@sabinocurcio made me do it.” His acceptance video announced that “Everybody tries to act like a New Yorker. And I guarantee most of them are not from New York. They’re either out of state, or whatever. I’m original. I was raised and born in Brooklyn. And that was it. And this is how my accent is.” His accent was droll, relaxed, and classically New York. And so was everything about him. Just like everything about the contest. People spoke of Corona, but not exclusively. When they did, they spoke with a combination of compassion, wit, and exasperation. All speeches reflected passion, larger-than-life facial expressions, and complete sincerity. All attributable to the fact that they were doing it for Nico. 





The Loss of @subwayhands

I follow an account on Instagram called @subwayhands which posts iPhone pictures of people(s)' hands on the NYC subway. I like it because, as a native New Yorker, it’s always felt incredibly authentic. On March 14th, subwayhands posted one of the last series that wasn’t a collection of old pictures, because after that, the photographer who runs the account stopped taking the subway. The series was taken on assignment for the New Yorker, because by that point, her account had gained significant notoriety. The series showed three images of the hands of people of color. The one I’ve included the one that stood out to me the most. Many of the shots subwayhands posts involve multiple people, often holding hands or interacting with each other. But even by March 14th, the hands of this person were left to intertwine themselves with only each other. It made me think of intimacy. Another image in the series showed the hand of a black woman with long, elegant fingers with painted pink fingernails, who didn’t have gloves, and was using a paper napkin to prevent her hand from touching the pole. It made me think of access. Another image showed a lighter skinned black woman’s hand which was encased in a pink glove. It made me think about expression. All of these images are incredibly close up. The account is @subwayhands. It’s just hands, on subways; but they say a lot. 

But slowly, corona took away their ability to do so. The next post after this series showed the hands of a man wearing a suit, holding his phone, which had the stocks app open. He was looking at his investments. This spoke to the idea that subwayhands wasn’t just posting individual pictures, but creating an Instagram account that was meant to create a full portfolio of images that were meant to be viewed together. After that, she posted the hands of an old man who was bent over, seemingly exhausted. This was followed by the hands of a young person who didn’t have any kind of protective-wear and was just barely gripping the pole, holding it as minimally as he could for support. 

And then she posted a picture of a shadow of her hands reflected in her dishwasher, a shocking post after years of posts exclusively containing hands on the subway, with a caption beginning with the line, “I miss the subway.” She never explicitly said that Corona was the reason she was unable to ride and post about the hands she saw on her journeys, but it didn’t need to be said. She linked to her personal Instagram page, and said she would be posting there to “cope.” I, along with her 224,000 followers, look forward to the return of her subway rides, and the hands she sees there. 

Corona, The Government, and Social Death

In most societies, dramatic shifts in culture result in dramatic shifts in the wants and needs of the people making up those societies. Who is responsible for making sure those new demands are accounted for varies depending on the hierarchical state of that society. In anarchist societies, the needs of citizens might be met using a model known as Participism, in which decisions are made using cascading levels of councils (this according to https://askananarchist.org/decisions/). In (well functioning) democracies, elected officials are responsible for making sure the needs of their constituents are met. In dictatorships, one person with authoritarian power makes all decisions, likely with no political pluralism. 

But how do these systems account for the demands of citizens under corona? The tweet above reminded me of our discussion in class about Orlando Patterson’s term “social death,” and what makes us feel human and connected to the world. We mentioned interpersonal connections, family, and kinship (and defined social death and the denial of kinship). We continued by listing things like the ability to communicate, access to basic hygiene, privacy, having our own spaces, connection to physical space, and having skills (including those which are commodifiable). 

It seems that Corona has given the government even more control over restricting and giving access to what makes us feel human. Further, it has given them supplemented leverage over the extended definition our class afforded “social death,” which I am further extending in the case of COVID-19. Just as social death isn’t simply the denial of kinship, but also the denial of the many attributes we collectively decided make us feel human, it is also the denial of intimacy, the denial of freedom to move widely, the denial to gather, the denial to eat diversely, and the denial to feel security. 

In contrast, this concept, and the meme above, has reminded me of the government’s ability to afford us access to vices and privileges it previously restricted. Dispensaries are now “essential businesses,” as millions of (mostly minorities) remain imprisoned for attempting to start these same businesses themselves. As the tweet above mentions, liquor stores are essential businesses. Homosexual men are able to donate blood 9 months sooner (after no sexual contact with fellow men) than they previously could. Small businesses are receiving loans, and taxpayers are receiving UBIs of over $1,000. Many countries--regardless of the political structure--are responding similarly. What does it say that times of pandemic afford government systems the ability to not only extend our definition of social death, but flip it on its head?