Israel has enacted a new emergency law on the use of mobile phone data to help track people who have been infected with the coronavirus and quarantined they have come into contact with those . Those people may also be infected and need to be .
According to the BBC, the law was decided during an overnight cabinet meeting, bypassing parliamentary approval.
In a statement on Facebook, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote: “We will dramatically increase the ability to trace and isolate those who are infected. Today we began using technology to trace people who have come into contact with people infected with the coronavirus. We will inform these people that they must quarantine for 14 days. We expect to find many people. We will announce them in the coming days. The move to quarantine will not be a recommendation but a requirement , and we will enforce it without compromise. This is a crucial step in slowing the spread of the epidemic.”
“I have instructed the Ministry of Health to significantly increase the number of coronavirus tests to 3,000 per day,” he added. “It is very possible that we will reach 5,000 per day. As far as I know, relative to the population, this is the highest number of tests in the world, higher than even South Korea. In South Korea, they are doing about 15,000 tests per day for a population five or six times larger than ours.”
Civil liberties advocates argue that actions that allow for the surveillance of citizens, even for the coronavirus, pose many risks to users ' privacy .
According to WHO data , Israel had 200 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of yesterday morning. Today, the country's Health Ministry reported that cases had reached 427.
The Ministry has not yet given details on how the tracking will work. According to the BBC, it will use data location from people's mobile phones . This data will be collected and given to health officials.
In addition, the Ministry of Health will participate in monitoring the location of people infected with coronavirus, to ensure that they comply with quarantine rules.
It will also send messages to people who have come into contact with the patients to inform them that they should also go into quarantine just in case.
The Israeli government enacted this law to combat the coronavirus and spread . However, the method it chose allows state agencies to monitor citizens.
The question is: Will this highly intrusive method affect people's willingness to take their phones with them?
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government is considering similar measures to contain the coronavirus. In fact, it has already reached out to major technology companies that can help with this.
