{"id":3757,"date":"2020-04-20T15:55:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T14:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/werle.pro\/?p=3757"},"modified":"2020-04-20T15:55:35","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T14:55:35","slug":"france-weighs-its-love-of-liberty-in-fight-against-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/werle.pro\/index.php\/2020\/04\/20\/france-weighs-its-love-of-liberty-in-fight-against-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"France Weighs Its Love of Liberty in Fight Against Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/04\/17\/world\/europe\/coronavirus-france-digital-tracking.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Norimitsu Onishi and Constant M\u00e9heut 16-20 minutes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The French are cautiously considering digital tracking, which has proved effective in Asia. But can a country that so prizes personal freedom and privacy ever accept it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Police
Police officers in Paris checking for certificates that people are required to produce when they are outside.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PARIS \u2014 As France sought clues last month on how to tame the coronavirus<\/a>, experts looked at one tool that has been central to the strategy of some Asian nations: digital tracking. Citing threats to \u201cindividual liberties,\u201d the powerful interior minister dismissed it as alien to \u201cFrench culture.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But three weeks \u2014 and a tenfold spike in deaths<\/a> \u2014 later, French culture could be changing, along with those of other Western democracies as they struggle to adjust the balance between personal privacy and the public good while attempting to reopen their societies and economies without setting off another wave of coronavirus infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Italy, politicians have proposed blood tests to detect antibodies<\/a> to the virus before licensing people to leave their lockdowns. President Trump may push for hiring hundreds of people to perform contact tracing as part of his effort to allow Americans to go back to work and school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in France, as President Emmanuel Macron extended a nationwide lockdown<\/a> by at least another month this week, he said his government was considering using a smartphone tracking app that would inform people if they have come in contact with an infected person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such steps are particularly fraught in Europe, the continent with the world\u2019s toughest online privacy rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fight against fascism and communism in the 20th century left societies wary of the intrusions of authoritarian power. That is true from Eastern Europe, through Germany and Italy. France, where the nation\u2019s values sprang from revolution against monarchy, is particularly attached to notions of individual rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has to do with French history and a sensitivity to freedom that is inherent to French culture,\u201d C\u00e9dric O<\/a>, who is spearheading the development of the app as France\u2019s junior minister in charge of digital affairs, said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even so, recent experience in Asia shows that comprehensive tracing of infection chains, along with aggressive testing, has proved critical to fighting the pandemic, which is calling into question a host of Western assumptions, whether the use of digital tracking or the wearing of face masks<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nearly 18,000 official deaths, France\u2019s toll is surpassed only by that of Italy and Spain, which have also prolonged restrictions on their populations, and the United States. But the authorities are cautiously optimistic that the worst is over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the country, like others, struggles to find a way out of a lockdown that is now entering its second month and has kept a population of 67 million confined to their homes and paralyzed its economy, options that once seemed unfathomable have steadily become more palatable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe gave up an absolutely fundamental freedom, that of movement, while most of the Asian countries chose instead to be much more coercive on the individuals,\u201d said Gilles Babinet, vice president of the French Digital Council, a commission that advises the French government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Babinet said there was more to learn from Asian democracies, like South Korea, whose use of intrusive digital tracking<\/a> has helped it avoid imposing the kind of strict lockdowns experienced in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou must have a device that is both coercive to those infected and as gentle as possible to the others,\u201d Mr. Babinet said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, many Asian governments have handled the crisis by limiting deaths to a fraction of those suffered in the West. In most cases, that was done not by resorting to debilitating nationwide lockdowns, but rather in part by employing digital tracking, a practice embraced even by strong democracies like South Korea and Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Europe, the possibility conjures up images of China\u2019s authoritarian rulers. An app created by the semi-authoritarian government of Singapore, the longtime proponent of Asian values, is the inspiration for versions being developed by the French, Germans and other Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who argue in favor of allowing its intrusiveness say that it is fair to infringe on people who are infected rather than inhibit the freedom of society as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know the patient\u2019s contacts, where the patient goes and stays, and so we don\u2019t need to lock down everybody,\u201d said Ki Mo-ran, an epidemiologist who is advising the South Korean government\u2019s coronavirus response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sign up to receive an email when we publish a new story about the coronavirus outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without digital tracking, governments cannot know precisely \u201cwhich place is contaminated, which place is clean, so they need to lock down,\u201d Ms. Ki said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s freedom is affected. We have to ask ourselves if one person\u2019s privacy is more important than the lives of a family or other people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to multipronged digital tracking \u2014 of cellphones, credit card usage and security camera footage \u2014 the South Korean authorities are able to closely monitor the movements of infected people. Health officials can then carry out tests on people who are potentially infected. People ordered into self-quarantine are monitored through an app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with a major outbreak, South Korea, with 52 million people, has managed to limit its official deaths to 230.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The South Korean government can make use of such intrusive tracking \u2014 though only during epidemics \u2014 because lawmakers changed privacy laws after an outbreak of MERS killed nearly 40 people in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then, health officials practicing traditional contact-tracing found that infected people, including \u201csuper spreaders,\u201d often failed to reveal all of the people with whom they had been in touch, or patients were too sick to be interviewed, Ms. Ki said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weakening privacy laws was a consequential step for South Korea, where people in their 50s and older remember snatching democracy from the country\u2019s military rulers in 1987.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They included people like Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul who was a student activist during the democratization era. He has come to regard Western liberal democracies, with their overriding emphasis on \u201cpersonal liberty and privacy,\u201d as being ill-equipped to respond to situations like terrorism or epidemics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn these kinds of emergency situations, we need to adapt,\u201d Mr. Ahn said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early instances in which a large amount of personal information was released raised fears of a government overreach. But in what was regarded as a referendum on the handling of the crisis, voters handed South Korea\u2019s governing party a landslide victory in parliamentary elections on Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at Korea compared with Europe or the United States, the critical difference seems to be tracking and testing,\u201d said Kim Seok-hyeon, a researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Seoul. \u201cIn the West, they will have to think more about those measures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for some French, the idea of giving up personal liberties is a non-starter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While tracking technology has been used by Asian democracies, they are \u201cdemocracies where the rule of law is not as strong as it is here,\u201d said Gaspard Koenig, a philosopher who has written about the relationship between technology and freedom, including in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Mr. Macron said that France\u2019s lockdown would be extended until May 11, he immediately framed the debate that lawmakers are expected to have on tracking technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis epidemic cannot weaken our democracy, nor impinge on liberties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. O, the official leading the development of France\u2019s technology, said that after studying the tracking technology used in Asia, France had settled on the least intrusive form \u2014 the Singaporean app, called \u201cTraceTogether<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are concerns that the app, relying mainly on a sense of civic duty, will be so watered down in France that it will prove ineffective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The app \u2014 called \u201cStopCovid\u201d in France \u2014 would be installed voluntarily on people\u2019s smartphones, would not track their locations or movements, and would use only Bluetooth technology to help trace a person\u2019s recent contacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If users tested positive for the coronavirus and indicate their status on the app, their recent contacts would be automatically alerted, and it would be up to them to take the appropriate steps by getting tested, seeking treatment or self-quarantining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French version would be different from Singapore\u2019s in at least one fundamental way, Mr. O said. In France, the list of recent contacts would never be made available to the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo be honest, people are asking whether it\u2019s enough and whether we need to take it up a notch,\u201d Mr. Babinet said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. O acknowledged that one of his main worries was whether enough people in France would install the app on their smartphones to work as a broad contact-tracing tool. The French, he said, are \u201cby nature cautious toward technology and even progress,\u201d especially compared with Asians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in Singapore, only about 20 percent of people have downloaded the app, and the authorities recently introduced stricter confinement measures to curb a jump in infections. Singapore \u2014 which has officially suffered only 10 deaths out of a population of 5.6 million \u2014 has said that<\/a> three-quarters of the population needs to use the app in order for it to be effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being a weakened version of the least intrusive tracking technology used in Asia, the app has already drawn fierce opposition from Mr. Macron\u2019s party in Parliament, La R\u00e9publique En Marche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sacha Houli\u00e9, a lawmaker, said that using the app would signify a \u201cprofound cultural shift\u201d in France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are France,\u201d Mr. Houli\u00e9 said. \u201cIn terms of civil liberties, being France means something. It means that, in a sense, the world is watching what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n