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Months into the global pandemic, governments, think tanks, and companies have begun releasing comprehensive plans to reopen the economy while the world will have to wait a year or longer for the universal deployment of an effective vaccine.

A big part of many of these plans are digital tools, apps, and public-health surveillance project that could be used to contain the spread of COVID-19. But even if they’re effective, these tools must be subject to rigorous oversight and laws preventing their abuse. Corporate America is already contemplating mandatory worker testing and tracking. Digital COVID passports that could grant those with immunity or an all-clear from a COVID test the right to enter stores, malls, hotels, and other spaces may well be on the way.

We must be ready to watch the watchers and guard against civil rights violations.

Many governments and pundits are turning to tech companies that are promising digital contact tracing applications and services to augment the capacity of manual contact tracers, as they work to identify transmission chains and isolate people exposed to the virus. Yet civil society groups are already highlighting the serious privacy implications of such tools, underscoring the need for robust privacy protections.

The potential for law enforcement and corporate actors alike to abuse these tracking systems is just too great to ignore. For their part, most democratic governments have largely recognized that the principle of voluntary adoption of this technology—rather than attempts at state coercion — is more likely to encourage use of these apps.

But these applications are not useful unless significant percentages of cellphone users use them. An Oxford University study suggests that for a similar app to successfully suppress the epidemic in the United Kingdom, 80 percent of British cellphone users would have to use it, which equates to 56 percent of the overall UK population. If the numbers for a digital contact tracing program to succeed stateside were similar, that would mean activating more than 100 million users.

The level of adoption will dictate just how well these technologies prevent the spread of the virus, but no matter how widespread such voluntary adoption may be there is still potential for coercion, abuse, and targeting of specific users and communities without their consent. Some companies and universities are already planning to develop their own contact tracking systems and requiring their employees or students to participate. The consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is advising companies on how to create these systems, and other smaller tech firms are designing Bluetooth beacons to facilitate the tracking of workers without smartphones.

An unaccountable regime of COVID surveillance could represent a great near-term threat to civil rights and privacy. Already marginalized communities suffering most from this crisis are the most exposed to the capricious whims of corporate leaders eager to restart supply chains and keep the manufacturing and service sector operating.

Essential workers are subject to serious health risks while doing their jobs during a pandemic, and employers mandating use of these technologies without public oversight creates another risk to worker rights. This paints a particularly tragic picture for the Black community which has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic in terms of sickness, death, and unemployment.

Black and Latinx people are more likely to work as cashiers in grocery stores, in nursing homes, or in other service-industry jobs that make infection far more likely. Many such workers are already subject to pervasive and punitive workplace surveillance regimes. But now, there may be real public-health equities at play. When these workers go to work they have to do so in close proximity to others. Employers must protect them and digital tracking tools may well be part of saving lives. But that balance ought to be struck by public-health officials and worker-safety authorities in consultation with affected employees.

This system of private-health surveillance may not just affect workers. Grocery store, retail, and restaurant owners eager to deploy this kind of technology to regain the confidence of shoppers may well see the logic in incentivizing widespread public deployment as well.

Those same stores could offer a financial incentive to customers who can prove they have a contact-tracing app installed on their phone, or they could integrate it into already existing customer loyalty apps, or even . Coordinated efforts from businesses to mitigate losses due to sick workers or the threat of repeated government shutdowns could make incentivizing or demanding COVID-passports worth the investment to them. We may well find ourselves in a situation where a digitally checkpointed mall, Whole Foods, or Walmart feels like an oasis — the safest place in the world outside our homes.

Unaccountable deployment of these systems threaten to create further divides between workers and consumers, the tracked and untracked, or perilous division between those who can afford repeated testing and those who can’t.

So far, few officials have weighed these tradeoffs. As of yet, the only federal legal guidance on these questions has come from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has ruled that employers can legally institute mandatory temperature checks and other medical exams as conditions of continued employment.

Lawmakers have to do more. They must provide protections for the unauthorized use of this information and not allow access to places of public accommodations - a core civil right - to be determined by a mere app. We must seriously consider what it would mean for a free society should businesses find it makes financial sense to invest in their own health-surveillance systems or deny people access to corner markets or grocery stores if they aren’t carrying the right pass on their person.

We do not have to be resigned to the deployment of a permanent state surveillance apparatus or the capriciousness of the private sector. If our post-9/11 experience is a guide, then we know that unaccountable surveillance infrastructure implemented during a crisis is wildly difficult to dismantle.

We must not construct a recovery that casts a needless decades-long shadow over our society, entrenches the power of large corporations, and further exacerbates class and racial divides. Governments must proactively decide the permissible uses and limits of this technology and the data it collects, and they must demand that these surveillance systems, private or otherwise, be dismantled at the end of the crisis.

Gaurav Laroia is the Senior Policy Counsel at consumer Group Free Press, working alongside the policy team on topics ranging from internet-freedom issues like Net Neutrality and media ownership to consumer privacy and government surveillance.

Buckle up, because this one is going to be quite the long road trip, and I hope you won't rush to the comments without joining me on the entire journey first. But if you want a sense of where we're heading, here's the route map: the New York Times published an insane warmongering Senator's push to turn our own soldiers on protesting Americans, people (including many Times journalists) complained, the Times tried to defend the decision, and then admitted "mistakes were made," and a bunch of very silly people who pretend to be "serious thinkers" whined nonsensically about free speech and the "unwillingness to listen to opposing ideas," all while refusing to listen to opposing ideas. And all of it's nonsense: because editorial discretion is not a free speech issue and calling out a terrible paean to fascism is not an unwillingness to listen to "opposing ideas."

Off we go.

If you've been paying attention to the world of media in the past few days, you've probably already seen some of the loud and raucous debate. On Wednesday, the Times made the incredibly bad decision to publish the truly awful op-ed from Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, suggesting that President Trump should send the US military to invade US cities, because, while the vast majority of protests around the nation have been peaceful (other than all those disrupted by police violence), there have been a few cases of some people breaking windows, setting fires, and stealing goods. There seems to be little evidence that this is as widespread a problem as the President and his supporters make it out to be, but in an effort to control the narrative, they're claiming that there's widespread violence and attacks overshadowing protests.

Cotton's op-ed is bad. Just to take one bit of it, this paragraph is utter hogwash:

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

This is a "the beatings will continue until morale improves" approach. It doesn't work. It's never worked. It will only make things much, much worse, and put many more lives in danger. It is based on a combination of false statements (regarding the extent of "riots"), a misunderstanding of why people are expressing their anger in this way, and huge confusion about how people are likely to react to even scarier militarized soldiers and weaponry arriving on city streets. The people are protesting the very concept that they are an enemy, and sending in our own military is not only scary and authoritarian, it simply reinforces the message that they are protesting against.

An overwhelming show of force is the problem. Doubling down on that doubles the problem.

Leaving that aside for the moment, what's been much more fascinating is the response to the publication. Many people pointed out that it was simply ridiculous for the New York Times to run this op-ed. After many people on Twitter raised questions about why the Times would publish such dreck on its opinion pages, a bunch of Times journalists themselves decided to speak up and call out their bosses for allowing the op-ed to run. Many pointed out that the op-ed itself put Times staffers in danger.

It's worth noting that the Times is one of the newspapers that has a set of very stupid social media policies that forbid journalists and staff from making any comment "that undercuts The Times' journalistic reputation." That means speaking out in this manner may actually threaten their jobs as well. As the complaints grew louder, James Bennet, who runs the frequently awful opinion section of the paper, first defended the decision to publish the op-ed on Twitter with a painfully weak and predictable argument along the lines of "we want to show both sides of the debate." He then posted a somewhat better and more thoughtful explanation in the Times itself (seriously, I'd recommend reading that over his terrible Twitter thread). He's still wrong, but his argument is much better articulated.

Of course, later in the day after an apparently vocal discussion inside the newspaper (more on that in a moment), the Times admitted that the Cotton op-ed did not meet its editorial standards, and should have received a more thorough review. Incredibly, that piece says James Bennet claims he never read the op-ed before it was published:

James Bennet, the editor in charge of the opinion section, said in a meeting with staff members late in the day that he had not read the essay before it was published. Shortly afterward, The Times issued a statement saying the essay fell short of the newspaper’s standards.

“We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication,” Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman, said in a statement. “This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short-term and long-term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reducing the number of Op-Eds we publish.”

This is insane on so many levels. I find it unbelievable (in the most literal sense) that no one within the editorial process thought to flag a piece as obviously as incendiary as this one for the top opinion editor to review. It suggests either that Bennet is really, really bad at his job, or the entire NY Times opinion section is a complete joke. Or both. There's enough evidence to suggest both of those may be the case. Meanwhile, a new report notes that the Cotton op-ed went through three rounds of revisions, which is quite odd for an op-ed piece, and makes the NY Times look so much worse. It means they really spent time thinking about it and still felt it was worth running, and yet Bennet never even bothered to read it? How is that possible.

In the midst of all this, there were a bunch of tweets and accusations thrown around about the internal debate at the NY Times, with one of its many terrible opinion writers, Bari Weiss, writing a huge thread pushing a narrative that there was a "civil war" between the young "woke" journalists and the older traditional "liberal" journalists. The only problem with this is that almost everyone else who was actually involved in the discussion pointed out that Weiss was completely full of shit.

Click through, because that thread goes on and on and on with examples of Times journalists saying that Weiss' statements appear to be more gaslighting than reality.

But then, of course, you had other "serious people" complaining about the complainers. You had long-time mainstream media "political analyst" Jeff Greenfield pushing a truly ridiculous strawman that complaining about one particular op-ed means you don't think the Times should have an op-ed page at all.

If that's the case, I'll refer to the title of this post. The Times must publish my op-ed on why James Bennet is an incompetent dweeb, or it proves that it's afraid to take on the difficult-to-hear opinions of the day. Prove me wrong, Jeff Greenfield. Prove me wrong.

And there was ever sanctimonious Andrew Sullivan, who called Times reporters speaking up about their own fears for their own safety "an attempted coup."

If you're playing along at home, apparently the rules are that if you're a white, war-mongering Senator with opinions about turning the US military on our own citizens, everyone must listen because that's free speech. But if you're a black reporter who is afraid for the risks you now face, and speaks up about it, that's an "attempted coup."

I sense a double standard.

There was also a truly disingenuous focus on the idea that this represented "safetyism" as a way to silence opposition. This was brought up by both Weiss and Randy Barnett, claiming that by playing the "victim" you are somehow "silencing opposition."

Of course, I have trouble seeing how they're doing anything differently than the people they're complaining about. Those complaining about the op-ed are stating their opinions and suggesting that it was silly of the NY Times to publish a garbage op-ed, which might lead to more death and destruction. Barnett and Weiss are now complaining that it was silly of those complaining to publish those complaints. Would it be okay if I accused both of them of resorting to "safetyism" and trying to hide from the opposing viewpoint that "promoting outright fascism is bad"? Or does this only work in one direction?

Unfortunately, this framing is picking up in certain circles, including among people I respect. The folks at Reason, who I tend to agree with much more frequently than not, ran a silly "mock the woke snowflakes" piece, arguing that this is the end result of political correctness run amok.

The woke left's march through the institutions, from experimental liberal arts campuses to the most hallowed journalistic outlets, has been breathtaking in its speed and scope. It's a generational war, and the GenXers for whom this stuff doesn't come natural are learning that they have to become fluent in the new language or end up as pariahs in their own newsrooms. The country's top editors—Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, David Remnick at The New Yorker—discover during moments of staff revolt that their old-timey notions about broad public squares and multi-viewpoint conversations are no longer tolerable.

And, of course, Senator Cotton is loving every moment of this nonsense, and gleefully playing up the controversy and using it to attack the Times (which, who knows, may have been his goal all along, or perhaps was just a bonus):

But there's a huge problem with this nonsense. It has nothing to do with "woke mobs," "political correctness," "safetyism," or an "unwillingness to listen to opposing viewpoints." Speaking up about your concerns is not "an attempted coup" and opposing the decision to publish a stupidly bad op-ed is not an unwillingness to have op-eds.

This is all free speech, and no one has even remotely attempted to stop anyone's right to speak their mind. They've just been highlighting the difference between discretion and censorship that we've been talking about here lately. The New York Times is the New York Times because it has a reputation (for some, good, and for others, bad). But part of that reputation is its editorial discretion. Declining to publish a bad op-ed is not about ignoring "the opposition" or wanting to play the victim and squelch "non-woke" speech, nor is criticizing the Times for its decision to publish it.

It's calling out bad editorial discretion. Every choice the Times Opinion section makes involves editorial discretion. Not agreeing to publish my op-ed on James Bennet being an incompetent dweeb is editorial discretion. Continuing to publish whatever utter bedbug nonsense its columnists come up with is editorial discretion. People can and should criticize bad editorial discretion, because that encourages better editorial discretion.

But it is simply ridiculous to say that complaining about a single editorial decision suggests an unwillingness to engage, or an unwillingness to hear ideas someone disagrees with. As far as I can tell, no one in this debate has suggested that Tom Cotton not be allowed to speak his militaristic, ahistorical nonsense. He can say what he wants. The question is whether or not it's appropriate for the New York Times to publish it at all.

This whole silliness hits home deeply for me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that just last week we launched a new project, the Techdirt Greenhouse, in which we will be hosting many opinions I disagree with strongly (oh, and for what it's worth, unlike James Bennet, I do read every piece before it goes out). And, over the past two years, as we worked on this effort, I've had to explain to many people that part of the idea was to publish smart, thoughtful, nuanced commentary that will involve fundamental differences of opinion and disagreement -- but without the crazy takes.

And I'll admit that there are times in this process that I questioned myself closely: when I say "no crazy takes," does that mean that I am silencing a certain point of view? Or is it simply a recognition that there are intellectually honest ways to disagree, and intellectually dishonest ways, and I have no desire to be a part of the latter? That, too, is part of editorial discretion.

It is entirely possible to believe in free speech, to believe in hearing all kinds of viewpoints, including those we disagree with and that make us feel uncomfortable, without saying "yes, this publication should post fundamentally terrible, intellectually dishonest support for a truly crazy idea." That's not running from things that make people uncomfortable. It's having the understanding of what's being discussed in good faith, and what's dangerous populist nonsense, designed to stir up emotions through dishonest means, rather than a debate of ideas.

So, of course, the Times should not publish my op-ed about how James Bennet is an incompetent dweeb (even though it's quite good). That's well within its editorial discretion and (mostly) an editorial position I'd agree with. That does not mean that anyone is uncomfortable with my ideas, or trying to silence me. It's just that they understand that my (mythical, theoretical) piece is an attempt at absurdist, emotional nonsense -- just like Senator Cotton's piece -- and deserves no space in a serious publication.

A COP IN EVERY HOUSE: that's the American dream. Maybe they can't enter the home, what with the Fourth Amendment and all, but they can be invited to every online get-together thrown by apps that promise neighborhood unity while asking law enforcement to get in on the action.

Ring, Amazon's doorbell/camera company, has made the relationship between neighborhood "sharing" and law enforcement explicit. It's right there in the term sheets. While Ring takes the PR reins to steer the official discourse, it's offering cops steeper discounts on Ring cameras they can hand out to citizens in exchange for pushing citizens to sign up for Neighbors, Ring's snitch app. Once attached to the app, Ring makes sharing of camera footage seamless and encourages homeowners to report suspicious people and activities. Unsurprisingly, many of the suspicious people reported are minorities.

It's not just Ring and Neighbors, as Citylab has discovered. Nextdoor -- a hyperlocal Facebook clone (and hotbed of bigotry) -- is courting cops as forcibly silenced partners in its plans to increase its user base.

Charles Husted, the chief of police in Sedona, Arizona, couldn’t contain his excitement. He had just been accepted into the Public Agencies Advisory Council for Nextdoor, the neighborhood social networking app.

“You’re the best!!! A great Christmas present,” he wrote in a December email to Parisa Safarzadeh, Government Relations Manager for Nextdoor.com Inc., obtained by CityLab through a public records request.

The invitation was too good to turn down: an all expenses paid trip to Nextdoor's headquarters in San Francisco. The company covered the costs for all invitees. In exchange for their participation, Nextdoor picked up the estimated $16,900 tab. And it swore participants to silence with a non-disclosure agreement.

Unfortunately for Nextdoor, this doesn't cover public records, which is what Citylab used to uncover this unseemly relationship between the social media company and US law enforcement. Chief Husted has no regrets -- or at least none he's willing to share publicly, possibly because of the NDA he signed. From what he can see, this isn't questionable. It's just a step in the right direction.

Husted says that leaning on social media — not just Nextdoor, but also Facebook or Twitter — in the line of duty is an inevitability of the current age. “It’s naive to think as public safety folks that we can keep doing our work the same as we have for years and years,” he said. “We have to evolve with the times, and the times have to do with social media: That’s where our communities are at. We have to find a way to be there too.”

He's right. Social media can't be ignored. But Nextdoor isn't inviting anyone from its largest group of stakeholders: members of the public. Instead, it's paying for government employees and officials to travel to San Francisco to hear its pitch for greater government involvement in a private company's communications platform. Nextdoor may claim to be connecting locals with each other, but its efforts are focused on roping in the people who are supposed to be serving its users: public servants.

Robbie Turner, a senior city strategist with Nextdoor, wrote to Husted that when expanding Nextdoor’s reach to Canada, the company was using “the same strategy we used when we first launched in the U.S. — recruit the major Police Departments and have them help us grow membership and engagement quickly.”

That's the bottom line: bumps in usage and users. Turning public entities into tools of corporations is seldom a good idea and it's certainly a bad idea when Nextdoor's user base appears to be willing to turn themselves into snitches at the drop of a hyperlink. If cops want to break bias patterns, they need to steer clear of unsubstantiated reports from biased Nextdoor users. Instead, Nextdoor is encouraging police to embrace the platform and all the problems inherent in its "see something, say something" nudges.

As for other public officials who took advantage of Nextdoor's all-expense-paid offer, they're having a problem seeing a problem with any of this. Never mind the optics. Officials want everyone to focus only on the letter of the law, which contains enough loopholes to drive an entire junket through.

Several public officials who were part of the Public Agencies Advisory Council say that the trip didn’t conflict with any city policies. Lara Foss, a corporate communications marketing consultant for the City of Austin, told CityLab that since the trip was work-related, it did not violate the city’s gift policy. Sedona’s Husted also said there were no endorsement regulations that prohibited him from participating. Katie Nelson, social media and public relations coordinator for the Mountain View Police Department in California, said that because the city’s policy prohibits taking paid trips on clocked time, she took a few days off from work to participate in the San Francisco meet-up.

Being wined and dined on a corporate tab makes people more receptive to their pitches. Everyone knows this. And that's why nearly everyone thinks things like this reek of buying off cops and politicians. Everyone, that is, but the cops and politicians being seduced by a whirlwind trip to a tech company's headquarters.

Once the dirty has been done, it's time to let what happened at Nextdoor HQ stay at Nextdoor HQ. This isn't so much a slogan as it is an existential lawsuit threat. Shut up, says Nextdoor, or it will be more than an un-invite to future events. It will be your proverbial ass in a litigation sling. Public officials owe a duty of transparency to their constituents. But Nextdoor is appending a whole lot of asterisks to the duties of public officials. The exceptions include a completely separate arm of the government.

In the terms of Nextdoor’s NDA, advisory council members are not allowed to release public statements about the partnership without the consent of Nextdoor, nor are they able to follow a court order to disclose any information deemed confidential by Nextdoor without alerting the company first.

And Nextdoor has made it easy for its snitchiest users to bring the government in on conversations other Nextdoor users might have thought were private. The platform can't allow users to file actual police reports but it does give users an option to screw other users over. A feature called "Forward to Police" allows users to send copies of private conversations to officers monitoring accounts. This feature is activated by police departments themselves, so those willing to further demonstrate their indifference for the people they serve can give people an one-click solution for all their snitching needs.

Sure, any participant in a private conversation could take screenshots and hand them to law enforcement. Removing the minimal tech hurdles, however, encourages people to use this option anytime they come across something that bothers them. It's a "speak to the manager" button, but one that potentially involves government-blessed use of deadly force. If people don't even have to leave their chairs to engage in SWATting-adjacent activities, they won't. Giving them a button just increases the chance someone's going to get hurt or killed.

At the end of the day, it's problematic all over. Public officials are endorsing a platform that paid to have them feel good about it -- both by covering their trip to San Francisco and by giving them the impression they are doing something to make their communities better by making them members of a private company's "Public Advisory Council."

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