Surveilled — Issue 39
Surveilled
Issue 39
A weekly summary of what I’ve found interesting at the intersection of economics, finance and technology.
In these unprecedented times, when many of you, like me, are holed up at home, a newsletter about technology and privacy is not at the top of the list, and there is a lot of other news to keep up with. So inevitably this issue is shorter, but it’s there, to maintain some stability at least.
Once the threat of the virus recedes, we will probably be faced with profound structural change to the economy, among others because of the after-effects of the drastic government action taking place today. Some of those actions relate to the topic of this newsletter, as the few links below demonstrate, so we will keep on going. In the meantime, stay safe!
Published elsewhere
COVID-19: Revisiting the Economic Stimulus after the World Woke Up — A couple of weeks ago, the magnitude of the issue has become clear, especially in the Western hemisphere, and financial markets have responded on cue: We witnessed the biggest sell-off since the global financial crisis in 2008. Government intervention, on a scale unthinkable even two months ago, is required. Read (Malay Mail)
Context
Israel enabled emergency spy powers, allowing the state to track mobile-phone data of people with suspected coronavirus infections. Enabling this is easy, rolling it back less so. Read (BBC News)
Chinese AI companies scrambled to enable facial recognition of people wearing masks, and achieved a 95% success rate in a few weeks. Read (FT $)
That’s it for this week’s edition. As always, thanks for reading and please forward this to anyone who you think might be interested, it would be much appreciated.