History shows that during times of crisis, politicians tend to reach

for more power. It's happening again now, argues researcher Luke
Kemp, and democratic citizens should be wary of the dangers.
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There is an old adage that crisis brings both danger and opportunity. During the
Covid-19 pandemic, this has proved true for many politicians.

As the coronavirus has spread, many governments around the world have sought to
tackle the pandemic by broadening their powers and abilities, according to data
collated from the Covid-19 Digital Rights Tracker and Civic Freedom Tracker. A
total of 32 countries have used militaries or military ordances to enforce rules, which
has not been without casualties. In Angola, police shot and killed several citizens
while imposing a lockdown. Others have drawn on technology to grow government
oversight. To monitor rule-breakers, 22 countries have used surveillance drones.
Facial recognition programmes have been expanded, internet censorship has
occurred in 28 countries, and internet shutdowns in 13. At least 120 contact-tracing
apps are in use across 71 states, and 60 other digital contact-tracing measures have
been used across 38 countries.

Many of these are examples of emergency powers: exceptional actions that states
can invoke during a crisis to deviate away from existing laws. Legally, emergency
powers vary by country. Many are enshrined under a constitution, give specific
powers to the executive, and require time limits. Many (but not all) require the
declaration of a "state of emergency".

When an enemy is at the gates or a disease in the streets, some extraordinary

measures are necessary. Lockdowns, for example, have saved millions of lives.
But some measures may be built on a fundamentally flawed vision of what to fear
during an emergency. If left unchecked, these emergency powers are prone to
abuse, and what started as an exception can frequently become the norm.

This is not an argument against swift, dramatic and often beneficial actions such as
lockdowns and travel restrictions. But these can be implemented in an open and
democratic fashion. Indeed, most publics have expressed strong majority support for
lockdown measures, and indeed one recent study shows that nearly 50% of the
reductions in transmission came from behavioural change before government
imposed lockdowns were introduced. Instead, there is an argument that by stomping
down through greater surveillance, strenghtened security forces and expanded
powers, governments risk making disasters worse.

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The Roman dictator was one of the earliest and most famous examples of state-
sanctioned emergency powers. When the Republic had a specific problem, such as
defeating an approaching enemy army, the Senate would appoint dictators with wide-
sweeping powers, including complete control of the military. There were limits. The
Senate retained control over the budget, and dictators faced both a six-month time-
period and heavy social pressure to finish the task. They had to retire as soon as
possible. Remarkably, the role was rarely abused. Over 300 years, the Roman
dictators were appointed 95 times. Yet its misuse marked the descent from Republic
into Empire.

Rome appointed dictators, and for a few hundred years, it worked (Credit: Getty
Images)
Emergency powers have come a long way since Rome. They have become global
and regular. In 1978, approximately 30 countries were in some form of state of
emergency. It had risen to 70 by 1986. By 1996 147 countries had mechanisms to
declare states of emergency. These are just states of emergency, and the actual
provision and use of emergency powers is even broader.

According to data from the CoronaNet database, 124 countries declared a state of
emergency during 2020 in response to Covid-19, with another several declaring
emergencies in specific provinces and municipalities.

Even prior to the pandemic, many countries existed in a perpetual state of

emergency. The US does not have a separate regime for emergencies. Instead,
presidents can activate "national emergencies" to gain access to a range of 136
statutory emergency powers. As of February 2020 there were 32 active
national emergencies, the oldest of which dates back 39 years. The continuation of
national emergencies is a bipartisan affair and most politicians savour the expanded
abilities at their disposal. The continuous national emergency in the US has been
renewed by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
Even prior to Covid-19, many countries existed in a perpetual
state of emergency
Historically, particularly during World War One and World War Two, emergency
powers were granted to a prime minister or president through a constitutional
provision. But this is becoming less true with time. The 2001 USA Patriot Act allowed
the US Congress itself to expand surveillance powers. Some scholars have
labelled this "the Legislative Model", where a parliament adopts emergency powers
and often gifts new powers to the executive. While this may seem more democratic
as Congress can introduce limits on what the executive can do, it runs the risk of also
making it complicit in emergency powers, normalising their use.
The 2001 USA Patriot Act allowed the US Congress itself to expand surveillance
powers (Credit: Eric Baradat/Getty Images)
Perhaps more worrying is what can be called "emergency responses": exceptional
legislation that is not designated as an emergency power, but is either passed during
or in reaction to a threat. Many of the counter-terrorism acts passed in the UK during
the last two decades were ordinary legislation, but would make most emergency
powers seem tame. Similarly, the current UK Police, Crime, Sentencing and
Courts Bill contains what some critics consider to be sweeping provisions, but is
being passed during a time that is less than ideal for public deliberation and scrutiny.

The Stalker Complex

There is one network of powerful agencies that particularly benefit from emergency
powers. They include the big tech companies engaged in what Shoshana Zuboff of
Harvard University calls "Surveillance Capitalism": the mass collective, use and sale
of private, personal data.

Big tech is joined by a cabal of intelligence agencies across the world who have
gathered more data and power over the past decades. As was revealed in 2013,
most intelligence agencies had used the war on terror and ensuing surveillance
powers to construct an intrusive, global web of surveillance. For example, the UK's
anti-terrorism legislation enabled scaled-up surveillance networks, especially over
Muslim communities. Similar measures for mass surveillance (often innocuously
termed "bulk collection") have been passed in numerous countries over the past
decade including, France, Australia, India, Sweden, and others. This is not to
mention the expanding, AI-powered surveillance apparatus in countries such as
China and others around the world.

Surveillance measures are far from a panacea, and there are dangers with
expanding their reach (Credit: Dominika Zarzycka/Getty Images)
Together these two networks form what I call the "Stalker Complex". It is a grouping
that benefits through profit and control from the use of emergency powers and
responses for surveillance, such as anti-terrorism surveillance measures post 9/11 or
new wide-spread tracking and monitoring capabilities using GPS or Bluetooth during
Covid-19.

There is surprisingly little evidence to support the effectiveness of mass surveillance

in combatting terrorists or viruses. For contact-tracing apps, we don’t know how
effective they are mainly due to a lack of data. Nonetheless,