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The coronavirus pandemic is bringing all sorts of changes. Some are tiny and some are huge. Some will be temporary and some will be permanent. But one thing is clear. Things will never be the same again.

Yes, we will get past the pandemic. We will overcome the virus and the economic fallout due to the pandemic. It might take some time, but we will emerge victoriously. We have managed to do so throughout our history.

However, some things will change forever. For one, governments may use the pandemic as an excuse to grab more power. In fact, I had written a post about Snowden stating this exact same thing a few days ago.

The first signs of this are already visible. In the US, the police are using pandemic drones to keep an eye out for the violators of social distancing. If this seems like a scene from a dystopian movie to you, you would be right.

# The Rise of Surveillance State
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Don't get me wrong. I am all for containing the pandemic and keeping people in line. God knows how stupid people can be even in the midst of something as serious as this. But, the measures that are being used could quickly become a part of the arsenal that the government has that can be used against people in the future.

The police department in Westport, US, is collaborating with a drone manufacturer called Draganfly. These are being called "pandemic drones". These drones will be able to monitor whether people are following social distancing rules. Although it's not clear at this point, they might even have facial recognition to identify those people.

That's just the beginning of their capabilities. They can even monitor people's temperature and heart rate from a distance of 190 feet. They can detect people sneezing and coughing in crowds which could be potential symptoms. Now that is high-tech!

The main use case of these drones is to keep the first responders safe. And that is quite good. As far as the use is limited to the pandemic, there is nothing wrong with using hordes of these.

The problem only arises if the government keeps using these after the pandemic. That would literally create a surveillance state. It will raise all sorts of questions about privacy and rights. Could we really be a dystopian society in the making?