Under the cover of COVID

Since early 2020 the world has been in the grip of a pandemic that has cost millions of lives and affected billions more of us through sickness, economic contraction and restrictions on our movements.

Much of this story has been exhaustively documented – on Al Jazeera and elsewhere – but the crisis has also thrown up a question that has received far less attention.

Have measures taken by governments and employers in the name of defeating COVID-19 also done lasting damage to our civil liberties?