Brazil has been standing out as one of the worst places on Earth to be during a global health crisis, especially for those whose struggle for basic humanitarian rights are already a routine. How does the political environment and the historic inequalities in countries like Brazil affect the ways in which public policy and technologies are framed as responses for the pandemic crisis? In this paper we aim to present the sequence of actions and omissions in the fight against sars-cov2 in Brazil, concentrating on measures based on the use of digital technologies and the sociotechnical arrangements unfolded in materialities that give shape to such measures. We will also discuss possible repercussions of the widespread adoption of surveillance technologies as a quick fix to the effects of the pandemic. Our focus is to explain how the materiality of the virus and its political as well as territorial effects are combined with digital technologies as responses (or lack of) in the fields of healthcare, education, communication and labour in the context of the Global South.

Rafael Evangelista is a professor in the Graduate program in Popularization of Science and Culture at State University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil.

Rodrigo Firmino is an Associate Professor in urban management at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUCPR) in Curitiba, Brazil.

Both are founding members of LAVITS, the Latin American Network of Surveillance, Technology and Society Studies.