The intelligence services are deploying secretive surveillance technology normally used to locate militants to instead track coronavirus patients and the people they come into contact with, AFP has reported.

Details about the project have not been released, but two officials told AFP that intelligence services are using geo-fencing and phone-monitoring systems that ordinarily are employed to hunt high-value targets including homegrown and foreign militants.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a senior security official said that agencies are now “quite effectively” using the technology to track coronavirus cases.

“The government has been successful in tracing even those who tested positive but went into hiding,” the security official said.

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