This article was originally published by Aaron Kesel at Activist Post.
The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be the Trojan horse that justifies increased digital surveillance via our smartphones.
All over the world, starting with China – the suspected origin of the COVID-19 outbreak – governments are increasing surveillance of citizens using their smartphones. The trend is taking off like wildfire; in China citizens now require a smartphone application’s permission to travel around the country and internationally.
Edward Snowden’s Warning: Surveillance Measures Will Outlast The Pandemic
The application is AliPay by Ant Financial, the finance affiliate controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma, and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat. Citizens now require a green health code to travel, Yahoo News reported.
China isn’t the only country looking towards smartphones to monitor their citizens; Israel and Poland have also implemented their own spying to monitor those suspected or confirmed to be infected with the COVID-19 virus. Israel has gone the more extreme route and has now given itself the authority to surveil any citizen without a court warrant. Poland, on the other hand, is requiring those diagnosed with COVID-19 ordered to self-isolate to send authorities a selfie using an app. Which, if Poles don’t respond back in 20 minutes with a smiling face, they risk a visit from the police, Dailymail reported.
Singapore has asked citizens to download an app that uses Bluetooth to track whether they’ve been near anyone diagnosed with the virus; and Taiwan, although not using a smartphone, has introduced “electronic fences” which alert police if suspected patients leave their homes.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. as reported by the Washington Post, smartphones are being used by a variety of companies to “anonymously” collect user data and track if social distancing orders are being adhered to. Beyond that, the mobile phone industry is discussing how to monitor the spread of COVID-19. If that’s not enough, as this author reported for The Mind Unleashed, the government wants to work with big social tech giants like Google, Facebook, and others, to track the spread of COVID-19.
A new live index shows the increase of the police state by Top10VPN, a Digital Rights group. Top10VPN lists a total of 15 countries which have already started measures to track the phones of coronavirus patients, ranging from anonymized aggregated data to monitor the movement of people more generally, to the tracking of individual suspected patients and their contacts, known as “contact tracing.”
That’s not the only live index, a company called Unacast that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data also launched one. Except this is a “Social Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county, monitoring who is following social distancing rules.
As Activist Post previously wrote while discussing the increase of a police surveillance state, these measures being put into place now will likely remain long after the pandemic has stopped and the virus has run its course. That’s the everlasting effect that COVID-19 will have on our society. The coronavirus is now classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, and it may very well be a legitimate health concern for all of us around the world. But it’s the government’s response that should worry us all more in the long run.
At the time of this report, the COVID-19 virus has infected 458,927, killed 20,807, while 113,687 have recovered according to the Johns Hopkins map.
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I feel it’s time to ask aloud what I suspect so many are thinking. At what point do we, as a once free people, take up arms and attempt to restore our Republic?
I do not own a cell phone and would rather die than own one. No chance I would obey.
Nothing new, just a matter of scale. Knowing that, put your brain to use. Think how you can use the knowledge of this to your advantage.
a drastic way to stop surveillance on movement via apps. leave that puppy at home.
I am furious, disgusted, insulted, and enraged to put it mildly that the Medical Mafia, local, state, and federal governmemts, the financial sector, Silicon Valley, and the Military Corporate Complex feel entitled to use me and hundreds of millions of Americans and hold us hostage and as proxies in their battle of greed, and are perfectly content to destroy every Americans life, and livlihood! Since when did any of them actually give a damn about life? Was it when they killed 500,000 Americans with narco-trafficking and prescription drugs, or when they went to wars against countries that never invaded our country, or was it when they created impoverishing and debilitating sanctions on other countries, or when they imprisoned millions of Americans usually without charges, or with petty infractions, or when they refused to allow churches, charities, and restaurants to feed the homeless, or when they flooded the Flynt River with lead, or when they kicked the poor off of healthcare and food stamps, or when they allowed total poverty and homelessness of millions of Americans, even though the federal government owns most of the vacant homes and mortgages, or when they shut the water off from people with delinquent water bills, or when they did radiation experiments on pregnant women and new borns, or when they did the bad blood experiment, or with the MK Ultra Experiments, or when they shoot people for looking for their drivers licenses, or any of the thousands of others of heinous and abusive predatory crimes that they perpetrate against us on a daily basis?!
I’m sure you missed something,but you have pretty much covered it all. Sickening isn’t it?
Howdy Y’all, completely OT here…
Well, we’ve got an ‘interesting’ situation shaping up in France.
Up at ZH today;
“Escobar: Why Is France Hiding A Cheap And Tested Virus Cure?”
The article is utterly Machiavellian and WAY to long to describe in summary. Suffice it to say that the Gillets’ Jaune are going to go stark-raving ‘Berzerk’ when news of this hits the streets. The PURE corruption this implies is simply staggering.
“I see dead people…and Guillotines upcoming In a Fench suburb near you.”
Fock! I used to believe that the West – at least – would draw the line at the point of existential threat’, no more. No one, and NO THING can hereafter be assigned ‘Trust’ if they are associated with Big Business or Government. Period.
I am way past simply ‘alluding’ to getting ready to be ‘PRO-Active’ hereafter…if those fucking snakes associated with Big Pharma even SMELL like they’re prepping to stiff the US population in similar fashion then – IMHO – “It’s PARTY time Boyz and Gurlz…”
JOG…long on ROPE and Cutlery.
Everyone knows where I am , and what I do.
Big Brother ( Feds)
Family
Etc.
Tell me something new.
We really have to stop paying for and allowing stalkers, sex-offenders, and theives to do this to us!
I guess that if someone is a complete fucking retard, they can always spy on people!
A brain dead fucking idiot can do it! Like watching tv all day!
The photograph in this article featuring Rudi Giuliani and Hillary Clinton on September 12th 2001 in a blast from the past, both walking around ground zero with surgical masks during the last faked terrorist attack on U.S. soil that led to mass surveillance and the rise of fascism, permanent war, permanent economic fraud, and permanent bail-outs is rather comical in a cynical way with Giuliani looking smitten with himself for successfully playing a leading role in the biggest con on the American people in history, and Hillary rolling har eyes, averting her eyes from him and the photographer with an expression like, “I can’t believe that people are falling for this fucking bullshit! I can’t believe that I have to go along with this fucking bullshit! Get me the hell out of here!”
https://news.yahoo.com/the-mistakes-that-turned-new-york-into-an-epicenter-of-the-coronavirus-epidemic-090040375.html
Increase?
Nobody needs to increase tracking of cellphones. It’s already full on.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cq2zuE3ISYU
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/stunning-visualization-reveals-where-spring-break-covidiots-traveled-after-flooding-florida
People are not reliable-enough, over the phone, to convince me that their life depends on it. (I learned my correct number and all the typical etiquette, in the first grade, then, in the days of the rotary. When did you?)
My prediction is that mail order dies out, for the same moral reasons as buffets and malls. You have to hide your candlestick under a bushel or in V’s basement, from the general public, as grace is a supernatural gift, not standard in human nature.
I’m not saying the virus isn’t real, of course it is, but do have some doubts about its infection rate and magnitude. Thankfully, I don’t have this virus, neither does my immediate family or any relatives. Nobody I’ve worked with has it, nor any of my friends or people from church. None of any of us know anyone who has the virus or displaying any of its symptoms. Speaking for the area I live I, there are a few cases, but the vast majority of people here basically have the same observation as I do. Furthermore, officials up in NY were saying they immediately needed 30,000 more ventilators to put into use as soon as they got them, but now there’s was a news item about them not using all the ventilators they already have available. So, are there as many cases of infections as we are led to believe.
All that the people of this country know about the impact of this virus on the country is what is being reported by the MSM on behalf of the State. And it’s literally a 24/7 presentation of ever-worsening conditions, as if news outlets are competing who can deliver the most dire stories, with some outlets even sometimes contradicting each other about the same story.
The real effect of this pandemic is the intentional damage to the economy by a large scale loss of employment, more unbelievable deficit spending, and a curtailment of rights.
There is no doubt the State has a big list of metrics to measure during this pandemic. The knowledge they gain from this “crisis” will help them fine tune methods of even more control they can achieve in the next crisis.
The State would have us believe they are devoting 100 % of their time and resources to fighting this virus. But today I looked up, and could see they still have time and resources to chem-trail the f*ck out of what was a beautiful sky, from southeast to northwest in my area.
Ironically, Sweden is one of the few countries that has not closed schools and/or businesses as a result of the coronavirus, but did recently limit gatherings to 50 people.
Sweden rightfully believes that the coronavirus response has been politically motivated. Pubs, restaurants, and ski resorts remain open. What do the fascist central planners have to say about that? They always use Sweden as a role-model. Why not on this?