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Pervasive surveillance through digital technologies is the business model of Facebook and Google. And now governments are considering the web giants' tools to track COVID-19 carriers for the public good.
Among democracies, Israel appears to have gone first: prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced "emergency regulations that will enable the use of digital means in the war on Corona. These means will greatly assist us in locating patients and thereby stop the spread of the virus."
[...] The idea of using tech to spy on COVID-carriers may now be catching.
The Washington Post has reported that the White House has held talks with Google and Facebook about how the data they hold could contribute to analysis of the virus' spread. Both companies already share some anonymised location [data] with researchers. The Post suggested anonymised location data be used by government agencies to understand how people are behaving.
Thailand recently added a COVID-19-screening form to the Airports of Thailand app. While the feature is a digital replica of a paper registration form offered to incoming travellers, the app asks for location permission and tries to turn on Bluetooth every time it is activated. The Register has asked the app's developers to explain the permissions it seeks, but has not received a reply in 48 hours.
[...] If other nations follow suit, will it be possible to put the genie back in?
Probably not: plenty of us give away our location data to exercise-tracking apps for the sheer fun of it and government agencies gleefully hoover up what they call "open source intelligence". ®
After the 9/11 attacks, laws were enacted in the United States that have since resisted being scaled back. Think, for example, of the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).
There were sunset provisions to the act which, failing reauthorization, would cause provisions to expire on December 31, 2005. In the years since, most of the provisions have been extended. Most recently we have the USA FREEDOM Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015). Among its provisions was the extension of the USA PATRIOT Act.
"KTO NIE PAMIẸTA HISTORII SKAZANY JEST NA JEJ PONOWNE PRZEŻYCIE" GEORGE SANTAYANA ("THE ONE WHO DOES NOT REMEMBER HISTORY IS BOUND TO LIVE THROUGH IT AGAIN" / GEORGE SANTAYANA) from a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Polish and translated into English. Wikipedia link.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:17PM (4 children)
Yep, any excuse is good to further control the populace.
And of course, extract from it as much rent as possible.
Frankly, I fail to understand why we keep electing people who work against our common interests.
We are doomed.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:14PM
https://twitter.com/search?q=boomerremover%20election&src=typed_query [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/PartTimeWin/status/1238815821843042305 [twitter.com]
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:27PM (1 child)
The problem with this argument is that you're claiming the proletariat are being squeezed to pay more for things and also squeezed by being paid less for work they do. Candle burning at both ends - this is not stable and yet... here we still are 200 years later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @10:03PM
Don't ignore the fact that that argument has led to changes that allow us to continue existing two hundred years later
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Friday March 20 2020, @03:52AM
Because, to loosely quote an old-ish movie, 'A person is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.".
I like to think I'm a person and smart. Sometimes I wonder in which situations I'm being a people and dumb.
- D
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:19PM (10 children)
This sickens me, but it was as inevitable as the tides...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:40PM (1 child)
FIB will take a break from catching fake terrorists and look for the walking dead instead?
But wait, 50% of the country is going to get infected anyway.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 20 2020, @04:13AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:43PM (7 children)
Just as inevitable is that oppression incites revolt, after which the cycle starts over again. (Keanu sez "Whoa!")
Rather than panic over the current doom-saying, I'm inclined to be resigned to enjoying a "sabbatical year" - words to live by.
We need only look after one another to survive.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:50PM (6 children)
At some point the technology wielded by those in power will be sufficiently powerful and omnipotent as to make that no longer possible. Whether we've already reached that tipping point is up for debate.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:30PM (1 child)
Yes, but at some point it becomes a pyrrhic victory resulting in something akin to 1945 Germany or 2020 Syria. If my memory was still working, I would add a quote about "the arc of history".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:40PM
Let me help you!
The arc of history... is like arcing ropes of jism hitting chins. Women licking up semen like kittens under a cow udder.
https://books.google.com/books?id=2gvBBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT57&ots=KfkxKkbYK0&dq=arcing%20ropes%20of%20jism%20%20chins&pg=PT57#v=onepage&q&f=false [google.com]
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday March 20 2020, @12:17AM
It's always possible to revolt. I realize that first thing every morning when I look in the mirror, and go "gawd, how revolting" :-)
Well, it's really just a joke. Unless I'm going out somewhere special, I don't bother looking in the mirror. It's not like I can see it well enough to begin with ... which saves me a lot of time because I don't have to bother with details, not just to walk the dogs or whatever.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Friday March 20 2020, @03:42AM (2 children)
There's a long list of peasant revolts, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_peasant_revolts [wikipedia.org] most of which failed, generally due to professional armies being better organized and often having better weapons.
The revolts after the black death were quite unsuccessful, even with the peasants far out numbering the lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_revolts_in_late-medieval_Europe [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 22 2020, @10:35PM (1 child)
Worth noting though, the actual results are more nuanced than the table might imply. If a rebellion is suppressed but as a result the King dares not do the thing that sparked revolt again, did the revolt ACTUALLY fail? In other cases the revolt is suppressed but the kingdom is so weakened in the process that it can then be toppled from the outside. They wanted the king gone and by their actions facilitated his demise, is that actually a loss?
Even more ambiguous cases can be seen as well. If a rebellion is "suppressed" but another over the same issue pops up within a year or two was the first truly suppressed? Or was it just forced to retreat and re-group?
Those cases may not have gone so well for the leaders of the rebellion, but they didn't go so well for the rulers either.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 22 2020, @11:02PM
Good points. I was mostly thinking of the various peasant revolts in Europe in the middle ages. Wat Tyler's revolt did seem to slow Parliament down when it came to raising taxes, whereas in Central-Eastern Europe, where they were violently suppressed, the end result in the east was to be conquered by the Turks and things continued to get worse for the average peasant in the Holy Roman Empire, though it may have slowed it down.
From the Wiki article I referenced on late medieval Europe,
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:54PM (10 children)
Totalitarians view this as a golden opportunity to seize formal control once and for all. The opposite is going to happen.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:59PM
I hope like hell you're right, because the historical trajectory we're on is hideous.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DimestoreProstitute on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:20PM (1 child)
What you're suggesting requires people to open their eyes and I don't see that happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:15PM
if they did all they would see is toilet paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @09:32PM
You can feel they are just *lusting* to effectively put us all in prison while trying to scare us with end-of-the-world virus bullshit.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday March 20 2020, @03:50AM (5 children)
Going for a funny mod? Peasant revolts almost always fail against the authoritarians. They have professional armies that are always better organized. That's why the American Forefathers (actually it was a pretty common belief at the time) considered having a professional army to lead to tyranny. It's one of the main reasons that the 2nd amendment mentions the militia.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday March 20 2020, @12:08PM (4 children)
The American military is all volunteer. The Air Force is not going to drop napalm on Boston. Tanks are not going to roll on Houston.
The supply depots and infrastructure that serve the military machine are all around us, surrounded by American rabble.
But let's suppose there is an army that will follow a tyrant's command to suppress the masses. If the American military had trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan will full permission to fire, how will they do against their own citizens who own something like a billion guns? How will they do against engineers and chemists and others with practical skills who can employ them toward sabotage and IEDs in a heartbeat?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @02:46PM
They'd do it for the greater good.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Friday March 20 2020, @04:12PM (2 children)
Yet, you've already had one civil war where city's were burned by the volunteer army and more recently a few times the army has been called out against labour unrest or even ex-military unrest after WWI. Just have to divide the country up and make sure the army unit ordered to roll their tanks is from a totally different part of the country after severely politicizing things. Divide and conquer basically.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:23AM (1 child)
The Union Army did not attack its own civilians on purpose. The Confederates did not theirs, either.
Are you referring to Ludlow? Those were Pinkertons.
This is not China, which can roll in units of ethnic Mongolians to suppress Han students in Tiananmen that they hate anyway. American units are not geographically- or in any other way segregated now. You can send units stationed in Washington state to attack people in Georgia, but the odds are very good there will be a lot of Georgian boys in that unit who will flip out.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:57AM
I thought that the civil war was between the American States, they were part of America, didn't want anything more to do with the feds and war ensued. It is called a civil war for a reason.
As for the various labour wars, I guess it depends on whether the national guard is considered part of the army. Examples of Federal troops becoming involved include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain [wikipedia.org] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877 [wikipedia.org]. Considering 3 Federal army personal were killed in the Battle of Blair Mountain, it sounds like a shooting thing.
There were also numerous examples of the militia being called out and shooting at strikers.
There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army#Army_intervention [wikipedia.org] where Patton had 6 tanks as well as ordering the cavalry to attack. While it was mostly bayonets and tear gas, the infantry was quite willing to charge.
Today, America seems more divided then ever, with a President who encourages it and isn't even willing to try to work with others during the present crisis. It is easy to believe that a Trump supporting army unit would attack a bunch of Liberals. Just have to claim there coming for their guns or letting in aliens or such. As I said, divide the people against each other and conquer.
Shit even here in Canada, it wasn't that long ago (1990) that the army was deployed against the Iroquois though the shooting was earlier and at least one 15 year old girl getting bayoneted. And just a couple of months ago the Conservatives were screaming that it was time to deploy the army against the people again and I'm sure they would have if they were in government.
Famous picture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_to_Face_(photograph) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @02:59PM
I don't think Santayana's original was in Polish, but literal translation goes:
Who does not remember history is sentenced/condemned to live through it again.
Since I know Polish, well, hell, I wanted to write in the language before switching to English.
And Santayana's original:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:03PM (2 children)
"a COVID-19-screening form to the Airports of Thailand app. While the feature is a digital replica of a paper registration form offered to incoming travellers, the app asks for location permission and tries to turn on Bluetooth every time it is activated."
So they are talking about a retarded little smart phone app.
Does that make me an evil terrorist for not owning a stupid smart phone?
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:30PM
"Does that make me an evil terrorist for not owning a stupid smart phone?"
Not at all. But in the end, resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. Or so I've heard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @07:05AM
They will struggle to understand the concept then just declare you 'mentally unwell' and ask for your facebook account instead. When you tell them you don't have one either its lockup in padded cell time.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by nishi.b on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:11PM
This process (using times of crisis to advance the power of large companies and states) was analyzed in 2007 in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:57PM
is that people do not learn from history.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @06:51AM
I just wanted to say poppycock. Nothing more, nothing less. Carry on.