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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: 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,