How the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs globally
onezero.medium.com
onezero.medium.com
> Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect individuals who are threatened with imminent harm or prevent the imminent destruction of evidence.
Fighting a pandemic arguably falls into this category, since an awful lot of people are threatened with imminent harm. So we already have a constitutional standard for rolling back pandemic-related surveillance measures.
Also, something this article overlooks about the Apple/Google system is that it does a pretty good job of protecting user privacy. Contacts are discovered by direct bluetooth contact, and central servers don't get any information from people except that they tested positive.[2][3]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court...
Trust is one factor. Even if an individual agreed that the approach being suggested by Apple and Google is a good one, they are unlikely support it if they do not trust those businesses. Even if that individual trusts the motivations of a party, it does not imply that they trust their competence.
Social change is another factor. Whether we acknowledge it or not, there has been an enormous change in attitudes towards privacy over the past quarter century. If you took anyone from 1995 and showed them the technology of today, they would likely be amazed by our access to information and horrified by other people's access to our own information. Keep in mind that was an era when the Internet was just starting to reach into homes and the typical phone call was made from a landline. On top of that, most devices were siloed by necessity so that phone call was between you, the recipient, and the phone company. You did not have to worry about a social media company trying to mine your contact data with an app installed on your phone (because phones did not support apps and barely supported storing phone numbers). Even though we have had decades to adapt to those changes, some people are more likely to embrace their benefits while others have held on to their old values.
Also, (as a non-American) I think the patriot act is a horrible thing, but I also think that in particular, the threat of terrorism has always been massively overstated (and even if not, many of the subsequent changes e.g. in airport security, are terribly ineffective). By contrast, I think that Coronavirus is a very serious threat and a recent study does seem to indicate that app-based contact tracing solutions could really help. I'll repeat that it's possible to do this in a privacy-conscious manner and it really should be done like that (not just because otherwise people will refuse to use it).
I wonder if it’s worth governments’ time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for “emergency” uses such as these.
The Patriot Act has a sunset clause, but has been repeatedly extended, which no obvious sign of it ever not being extended.
The ability to change laws makes it easier for government's to sell these sorts of changes to their constituents ("it's only temporary") whilst knowing that it probably won't turn out to actually be temporary, because they can change something that is temporary into effectively permanent.
1. Must be voted on alone. That is, no sneaking it into another bill, or into the budget votes.
2. Each renewal requires a higher percentage of yes votes than the last time until 100% is required. To my recollection, there's never been a time when the Patriot Act received 100% approval.
To law makers, nothing about a law is immutable. Which is the crux of the problem, really. You can't prevent bad actors from messing things up unless you don't do it in the first place.
There are benefits, clear and strong, for several of these laws when they are first prepared. It's the fact you can't rely on anyone down the track not to abuse it that's the problem.
I don't know how often sunset clauses are used in (US) federal legislation, but I do recall that the original "Assault Weapons Ban" of 1994[1] had, and eventually utilized, a sunset clause. The law did, in fact, expire in its entirety in 2004.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban
And here with the new surveilance against corona, we will probably find out, that to fight new more dangerous deseases and of course terrorism, crime and pedophiles, we cannot really give up on these tools. There is no alternative, like my chancellor merkel says with everything. And when enough people believe it, it is true.
Depends. It does not matter for example, if the majority wants to have nice weather, no. But if the majority would insists on mandatory privacy, for example, then yes, it would pass. But they do not. Most give up privacy voluntarily for all their "free" apps and services.
Same if other countries I am sure, but America is the topic.
The risk is largely related to changing perceptions and standards for what is normal, beyond the pales & such. Once something has been done widely and publicly, it becomes more normal and less scary.
Deciding when the emergency is over is less straightforward than a fixed time period. A government that wanted to extend the measures indefinitely would just claim there's still an emergency.
And even if the emergency is not over in a year, it makes a lot of sense to reconsider if the measures (which were decided very quickly) are actually appropriate and necessary going forward. Hopefully a lot have been learned in a year.
https://coronavirus.medium.com/apple-and-google-join-forces-...
I know Apple is marketing themselves as pro-pricacy, but I doubt they can anonymize the data in a way that preserves privacy while still achieving the goal of tracing contacts.
It just seems like a convoluted way of making a gigantic knowledge graph of interactions between individuals under the pretense of public health.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/comment...
The world is full of deadly deseases anyway, so endangered people allways have to look out and vaccines allmost never guarantee 100% immunity.
The combination of rapid spread and not negligible mortality makes covid19 a much higher threat globally than most other diseases, as has been shown repeatedly. Even a lot of not-at-risk individuals will die from it. We really shouldn't be arguing over these facts anymore. and in fact, we're still lucky. nothing guarantees that we might not have a worse infection in the future that is as contagious but much deadlier (think of something like Ebola but much more contagious).
if we can somehow diminish the threat, it's worth thinking about it. it might be that the tradeoffs are not worth it (locking everyone up for two years for example wouldn't qualify), but it's still worth thinking about options. that includes imperfect options like a vaccine.
Well actual death tolls for the US would be around 60,000 which is comparable of number of new suicides due to lockdowns.
again, all these numbers have been debated so many times before.
That's not true. Very worst case scenario will be 160,000 deaths based on our last data. But around 60,000 is more probable even we go out of lockdown right now.
Ref: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
The numbers you cite all assume social distancing measures, it says so at the very top (and also the forecast only goes to the end of August, there is no guarantee that the virus doesn't come back in winter or so, we saw this with the Spanish flu).
sigmoids tend to reflect nature more realistically.
so, as long as herd immunity is not high, the curve is approximately exponential.
A vaccine is not an imperfect option. It is our standard way of defeating diseases. Only problem here is, there is none ready, but several on its way. This is the only reason why covid19 is a higher threat and not really because of the disease itself. Neither our medical system, nor our immune system is prepared for it.
So we need a vaccine, for the risk groups, yes. But why do we need to give up on privacy and freedom for it, I do not really understand.
Things like ID2020 will be expanded. The forced vaccination program through excluding participation in society hasn't started yet. Chances are your kid will not be allowed in school without one at some point.
To a lot of people who were in tech in the '90s, he was also a villain to society when he was younger.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundat...
Practically, one is required to obtain an ID to do many common activities. Being able to theoretically opt-out of these systems is a fiction that forms a cornerstone of their justification.
Closest I could find was a conspiracy theory linking a separate study into using quantum dots to record vaccination. https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/523/eaay7162
http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218
"Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute "
Thankfully this won't fly in Germany, because the Nazis tattooed concentration camp victims with numbers. Not sure about the U.S. though.
However, for some reason ID2020 is distancing themselves from this quantum dot approach.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/conspiracy-theory-misinter...
"The Gates Foundation has advocated for expanded testing and has funded vaccine research, but neither of those involves implanted microchips."
Technically true. Quantum dots aren't exactly microchips.
Let me guess... Mark of the Beast, rise of the Antichrist, New World Order, FEMA death camps, blah blah blah. Same stuff, different decade.
Basic economics there.
I won't be getting my "ID" card if they ever make one.
The ROI for that scheme seems terrible, but maybe I just don't understand basic economics well enough. It seems obvious to me that they could make more money charging less for the vaccine and more to companies and government for implementation and data infrastructure.