Posted on 12/21/2022 5:50:52 AM PST by MtnClimber
Wanna bet?
I’m so old that I remember when media outlets would have considered “extreme” any allegations that governments would abuse pandemic-tracking tools. And yet, here we have the Associated Press reporting its scoop today that reveals precisely that outcome. After first insisting that individual privacy had to be set aside in an emergency, the AP seems shocked, shocked to find that governments like being able to track and snoop on its subjects — er, citizens: (AP Excerpt in Comment #1)
This seems so obvious that it almost goes without saying. Once you allow the camel’s nose into the tent, the rest of the camel follows immediately after. And the smell with it.
The AP spends a lot of time on China, but Beijing’s tyranny began long before COVID arrived. The Xi Jinping had begun integrating its tech tools, surveillance systems, and domestic intelligence into a “social credit” system that virtually locked down its populations years prior to the physical lockdowns that finally produced a revolt this year.
More interestingly, the AP takes note of the same encroaching domestic surveillance in other nations, countries with democratic values such as India, Israel, and Australia, which had some of the harshest lockdown measures in the Western world. Their use of health apps turns out to be more like Big Brother, too:
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. The issue has taken on fresh urgency almost three years into the pandemic as China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns.
Never let a good emergency go to waste.
The “social credit score” will only have control until things go kinetic.
AP did this report? Wow. I think maybe some people, even on the left, are starting to wake up.
The news media does not care what government is doing as long as it harms Conservatives and secures more power and funding for the Political Left.
Our 'home-grown intelligence thugs are jealous - they were outed before they got to that level.
.
They never do
I remember reading that no records were actually kept and the deaths were determined by using stats from earlier years and
claiming the excess” as covid deaths.
A government LIED to its slaves? You mean they said one thing and did another? I’m shocked!
The PLA picked up DNA data on nearly every single foreigner that had the misfortune to be in that confucian shithole when their Red Army unleased their bioweapon. Bad ju ju.
AP is just upset that the tech was used to track leftists and royal blood minorities.
They couldn’t care less if right wing political activists were tracked.
Does this hack ever actually say what the “other purposes” are?
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