For four decades, East Germany held complete power over almost all aspects of life for people in East Germany. They maintained this domination by use of a secret police force named the Stasi.
The Stasi were one of the most successful intelligence services in history: they kept almost unimaginably detailed files and records on large quantities of the population, and created an atmosphere of fear and unease that they then proceeded to exploit. They created a vast network of unofficial informants to spy on the populace.
In 1990, the Stasi were dissolved when East Germany disintegrated, and there is an ongoing effort to understand all that they knew, did and how they did it.
Governments all over the world are using surveillance data collected on the net, and have now expanded their reach by using COVID-19 tracking technology - just as “conspiracy theorists” had feared would be the case. These governments and NGOs seem to think -in a naive kind of “hope”- that if they only have enough data, they could control the world and bend reality to their objectives.
As had been feared, it now turns out that governments are using the COVID-19 tech to follow, track down, investigate and arrest people for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID. COVID-19 exposure, tracking and contract tracing tools have become all purpose tools for biosecurity surveillance states.
Today, I am highlighting a few recent articles that show how these surveillance states are using COVID-19 tech to monitor, track, investigate and arrest. Forewarned is forearmed, as such tactics could and probably will be used against you.
Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance.
Associated Press, December 20, 2022
The Associated Press (Tech) reports:
“from Beijing to occupied East Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia.”
“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.
“Any intervention that increases state power to monitor individuals has a long tail and is a ratcheting system,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab. “Once you get it, is very unlikely it will ever go away.”
A brief review some of the findings.
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Israel appears to be using COVID-19 tracking data to GPS locate people to protests and threatening them with legal action for their involvement… “Gil Gan-Mor, an attorney with the nonprofit Association for Civil Rights in Israel, estimates that hundreds of Arabs in Jerusalem received the threatening message during the unrest and said the mass text message blast was unprecedented.”
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