By Aaron Kesel
The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be the Trojan horse that
justifies increased digital surveillance via our smartphones.
All over the world, starting with China – the suspected origin
of the COVID-19 outbreak – governments are increasing
surveillance of citizens using their smartphones. The trend is
taking off like wildfire; in China citizens now require a
smartphone application’s permission to travel around the country
and internationally.
The application is AliPay by Ant Financial, the finance
affiliate controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack
Ma, and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat. Citizens now require a
green health code to travel, Yahoo News
reported.
China isn’t the only country looking towards smartphones to
monitor their citizens; Israel and Poland have also implemented
their own spying to monitor those suspected or confirmed to be
infected with the COVID-19 virus. Israel has gone the more extreme
route, and has now given itself
authority to surveil any citizen without a court warrant.
Poland on the other hand is requiring those diagnosed with COVID-19
ordered to self-isolate to send authorities a selfie using an app.
Which, if Poles don’t respond back in 20 minutes with a smiling
face, they risk a visit from police, Dailymail
reported.
Singapore has asked citizens to download an app which uses Bluetooth to track whether they’ve been near anyone
diagnosed with the virus; and Taiwan, although not using a
smartphone, has introduced “electronic fences” which alert police if suspected
patients leave their homes.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S. as reported by the Washington Post,
smartphones are being used by a variety of companies to
“anonymously” collect user data and track if social distancing
orders are being adhered to. Beyond that, the mobile phone industry
is
discussing how to monitor the spread of COVID-19. If that’s
not enough, as this author
reported for The Mind Unleashed, the government wants to work
with big social tech giants like Google, Facebook, and others, to
track the spread of COVID-19.
A new live index shows the increase of the police state by
Top10VPN, a Digital Rights group. Top10VPN lists a total of 15
countries which have already started measures to track the phones
of coronavirus patients, ranging from anonymized aggregated data to
monitor the movement of people more generally, to the tracking of
individual suspected patients and their contacts, known as
“contact tracing.”
That’s not the only live index, a company called Unacast
that collects and analyzes phone GPS location data also launched
one. Except this is a “Social
Distancing Scoreboard” that grades, county by county,
monitoring who is following social distancing rules.
As Activist Post previously
wrote while discussing the increase of a police surveillance
state, these measures being put into place now will likely remain
long after the pandemic has stopped and the virus has run its
course. That’s the everlasting effect that COVID-19 will have on
our society. The coronavirus is now classified as a pandemic by
the World Health Organization, and it may very well be a legitimate
health concern for all of us around the world. But it’s the
government’s response that should worry us all more in the long
run.
At the time of this report the COVID-19 virus has infected
458,927, killed 20,807, while 113,687 have recovered according to the Johns
Hopkins map.
**By [@An0nkn0wledge](https://steemit.com/@an0nkn0wledge)**
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on
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COVID-19 Outbreak Is The Trojan Horse To Increase Smartphone
Surveillance
