mass electronic surveillance

the requirement of your consent has been avolitionally waived.

just as massachusetts ends its purported “covid emergency” they lurch right into the next one: the invasion of the privacy snatchers.

yeah, not creepy at all, right?

it’s just an ap that tracks you and who you’ve been near, cross indexes you to external databases, and reports on contacts.

that claims to be anonymous, yet somehow knows everyone’s disease status.

developed with google and apple but claiming not to share data with them.

that ghost installs itself automatically on your phone.

without your request or permission.

and that has no icon and cannot be opened or used or disabled.

and that circumvents locked phones and parental controls.

and re-installs itself even if you try to remove it.

so, you know, like, what’s to worry about, ya know?

after all, when has the government ever abused a system like this before?

oh, wait…

“The FBI insisted that the queries for all 16,000 people “were reasonably likely to return foreign-intelligence information or evidence of a crime because [redacted],” Boasberg wrote. But the judge found that position “unsupportable,” apart from searches on just seven of the people.”

i mean, just how detailed a map do people need here?

this is a wild new lurch into authoritarian surveillance states. it represents the thin end of a excruciatingly dangerous wedge.

any tracking data system that can be attached to one database (like health records) can be attached to another. it can be attached to bank files, purchase habits, travel, and even social media.

it’s literally designed to build maps of where you go and who you are near.

this is how you take the absurdist claims about “white supremacist domestic terrorism” that are suddenly so popular among the dishonest pushers of neo-patriot actism and turn them into totalitarian tracking of literally everything and everyone.

you can pick every person out of every crowd and instantly map every close contact.

this is useless for tracking exposure to a disease with aerosol spread whose virions take 2 weeks to fall to the ground after you exhale them.

this is clearly about something else.

this is the wire frame that becomes an inescapable cage.

you do not get to put this genie back in the bottle once you let it loose.

taking any of this at face value and playing this game on one move look ahead is a shatteringly bad strategy. power like this is NEVER used once or for one thing.

look at the players involved.

look at their track records and incentives.

consider that they are already lying about “opt in.”

then realize the bet you’re making if you do not stand up to this new encroachment immediately and implacably.

this is not an inch you want to yield.

you will never, ever get it back.