Commentary
First, by way of contextual backdrop, let me offer a quick recap of some relevant developments, which I describe in more detail in “The New Abnormal”: November 2021: As reported by the New York Times, the Israeli government issued emergency pandemic legislation permitting Shin Bet (their equivalent of the CIA), to access mobile phones and extract track and trace data from suspected COVID patients without their knowledge or consent.
December 2021: Canada’s Public Health Agency confirmed that it had been extracting mobile phone data from the outset of pandemic to covertly track citizens’ movements, again without their knowledge or consent. Unlike Israel, this was not done legislatively or publicly. The agency confirmed that it planned to expand and continue this program until 2026.
May 2022: Vice broke story that over the past two years, “The CDC tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders.“ The CDC used phone location data to, among other things, monitor citizens’ movements at schools and churches. They confirmed plans to use the data for applications beyond COVID in coming years. Researchers from Princeton demonstrated that with only four location data points, the supposedly anonymized data could easily be connected to specific persons.
Evidence also emerged last year that the CIA has been using unauthorized digital surveillance to spy on Americans. Two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned that “documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans.” Not to be left out of the digital panopticon game, news from Britain broke this week with the following headline:…