Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quietly Fed Up
For the last several months, Governors have tried in vain to encourage their citizens to download “contact tracing” apps. I’m not sure I can think of an iPhone app I want less than one that tells the government where I am at every moment I have my phone on me, and then sends people around me “pings” if we’ve been exposed to COVID. It’s a massive invasion of privacy, but I figured the low numbers of people downloading the apps was out of poor communication and just plain laziness (in Virginia only 11% of residents have the app on their phones). But then I saw this from a hard hit by COVID blue state Governor:
Contact Tracing Update:
We now have approximately 3,000 contact tracers on the ground.
Nearly 70% of individuals refuse to cooperate with our contact tracers.
This is not a witch hunt. This is about protecting you, your loved ones, and your community.
Take the call. pic.twitter.com/1bSzYzgdez
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) November 30, 2020
For those who still fancy Americans to be freedom-lovers, this is an incredibly encouraging sign. We’ve put so much of our virus mitigation hope into contact tracing, for a virus that presents asymptomatically for countless people, a virus where the test can take a week to come back positive… Contact tracing as a containment strategy was never going to accomplish much. And encouragingly, Americans aren’t interested in giving up their freedom to be unmonitored by the government, no matter how much politicians try to shame them into it.
Published in General
AND…once they start, they will never stop.
People downloading an app to their phone to help their government track them. And people are doing it.
That’s just astonishing.
Contact tracing has proven to be a spectacular waste of time. This is more fascist kabuki under the rubric of Doing Something.
The government can track you anyway, trivially. I can think of half a dozen ways to do it, all legal. It is only profound incompetence that stops them from doing it. Thank G-d for their stupidity.
The “exposure notifications” app was uploaded to my phone without my permission yesterday. I have disabled it, but I don’t know how to remove it entirely. This is a huge invasion of my privacy, and if I can find a way to remove it, I will.
The South Korean government found its first big COVID carriers using cell phone data. They had direct access to the records of all phones in the country, found those that were in the same public places at the same time as the spreader, and could call them directly to come for testing if they wanted. Who needs an app? Brennan and Clapper have been doing it for years, most likely.
It’s astonishing how many people in this country have been fine with letting government cancel most of their rights throughout this entire fiasco.
Was the app this one-WA notify?
Yes. I despise Dictator Inslee and his entire administration.
Hmmmm. The story says the app “can be added to” a smartphone.
About 5 months ago, I noticed a setting mysteriously appear on my phone’s Google app called “Covid-19 Exposure Notifications” set to “Off.” I check it once a week or so to make sure it’s still off.
Gov. Murphy’s attempt to assure people that “this is not a witch hunt” has a lot of history to overcome. Surely he and his fellow governors who demand to track people and demand that neighbors tattle on neighbors recognize the more than passing resemblance to East Germany, to the Soviet union, to current Cuba and China as to why Americans aren’t going along.
I like how in South Australia one guy lied to a contact tracer about not going to a pub and the state assumed
1) the guy got the virus walking his dog
2) going outside was dangerous
3) there was a new super-contagious strain of Wuhan Flu
Contact tracing is dumb, when we won’t admit what the transmission mechanism is and who is vulnerable and who is not.
O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
[Orwell, 1984.]
Bethany, who by now must have a dozen granny-shaped stencils stamped on her nosecone, does not realize how everything has changed:
At least in zombie movies the zombies just kill or transform the living are done with it. They don’t go on lecturing the victim about masks, recycling, and climate change.
How about set it to DELETE?
It doesn’t give that option. “Off” or “On” is it. It’s a Google setting, not an App.
The story today, on KOMO-Seattle, is “Over a million Washingtonians activate Covid exposure app in first four days”. Just under 25% of the population. This is why our Dictator was elected to a third term. The slaves of Washington State like their slavery. They are welcome to it. Count me out.
I just did a new post on my personal blog about this.