ARTICLE

COVID-19 Big Brother Mass Surveillance Is Only Just Beginning

News Image By Tyler Durden/Activist Post April 01, 2020
Share this article:

This week a technology startup called Unacast launched a new app called "Social Distancing Scoreboard," which tracks the GPS location of smartphones and grades geographical regions, such as a town, county, and or even a state, on how well residents in those areas are abiding by the government-enforced social distancing rules. 

The app creates an index, ranked from A to F, for whether people are staying home or not.

Comparing the nation's mass movements between February 28 to March 23 - virus cases started to rise and local governments across the country began to implement "shelter in place" public health orders, which by mid-month, changes in the average mobility for Americans started to slope downwards. 

As of March 23, the app ranked the US with a "C," detailing how many people in the US are ignoring calls by the federal and state governments to stay home amid community spreading.


As of March 23, the top five states where citizens were practicing the best social distancing were District of Columbia, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, and Alaska. The bottom five states were Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

On a state and county level, Maryland earned a "B" with much of its counties surrounding Washington, DC, and central counties receiving good marks on Monday as many stayed home. However, in Western Maryland, it was life as usual as many seemingly did not care about the virus crisis.

Unacast is just another example of how technology is being deployed as mass surveillance tools to combat the virus.

Several other examples of companies and governments extracting data from citizens for surveillance purposes to support quarantines have been though monitoring social media posts and facial recognition databases.


Ghost Data, a big data analysis firm, collected half a million Instagram posts in March, mainly from hard-hit virus regions in Italy that are in lockdown. The company was able to run facial recognition software on all images to identify people who were violating the country's quarantine orders.

Another technology company that has joined the effort to support big governments in their quest to enforce full lockdowns with high-tech tools is telecommunications firm Vodafone. The company is giving European governments heat maps of location data, to track mass gatherings.

The World Health Organization has widely supported the actions by governments to tap technology companies to unleash mass surveillance programs to fight the virus. 

However, monitoring the populace through invasive technology tools will erode whatever freedoms people of the West have left and risk ushering in a more permanent dystopian surveillance system like China's.

Originally published at Activist Post - reposted with permission.




Other News

July 10, 2025We're One Deepfake Away From A Digital Point Of No Return

Last month several foreign officials received Signal messages from what appeared to be U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. These weren't ...

July 10, 2025Europe On Edge: Five Ways The EU Is Preparing For Potential War With Russia

Perhaps most alarmingly-and most revealing-is the psychological transformation taking place in many European societies. Defense ministers ...

July 10, 2025Men Can't Breastfeed - But That Hasn't Stopped Trans Activists From Trying

One of the most disturbing developments in recent years is the growing push to normalize "chestfeeding," a term and practice promoted by t...

July 10, 2025Young Men Returning To Church - Why Aren't Young Women Joining Them?

The New York Times reported last fall that, for the first time in American history, men now outnumber women in churches. The trend is espe...

July 09, 2025From Japan To The U.S - Earthquake Fault Lines Are Awakening

Is there a possibility that a cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Rainier could occur in the not too distant future? On Tuesday morning, Mt. Rain...

July 09, 2025When The Left Wants Blood: The Quiet Slide Toward Political Violence

Democratic lawmakers are hearing increasingly violent rhetoric from their constituents-calls to "break the rules," "fight dirty," and stop...

July 09, 2025The Digital Trap: Europe's Quiet March Toward Total Control

Imagine a world where every transaction you make, every website you visit, every thought you dare to express online is silently recorded, ...

Get Breaking News