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“We Need An Army Of Contact Tracers” – Meet The Enforcement Arm Of The “New Normal”

The Last American Vagabond

As the people of the world grapple with a pandemic that is demonstrably less deadly than originally reported, the public is being primed to accept an exponential increase in invasions of personal liberty and privacy. Every day the public grows more weary of lock downs which seem to never end, and the bankrupting of individuals and businesses around the world. Amidst the frustration and protest a solution is being presented.

To return to normal, we are told, we must accept certain changes to how our world operates. Of course, this is actually a push to a “new normal” which will mark the world after COVID-19. Just like the attacks of September 11, 2001, there is the world we knew before, and there is the post-9/11 era. We are currently in the middle of the COVID-19 era and a shift to post-COVID19 life will not happen without the completion of local, state, national, and international programs which identify potential infectees, test them, and, if positive, quarantine them in their homes or other government facilities.

This is what is known as a contact tracing program. You have likely heard the term in recent days and weeks because a number of local and state bodies within the United States are considering or already launching contact tracing programs. Nations like China, Singapore, India, South Korea, and Israel have implemented these programs but have also faced criticism from digital rights advocates for violations of privacy protections.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS CONTACT TRACING?

Contact tracing is a process of identifying individuals who may have come into contact with an infected person, collecting information about their contacts, and then tracing the contacts of infected individuals. All persons who may have come into contact with an infected individual are tested for infection, treated for the infection, and their contacts traced as well.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing calls for digital contact tracing using cell phones to notify individuals when they may have come into contact with an infected person or visited a hot spot of infection. Digital contact tracing apps use Bluetooth to track encounters, a move which is supposed to anonymize actual location data. Other forms of contact tracing apps involve the use of location data gathered from cellular networks.

Additionally, tech giants Apple and Google have promised to help slow the spread of the virus with new tracking apps that the public can download to report themselves as infected. Using Bluetooth, the phones will warn app users when they are near an infected person or a hot spot. The programs will use data from Android and iPhone users who volunteer for the program later this month. Jennifer Granick, a surveillance and cybersecurity attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told Politico that the joint effort between the tech companies “appears to mitigate the worst privacy and centralization risks.” However, “there is still room for improvement.”

Microsoft is collaborating with the University of Washington on their own project which the university promotes as a privacy based contact tracing app. Researchers with the University of Washington and UW Medicine worked with volunteers from Microsoft to develop CovidSafe. The researchers stated that the app will alert users about potential exposure to COVID-19, but will do so without giving up anyone’s privacy.

“With CovidSafe, all information is stored locally on your phone unless you choose to share that you’ve tested positive,” explained Justin Chan, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Only then is your data sent to a secure server, and the app alerts anyone who has been nearby. After these notifications are sent, all the information is deleted.”

CovidSafe is not the only attempt to build a privacy-based contact tracing program. In April, a team of researchers launched Coalition, a free contact tracing app designed to protect users’ privacy and protect communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Coalition claims to utilize secure Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and cryptography to protect a user’s identity by generating random anonymous IDs. The app uses Coalition’s Whisper Tracing, an open source privacy-first protocol that randomizes a user’s device identity and does not share identifiable information with the cloud.

BUILDING A CONTACT TRACING ARMY

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced efforts by NY state to hire thousands of contact tracers. The state’s contact tracing program is being developed with $10 million from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and support from Johns Hopkins University. Cuomo stated that applicants will need to go through a training program and pass an online exam before being granted the authority of contact tracer. The state’s program will involve identifying COVID-19 positive individuals, interviewing them about contacts in the previous two weeks, and then those contacts must isolate for two weeks.

By late April, calls for contact tracing had grown so loud that Congressman John Garamendi introduced a bill that would “expand volunteer opportunities within AmeriCorps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency”. Garamendi is the Co-Chair of the AmeriCorps, a nationwide volunteer force created by former President Bill Clinton in 1993. The Orwellian bill – “Undertaking National Initiatives to Tackle Epidemic Act” or the UNITE Act – would allow AmeriCorps and FEMA to create a national contact-tracing corps.

“The coronavirus pandemic has put an unprecedented strain on our society, and our nation requires a significant scaling of testing and contact tracing in order to flatten the curve and lift stay-at-home orders,” Garamendi stated.

Coincidentally, the UNITE Act lines up with recent calls for a contact tracing “army”. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control called for more contact tracers in the state. Dr. Joan Duwve, the Director of Public Health for DHEC, said being able to test someone rapidly was necessary. “We need an army of contact tracers to respond in a short time to someone who has a positive diagnosis,” Duwve said.

On the opposite side of the country, California Governor Gavin Newsom has partnered with the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco to train more than 3,000 employees to become “coronavirus detectives“. During a live streamed press conference Newsom described the efforts as a training academy designed to build an “army” of 20,000 people who can test, trace, and isolate people who may be infected. Sonia Angell, California Department of Public Health director and State Health Officer, also stated that the new contact tracing program will be connected to California’s existing digital disease surveillance platform. Angell claims the database will be confidential.

The push for international contact tracing programs has also blossomed in nations like South Korea and China, who are praised for their aggressive approaches to slowing the growth of the virus. Forbes noted that South Korea has had a massive drop in COVID-19 diagnoses largely due to “mass rapid testing and comprehensive digitally-enabled contact tracing”. South Korea has also used GPS phone tracking, CCTV cameras, credit card transaction monitoring, and automated text alerts as part of a comprehensive universal contact tracing program.

The Chinese government approach is what you would expect from a totalitarian communist state: an all encompassing app that pretty much “controls your life.” Bloomberg describes China’s contact tracing app as a “public-private ‘health code’ system” which issues one of three risk assessments in the form of a colored QR code. “A green QR code, which denotes a low risk of having the virus, is the general default, while coming into contact with an infected person can trigger a yellow code and a mandatory quarantine. Red is for a likely or confirmed case,” Bloomberg reported. It does not take an extremely paranoid mind to see how this system could be easily abused.

Read the entire article HERE.

A Nation of Sheep

By Judge Andrew Napolitano

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

To Thomas Jefferson, the fulcrum between the people and the government they have elected was fear. He argued succinctly that the government would only respect liberty if it feared losing power. Today, the relationship between people and government is power. Does the government have the power to tell us how to make personal choices, or do we have the power to tell the government to take a hike?

Stated differently, does the government work for us or do we work for the government?

Jefferson’s answer to that question in 1801, the year he became president, was that the government worked for us. Today, unfortunately, this same question has two answers — a functional one and a formal one. One would stumble answering this question if one looked only at how some state governors are treating the people for whom they claim to be working. One needs to look as well at the nature of government in a free society.
Six months ago, no one could have imagined where we are in America today. Then, if anyone had suggested that the governors of all 50 states, in varying degrees of severity, would be using police to interfere with personal choices — choices that we and our forbearers have all made without giving a second thought to the preferences of the government — no one would have believed it.

Think for a moment of how you would have reacted to any pre-COVID-19 idea that the police in America — using not the force of opinion but the force of arms — would prevent you from going out of your home, operating your business, jogging in a park, patronizing a restaurant or clothing store, buying a garden hose, going to Mass or church or temple or mosque or even joining a small public gathering of folks who want to protest these prohibitions.

Where did these prohibitions come from? They have come from the ever-changing edicts of governors and mayors, who rely on the ever-changing evaluations of medical data from an ever-changing cast of scientific experts. They are the pronouncements of politicians who have forgotten that they are elected to enforce laws, not to write them, and to be the servants of the people, not their masters.

Why do Americans accept this? We are a nation born in a bloody revolution against a king. The founders of America made the profound and indisputable choice of establishing a government dedicated to the cacophony of liberty over the illusion of safety.

They embedded that choice in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The former states, unequivocally, that no government is legitimate without the consent of the governed and that government’s principal duty is to secure our rights. The latter — which expressly protects the right to make personal choices — is the supreme law of the land, and thus all governmental acts are subordinate to it.

We have fought wars against tyrants who wanted to tell us how to live. Today, we have elected our masters who are doing just that.

Americans seem to accept the restrictions on our rights to speech, religion, travel and commercial activities simply because the origin of those restrictions is a popularly elected person. But even an elected government can be tyrannical. Should you bow to these restrictions merely because their authors were elected and they have persuaded your neighbors that the prohibitions are for their own good — the Declaration and the Constitution be damned?

Read the entire article HERE.

Gov. Inslee to Washington state restaurants: Want to reopen? You’ll have to help us track citizens’ movements

Via The Blaze

Keeping a log of all customers’ names, phone numbers, emails

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) on May 1 published his state’s four-phase plan to reopen, which went into effect May 5. Dine-in restaurants can finally begin reopening in Phase 2.

Until Monday, no one knew what the requirements would be for restaurants wanting to do business. But now, restaurants in eight counties that have been approved to jump to Phase 2 immediately are discovering that Inslee’s order includes maintaining a log of customers that would lay the groundwork for a contact-tracing plan that would track citizens’ movements.

Gov. Inslee’s plan always included a Phase 2 that would allow dine-in restaurants and taverns to open at 50% capacity, but he offered zero initial details on what the businesses’ requirements would be should they choose to reopen.

After a total of eight counties were approved Friday and Monday to move to Phase 2, the governor posted his 13 requirements for any dine-in facilities that wanted to do business.

The new requirements include party-size limits, a ban on bar seating, hand-sanitizer stations, occupancy caps, distance between seats, proscriptions on buffets, single-use-only menus, and staffing guidance.

But one requirement is raising eyebrows.

Inslee told restaurants they must keep a log of all customers’ names, phone numbers, emails, and arrival times, and maintain those logs for at least 30 days.

The logs will reportedly be part of a statewide plan to track citizens’ movements.

From the governor’s website:

If the establishment offers table service, create a daily log of all customers and maintain that daily log for 30 days, including telephone/email contact information, and time in. This will facilitate any contact tracing that might need to occur.

Eater noted that no one knows how the tracking info will be maintained and handled. Also, the governor was not clear on what would happen to the data once it’s no longer needed.

Read the entire article HERE.

Judge In Transgender Athletes Case: Don’t Call Males ‘Males,’ Because Science

Via The Federalist

Three high school female athletes — Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell — filed a federal lawsuit in February against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for permitting male high school students, who identify as female, to compete against them in sports.

The girls argued, correctly, that allowing boys to compete with them in girls’ sports would disadvantage females in competitions, scholarships, and recruitment for college sports. Since Title IX of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 prohibits sex-based discrimination, the girls alleged that the state’s transgender policy unfairly displaced female athletes.

Now a district court judge has made it abundantly clear he has a different idea of “sex.” In one of the most disturbing attacks on free speech we have seen, Connecticut District Judge Robert Chatigny prematurely decided the merits of the case and predicted its outcome, based on the preferred and inaccurate language of transgender advocates.

In an April 16 conference call on the issue, Chatigny lectured Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers on referring to male students competing in girls’ sports as “males,” saying, “Referring to these individuals as ‘transgender females’ is consistent with science, common practice, and perhaps human decency. To refer to them as ‘males,’ period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative.”

Of course, as Helen Joyce, executive editor for The Economist’s events business, perfectly articulated, “A judge tells lawyers that they are not allowed to refer to trans girls — males who identify as girls — as ‘male’, but rather as ‘transgender females’. If they comply they’ve lost their argument before they make it — the ENTIRE ARGUMENT is that males don’t belong in female sport.”

Obviously, if the judge believes biological males are “female” based exclusively on their gender identity, how could he objectively view biological female concerns about their participation in girls’ sports? Ironically, under this standard, the judge is recognizing a difference between females and transgender females. Despite this, Chatigny ordered the use of his preferred language, warning, “So if you feel strongly that you and your clients have a right to refer to these individuals as ‘males’ and that you therefore do not want to comply with my order, then that’s unfortunate.”

Read the entire article HERE.

‘Please Don’t Misgender Me’: Reporter Apologizes After Calling Transgender PA Health Secretary ‘Sir’

Via The Daily Caller

Pittsburgh radio station talk show host was rebuked by Pennsylvania’s health department secretary, who is transgender, for misgendering the secretary during a press call, Penn Live reported.

Marty Griffin, the host of KDKA-AM, called Dr. Rachel Levine “sir” during a conference call with reporters Tuesday, according to Penn Live.

Griffin was asking a question about the different phases the state is implementing to ease stay-at-home orders, and said “sir” twice. Levine responded by telling Griffin “please don’t misgender me,” and that it was “really insulting.”

Griffin apologized multiple times, and self-corrected once to say ma’am.

He also later apologized on Twitter, saying multiple distractions caused him to use the wrong pronouns and that his actions weren’t intentional.

The incident later caused Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto to decide to cancel a scheduled appearance on KDKA Radio, the mayor’s spokesperson told Pittsburgh City Paper. Peduto criticized the KDKA station as having changed from “good people who made us proud to be from Pittsburgh” to “shock-jocks, sensationalism & worse.”

Read the entire article HERE.

Texas Rangers’ new stadium to host drive-in concerts

Via ESPN

Rangers season-ticket holder Pat Green will be among the Texas artists who will play a series of drive-in concerts in the parking lot of the team’s new stadium that has not yet hosted a baseball game because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Eli Young Band, Whiskey Myers and Josh Abbott Band with Kevin Fowler will also do hourlong acoustic sets during the Concert In Your Car series June 4-7 at Globe Life Field.

Organizers said Tuesday that 400 vehicles will be allowed in for the shows each night, with fans having to remain in their vehicles and listen to the performances through FM radio signals. General admission tickets, for $40 per vehicle, will have to be bought online in advance and will be scanned through the window for entry.

The parking lot being used, located between the new Globe Life Field and the team’s former home, Globe Life Park, could hold 800 to 1,000 vehicles. The capacity is being limited to allow plenty of room for social distancing. There will be no concessions or merchandise sales.

The first scheduled event at the new $1.2 billion stadium, which is also adjacent to the home stadium of the Dallas Cowboys, was supposed to be a Chris Stapleton show March 14 that included Willie Nelson. That concert was postponed, and later rescheduled for Nov. 21, because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Read the entire article HERE.

CNN Replaces President Trump’s Press Briefings With President Xi’s

Via The Babylon Bee (Satire)

ATLANTA, GA—CNN is refusing to air President Trump’s press briefings, calling them propaganda and fake news. Instead, the station will be broadcasting the far more fair, balanced, and accurate daily takes by President Xi Jinping.

“We don’t want to broadcast Trump’s propaganda, so we’ll turn to a far more accurate source,” said Brian Stelter. “We pretty much were already repeating the Chinese government’s stances word for word, so now we can go straight to the horse’s mouth.”

Financial costs were also a factor here, according to insiders. Legacy media has been hit hard by the economic shutdown. CNN has had to look for ways to cut corners and save time, and they found out they could save tons of man-hours by just broadcasting President Xi Jinping’s press briefings directly.

Now, instead of rewriting Chinese press briefings for an American audience, CNN can just air the communist country’s propaganda directly, getting hours’ worth of free content to broadcast to empty airports and hotel lobbies.

“We were spending all this time and effort translating his broadcasts and rewriting them, and we figured this was a lot more efficient,” said a CNN spokesperson. “Work smarter, not harder.”

Check out all of the Bee’s takes on politics and culture HERE.

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