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People-tracking wristbands tested to enforce lockdown in Bulgaria
- m0xte 6y agoI can't see anything positive about this at all. Not one thing.
- nerdbaggy 6y agoI think it’s bound to happen with how the world is. But a removable wristband seems better than tracking phones or even the rumored chip implants.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- crookshanked 6y agoRE: Chip implant: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&_cid=P20-K9ADA0-20310-1 https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...
- m0xte 6y agoThey aren't removable AFAIK without destroying them, which probably calls home.
- kgwxd 6y agoThey already track phones, and will keep doing it even with wristbands. Chip implants would hopefully be the start a revolution, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.
- tellmelies 6y agoDid we all forget about Stingray? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
- beamatronic 6y agoDopamine keeps you addicted to your phone, there's no way we are setting them aside any time soon.
- djsumdog 6y agoThat's still not comforting. People can see if you're wearing your wristband or not; unlike a phone. This disease has leaders treating human beings like we're gears in a machine; or machines that can be turned on and off. >25million unemployed Americans who are burning through months of savings, with unpaid bills and rent and mortgage due, begs to differ. Humanity cannot be turned off an put in storage. Maybe in the EU there is relief and good social welfare systems. In a lot of the world, there isn't. And then the media blasts protestors as right wing gun waving people who want haircuts. Some of them might be sure, but some of them have also been in food bank lines for hours and are wondering how they are going to survive without an income for another month. We are suffering form two diseases. The first one is the virus killing people. The second one is ever measure without forethought leading to the suffering of the poor, increasing poverty and eroding our basic civil liberties. This disease has shown our leaders don't see us as people. They claim they care about our lives, but they only really care that people are alive.
- wbl 6y agoTaiwan, South Korea and New Zealand have all had effective responses to the pandemic that haven't required lockdowns. It's just that the West doesnt believe in survival masks and didn't make them, and can't figure out how to find and isolate cases.
- djsumdog 6y agoI know personally that's not true about NZ. My ex is immune compromised and they have "Levels" there (L0, L1, etc.) and she most likely won't be able to leave her place for another two months. Another kiwi I worked with sent me a video of walking through an empty Wellington. It's a small nation, 4 million people, plus ACC (health care) and solid unemployment for all, so it's much easier for them to cope. It's also easier for them to close the country, as it is a set of islands. The friend who did that walk said it was still Orwellian though.
- wbl 6y agoThey are about to have complete elimination of the virus.
- ruffrey 6y agoIs there a credible source for chip implants?
- mmm_grayons 6y agoWhat are these rumors of chip implants? I haven't heard of these beyond a few bio-hacker types using them. I think people would start shooting before they went for that, or at least I'd like to hope they would.
- numpad0 6y agoAnything ferrous, even tattoo inks are incompatible with MRI and other medical devices, so anything will have to be removable either way.
- agilebyte 6y agoReduced infection rates through Black Mirror level contact tracing?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rasengan 6y agoWelcome to 1984.
- vmception 6y agoIt's a 71 year old book. The omniscience of the state has vastly expanded further than anything George Orwell imagines, no matter which age you happened to become aware of it. Time for a new colloquialism.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago... welcome to That Hideous Strength? http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/
- gagege 6y ago> For in essence it is a crime story, and the miraculous happenings, though they grow more frequent towards the end, are not integral to it. LOL! This person completely missed the point of the book.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago("this person" is Orwell)
- gagege 6y agoI didn't notice that. That's cool and I'm glad to hear he liked my favorite novel. Still, he's quite wrong about it.
- stillcurrent 6y agoAs someone involved in technical culture for a couple of decades, I've read enough parts of it to be able to understand its symbolism and dialectic usefulness, but had never really read it from start to end. Coincidentally I found a couple of days ago a link to it and started reading it, I'm almost thru it. It's unfortunately as current as when it was written, probably even more.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- OneGuy123 6y agoThere is a point when something makes sense. And there is a point where something becomes "slightly unsettling".
- cpr 6y agoOr "majorly unsettling" in this case.
- LB232323 6y agoNot everyone owns a smartphone, how can they enforce this? High tech fascism is a double-edged sword, this is certainly a good time to be a hacker.
- jjgreen 6y agoI don't have a phone because I don't want to be tracked. So they can stick this right where sun doesn't shine, I'd rather do the duration in prison.
- commandlinefan 6y agoGet ready for your government-issued (mandatory) smart phone.
- m0xte 6y agoIt'll be more like "you need to use this app to manage your government account - look it's easy!" marketing and lack of investment in other methods of accessing government services. Eventually you'll be unable to function without the app and the smartphone and be left with no choice. This is already happening in the UK as a lot of services are fairly difficult to use if you don't go via https://gov.uk https://gov.uk.
- dingaling 6y agogov.uk actually has very reasonable UX guidelines: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-design-principles The people who most need our services are often the people who find them hardest to use. Let’s think about those people from the start.
- standardUser 6y agoI assumed this would be for people who test positive for infection and are on a two week quarantine. But this is apparently for the general public? That seems like a gargantuan overreach and completely unnecessary. Lockdowns are certainly imperfect and there are plenty of bad actors, but they are still very effective despite the flaws. If it ain't broke, don't fix it with compulsory government tracking of all citizens.
- rindalir 6y agoI could maybe, I guess, giving these to people temporarily if they actually test positive and are legally required to stay at home AND there was a problem with compliance with that order. But assigning them to broad swaths of the population would be completely unacceptable. The way that stuff like this is just being casually proposed and accepted is really alarming to me.
- lvturner 6y agoThey assign tracking wristbands to everyone entering Hong Kong. I had one. Mine was just a paper band with a QR code on it - it was implied it had some form of RFID chip in it, although it was clear it didn't. The new ones are a larger grey box that straps on to your wrist - I'm not convinced this isn't a panopticon too, but have yet to see any firm evidence either way. While I know the risks, I'm partly for it - the methods here have worked. Yes, yes, I know it's a slippery slope, hence the use of the word "partly"
- nsgi 6y agoCan you take it off?
- lvturner 6y agoOnly with scissors - from what I've seen online the newer larger grey ones are removable, but it's possible you can't put them back on after removing them - don't know for sure. Edit: upon entering HK you are put in to mandatory quarantine for two weeks - it's during this period the wrist bands are used.
- olivierkaisin 6y agoI can't agree more with you
- azov 6y agoIf the punishment for “failing” the test is having to wear this thing - good luck getting people to test. You would also need to legislate mandatory testing.
- xkcd-sucks 6y agoAKA house arrest enforced by ankle monitors
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- _trampeltier 6y agoEach every single counrty in this world had the chance to close the boarder early. They all failed. And things like that should be the solution now? Seriously? Even with the wristband people transfer the virus. So it's totaly useless.
- 101404 6y agoHere in Germany, the government called Corona "a trick by the political right" to "achieve border closing". We only closed borders way after every country around us did. Because ideology is more important than human lives, apparently.
- _trampeltier 6y agoSwitzerland never really closed the boarder because every day about 7000 people come from italy to switzerland for work in healthcare.
- 101404 6y agoSame here, people working across the border get special permits. But they do need permits if they want to cross. Closing border refers to closing it for regular people.
- amagasaki 6y agoAt least post a source for such a claim. M understanding is that they managed. to act relatively good, given the information and circumstances.
- 101404 6y agoIt was in the newspapers in February and first half of March. The "big switch" was 14to 15 of March. The MSN here ran a fake story about Trump wanting to buy some German pharma company (all large newspapers retracted the story around March 17), but it was enough to get people sufficiently distracted to completely change their previous policy. It was pretty interesting to watch how it was orchestered.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoIs the reason for using it, because Bulgaria population has lower cell phone use? In a very practical sense, cell phone seems like the most logical piece of hardware government would use here. For the record, I hate it. And I hate that Poland's Comarch is adding to this growing panopticon.
- djsumdog 6y agoYour cellphone often sits in your pocket. It's not visible, and even when it is, they can't tell if you have a medical tracking app installed. A wristband is always on you, visible, can survive weeks without charge (if they use bluetooth LE and don't have a display) and is impossible to hide.
- qqssccfftt 6y agoA global pandemic is truly perfect for a modern government: - Good chance to kill off the filthy undesirables (economic deadweights such as those who dare to be ill or elderly people) - Easy to roll out mass increases of police powers and surveillance without any real opposition - Fuck it, you can basically do what you want and sycophants will still go "now is not the time to critique, we need to be united" Modern liberal democracies have been absolutely gasping for the chance to roll out some of these measures. Expect to see a "productive work time tracker" soon!
- Datenstrom 6y agoI can tell you for certain a "productive work time tracker" using computer vision and ML is being worked on right now.
- qqssccfftt 6y agoYeah, but now is the time to push it out with zero repercussions because western workers will gladly take it lying down.
- airstrike 6y agoF, U and D.
- stOneskull 6y agoLittle bit but not incorrect. See my comment for expose by Whitney Webb.
- vzidex 6y agoNope, complete FUD that shouldn't be on HackerNews. Whitney Webb writes for The Last American Vagabond, and I didn't have to dig deep on their site to find material on "Metaphysics" and Illuminati et al conspiracy theories. Find a better source.
- 6y ago
- Pmop 6y agoWhat can I, as a techy person, do to fight off these blatant attacks to freedom, before things get messy?
- m0xte 6y agoWell the most obvious solution is to find flaws, compromise them and publicise it. There is nothing better to fix a government's policies than bad publicity.
- qqssccfftt 6y agoGood joke!
- m0xte 6y agoYeah that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm glad someone noticed it.
- nsgi 6y agoWell, anyone can support the EFF
- beamatronic 6y agoWithout debating the pros and cons of religion... Isn't there something in Revelations like this?
- Vysero 6y ago.. and now Californians you understand why us rednecks like our guns so much XD