> Life in Singapore during the pandemic has become about tracking, tracking, tracking. Wherever one goes, one has to scan QR codes that log entry into malls, re

> Life in Singapore during the pandemic has become about tracking, tracking, tracking. Wherever one goes, one has to scan QR codes that log entry into malls, restaurants, shops and office buildings. Heh. In Israel, and even before the pandemic, the political police (the "Shin-Bet") has the cellular operators save your location history (indefinitely? who knows) for them to query for their shady ends, and sometimes even for regular police to have access to. During the pandemic, this was used to retrace movements of sars-ncov-2-test-positive people, and to inform people they were in contact with they should self-quarantine. The funny thing was that the quarantine had a bunch of loopholes, and you don't have to carry your phone with you, and nobody would check up on you, and the airport was basically wide open until early this year, so the whole clamp-down was half-theatrical and we got the further legitimization of mass surveillance without even the potential upside. (Now, In Israel, things have improved because of vaccination, not other reasons; but the government won't allow the Palestinians in the 1967-occupied territories, the ones without citizenship, to get vaccinated, so they're not faring that well.)