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So after all this talk of how we're better than China and how invasive the wechat Green qr code is we decided to copy it? What exactly is the moral high ground

So after all this talk of how we're better than China and how invasive the wechat Green qr code is we decided to copy it? What exactly is the moral high ground we stand on?

martin_a 5y ago
I don't see any personal information besides the name and date of birth here. That's pretty good, don't you think so?
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  The magic happens in the reader app. Does it have access to a passport ID? Image database? How is the one verifying the validity of the certificate supposed to check if it's actually the holder of the certificate standing in front to clear admission?
  - Deukhoofd 5y ago
    Check name, compare with identification, and done? Most of the EU has an identity document.
  - markus92 5y ago
    The person reading can use their eyes to read a passport/photo ID ;) You don't need an app to do that.
    - Kwantuum 5y ago
      Your id does not contained a cryptographically signed vaccination status, which this is.
      - avianlyric 5y ago
        You know it’s possible to carry ID and this QR code at the same time
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      Many forms of ID also have some form of NFC/RFID to read out data wirelessly. I don't know why you'd buy something to do it automatically, but you totally could. You'd still end up comparing a picture to someone's face, though, so you can't really remove the middle man without going into some dangerous facial recognition tech.
  - fabian2k 5y ago
    You show your photo ID, and the person that is checking looks if the name on your ID matches the name in the QR code. The reader Apps are dumb, they only show the content of the QR code and verify that the signature is valid.
    - emteycz 5y ago
      Yeah sure, how am I going to verify that, and what about my grandmother - I foresee many problems with doing that even as a programmer?
      - Aaargh20318 5y ago
        Your grandmother is a bouncer at a club ? Your granny doesn’t need to verify this, these are used by employees of venues that want to limit access to their facilities to people who are either vaccinated or tested negatively.
        emteycz 5y ago
        I'm talking about people like me or my grandmother who want to verify that the guard at a club uses application that works fully offline and doesn't save any data - the QR code we're handing over contains our personal data and on top of that we're actually cryptographically verifying our whereabouts while using it, so I want to be absolutely sure the government doesn't have access directly without a court order. // yes I have had a real, serious problem with the government using data it got for other purposes against me for its own gain (I won the court, but it nearly destroyed my life and I'm still not where I was before and won't be for a long time). I'm pretty sure the guard doesn't give a flying fuck about my personal information, just like the programmers - so how do I verify myself? Or am I to stay at home forever if I care about my privacy? The EU said very different things about these issues, is that forgotten now? The same goes for the other identity-related EU initiatives, where did all the talk about privacy go? Was it just propaganda, because it certainly seems so now, as there are so many so obvious loopholes it can't be an accident?
        5y ago
- flotzam 5y ago
  Name+DOB in digital form is more than enough to track people, even with an offline verification process: We can expect that any number of "interested parties" will attempt to get access to the computer systems of venues operating these QR code scanners, or of their suppliers. Having someone at the door look at a paper ICVP and a photo ID with their analog eyes has much better privacy properties. (Still bad though.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_Vaccination_or_Prophylaxis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_V...
  - supermatt 5y ago
    They are still using their "analog eyes". The verifier app is a dumb app that simply verifies the signature of the QR code payload and displays the relevant info on screen, which they look at with their analog eyes and compare to the photo id. The only network activity and/or storage is related to downloading the public keys of the issuing authorities. Source code is available on github.
    - flotzam 5y ago
      My point was that once you make that data machine-readable, it's not good enough to have privacy-by-policy of not storing it - IT security being what it is.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Ah, the threat of the imaginary hackers ("interested parties"). The QR code scanners will probably just be the official app installed on smartphones the venue will need to supply to the security personnel. Who's going to hack this? Banks can already track your credit card payments to figure out your profile, Google can track your location through your phone. Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers probably don't care about where you spend your evenings.
    - flotzam 5y ago
      > Ah, the threat of the imaginary hackers "The imaginary is that which tends to become real" -André Breton > Banks can already track your credit card payments to figure out your profile, Google can track your location through your phone. For people who don't even avoid these easily defeated tracking vectors (with cash and de-googling), sure, vaccine passport tracking won't make a big difference.
- nomercy400 5y ago
  It links 'a person' to 'a piece of health information'. Imagine what you or any data platform could do with that (big) data. Here we hide personal health information in a QR code and are expected to give random strangers 'consent' to this personal data to gain 'access' to a venue or 'service'. Sounds awfully lot like a cookie consent-popup.
  - martin_a 5y ago
    No, it links a name and a date of birth to a number of vaccinations. Without any kind of ID the QR code is useless.
    - nomercy400 5y ago
      Yes, The name and date of birth are linked to a number of vaccinations, AND the exact vaccine, AND date it was administered, AND the country it was administered, (I also now have a good guess about you nationality) AND the disease the vaccine works against. Do you really need to know the last four if you all you really want to know if the identified person should be granted access?
      - alkonaut 5y ago
        But that’s the exact information I want to pass to someone? I’m not sure how else to give someone the information that person X has had vaccine Y, other than actually transmitting that exact information? Yes, it’s (slightly) sensitive information. But if one decides that we want to have a system based on this exact information, and it had to be “offline capable”, what are the options? > Do you really need to know the last four if you all you really want to know if the identified person should be granted access? If the requirements are that verifiers must themselves be able to decide which vaccines are acceptable, number of doses or time since last dose, and which issuers are allowed, then yes.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
supermatt 5y ago
Pretty sure the complaints were about allowing wechat/alipay and gov/police to track you and your health status. There was no transparency in what was stored/transmit, whereas here it is all documented. Its a static QR code you can carry, rather than an app that does a lookup and phones home. The reader app only verifies the signatures used to sign the (limited) id info, doesnt send info back to the mothership, etc.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  No, actually the complaint was that a central authority could, under the pretext of some obscure rule, forbid you access to certain or public services. The same concept applies here, whether it's open source or not.
  - neither_color 5y ago
    We're not over it, the discussions were consistently buried and we skipped that part to "here's how the new QR systems work" to give the illusion of consent. They didn't even bother manufacturing consent this time. There was no healthy public discourse on it, just some states/countries banning them pre-emptively and some states taking for granted that you would accept it.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Requirements for public health aren't new. Most countries, for example, require vaccination for contagious diseases for a variety of public functions like attending school. The need to validate vaccination status for functions like boarding airplanes or attending large stadium events is just common sense, as certain populations are refusing vaccination for mostly irrational reasons. These digital credentials allow people to conveniently provide this documentation in a reliable way.
    - logicchains 5y ago
      >certain populations are refusing vaccination for mostly irrational reasons. It's not irrational for people to be cautious about a new treatment for which there's absolutely no data about long-term safety (can't know the 2-3 year effects of something that's only been around one year), which has bypassed normal treatment approval processes (the covid vaccines only have FDA emergency use authorisation, and have not yet passed the requirements for full FDA approval, requirements which are strict for a reason), for which some previous attempts have failed significantly (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/), to prevent a disease that for many people has less than a 1/100,000 to 1/1,000,000 fatality rate (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.20097410v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.20097410v...), ten to a hundred times less dangerous than giving birth.
jansan 5y ago
A number of politicians have already declared that we need to become "more like China". Not sure what Soros' current position on this is, as he clearely warned of China's social credit score system in 2019.
d0100 5y ago
Freedom is always eroded by "good for society" reasons Of course, just because something is called "good for society", doesn't mean it actually is So it's just meaningless erosion of freedom
avereveard 5y ago
you're comparing a signed certificate that exist locally with a credit score that continuously update centrally and track your behavior across your social interaction with the government, third private entity and your peers
- kderbyma 5y ago
  and both are terrible when used to stop and restrict people and descriminate.....both which are done blatantly and in the open yet no one cares.....I call you a mean word and I am bad guy....people are regarded..
tpm 5y ago
The moral high ground is that the EU Covid pass is basically only a convenience: the exercise of fundamental rights is untouched by this: > Will citizens who are not yet vaccinated be able to travel to another EU country? > Yes. The EU Digital COVID Certificate should facilitate free movement inside the EU. It will not be a pre-condition to free movement, which is a fundamental right in the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  No, it is not. You're basically given three options: - get vaccinated - get tested every 48 hours - intentionally infect yourself with covid Compare this to pre covid travel, and yes, it affects us greatly. Since pretty much all the countries have very low covid numbers, any such limitations are stupid.
  - tpm 5y ago
    > Compare this to pre covid travel No, don't. What we are talking here about is a Covid pass / QR code thing, not the pre-pandemic past. > Since pretty much all the countries have very low covid numbers, any such limitations are stupid. In just the Europe, Russia and UK have horrible numbers right now, Portugal joining them. So no, you are wrong, I am sorry but the testing/vaccine/quarantine rules make sense and will make sense in the foreseeable future.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      But we're striving for the prepandemic way of life, not some alternate reality postapocaliptic videogame world. And, does this "EU Green Pass" work in UK or russia? Because the "EU" implies EU only and the webpage[0] says that directly [1] [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re... [1] The EU Digital COVID Certificate will facilitate safe free movement of citizens in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic.
eplanit 5y ago
Freedom is the high ground. You can feel superior or safer in the knowledge that the government deploys strong tech to monitor and control you (in the name of public safety, of course) all you want. I'm vaccinated, the vaccine works, and I'm living accordingly. If a business wants proof, they don't get my business.
lettergram 5y ago
Look at these threads and how positive they’re discussing this. Or how any dissenting opinion about a plethora of topics get you banned off social media or flagged to oblivion even on HN. If you take a 10,000 foot perspective I think you can recognize the west was conquered (without force). Our media (news, AMC, Hollywood, etc), are presenting a narrative (they call it that). Why do we need this passport? For safety from an illness that kills 0.5% (or less now) of people? We have vaccines, treatments, etc and vaccines seem very effective and protecting people. It’s hard to watch tbh.
- benjaminwootton 5y ago
  I agree. Seeing stuff like this take hold is both scary and tragic to me. It feels like a genuine turning point for our way of life when the government can control your life unless you have a brand new medical procedure which, with no hyperbole, can kill healthy people at no significant risk from the disease. I’m amazed how popular it seems to be here and the fact you have downvotes. This community like to tear companies like Facebook apart but cannot see the risks and impacts of what we are doing here?
  - logicchains 5y ago
    I grew up in Australia, thinking Americans were crazy for their obsession with guns. In the past year my opinion changed completely, after seeing the US states with high gun ownership like Florida and Texas are some of the few places in the world where this authoritarianism hasn't taken hold.
    - lettergram 5y ago
      The US is a bit different than portrayed. Even in Illinois, most of the state is hard red. They have “2nd amendment sanctuary counties”. Masking, gun laws, etc aren’t followed in the country, even suburbs. Honestly, there’s a good reason people in Illinois believe their elections are stolen (there’s lots of historic proof). It’s an open secret that the democrats steal the state. If you ask around, almost everyone believes it. To be fair, Illinois has jailed a significant number of governors lol
kderbyma 5y ago
It went from conspiracy theory to fact....like everything else coincidental about this virus and pandemic..... ID2020 anyone? remember that was always the plan.....
- 9dev 5y ago
  What exactly are you hinting at?
  - kderbyma 5y ago
    Generally speaking - I am suggesting that there was a coordinated effort to utilize the pandemic in order to better ID and track outside of the traditional means (ie. advertising to consumers) - they need to fix the ID problem so to speak (ie...online anonymity) - they want to final mile everything.....so they can fully track everything. The pandemic was the perfect opportunity - so they coordinated between big tech and government to setup more and more tracking systems - Apple and Google knew ahead of time, just like the politicians and CEOs who ran before the announcement with buckets of share sales.... And then there is the solidarity and collective front to ensure that no dissent was heard (ie...fact checkers) and cartel like collusion between platforms to silence and coordinate news. Then there is the fact that they have managed to make health and science immune to the forces of criticism and public disclosure.... or how about the media sucking at the tit of big tech for years trying to get at that sweet sweet ad nector....
skocznymroczny 5y ago
There isn't, it's just that western governments needed an excuse in form of a 'pandemic' to implement the same measures.
alkonaut 5y ago
> What exactly is the moral high ground we stand on? Umm that I elected the people who do this, and support it (or else I’d vote for someone else next time). The Chinese don’t have that privilege.

So after all this talk of how we're better than China and how invasive the wechat Green qr code is we decided to copy it? What exactly is the moral high ground we stand on?

martin_a 5y ago

I don't see any personal information besides the name and date of birth here. That's pretty good, don't you think so?

jhoechtl 5y ago
The magic happens in the reader app. Does it have access to a passport ID? Image database? How is the one verifying the validity of the certificate supposed to check if it's actually the holder of the certificate standing in front to clear admission?
- Deukhoofd 5y ago
  Check name, compare with identification, and done? Most of the EU has an identity document.
- markus92 5y ago
  The person reading can use their eyes to read a passport/photo ID ;) You don't need an app to do that.
  - Kwantuum 5y ago
    Your id does not contained a cryptographically signed vaccination status, which this is.
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      You know it’s possible to carry ID and this QR code at the same time
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Many forms of ID also have some form of NFC/RFID to read out data wirelessly. I don't know why you'd buy something to do it automatically, but you totally could. You'd still end up comparing a picture to someone's face, though, so you can't really remove the middle man without going into some dangerous facial recognition tech.
- fabian2k 5y ago
  You show your photo ID, and the person that is checking looks if the name on your ID matches the name in the QR code. The reader Apps are dumb, they only show the content of the QR code and verify that the signature is valid.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Yeah sure, how am I going to verify that, and what about my grandmother - I foresee many problems with doing that even as a programmer?
    - Aaargh20318 5y ago
      Your grandmother is a bouncer at a club ? Your granny doesn’t need to verify this, these are used by employees of venues that want to limit access to their facilities to people who are either vaccinated or tested negatively.
      - emteycz 5y ago
        I'm talking about people like me or my grandmother who want to verify that the guard at a club uses application that works fully offline and doesn't save any data - the QR code we're handing over contains our personal data and on top of that we're actually cryptographically verifying our whereabouts while using it, so I want to be absolutely sure the government doesn't have access directly without a court order. // yes I have had a real, serious problem with the government using data it got for other purposes against me for its own gain (I won the court, but it nearly destroyed my life and I'm still not where I was before and won't be for a long time). I'm pretty sure the guard doesn't give a flying fuck about my personal information, just like the programmers - so how do I verify myself? Or am I to stay at home forever if I care about my privacy? The EU said very different things about these issues, is that forgotten now? The same goes for the other identity-related EU initiatives, where did all the talk about privacy go? Was it just propaganda, because it certainly seems so now, as there are so many so obvious loopholes it can't be an accident?
        5y ago
flotzam 5y ago
Name+DOB in digital form is more than enough to track people, even with an offline verification process: We can expect that any number of "interested parties" will attempt to get access to the computer systems of venues operating these QR code scanners, or of their suppliers. Having someone at the door look at a paper ICVP and a photo ID with their analog eyes has much better privacy properties. (Still bad though.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_Vaccination_or_Prophylaxis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_V...
- supermatt 5y ago
  They are still using their "analog eyes". The verifier app is a dumb app that simply verifies the signature of the QR code payload and displays the relevant info on screen, which they look at with their analog eyes and compare to the photo id. The only network activity and/or storage is related to downloading the public keys of the issuing authorities. Source code is available on github.
  - flotzam 5y ago
    My point was that once you make that data machine-readable, it's not good enough to have privacy-by-policy of not storing it - IT security being what it is.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Ah, the threat of the imaginary hackers ("interested parties"). The QR code scanners will probably just be the official app installed on smartphones the venue will need to supply to the security personnel. Who's going to hack this? Banks can already track your credit card payments to figure out your profile, Google can track your location through your phone. Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers probably don't care about where you spend your evenings.
  - flotzam 5y ago
    > Ah, the threat of the imaginary hackers "The imaginary is that which tends to become real" -André Breton > Banks can already track your credit card payments to figure out your profile, Google can track your location through your phone. For people who don't even avoid these easily defeated tracking vectors (with cash and de-googling), sure, vaccine passport tracking won't make a big difference.
nomercy400 5y ago
It links 'a person' to 'a piece of health information'. Imagine what you or any data platform could do with that (big) data. Here we hide personal health information in a QR code and are expected to give random strangers 'consent' to this personal data to gain 'access' to a venue or 'service'. Sounds awfully lot like a cookie consent-popup.
- martin_a 5y ago
  No, it links a name and a date of birth to a number of vaccinations. Without any kind of ID the QR code is useless.
  - nomercy400 5y ago
    Yes, The name and date of birth are linked to a number of vaccinations, AND the exact vaccine, AND date it was administered, AND the country it was administered, (I also now have a good guess about you nationality) AND the disease the vaccine works against. Do you really need to know the last four if you all you really want to know if the identified person should be granted access?
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      But that’s the exact information I want to pass to someone? I’m not sure how else to give someone the information that person X has had vaccine Y, other than actually transmitting that exact information? Yes, it’s (slightly) sensitive information. But if one decides that we want to have a system based on this exact information, and it had to be “offline capable”, what are the options? > Do you really need to know the last four if you all you really want to know if the identified person should be granted access? If the requirements are that verifiers must themselves be able to decide which vaccines are acceptable, number of doses or time since last dose, and which issuers are allowed, then yes.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

supermatt 5y ago

Pretty sure the complaints were about allowing wechat/alipay and gov/police to track you and your health status. There was no transparency in what was stored/transmit, whereas here it is all documented. Its a static QR code you can carry, rather than an app that does a lookup and phones home. The reader app only verifies the signatures used to sign the (limited) id info, doesnt send info back to the mothership, etc.

rjzzleep 5y ago
No, actually the complaint was that a central authority could, under the pretext of some obscure rule, forbid you access to certain or public services. The same concept applies here, whether it's open source or not.
- neither_color 5y ago
  We're not over it, the discussions were consistently buried and we skipped that part to "here's how the new QR systems work" to give the illusion of consent. They didn't even bother manufacturing consent this time. There was no healthy public discourse on it, just some states/countries banning them pre-emptively and some states taking for granted that you would accept it.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Requirements for public health aren't new. Most countries, for example, require vaccination for contagious diseases for a variety of public functions like attending school. The need to validate vaccination status for functions like boarding airplanes or attending large stadium events is just common sense, as certain populations are refusing vaccination for mostly irrational reasons. These digital credentials allow people to conveniently provide this documentation in a reliable way.
  - logicchains 5y ago
    >certain populations are refusing vaccination for mostly irrational reasons. It's not irrational for people to be cautious about a new treatment for which there's absolutely no data about long-term safety (can't know the 2-3 year effects of something that's only been around one year), which has bypassed normal treatment approval processes (the covid vaccines only have FDA emergency use authorisation, and have not yet passed the requirements for full FDA approval, requirements which are strict for a reason), for which some previous attempts have failed significantly (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/), to prevent a disease that for many people has less than a 1/100,000 to 1/1,000,000 fatality rate (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.20097410v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.17.20097410v...), ten to a hundred times less dangerous than giving birth.

jansan 5y ago

A number of politicians have already declared that we need to become "more like China". Not sure what Soros' current position on this is, as he clearely warned of China's social credit score system in 2019.

d0100 5y ago

Freedom is always eroded by "good for society" reasons Of course, just because something is called "good for society", doesn't mean it actually is So it's just meaningless erosion of freedom

avereveard 5y ago

you're comparing a signed certificate that exist locally with a credit score that continuously update centrally and track your behavior across your social interaction with the government, third private entity and your peers

kderbyma 5y ago
and both are terrible when used to stop and restrict people and descriminate.....both which are done blatantly and in the open yet no one cares.....I call you a mean word and I am bad guy....people are regarded..

tpm 5y ago

The moral high ground is that the EU Covid pass is basically only a convenience: the exercise of fundamental rights is untouched by this: > Will citizens who are not yet vaccinated be able to travel to another EU country? > Yes. The EU Digital COVID Certificate should facilitate free movement inside the EU. It will not be a pre-condition to free movement, which is a fundamental right in the EU. https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
No, it is not. You're basically given three options: - get vaccinated - get tested every 48 hours - intentionally infect yourself with covid Compare this to pre covid travel, and yes, it affects us greatly. Since pretty much all the countries have very low covid numbers, any such limitations are stupid.
- tpm 5y ago
  > Compare this to pre covid travel No, don't. What we are talking here about is a Covid pass / QR code thing, not the pre-pandemic past. > Since pretty much all the countries have very low covid numbers, any such limitations are stupid. In just the Europe, Russia and UK have horrible numbers right now, Portugal joining them. So no, you are wrong, I am sorry but the testing/vaccine/quarantine rules make sense and will make sense in the foreseeable future.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    But we're striving for the prepandemic way of life, not some alternate reality postapocaliptic videogame world. And, does this "EU Green Pass" work in UK or russia? Because the "EU" implies EU only and the webpage[0] says that directly [1] [0] https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re... [1] The EU Digital COVID Certificate will facilitate safe free movement of citizens in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic.

eplanit 5y ago

Freedom is the high ground. You can feel superior or safer in the knowledge that the government deploys strong tech to monitor and control you (in the name of public safety, of course) all you want. I'm vaccinated, the vaccine works, and I'm living accordingly. If a business wants proof, they don't get my business.

lettergram 5y ago

Look at these threads and how positive they’re discussing this. Or how any dissenting opinion about a plethora of topics get you banned off social media or flagged to oblivion even on HN. If you take a 10,000 foot perspective I think you can recognize the west was conquered (without force). Our media (news, AMC, Hollywood, etc), are presenting a narrative (they call it that). Why do we need this passport? For safety from an illness that kills 0.5% (or less now) of people? We have vaccines, treatments, etc and vaccines seem very effective and protecting people. It’s hard to watch tbh.

benjaminwootton 5y ago
I agree. Seeing stuff like this take hold is both scary and tragic to me. It feels like a genuine turning point for our way of life when the government can control your life unless you have a brand new medical procedure which, with no hyperbole, can kill healthy people at no significant risk from the disease. I’m amazed how popular it seems to be here and the fact you have downvotes. This community like to tear companies like Facebook apart but cannot see the risks and impacts of what we are doing here?
- logicchains 5y ago
  I grew up in Australia, thinking Americans were crazy for their obsession with guns. In the past year my opinion changed completely, after seeing the US states with high gun ownership like Florida and Texas are some of the few places in the world where this authoritarianism hasn't taken hold.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    The US is a bit different than portrayed. Even in Illinois, most of the state is hard red. They have “2nd amendment sanctuary counties”. Masking, gun laws, etc aren’t followed in the country, even suburbs. Honestly, there’s a good reason people in Illinois believe their elections are stolen (there’s lots of historic proof). It’s an open secret that the democrats steal the state. If you ask around, almost everyone believes it. To be fair, Illinois has jailed a significant number of governors lol

kderbyma 5y ago

It went from conspiracy theory to fact....like everything else coincidental about this virus and pandemic..... ID2020 anyone? remember that was always the plan.....

9dev 5y ago
What exactly are you hinting at?
- kderbyma 5y ago
  Generally speaking - I am suggesting that there was a coordinated effort to utilize the pandemic in order to better ID and track outside of the traditional means (ie. advertising to consumers) - they need to fix the ID problem so to speak (ie...online anonymity) - they want to final mile everything.....so they can fully track everything. The pandemic was the perfect opportunity - so they coordinated between big tech and government to setup more and more tracking systems - Apple and Google knew ahead of time, just like the politicians and CEOs who ran before the announcement with buckets of share sales.... And then there is the solidarity and collective front to ensure that no dissent was heard (ie...fact checkers) and cartel like collusion between platforms to silence and coordinate news. Then there is the fact that they have managed to make health and science immune to the forces of criticism and public disclosure.... or how about the media sucking at the tit of big tech for years trying to get at that sweet sweet ad nector....

skocznymroczny 5y ago

There isn't, it's just that western governments needed an excuse in form of a 'pandemic' to implement the same measures.

alkonaut 5y ago

> What exactly is the moral high ground we stand on? Umm that I elected the people who do this, and support it (or else I’d vote for someone else next time). The Chinese don’t have that privilege.