And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”
Is Pandemic Australia Still a Liberal Democracy? – The Atlantic
Don’t worry, you won’t be forced to download an app as I am sure carrier companies will be more than gladly to update you phone for you and install that app.
Then again sending cops to a geolocation to arrest an individual for violating some idiotic lockdown regulation may turn out to be a dangerous enterprise.
Apropos of nothing, here is an old post.
So!
Each person in South Australia must have his own smartphone (and a service plan for it), must have the phone with him at all times, and must never be in a dead zone. Do they really have 100% cell coverage for that entire state?
And, presumably, the messages can come at any time, day or night, because if there were a designated do-not-disturb time people might go sneaking out without their phones and talk to each other in person, which could get all seditious. So nobody can count on an uninterrupted night’s sleep: would you like some Harrison Bergeron with your 1984?
Sounds peachy! Especially the part where anyone who doesn’t answer his phone will be mobbed by cops, To Prevent Contagion.
Send them back dick pics
LOL… I should have thought of that!
I was going to say that software is gonna be getting a lot of pictures of dicks and buttholes just like De Blasio’s COVID rat hotline.
I live on the opposite end of the state from NYC; I know at least a few people around here who flooded DeBlasio’s snitch number with pictures of middle fingers.
Didn’t NYC have some sort of reporting system that people did the same thing?
How long would it be before someone developed an app that automatically responded to the text w/ a pre-dl’ed photo?
Or robbers/stalkers spoof it to see if their intended victim is home?
I wouldn’t be found unless I wanted to be found. I have Faraday bags. On the flip side, a prepaid burner phone would be a handy way to setup an ambush.
Hunting over bait
There’s gonna be a lot of wasted police time. If you’re going to do something they frown on, put your phone in airplane mode.
Plus, I regularly leave my phone in another room and wouldn’t hear the text announcement go off. Or put it in silent mode because I’m working on something and don’t want to be interrupted.
So what happens when NOBODY replies???
They can’t arrest everyone.
Keep poking that bear bitches, and he’s gonna bite you !!!
I’m glad I have a “feature phone” — which ordinary people refer to as a “dumb phone”. No downloading apps, it simply can’t do that.
Another option: throw away your cell phone.