Nachrichtenagentur Radio Utopie
Nachrichten direkt von der Quelle. Im Kontext sehen. News Agency of Radio Utopie. News directly from the source. There is context in life. Deutsch, English. 24 h. – Democracy First!
(March 2019)
Examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccination card/passport for EU citizens (that takes into account potentially different national vaccination schedules and), that is compatible with electronic immunisation information systems and recognised for use across borders, without duplicating work at national level.
(18.02.2021)
New government and business initiatives are moving in the direction of a two-tier system for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, raising legal, moral and ethical questions.
The Knesset approved in a third and final vote a law allowing disclosing personal details of Israelis who have not been vaccinated.
The information will be given to local authorities, the Education Ministry and officials in the Welfare Ministr
(19.02.2021)
Findings of the pre-published study, not yet peer-reviewed, but based on a national database that is one of the world’s most advanced, were first reported by the Israeli news site Ynet late on Thursday and were obtained by Reuters on Friday.
Pfizer declined to comment and the Israeli Health Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
(19.02.2021)
Israel is preparing itself to be split in half from next week, with the government creating a new privileged tier in society: the vaccinated.
Green Pass venues include houses of worship, cultural events, gyms, hotels and swimming pools. To enter, those eligible to do so will be required to present valid ID and a so-called Green Pass, vaccination certificate, or official document stating they had the virus and recovered, as relevant.
Social distancing rules will stay in force until June 21 at the minimum, with a government review to decide their future after that. The decision means that grandparents face months of waiting before they can hug their grandchildren – even though millions have already been vaccinated.
Israel’s Health Ministry is formulating a legislation that will provide workplaces that receive customers the legal framework to compel employees who refuse to vaccinate against COVID-19 to test for the disease every two days, Health Minister Yuli Edelstein said Monday, according to outlet Ynet.
Netanyahu has tied his fate in the election to COVID vaccinations, and suspicion arises that his proposals are influenced by personal considerations. Meanwhile, disclosing names of Israelis who have yet to get vaccinated paves way for severe infringement of privacy.
The critical ‚Covid O‘ Cabinet sub-committee is expected to look at proposals for assembling a system that could loosen restrictions on international travel.
However, there are not expected to be any final decisions – and no date has been mooted for when the arrangements might come into force.
(17.01.2021)
I have been criticised by a family doctor on the grounds that a question I put to the PM in Parliament was ‘demoralising for NHS staff’.
I am at a loss as to how this could be the case.
The question to the PM was this:
“Pubs cannot compete with supermarkets for off-sales. Even within a household, people cannot play tennis or golf. Notwithstanding the assault on liberty and livelihoods, why are the regulations pervaded by a pettifogging malice?”
A fitness instructor’s online class was interrupted by three police officers who were given an incorrect tip off saying she was breaking coronavirus restrictions.
CCTV footage shows eight people making a run for it after escaping through the fire exit. One woman can be seen with a towel covering her shoulders and treatment still on her roots.
Gwent Police found the tanning beds had recently been used and beauty treatments had been taking place.
(today)
Another police car, siren blaring, driving through residential neighborhoods with the sole purpose of terrifying the public into submission. A far greater infringement of civil liberties than the FLQ crisis 50 year ago.
As Palantir’s executives were preparing over the summer to release shares publicly for the first time, they faced a challenge: how do you convince investors to buy into a 17-year-old company that has never turned a profit?
– Officers will ‚move through the gears‘ and fine people £200 if they think a person is flouting the restrictions
– It comes as footage showed three police officers surrounding a woman for leaving her house more than once
– Another four officers appear to arrest a different woman for what she claims was ’sitting on a bench‘ by sea
Debate, dissent and independent thought are not allowed in Covid Britain.
(04.01.2021)
Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith said: ‚We are drifting into a totalitarian ‚woke‘ state where nothing can ever be said for fear that somebody will be offended. It’s madness, and it’s driven by a small minority. Most people don’t care.‘
– The West Mercia police force tweeted: ‚There have been two reports of snowballs being thrown last night‘
– Came as friends were surrounded, read their rights and fined £200 each after driving seven miles for a walk
– Derbyshire Police has previously been criticised for using drones to film dog walkers and dying lagoon black
– Priti Patel insisted it’s ‚right‘ for officers to confront Britons sat on park benches after criticism of their tactics
– Officers in England and Wales have handed out more than 30,000 fines under coronavirus laws since March
It is expected to cause a scramble for return flights as around 100,000 Brits are currently away in hotspots such as Dubai and the Maldives.
Ministers agreed the strict measures last night amid growing pressure to tighten borders – but have not confirmed a start date, although it is expected to be next week.
– Scotland Yard revealed that officers will be told to stop civilians in the street and ask why they are not at home
– MailOnline witnessed patrols out in force in Hammersmith today stopping Tube travellers and drivers
– Police in Derbyshire stopped people outside National Trust property including a woman desperate for the loo
– Officers in Birmingham City Center questioned a couple with pushchair to ask what business they had in town
– Priti Patel backs police to demand answers about why public are out with a ’stay at home‘ order in place
– This includes approaching people in parks, drivers out and about and going to homes if they are very noisy
– Police arrested 28 demonstrators for flouting restrictions and fined four men £800 for driving to McDonald’s
She said: ‚My house. That is bullying. This is my house. Get out of my house. I did not ask you in here.‘
A young boy can be seen in the video as the woman’s daughter said: ‚Just stop it mum‘.
Two women, aged 18 and 48, and a 43-year-old man were charged in connection with assaulting police officers and threatening and abusive behaviour, according to Police Scotland.
This is the stage of lockdown authoritarianism we have now reached: anyone who questions the lockdown will be branded a liar and a hoodwinker who should be expelled from public life, while the cheerers of lockdown, those self-styled saviours of lives, can say whatever they want with very few repercussions.
However, with Labour saying it will support the measures, the law enforcing them is likely to be approved.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is updating the Commons now, telling MPs – many of whom are participating remotely – that says the vaccine programme provides a „means of escape“ from the current lockdown, with 1.3 million people in UK already vaccinated.
Police today vowed to fine anyone not wearing a mask, groups of more than two or anyone out of the house without ‚good reason‘ at least £200 on the spot with one force ready to smash their way into homes to break-up parties, MailOnline can reveal.
– Britons have taken to social media to mock the prospect of a third lockdown
– Boris Johnson unveiled a new set of restrictions in his address to nation last night
(29.12.2020)
(…)
Therefore, the overall risk of an increased impact on health systems in the coming weeks is assessed as 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡. 4/4
(22 Dec 2020)
Noting that the ECDC’s report on the new strain was published last night, Balik said “this mutant variant has been named SARS-CoV-2 VUI 202012/01 [Variant Under Investigation, year 2020, month 12, variant 01] for now.”
Balik said the report points out the importance of a comprehensive examination of the new strain.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the weeks ahead would be the „hardest yet“ but added that he believed the country was entering „the last phase of the struggle“ with coronavirus
(05.06.2020)
Clare Gardiner, head of cyber resilience and strategy at the UK National Cyber Security Centre — a branch of signals intelligence agency GCHQ — will become the centre’s first director-general, responsible for advising ministers on the “alert level” for the virus; which is similar to assessing the terror threat.
Ms Gardiner’s role at the NCSC involves advising businesses and public organisations on how to improve their cyber defences, and she will return to this post after her secondment at the centre. But her research background in epidemiology and medical statistics make her well-suited to the role, according to one person familiar with her appointment.
She will report to Dido Harding, who is in charge of the NHS test and trace service.
The decision to put a security official in charge is likely to cause consternation among public health experts, who have questioned whether the template of a terror analysis centre is appropriate for managing a viral pandemic,
(09 Dec 2020)
Vallance and chief medical officer Chris Whitty were asked if there was something that could be done in the structure in scientific advice that could be a bit more forensic about those restrictions on the sector that have a very big impact on certain people. The scientific advisers said they are trying very hard to get data but can´t give specific data on it, and nor can anyone else across the world.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has said that Boris Johnson’s tier system is “no longer strong enough” to deal with the new more virulent variant of coronavirus.
– Boris Johnson is set to announce a dramatic new national lockdown for England amid mutant Covid crisis
– Ex-health secretary Jeremy Hunt urged immediate closure of schools, borders with household mixing ban
– Matt Hancock said the tiers were no longer strong enough to deal with the mutant version of coronavirus
– Suggested public’s failure to comply with all the rules was to blame for inability to control outbreaks in Tier 4
– PM warned that curbs are about to get ‚tougher‘ – and admitted he is considering further closures of schools
– Government’s core ‚Covid-O‘ committee has met this morning to decide on the next steps in the response
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said at the time that it was ‘just not possible’ for Ferguson to continue advising the Government. But this was not true. The professor was said to have resigned from the SAGE advisory committee. But did he? Not really. A current State website lists him as a member of the ‘New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group’ (NERVTAG). Minutes suggest he was only ever away from that for a few weeks.
And yet, uncanny though it might be, the imagery of an actual pandemic is, truth be told, considerably less melodramatic than the cinematic version. Often, when we call something “unimaginable,” what we really mean is more like “too oft imagined.” We actually have been here before, in every pandemic movie, in that Will Smith one with the zombies, for instance—and, in the zombie movie, the people are slavering in the streets. In the real one, the streets are merely empty.
The same place that last year saw over a million people pack in to watch the annual tradition as well as live music performances was far more somber.
Only a handful of invited guests, including health care workers and others from the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, gathered to usher in the New Year.
(02.12.2020)
„Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due,“ Moore said. „Let’s do the simple, easy thing first. Everyone’s going to get that.“
On Wednesday the Department of Defense released the first images of a COVID-19 vaccination record card as well as vaccination kits, according to CNN.
„Everyone will be issued a written card that they can put in their wallet that will tell them what they had and when their next dose is due,“ says Dr. Kelly Moore, associate director of the Immunization Action Coalition.
Ruth Humbel, a National Councillor with the Swiss People’s Party, said that people who are immune to the virus should receive a card or certificate which will allow them to participate in certain activities, such as going to football games, clubs or travelling, 20 Minutes reports.
– Pfizer vaccines licensed by UK regulator and will be distributed from next week
– Wales says people will be issued with ID-style cards to show they have had jab
– Fears that pubs and shops could demand proof of vaccine before allowing entry
The approval of Pfizer/BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday was hailed as the light at the end of the lockdown tunnel that could finally revert Britain back to pre-pandemic normality.
But the breakthrough jab — shown to be 95 per cent effective at blocking Covid-19 infection — has thrown up a series of logistical hurdles that make getting the vaccine to those who need it most challenging, including care homes.
The fences were erected on Thursday at the University of Manchester’s Fallowfield campus as a “security measure” to “help avoid the mixing of households”.
Students have torn down „prison-like“ fencing erected around their campus on day one of England’s new lockdown.
Those living at the University of Manchester’s Fallowfield halls of residence awoke to find workers putting up „huge metal barriers“.
Deputies said they found three walk-up bars inside as well as a DJ for what appeared to be a Halloween-themed celebration. They shut down the party and charged people for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and violating pandemic executive orders that put a ban on mass gathering.
(27.10.2020)
The EU has so far secured doses of the potential vaccines being developed by AstraZeneca, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson. It has also said it is in talks with …
A letter to Boris Johnson from the Northern Research Group – a newly-launched alliance of Tory MPs led by ex-Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry – outlines the group’s demands, which include a tailored economic recovery plan for the north.
Mr Berry says that the virus could widen the North-South divide and ’send the North into reverse‘. His group is now calling for Mr Johnson to ‚level-up the North‘ – something the PM claimed he would do following sweeping Conservative gains in the region in the General Election.
The MPs reminded Johnson of his promises to “level up” disadvantaged parts of the country, which helped persuade voters in former industrial heartlands last December to back his Tories instead of the opposition Labour Party many had supported for decades.
As of Sept. 18, only 10% of Manhattan office workers had returned to their buildings, the Wall Street Journal reported late last month.
De Blasio confirmed that City Hall had indeed been considering bringing back more of its workforce, but new developments were put on hold due to the recent COVID clusters in Brooklyn and Queens.
Berlin Senate is appealing #covid19 #berlin
(10.10.2020)
„This is not the time to party“, insisted Berlin’s democratic mayor, Michael Müller. „We want to prevent another more severe lockdown“, he added, with a particular message for people under 40.
Angela Merkel argued in favour of the measure on Friday, after consulting mayors from Germany’s 11 largest cities.
(07.10.2020)
The rate of new cases in the inner-city districts that host Berlin’s nightlife were higher still: of seven hotspots listed by Germany’s disease control agency as having a seven-day incidence of more than 50 cases per 100,000 people, four are in the heart of the capital. Trendy Neukölln leads the pack, with 288 new cases recorded over the course of the last week.
Brooklyn U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan said safety restrictions and guidelines may even “turn New York City into a very different, even desolate, place compared to how it was before the pandemic,” but he declined to grant a preliminary injunction against rules that prohibit restaurants from serving food after midnight. Indoor dining is also restricted to 25% capacity as of Sept. 30.
Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis said in an order Friday that even though the rules harm religious groups, it is not in the public interest to block them if they are helping prevent a wave of new infections.
– A new three-tier strategy of local lockdown measures for England has been announced by Boris Johnson in efforts to curb rising Covid-19 rates
– Different areas of England will be split up into medium, high and very high alert levels
– These areas will be subject to the same national measures which currently apply across the country including a 10pm curfew for pubs and restaurants and the ‚rule of six‘
Any details of the plan are based solely on leaks to the media over the last week, including a document dated 30 September that was seen by the Guardian.
The draft traffic-light-style plan is designed to simplify the current patchwork of localised restrictions, which apply to about a quarter of the UK.
Following the announcement of a new three-tier lockdown system, which will see areas with higher Covid rates imposed with harsher measures, the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) is leading a revolt against new rules that could see thousands of bars and restaurants ordered to close.
Two of the country’s biggest brewers and pub operators, Joseph Holt and JW Lees, are also involved in the challenge, alongside a further 10 hospitality businesses and organisations.
OVERNIGHT stays will be forbidden in northern virus hotspots for four weeks, Boris Johnson will announce today.
As well as the bed ban, residents can only leave the highest risk regions for essential travel such as work, education or health reasons, and must return that day.
Burnham told the Observer that by offering to pay only two-thirds of the wages of people hit by new closures – as opposed to the 80% which applied nationally under the original furlough scheme – ministers would be punishing people in the north in a way that was completely unacceptable.
Burnham said the Conservatives were betraying the people in so-called “red wall” seats who they had persuaded to vote Tory at the general election last December with pledges to “level up” the country.
Millions of people will be asked not to travel outside their local areas and could be banned from mixing with other households, even outdoors, amid fears that some hospitals in the North-West could be overwhelmed within days.
This weekend, Downing Street was briefing mayors and council leaders on the planned three-tier „Local Covid Alert Levels“ system of restrictions for England, expected to be announced by Boris Johnson on Monday.
The maps were drafted in consultation with health experts including former city health commissioner and Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Tom Frieden, Dr. Noam Ross of EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota.
There was confusion on Thursday as to the immediate effects of the ruling, although it was confirmed that fines cannot now be levied on citizens who flout the perimetral confinement of 10 cities in the region, including the Spanish capital. The court ruling does not, however, have an effect on the other restrictions imposed, such as capacity limits for bars and restaurants, and early closing times for all establishments, as well as a limit of six people for meetings both in public and private.
(03.10.2020)
Last month, Professor Whitty and Sir Patrick – dubbed Glum and Glummer by critics – held their own press conference, warning the infection rate could rise to 50,000 cases a day by mid-October.
Conservative MPs and local leaders in the North have been venting fury about the government’s stance, with former minister Jake Berry accusing the premier of being ‚London-centric‘ and enjoying his sweeping emergency powers ‚a little bit too much‘.
Politicians in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield raged at ‚diktats announced without notice‘ and said ministers were treating the North like a ‚petri dish for experimentation‘ while the South gets off lightly.
The north-south split could cost the Tories their majority
In contrast, in non-restricted areas, people are free to travel to different neighbourhoods and continue their regular activities. The selective confinement has left many people feeling disappointed and confused. “In the end, it’s a little absurd […] every day, people in the neighbourhood have to leave their neighbourhoods and take public transport to go to do their work in other neighbourhoods that are not confined,” explains Miguel, a local to Vallekas.
#Madrid #Spain #Vallecas #Vallekas
Indeed, the governor also announced that the state would take over supervision of enforcement of mask and social-distancing rules in the hot spot clusters, presumably putting the State Police in charge of New York City Police Department officers.
That deadline is a day earlier than Mayor Bill de Blasio had set — and equally irrelevant for the hundreds of Jewish schools in the areas, most of which are closed right now because of the Sukkot holiday.
Cuomo also announced that he would take over efforts to enforce social distancing and mask mandates in New York City areas with rising cases, many of which are home to significant Orthodox populations.
After initially leading the nation in positive coronavirus tests, New York City was able to get the virus under control earlier this year through strong messaging on the importance of social distancing and the widespread closures of businesses. But in recent weeks, city officials and residents had been watching the numbers tick back up, particularly in Orthodox Jewish areas.
Over the past two weeks, the number of new cases of the virus has been rising in pockets of the city, predominantly in neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that are home to the city’s large Orthodox Jewish population.
Meanwhile, protests have raged again in Madrid, following the imposition of localised measures on particular districts that protesters say are punishing the poor. Comments made by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Madrid region, suggesting ‘the way of life of immigrants’ was partly to blame for the rises in cases, have also sparked a fierce backlash.
A manifesto signed by various neighbourhood groups denounces the new measures as racist and classist, arguing that they single out the ‘individual behaviours’ of poorer residents for scorn when in all neighbourhoods rules are being broken.
Conte said the government would consult with parliament over extending the emergency until January 31.
At the headquarters of Spain’s armed forces in central Madrid is a room with a sign on the door reading „Epidemiological surveillance department“.
Inside, a team of around a dozen people, headsets on, are working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, each making between 70 and 80 daily calls to identify those who’ve been in touch with someone who’s tested positive for COVID.
„I’m a contact tracer for the region of Madrid, I got your number from someone who has tested positive. Firstly, where are you right now?“ says one, using a phrase that will be repeated throughout the day.
Spain’s national government ordered two weeks of new restrictions that started at 10 p.m. Friday (2000 GMT) despite reluctance from regional officials.
The measures prohibit all nonessential trips in and out of the capital and nine of its suburbs — affecting around 4.8 million people.
(31. August 2006)
And one think tank suggested it was almost „genetic determinism“ to suggest children could turn out to be troublemakers before they were born.
Mr Blair told BBC News his government had made „massive progress“ in tackling social exclusion but there was a group of people with multiple problems.
There had to be intervention „pre-birth even“, he said.
Families with drug and alcohol problems were being identified too late, said Mr Blair.
“Ministers simply have to get a grip. It’s vital that testing capacity is increased immediately in London and focused in the areas it is needed most.
The council leader in the northern England city of Leeds says people will be barred from meeting members of other households indoors or in backyards. The measure affects more than 750,000 people.
In Cardiff, Swansea and Llanelli in Wales, households will be banned from mixing indoors.
Meanwhile London, home to almost 9 million people, is being labelled an „area of concern.“
The regional government of the Spanish capital Madrid extended a partial lockdown from Monday to 45 health areas of the region, affecting more than one million people,
The Madrid region authorities have ordered a lockdown in 45 areas, mainly the poorest ones, where the contagion rate is above 1000 cases per 100,000 people.
The main objectives of this CyberDrill are as follows:
– Provide situational awareness to key public and private sector participants who lead their firms, organizations, or jurisdictions during a cyber disruption;- Bring the CERT/CIRT/CSIRT community together in a unified exercise to build global response and recovery capabilities;
– Test operational resiliency key concepts across CSIRT/CIRT/CERT community;
– Identify, exercise, and foster the improvement of processes, procedures, interactions and information sharing mechanisms that exist or should exist among CERTs/CSIRTs, SOCs, agencies, public bodies, and across regional organizations responsible for crisis management and regulatory bodies;
– Exercise coordination mechanisms, information sharing efforts, the development of shared situation awareness, and decision-making procedures of the cybersecurity community during cyber events; and,
– Raise awareness of other cyber exercise initiatives.
The Sultanate hosts the 8th Arab Regional & OIC-CERT Cyber Drill
Report: Saleh bin Khalfan Al RahbiThe Sultanate hosts the 8th Arab Regional & OIC-CERT Cyber Drill
´
Egypt, represented by the Egyptian Computer Emergency Response Team (EG-CERT), is participating in the “CyberDrill 2020 – Arab Region Regional Dialogue: CIRTs and lessons learned from COVID-19 crisis,” organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), online, on September 22.
The Global CyberDrill is a capacity building event which aims to enhance the communication and incident response capabilities of participating teams and promote collective efforts by national Computer Incident Response Teams (CIRTs) and Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs).
Covid authoritarianism is out of control. It’s time the people pushed back.
Today’s fresh plan includes:
– A 10pm curfew for all pubs across England – and they will be made to offer table service by law.
– There will be a significant cap on the number of guests allowed at weddings.
– But businesses and schools will be able to stay open as No10 attempts to stave off a second lockdown.
– A dramatic increase in enforcement measures to make sure people are obeying the Rule of Six.
– More fines could be slapped on those flouting the rules with on-the-spot closures for venues that fail to follow the rules.
– Facemasks will be made compulsory for staff in hospitality and close contact places – and taxis too
……….
The curbs on movement and gatherings start on Monday and affect 850,000 people, many in areas of lower income and with higher immigrant populations.
The data and concepts have been manipulated with a view to sustaining the fear campaign.
The estimates are meaningless. The figures have been hyped to justify the lockdown and the closure of the national economy, with devastating economic and social consequences. The Virus is held responsible for poverty and mass unemployment.
Confirmed by prominent scientists as well as by official public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Covid-19 is a public health concern but it is NOT a dangerous virus.
The COVID-19 crisis is marked by a public health “emergency” under WHO auspices which is being used as a pretext and a justification to trigger a Worldwide process of economic, social and political restructuring. Social engineering is being applied. Governments are pressured into extending the lockdown, despite its devastating economic and social consequences.
There is no scientific basis for implementing the closing down of the global economy as a means to resolving a public health crisis.
Both the media and the governments are involved in spreading disinformation.
Police have given more than 100 people head injuries with so-called less-lethal ammunition such as rubber bullets at protests this summer, according to a report published by the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).
There is a reason why the use of predictive policing continues to expand despite its dubious foundations: it makes money. Many companies have developed tools for data-driven policing; some of the biggest are PredPol, HunchLab, CivicScape, and Palantir. Academic institutions have also developed predictive policing technologies, such as Rutgers University’s RTM Diagnostics or Carnegie Mellon University’s CrimeScan, which is used in Pittsburgh. Some departments have built such tools with private companies and academic institutions. For example, in 2010, the Memphis Police Department built its own tool, in partnership with the University of Memphis Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, using IBM SPSS predictive analytics.
CIJP also stressed that the paramilitary group Autodefensas Gaitanista de Colombia (AGC), also known as Clan del Golfo, controls el Choco department in complicity with the army and local police forces.
Babel Street is a shadowy organization that offers a product called Locate X that is reportedly used to gather anonymized location data from a host of popular apps that users have unwittingly installed on their phones. When we say “unwittingly,” we mean that not everyone is aware that random innocuous apps are often bundling and anonymizing their data to be sold off to the highest bidder.
Turkey’s government will restrict 90 percent of traffic to social network platforms that receive more than 1 million visits per day if the companies do not establish a legal presence in Turkey, according to a draft bill submitted to parliament by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
The Shin Bet would now be allowed to track people for the coming three weeks, beginning Tuesday. The law will remain in effect until January 2021.
The law also requires the Health Ministry to respond within 24 hours to appeals by people sent into quarantine based on the Shin Bet’s data, following public criticism of its accuracy.
The pressure led Netanyahu to backtrack at the last moment and push off the planned closure from Friday to Tuesday morning.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) urged President Trump on Monday against sending federal law enforcement officials to her city, arguing it would create a “disaster” rather than help keep the city safe.
Thousands of Israelis were mistakenly forced into quarantine by a contact tracing program that gives the Shin Bet security agency access to the phones of confirmed coronavirus carriers, a Knesset committee heard Tuesday.
In the first week of the renewal of the Shin Bet tracing system last month, tens of thousands of people in Israel received text messages warning them that they had been in contact with a confirmed carrier of the coronavirus.
With 187 votes, Greek MPs put the nails on the coffin of Democracy in the country.
PS How many protesters were injured by police and suffered from tear-gas, we will probably never learn.
COVI-PASS will determine whether you can go to a restaurant, if you need a medical test, or are due for a talking-to by authorities in a post-COVID world. Consent is voluntary, but enforcement will be compulsory.
Brazilians will pretty much need a license to communicate with others — something achieved by turning platforms and app makers into bouncers at the internet nightclub.
Proponents are hailing the arrival of the system as a step towards stamping out the virus and ending lockdown.
The function is automatically disabled in countries without contact-tracing apps, such as Britain and the US.
Getting to that „new normal“ as quickly as possible is the target for governments around the globe, Many find antibody-testing the entire population a tantalising idea where infection rates are high.
In Germany, the country’s disease control and prevention agency, the Robert Koch Institute, is conducting large-scale random antibody testing.
Masks became a political cause for some in the early months of the pandemic. A growing set of Republican leaders are suddenly pushing Americans to wear them.
Speaking afterwards, a Labour spokesman said: “If you want other examples, Singapore has launched an app, South Korea has also got an app. So there are a number of countries that are far, far ahead of us.”
Ministers Gabi Ashkenazi, Avi Nissenkorn, Amir Peretz and Izhar Shay opposed resuming the tracking, which was stopped on the order of the High Court of Justice, before the process of finding a civilian alternative is exhausted. Ashkenazi said he didn’t think the current level of new cases justified the resumption of this surveillance. Shin Bet head Nadav Argaman warned that codifying the surveillance in law could expose his organization’s technology and work methods. Netanyahu said in response that “the enemy is already familiar” with the system in question.
Additionally, the publishing platforms must apply new measures, including the control of user comments and the manipulation of the literary works’ popularity rankings depending on whether they adapt to the parameters established by the government, placing an extra workload on these sites.
(14.06.2020)
The company also confirmed that their robust decision-making process involves checking their users‘ activity on other social media sites.
We share the common goal of preserving public confidence in systems that can help make us all safer. Therefore, before the NHS continues its plans, we urge you to provide the public with more information and take appropriate measures to reduce risk of data sharing and keep the aggregated data under democratic control.
In March, the NHS announced a new plan to build a datastore that aggregates COVID-19 health data. Microsoft, Google, Palantir, Faculty and Amazon will assist in the development of the datastore and the processing of the data.
(yesterday)
In an open letter directly addressed to the health secretary, civil society organisations, privacy advocates and academic researchers urged Hancock to give the public more information about the datastore and take appropriate measures to reduce data-sharing risks and keep it under democratic control.
Last week, Palantir got the US government contract to run a new system for tracking the spread of COVID-19.
It’s not just the US that is boosting surveillance in the pandemic. In tiny Liechtenstein, the government has launched biometric tracker bracelets that automatically collect key medical information. The statelet plans for all citizens to wear them by autumn, while Germany, Turkey and France are also among the 23 countries that have looked at high-tech surveillance measures in response to the crisis.
(21.04.2020)
It is unclear what exactly this data is, where it comes from, or how it’s being used. It’s also unclear if Palantir is the sole technology provider of the tool, or if other partners are involved.
Reports earlier this month first surfaced Palantir’s involvement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UK’s National Health Service regarding coronavirus tracking software and other assistance in combating the global pandemic.
Massachusetts has added more than 1,000 workers and sent some into communities with large numbers of cases. California last week began training the first recruits of a planned 20,000-person contact tracing team. And New York plans to add as many as 17,000 contact tracers through a partnership with former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Resolve to Save Lives, headed by former CDC Director Tom Frieden.
A senior government source told the Mail on Sunday last week that Mr Hancock was on “borrowed time” and had “fallen out with the most powerful figures in the Government”, including Mr Johnson.
But Mr Gove, who revealed that “just over 17,000 of the contact tracers” had now been recruited – told Sky News’ Niall Paterson: “Here I have to praise the work of the Health Secretary Matt Hancock.”
Beijing’s state-controlled Global Times claimed that Britain would need a ‚miracle‘ to get out of the health crisis as it condemned London’s response to COVID-19 as ‚flippant‘ and ‚ill-prepared‘.
The Communist newspaper slammed Boris Johnson for telling people to go back to work before setting up a track-and-tracing system. It accused the Prime Minister of prioritising the economy over virus control.
He said officials were ‚paying attention‘ to how other countries were using technology to keep on top of the crisis.
Other nations have adopted an app model which stores data in a more favourable way, which has fuelled a backlash over privacy concerns.
The ‚centralised‘ model used by the NHS is believed to have caused reluctance to download the app – which ministers have previously denied is a problem.
(02.05.2020)
The mayor of Nice has urged French PM Edouard Philippe to introduce new travel controls during the Covid-19 pandemic through “health passports” in the parts of France which border other countries.
Citing an infringement of constitutional rights and freedoms, leaders in the United States have so far been hesitant to adopt such technological approaches, but that may be about to change.
(29.04.2020)
Shopping malls and markets across Israel, shut due to the coronavirus outbreak, will only be allowed to reopen after the development of a tracking system that would monitor all visitors, Health Ministry Director General Moshe Bar Siman Tov said at a Monday meeting.
All customers will be required to install a tracking app on their phone to enter shopping malls and markets, once these reopen.
(01.04.2020)
Around 1.5 million Israelis have downloaded a mobile app in the past week that alerts users who have crossed paths with a coronavirus patient, according to the Health Ministry, helping to improve tracking of the pandemic.T he app “HaMagen” – Hebrew for The Shield – is sparking interest from abroad with approaches from Germany, Italy, Britain, Australia and Chile so far, ministry deputy director general Morris Dorfman said Wednesday.
Premier Giuseppe Conte’s Cabinet, at a meeting that ended early Thursday, approved a law, in the form of the decree, that guarantees that those who decide not to use the app won’t suffer limits on their movement or other rights.
Moreover, app development responsibilities will be placed on mall managers, but it is uncertain who will oversee them.
Sure, let’s take some precautions, like washing your hands.
But let’s put this in perspective. And let’s stop scaring our fellow citizens. Fear itself is far more dangerous and far more debilitating than COVID-19
Two weeks ago, the council had already discussed the possibility of a popular revolt and how the government could prevent an uprising against the authorities. Among other things, it considered how the state “could forestall dangers that could lead to widespread social unrest” that might spark protests against the government and state institutions.
It turns out that soldiers and officers from one of Military Intelligence’s classified intelligence gathering units gathered data and analyzed it for the task force that the National Security Council appointed for this purpose.
Israel Supreme Court on Sunday unanimously approved a petition by a rights group to suspend a controversial surveillance program aimed at tracking the movements of citizens suspected of carrying the coronavirus.
Concerns over civil liberties and privacy rights have been raised after caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the course of action last month in an effort to track down coronavirus carriers.
On one hand, the prime minister says we are in the midst of a crisis not seen since the Dark Ages and on the other he abuses the crisis to try to escape his day in court.
How do our leaders expect us to cooperate during one of the worst crises Israel has ever known when our confidence in them is crumbling?
In 2012, a landmark study on the “disease of isolation” was published in Britain and the US. Researchers from University College, London, revealed that isolation was killing the elderly — not loneliness, but isolation forced on people by circumstances beyond their control. More than “pre-existing” health conditions, isolation was the silent killer.
„It is not our place to interfere with the government’s decision,“ the Court concluded.
(today)
The Health Ministry sent a letter on Wednesday to hospitals, calling on them to reduce their use of anesthesia, due to a global shortage of anesthetics coupled with the use of many anesthetics to treat coronavirus patients. (…)
1:35 P.M. Bnei Brak hospital says it cannot accept more patients requiring ventilators
The Ma’ayanei HaYeshua Hospital in Bnei Brak says it can no longer accept patients who require ventilators because of a shortage in monitoring devices required to operate them.
(03.04.2020)
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, told Reuters: “Bnei Brak is on lockdown, as of this morning, and police will prevent any movements in or out of the city.
“People are only allowed in or out for medical reasons or medical support.”
The Israeli government is expected to declare full lockdowns of numerous ultra-Orthodox communities across the country and West Bank to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus.
A Knesset (Israeli Parliament) ministerial committee was formed late on Sunday to oversee the decision that is expected to affect at least eight cities that and more than a dozen neighborhoods.
“Since yesterday I’m trying to find someone to help get Passover food to four elderly couples that I’ve been taking care of for three weeks, and there’s no one to turn to,” said a city resident. “I tried everyone I know, and I know a lot of people. There’s no response from the municipality, all those getting paid by the city don’t want to deal with me. The police send me to the municipality, and from there they send me to the Home Front Command, which sends me back to the municipality.”
Earlier on Friday the government declared Bnei Brak, home to around 200,000 people, a „restricted zone“ after invoking emergency powers to quell the outbreak, which has spread quickly throughout the community.
The military is expected to deploy about 1,000 soldiers in Bnei Brak to assist local authorities due to the severity of the situation there and the reported lack of implementation of health ministry instructions.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said major cities can become „smarter“ by using big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies to modernize urban governance.
As COVID-19 worsens, though, expect to see a greater willingness to trade privacy for effective health surveillance, just as 9/11 led to a tightening of security around airports and other public spaces.
„A situation like the pandemic creates a fundamental shift in how people react to technology. This is the direction we are going to be moving in.“
— Labhesh Patel, chief technology officer at Jumio, an ID verification company
The bottom line: We’ve already given up so much in the fight against COVID-19. Some elements of personal privacy may be the next to go — and don’t expect the surveillance to end when the pandemic does.
We should listen to somebody who grew up in a society where there were no civil rights, Angela Merkel, talk about how the current situation justifies restricting our movements. And matters will not stop there: people might have been shocked when they saw China use apps and geolocation to control the movements of its population during the spread of the infection, but we now see Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan following suit: their success is being used to justify population control measures that would be completely unacceptable under normal circumstances.
When Declan Chan arrived in Hong Kong from Zurich on March 17 after six weeks overseas, city officials made him put on a plain-looking white wristband and download an app called StayHomeSafe before he exited the airport.
He was told to register on the app once he got home, which would start a 14-day countdown, and walk to all four corners of his apartment so it could capture the location and confines of his home.
The key to defeating the global pandemic of coronavirus is isolating the elderly population in the hope that young people who are not in the risk group for complications would develop herd immunity, Israel’s caretaker Defense Minister said Friday in a recorded statement.
(18.02.2020)
Israel based Vaxil Bio Ltd. announced an update to the Company’s press release dated February 13, 2020, regarding the possible identification of a novel coronavirus vaccine candidate, Vaccine Candidate.
Vaxil said in a newly published press release on February 18, 2020, the Vaccine Candidate is based on unique and patent-protected signal peptide technology, utilizing Vaxil’s proprietary VaxHit™ bioinformatics platform.
(31. August 2006)
And one think tank suggested it was almost „genetic determinism“ to suggest children could turn out to be troublemakers before they were born.
Mr Blair told BBC News his government had made „massive progress“ in tackling social exclusion but there was a group of people with multiple problems.
There had to be intervention „pre-birth even“, he said.
Families with drug and alcohol problems were being identified too late, said Mr Blair.
Surveillance capitalists control the science and the scientists, the secrets and the truth.
What if the United States government took the DNA of vast numbers of Americans for use without their consent? The Trump administration has just brought us one step closer to that dystopia.
In the United States, there is a growing industry of consultants who advise organisations about how to rid themselves of their supposed ‘white-supremacy culture’. According to these zealots, some of the attitudes and behaviours associated with white-supremacy culture include ‘individualism’, ‘a sense of urgency’ and ‘perfectionism’.
In other words, those who take their work too seriously may be tainted by white supremacy. Thinking logically is basically thinking white.
The authorities can scan your phones, track your face and find out when you leave your home. One of the world’s biggest spying networks is aimed at regular people, and nobody can stop it.
Luciano Galup, director of the Menta Communication consultancy, denounced that there were thousands of messages against the figure of Evo Morales from accounts that had almost no followers.
(17.09.2019)
SNA (Tokyo) — In a shocking series of exposés at the beginning of this month, the Mainichi Shinbun reported that minority children of workers in Japanese schools were being segregated from their Japanese peers, put in classes for the mentally disabled, and systematically denied an education.
„The police had 30 tweets of mine. I asked the officer, ‘What’s the worst one you’ve got? Which one comes closest to the edge of being dangerously criminal?’ He said, ‘Well, there is this limerick’. I replied to say that I hadn’t written any limericks. He said, ‘No, but you have retweeted a limerick’. He read it to me, and I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’. It wasn’t even a limerick. It was a lyric from a feminist song. He told me I had to stop doing this. I asked again if I had done anything wrong. And that is when he said the immortal line: ‘I need to check your thinking.’ „
Officers set up the camera on a van in Romford, East London, which then cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against a database of wanted criminals.
But one man was unimpressed about being filmed and covered his face with his hat and jacket, before being stopped by officers who took his picture anyway.
After being pulled aside, the man told police: ‚If I want to cover me face, I’ll cover me face. Don’t push me over when I’m walking down the street.‘
Singapore’s lone opposition party in parliament has said it will oppose a controversial fake news bill that has been criticized by rights groups, journalists and tech firms as a debate over the proposed legislation entered a second day on Wednesday.
(19.3.2019) When a Dutch cybersecurity researcher disclosed last month that Chinese security contractor SenseNets left a massive facial recognition database tracking the movements of over 2.5 million people in China’s Xinjiang province unsecured on the internet, it briefly shone a spotlight on the alarming scope of the Chinese surveillance state.
But SenseNets is a symptom of a much larger phenomenon: Tech firms in the United States are lending expertise, reputational credence, and even technology to Chinese surveillance companies, wittingly or otherwise.
(11.7.2018)
Postman’s key point was that Big Brother didn’t need to bother watching John Doe or controlling him, because John Doe probably was already willing to be controlled by forces that rendered him harmless to Big Brother. Postman argued that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was more prescient than Orwell’s 1984, because in his book Huxley portrayed a citizenry perfectly willing to give up its most sacred possessions for trivial things.
(12.10.2018)
This may all sound frightening, but a system devised by human beings to control others can also be controlled, if you know what you’re doing. If you’re a true entrepreneur, then you see the opportunity in every social evolution. And big changes mean even bigger opportunities. Are you ready?
(17.11.2018)
New York entrepreneur and Democratic 2020 candidate Andrew Yang wants to implement a system in which a government-run mobile app rewards Americans with “digital social credits” (DSCs) for good behavior.
Americans would receive DSCs under Yang’s system for things such as “participating in a town fair,” “fixing a neighbor’s appliance” or “tutoring a student,” his presidential campaign website explains.
(6.12.2018)
To use Jamie Horsley’s argument in Foreign Policy, „China’s Orwellian social credit score isn’t real…There is no such thing as a national ’social credit score‘.“
Apart from the (negative) political implications of the work-in-progress social credit system, we should also consider the economic implication of such a system.
In addition to more mundane areas like whether you pay your community charge on time, the system’s reputational algorithm will also factor in your choice of online friends. That person who complains about how the government is doing its job could suddenly cost you some serious social cred. Befriend too many wrongthinkers and you could quickly find yourself classed as a wrongthinker too.
(11.2.2019) „We’re beginning to see it already where insurance companies affect your premium based on whether you’re eating healthy, getting a good night’s sleep or getting enough exercise,“ he said, adding that the need for Congress to act is urgent.
But Chertoff said the emphasis needs to change from how do we keep things confidential, and instead pass laws that focus on who controls the data once it’s been generated.
(22. Oktober 2016)
The ambition is to collect every scrap of information available online about China’s companies and citizens in a single place — and then assign each of them a score based on their political, commercial, social and legal “credit.”
The government hasn’t announced exactly how the plan will work — for example, how scores will be compiled and different qualities weighted against one another. But the idea is that good behavior will be rewarded and bad behavior punished, with the Communist Party acting as the ultimate judge.
(23.10.2018) The idea is simple: By keeping and aggregating records throughout the government’s various ministries and departments, Chinese officials can gain insight into how people behave and develop ways to control them.
The goal writes Rogier Creemers, a postdoctoral scholar specializing in the law and governance of China at Leiden University in The Netherlands, is “cybernetic” behavioral control, allowing individuals to be monitored and immediately confronted with the consequences of their actions. In so doing, authorities can enhance the county’s expanding surveillance apparatus.
(23.2.2019) When George Orwell’s “1984” was published seven decades ago, it seemed a dire warning of a future dystopia ruled by thought police and authoritarian control. Today, such a world is becoming a reality in Xinjiang. We agree with human rights groups who have urged the United Nations Human Rights Council, when it meets starting Monday, to launch an international fact-finding mission to Xinjiang to expose this unsettling experiment in state control of human behavior.
(14.7.2016) Tools for the collection of data include all manner of devices, from cameras on the street to smart devices connected to the internet.
“Every person is monitored from the moment they leave their doorstep to the moment they return to it. Their work, social and behavioural patterns are recorded, analysed and archived,” a source close to the project told MEE at the time.
Julian Assange today launched a case accusing the government of Ecuador of violating his fundamental rights and freedoms. WikiLeaks general counsel Baltasar Garzon arrived in Ecuador yesterday to launch the case against the government. The move comes almost seven months after Ecuador threatened to remove his protection and summarily cut off his access to the outside world, including by refusing to allow journalists and human rights organisations to see him, and installing three signal jammers in the embassy to prevent his phone calls and internet access.
ECUADOR has banned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from taking visitors and phone calls in a further crackdown on the Wikileaks founder, it has been claimed.