Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine • Hacker News Board

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#151

Post by blitz_skull » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

kongin wrote: post #42

blitz_skull wrote: post #5

Wow. It’s like the twilight zone over there. I’m quite concerned at the lengths governments are going to take away our rights. All in the name of “the good of others”.

Believing what you see on the news about covid is like believing the USSR's growth numbers. It's the terminally online and politicians who push the narrative, the rest don't care, including the police. In Australia it's under 20% of people that have gone insane. The rest have checked out and completely ignored it. It's like a long holiday where you get paid to pretend you work. But you can't say that in polite compan…

Ah, well for the fate of our friends down under, that seems good that it’s mostly “talk” and not as bad as they indicate.

Thanks for this refreshing update!

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#152

Post by swiley » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #105

umvi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than in a state-run, guarded, hotel room, or without regular police visits to their home Ah yes these are totally normal things for a democratic country to do

The borders are closed so it's a choice you have made to enter the country and require quarantine, you know what you signed up for it is made abundantly clear. I think if you asked the majority of Australians they would say that they are happy people have to quarantine at the hotels and that they be guarded, since most of our outbreaks have been from quarantine breaches. So as far as a democracy goes that's right on…

It doesn’t matter why, stop rationalizing this bullshit.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#153

Post by throwawayfear » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

ephextom wrote: post #150

throwawayfear wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those systems will not go away once they are implemented. Power will consolidate. It is a system of enslavement.

Whatever their intentions, governments can’t sustain these measures forever economically or politically.

Yes they can. Especially in Australia where people don’t have means to defend themselves and are falling for the “vaxed vs unvaxed” narrative. Pit sides against each other and they’ll clamor for the state to protect the peace and establish order. And that it will do with increasingly invasive measures like arresting pregnant women for making anti-lockdown Facebook posts or locking residents of an entire apartment complex in their homes with no one allowed to leave.

Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen a short time later - the government there arresting or locking people in that way. Would you have believed it could happen?

Could you see it becoming worse, particularly if the media narrative about us-them continues until one side gets dehumanized?

Why rest in this blind faith about how much they can sustain? When they have already been sustaining this stuff for going on two years with no signs of letting up. If anything it seems to be getting worse per the OP, with even more idiotic systems being built “because of the antivaxers” or whatever convenient justification is peddled by media to divide the people and consolidate power towards the top of the top.

sigh

I don’t want to be right. I want to be WRONG.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#154

Post by bigiain » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

throwawayfear wrote: post #140

bigiain wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read out loud what you are saying. You are saying that government ordering you to quarantine in your house, with facial recognition and GPS tracking in your own home, is less oppressive than being forced to stay in one of their quarantine hotels. And you're saying that in response to all the "freaking out" about this. A slightly different reading of what they're saying is: "The government ifs offering to allow you…

It is not a choice no matter how often the people defending it insist it's a choice. It's no more a choice than someone holding a gun to your head and asking you which poison you'd like to drink. On what planet do we live, where all of a sudden that statement even in your version of the reading is in ANY way more palatable or reassuring? The government is offering you these choices: 1) Quarantine in a guarded quarant…

> On what planet do we live, where all of a sudden that statement even in your version of the reading is in ANY way more palatable or reassuring? The government is offering you these choices:

> 1) Quarantine in a guarded quarantine hotel for two weeks in a sealed room

Where I am (Australia, the place where this is happening), right now that is current reality on the planet we live on, and is the _only_ choice offered. I cannot leave Sydney for any reason, without being required to spend two weeks in a sealed room at my own expense. It's not just state or federal borders, it's travel within the state of NSW - I cannot go further than maybe 30-40km in any direction from my house without a "permissible reason" which pretty much means "essential work". Bereavement, family visits, or wanting to stab all my household and neighbours in the face do not count as "permissible reasons". That is, as you rightly allude to, in now way palatable or reassuring. But is is in fact the ground truth where I live.

As much as I despise option #2, I would seriously consider making that choice for myself - in spite of the acknowledged normalisation of massive surveillance overreach it would represent.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#155

Post by tarboreus » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 1:59 AM UTC

ephextom wrote: post #104

umvi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than in a state-run, guarded, hotel room, or without regular police visits to their home Ah yes these are totally normal things for a democratic country to do

Quarantine has been used in all kinds of societies for thousands of years during times of infectious outbreak. It’s described in the Bible, and it was used in the USA during the Spanish Flu. What is the point of quarantine without systems to ensure it is obeyed?

The word quarantine comes from 40 days, though. They weren't indefinite and endless.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#156

Post by mindwok » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

throwawayfear wrote: post #146

mindwok wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these I won't defend, I think the arrest for the protest post and the Melbourne Towers lockdown were not ok. Both of those have been widely criticized, including by branches of the government. I wouldn't be surprised if there's legal action from these events and I'd be in favour of the victims. The number of people in the home thing doesn't bother me, again because I'm happy to accept this as a temporary rest…

What good is it to me or to you or to the people of Australia that the protest post arrest and the Melbourne Towers lockdown were "widely criticized?" That says nothing even if branches of government did it. That's controlled opposition at best until there's clear evidence that they're relenting from these practices. Instead I see just evidence of more power consolidation. The number of people in the home thing doesn…

If we reach 80% vaccination rates (which we're on track to do in the next 1/2 months) and these measures don't disappear quickly, I would start to be very concerned.

I understand I probably seem like a naive optimist, and I self-confess that I am (although most of my Aussie friends are even less concerned than me). At least we will find out soon whether that's misplaced.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#157

Post by shirro » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:02 AM UTC

ephextom wrote: post #104

umvi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than in a state-run, guarded, hotel room, or without regular police visits to their home Ah yes these are totally normal things for a democratic country to do

Quarantine has been used in all kinds of societies for thousands of years during times of infectious outbreak. It’s described in the Bible, and it was used in the USA during the Spanish Flu. What is the point of quarantine without systems to ensure it is obeyed?

Used in the US and around the world for cholera and typhoid as well. For many years. There are a lot ruins of old quarantine facilities and several islands around New York were used for the purpose.

People don't understand how isolated some states of Australia are, even from the other states. Some parts of this country were barely touched by covid. It was just about the least dystopian life you could imagine apart from driving through the Mad Max landscape.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#158

Post by nineteen999 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

throwawayfear wrote: post #136

nineteen999 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the article's headline, and there wasn't enough space to edit in the specific state. Sure - I noticed that and wasn't implying that you modified the article title. The article title is incorrect, at least in the way it reads at first glance - yes the South Australian government is "an Australian government", but it's not "The Australian Government". > But is it actually a meaningful distinction as far as thes…

Re: your point in #1 This other source does not say that it is voluntary. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a... Returning travelers quarantining at home 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…

> Returning travelers quarantining at home will be forced to download an app

Interesting .. how exactly will they "force" people to download an app if they said person doesn't have a smart phone, or refuses to unlock it? Are they going to buy them one?

The police aren't going to see this as a useful use of their time and resources; and the public isn't going to put up with it either. There's one thing to make an announcement like this in Australia; and another thing completely to make it stick. Governments here have a habit of backing down completely when it's clear their re-election is at stake.

The proposal wouldn't fly in Victoria; but if it was attempted, I'm pretty sure it would be rolled back pretty quickly. Let's wait and see before getting too up in arms about it - the app isn't even written yet.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#159

Post by hug » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

the_third_wave wrote: post #134

hug wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately no one in Australia has 'natural immunity', because approximately no one here has had COVID. Those people who are advised by their docotrs not to get vaccinated are few and far between, but it turns out the current vaccine push takes those figures into account. The people who deem the risk of COVID lower than the vaccine are just straight up incorrect. They're either misled or just deliberately contrari…

Do you drink, smoke, drive a car, are you overweight, do you participate in high-risk sports, eat a lot of processed food, red meat, fatty fish from polluted waters, drink sugared carbonated water, keep dangerous pets? If so, do you voluntarily opt out of any hospital care related to these activities or habits? The list can be made much longer. On the subject of people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... real…

> people supposedly taking 'livestock medication'... really?

Yes. Really. And then apparently shitting their pants in the supermarket. Appalling, I know.

> If they're taking the latter, why call it 'livestock medication'?

Because a lot of them are not, they are taking livestock medication bought from agricultural stores, because their doctor won't prescribe them what they want. You and I both know this is the case, so please don't bother pretending it isn't.

And to be clear. the people who are taking literal horse dewormer as opposed to getting vaccinated are doing a stupid thing. It is the wrong answer to COVID, no matter which way you look at it. Even if Ivermectin -- formulated for humans, qua Stromectol -- is actually a useful treatment against COVID, there's another more useful prophylactic against COVID: A vaccine.

This isn't an opinion, it's a bald-faced fact. You don't need to be given Ivermectin to treat severe COVID if you never end up with severe COVID in the first place.

Should hospitals be administering Ivermectin clinically? I dunno, jury is still out and I'm not a doctor, but an alternative to the vaccine it is not.

Re: Australian gov to use facial recognition and GPS tracking to enforce quarantine

#160

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #126

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection. > Unfortunately this creates a strong incentive for all governments to actually create such societies and increase division and mistrust in order to gain power. Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Your clai…

> But Australia isn’t violent, divided, and less trusting of one another. Neither are most of the western-style developed countries that turn to the state for protection. I didn't say they were. > Have you actually been to Australia before? Or Europe for that matter? Or Japan? Yes, yes, yes. Worthless rhetorical questions. > Your claims don’t make much sense with the current examples. What claims? > All we have is a…

We have tons of examples of states where the government takes responsibility for protecting the people and are safer than the one example where a second amendment exists to keep people "safe". If you want to split hairs between western and eastern europe, yes, countries like the Ukraine is not as safe as the USA, but that in no way proves your point.