This virus is just an excuse to accelerate the release of technology and laws that have slowly been trickling out over the last few decades, the last little push as it were.
It's mostly up to people now, whether they decide to listen and be compelled to give up nearly every freedom and right they have in the name of 'safety', or they push back against it.
We are always having to adjudicate the boundaries of rights... that is why we have a court system. Where those boundaries are IS up to date, and has changed over time... this is unavoidable, because there is no 'natural' place to put those boundaries.
Questionable. Who says you have those rights? The government. They can take them away at any time. Just look at the USA PATRIOT Act.
Yeah, but he enacts the will of the majority ;)
I totally get & agree with the sentiment, but not in the absolutist form. It's always going to be fuzzy, the question is mostly how we weigh the needs of the many and the needs of the few (or the individual). I do believe that the average response to that is strongly reflected in each nation's laws & culture, with the US emphasizing the individual's needs a lot more.
I think this is a perspective encouraged by those in power. I think that a slightly different, but truer analysis is that our rights are always there, but often violated.
Now, I feel that the exceptions have become the norm and with each passing event, are creeping in every aspect of our lives. Turning it around - Our rights are always violated, we sometimes get to exercise them.
The very notion that you have something means that it can be taken away, unless like you said, you have the means to defend it. Contrast that with something you are, not have. That can only change, not taken away.
That sounds like 18th-century thinking. In that era, "natural rights" seemed a reasonable notion because people could agree on the existence of a higher authority (even if it was a pretty aloof Deist-type God) that bestowed those rights inalienably on each and every person. But that idea has become increasingly discredited, and in the 19th century other schools arose with their positions that "rights" are merely an invention of human societies for the purposes of those societies.
However, without a shared higher moral authority, I can claim whatever rights I want and you can't tell me otherwise. All you can do is forcibly remove my ability to freely exercise them, and all I can do is forcibly defend my ability to enjoy them. Hence the existence of the USA's second amendment.
The pendulum has swung too far the other way.
But there are a lot of knee-jerk "but muh liberties" reactions in this thread and I think this is very dangerous, as it fails to see that sometimes individual rights must be weighed against each other.
My personal issue is the companies with ubiquitous presence to implement these changes (Apple & Google) has to negotiate US political environment. One on hand, having a near global solution seems preferable to fractured regional systems specially if we expect to resume global travel in the future. On the other hand, this is more global surveillance information at the hands of US government which... I'm sure they're eager to collect.
My current position is I can't see covid19 or any similarly infectious disease being contained without mass contact tracing / global medical monitoring technology, it's an emergent reality when globalized society confronts pandemics. The only things preventing this system prior was an absence of technology, so in some sense we are almost fortunate the outbreak is happening with our current capabilities. If covid19 happened instead of SARS 20 years ago, there wouldn't even be the technology to rapidly map the genome, roll out tests, or contact trace the way east Asian countries are doing to mitigate spread. This is the first time in human history where we have the opportunity deal with ongoing serious pandemic and perhaps implement resilient technical systems to prevent for future events without catastrophic social disruption. Covid19 is not going to be the last pandemic we see, billions of people in Asia and Africa are being uplifted through industrialization which means more opportunities for zoonotic diseases in the future.
I don't believe mass contact tracing is essential to contain this pandemic. It is a trojan.
>> If covid19 happened instead of SARS 20 years ago, there wouldn't even be the technology ....
Again, just because we have the technology, it gets used, irrespective of whether is needed or useful.It is hilarious that we don't have technology/will to provide PPE for healthcare workers, masks for everyone but hey we can easily track everyone in the world. Talk about perverse optimizations.
And what is more, now, people are welcoming it !!
Although it's noteworthy that data protection is also much stronger in Europe than in the US.
As this article correctly points out, we should be very concerned about contact tracing, and any contact tracing program needs to have broad privacy and legal protections built into it. What this article does not say is that there should never be any contact tracing for any reason because it has the potential to be abused which automatically outweighs any benefit to public good. Similarly, our stay at home orders should have termination dates based on transparent metrics, and we should be very careful about how we apply martial law. That being said, I find it not only ridiculous but enraging that people would advocate flaunting quarantine out of high level principle. You do not have the right to do harm to others by acting as a viral carrier. You do not have the right to endanger other people with your behavior. You do not have the right to get sick behind principle and then demand scarce hospital resources and provider time. I'm sorry but that is not reasonable, ethical, or in line with the principles our country is based on.
Bound by the GDPR? Really? People here are giving out advice like a smart high school student who thinks he knows everything because he has read about it.
The real world does not work that way.
If you have any specific criticism, in particular about why you think the GDPR doesn't matter and why "the real world" works differently, I'd be happy to hear it.
At present it is due the pandemic, next it will target some set of people because they are undesirable - because you know, that would supposedly make us safe. We know how that ended the last time. Whether it is contact tracing or wearing an arm band, underneath it is the same thing.
When an individual is compelled, for the perceived safety of the majority, it leads to slavery. It also destroys the majority. And technology accelerates this process.
Having seen rights being eroded, trampled, mocked, I have realized that we do not have any effective rights. They are a privilege bestowed by those in power.