Several weeks ago during a livestream interview I said that one of the potential risks of the current crisis was that it would become another 9/11 moment.
What I meant by that was that this would be an event that would invoke so much fear, unfiltered emotion, and blind panic in people that they would not be as willing to question offical solutions being proposed for the crisis as they should be.
Well, I would humbly suggest that today's announcement about a New Zealand Covid-19 tracking app is a prime example of this.
In a nutshell, this is an app that will see the state tracking the user 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and then alerting them if they have had more than 15 minutes of close contact with anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19.
We should all be asking some serious questions about the roll out of this app.
Firstly, NZ epidemiologist Dr Ayesha Verrall has said that the Ministry of Health "urgently" needed the app to help with contract tracing in our country.
Shouldn't that statement alone be raising a bit of a red flag?
I thought that NZ was already mounting a world-leading contact tracing effort - at least that's what we've all been led to believe thus far.
If we now "urgently" need an app to do this job in our country, does this mean that our contact tracing efforts really haven't been as good as the Government have been claiming in their daily media briefings for weeks now?
One of the most important questions anyone considering this app should be asking themselves is: is this really a good and prudent solution to the current crisis?
Just imagine that you sign up for this app and allow ALL of your movements to be constantly tracked by the state.
How likely is is that you will come into contact with an infected stranger?
How likely is it that you will remain in their presence for more than 15 minutes of close proximity contact?
Even a trip to the supermarket is unlikely to cause such an occurrence for the vast majority of Kiwis.
But even if this does happen, and you get an alert to tell you that the Government tracking system knows that you were in close contact with an infected person for more than 15 minutes, then what?
Even if you rush out and get tested, and that test turns out to be positive, what will do you?
It's not like you can visit a doctor or hospital and get a cure for Covid-19.
The only real advantage here is that you MIGHT be able to self-isolate before passing it on to other people. Even this is not guaranteed though, because of the way the virus effects the human person and the fact that there has to be a positive result from a physical Covid-19 test before you will be notified.
And this is to say nothing of the serious issues now being raised by experts about whether these apps will even work.
These problems range from not enough people signing up for the app for it to be effective, to the fact that Bluetooth technology is not precise enough to actually guarantee accurate tracing results.
Bluetooth not only has weaknesses that could cause actual legitimate close contact exposures to be missed, but its range is far greater than the social distancing parameters, and this can lead to false positives.
This matters, because if a lot of people suddenly stop going to work or start socially isolating themselves based on false positives we're just going to end up doing even more damage to an already major social and economic crisis.
Then there's the way in which we humans tend to overestimate the effectiveness of safety devices, to the point that we will often take risks because of the false sense of security such technologies give us.
Does this really sound like the sort of risk/reward scenario that should see us rushing out to sign up for widespread state surveillance?
The chances are extremely high that a lot of public money will be wasted on something that has all the hallmarks of being a very dangerous lemon.
There is a major risk of this app being used for mass global surveillance - and that's not me saying that, it's the NZ Government who are warning that this is a very real risk of their new app.
Just imagine how tempting this technology will be to various parties who could easily use this sort of device for economic or political gain?
Have we become so enamoured with Prime Minister worship that we are now happy to turn a blind eye to the important lessons of history - even recent history - about just how untrustworthy Governments can be when given the opportunity to wield great power over their citizens?
Just a few weeks back I was astounded to see so many of my seemingly intelligent friends lightheartedly posting about how Google had been tracking our movements in lockdown without even so much as a question about what the heck a big tech company was doing engaging in such an act of mass surveillance.
There are very serious dangers associated with these sorts of technologies and you don't need to be a conspiracy nut to think so, just an astute observer of history and our human propensity to do all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
Comments