[MtnClimber]

AP: In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses.

Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. The issue has taken on fresh urgency almost three years into the pandemic as China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns.

[MtnClimber]

Never let a good emergency go to waste.

[livius]

AP did this report? Wow. I think maybe some people, even on the left, are starting to wake up.

[zeestephen]

The news media does not care what government is doing as long as it harms Conservatives and secures more power and funding for the Political Left.

[GOPJ]

Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies.

Our 'home-grown intelligence thugs are jealous - they were outed before they got to that level.

[Sacajaweau]

I remember reading that no records were actually kept and the deaths were determined by using stats from earlier years and
claiming the excess” as covid deaths.

[I want the USA back]

A government LIED to its slaves? You mean they said one thing and did another? I’m shocked!

[StAnDeliver]

"The Xi Jinping had begun integrating its tech tools, surveillance systems, and domestic intelligence into a “social credit” system that virtually locked down its populations years prior to the physical lockdowns that finally produced a revolt this year."

The PLA picked up DNA data on nearly every single foreigner that had the misfortune to be in that confucian shithole when their Red Army unleased their bioweapon. Bad ju ju.

[cgbg]

AP is just upset that the tech was used to track leftists and royal blood minorities.

They couldn’t care less if right wing political activists were tracked.

[ifinnegan]

Does this hack ever actually say what the “other purposes” are?