This is disturbing but not surprising information regarding how powers related to a health emergency are used to curtail personal liberty.
Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech To Expand Global Surveillance
Garance Burke – Grantee • Guest Contributors: Josef Federman • Huizhong Wu • Krutika Pathi • Rod McGuirk
December 21, 2022 • Pulitzer Center
A worshipper stands in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on January 29, 2022, and holds his mobile phone showing a threatening message. The May 2021 text, signed ”Israeli intelligence,” reads: “Hello! You have been spotted as having participated in acts of violence in Al-Aqsa Mosque, and we will hold you accountable.” Image by Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press. Israel.
JERUSALEM (AP)—Majd Ramlawi was serving coffee in Jerusalem’s Old City when a chilling text message appeared on his phone.
“You have been spotted as having participated in acts of violence in the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” it read in Arabic. “We will hold you accountable.”
Ramlawi, then 19, was among hundreds of people who civil rights attorneys estimate got the text last year, at the height of one of the most turbulent recent periods in the Holy Land. Many, including Ramlawi, say they only lived or worked in the neighborhood, and had nothing to do with the unrest. What he didn’t know was that the feared internal security agency, the Shin Bet, was using mass surveillance technology mobilized for coronavirus contact tracing, against Israeli residents and citizens for purposes entirely unrelated to COVID-19.
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Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech To Expand Global Surveillance – Stethoscope with chart
