Society's ChildS

Eye 1

Big Tech is turning hospitals into real-time surveillance centers

big tech hospitals
Recent events have come to light about hospital surveillance that should concern everyone.

Big Tech is using the pandemic as an excuse to turn hospitals into mirror images of law enforcement's real-time crime centers.

When Google announced that they were donating 10,000 Nest cameras to hospitals, my jaw dropped.
"With these Nest Cams, nurses and doctors will be able to check in on patients, supplementing in-person checks. This means there will be a reduction of physical contact, and therefore less of a need for personal protection equipment (PPE), which has fast become a scare resource."
What makes Google's donation so jaw dropping is how Big Tech companies are using the pandemic to make them appear magnanimous.
"With both contact tracing and the Nest Cam solution, however, Google needs to rebuild a reputation as a privacy concerned company due to the sensitive nature of both projects. It's not going to be an easy task, but one that should remain at the forefront of all such efforts."

Star of David

Palestinians mark 72 years of the Nakba, with no end in sight

Palestinian keys
© Daily SabahA Palestinian woman holds the keys to the house her parents were driven from
At least 750,000 Palestinians, nearly half of Palestine's Arab population, became refugees in the months leading up to and following the establishment of the state of Israel

Friday marked the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba, or 'catastrophe' in Arabic, signifying the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homelands in 1948.

Every year on May 15th, the day after Israeli independence day, Palestinians commemorate the occasion, typically with massive protests and demonstrations against the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine.

This year, however, protests and demonstrations were canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, which continues to affect Israel and Palestine, the latter on a much lesser scale.

Bullseye

Best of the Web: Tucker: America is splitting into 2 hemispheres - free states and those still tightening lockdowns

Eric Garcetti
Clueless, incompetent, authoritarian and pathologically controlling Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti

Comment: Considering the generally piss-poor level of reporting we're used to seeing from mainstream news about Covid-19 (or much else) - that the following analysis actually aired is something of a miracle.


The country appears to be splitting into two hemispheres before our eyes: There are those places where public officials are allowing science to guide their decisions; states like that are cautiously beginning to relax their lockdowns and finding no spike in illness as they do it. Those are the free states.

And then there's the other half of the country, the places where you're glad you don't live right now. In those places, power-drunk politicians crow about science but resolutely ignore its findings.

They don't read studies. They don't care what the data say.

Their decisions are driven by ambition, political calculation and the pure animal joy of controlling other people's lives.

Places like that are tightening their lockdowns even now.


Bad Guys

Three Daesh terrorists confess to perpetrating a number of operations in cooperation with US occupation forces in al-Tanf

Daesh terrorists
Through a security operation, that was launched in cooperation with Syrian citizens in al-Badyah (Syrian semi-desert), an ambush has targeted a group from Daesh terrorist organization, including 6 persons.

The security operation ended up with killing three of the groups and arresting the three others. Their names are Salah Jaber al-Zaher, known as Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Salafi, Ali Salim Yahya, known as Abu al-Bara'a al-Homsi and Amer Abd al-ghafar Nemah, known as Abu Sawan.

The three terrorists, in a program broadcast on the Syrian TV on Thursday, confessed to perpetrating different terrorist operations, inducing acts of killing, execution, abduction, acts of sabotage and destruction of public and private properties.

They confessed that a number of the operations were done in coordination between leaders of Daesh terrorists and the US occupation forces positioned in al-Tanf area on the Syrian-Jordanian borders.

Handcuffs

NYC man arrested in Hawaii for breaking quarantine rules for tourists after social media snitches turn him in

Waikiki Beach
© MARCO GARCIA/REUTERSWaikiki Beach is nearly empty due to the business downturn caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S. April 28, 2020.
Hawaii officials arrested a man from New York on Friday for violating the state's 14-day quarantine rule for tourists. Tarique Peters, 23, of the Bronx posted photos on Instagram showing him outside his hotel room after he arrived in O'ahu on Monday, according to a news release from the office of Hawaii's governor.

According to the news release Peters allegedly left his hotel room the same day he arrived "and traveled many places using public transportation."

"Authorities became aware of his social media posts from citizens who saw posts of him โ€” on the beach with a surfboard, sunbathing, and walking around Waikiki at night," reads the release. "This morning agents were able to confirm with hotel personnel that had seen Peters leave his room and the premises on numerous occasions this week."

Comment: There was never any curve to flatten, and the only groundwork being laid here is for more totalitarian control over people's lives.


Arrow Down

For those keeping count, Colorado had negative 272 COVID deaths Friday

Mark Baisley letter to Brauchler
The Colorado Department of Health has been caught inflating COVID 19 deaths. A state lawmaker has requested a criminal investigation.
He also provided another letter dated April 17 from the Someren Glen senior care center to its staff, residents, and residents' families. The Centennial facility's letter said CPDHE had overruled the cause of death findings by attending physicians in order to list seven deaths as being caused by COVID-19.

Sheeple

Police have dispersed thousands of visitors from Scotland's rural beauty spots in recent weeks

river Leven
© Murdo MacLeod/The GuardianThe river Leven as it enters Loch Lomond at Balloch.
Politicians and police have urged the public to stay away from Loch Lomond after it emerged thousands of people had breached the lockdown around the beauty spot in recent weeks.

Police data shows the district which includes the villages of Balloch and Luss on the banks of the loch had the highest number of lockdown breaches of any in Scotland, with police ordering 2,291 people to go home in just 30 days.

Shopkeepers in Balloch, the centre of the loch's tourism industry, said there was a rush of visitors at weekends and on sunny days. "It's been really mad," said John Gray at Lomond Stores, close to the village's railway station.

Comment: See also:


Gear

Pain in Spain as two largest cities - Madrid and Barcelona - see draconian lockdown extended for THIRD MONTH

protest lockdown spain
© EFE
For the past five days, millions of people in Spain have once again been able to indulge in moments of luxury that would have been mundane routines just two months ago.

Across half the country, they have been able to meet up with friends and family, and to sit outside bars and sip a cafรฉ con leche or a cold, refreshing caรฑa (beer). But not so in Madrid or Barcelona.

On Friday the Spanish health ministry denied the Madrid regional government's second request to join the 70% of the country in the next phase of relaxation of some of the strictest lockdown measures in Europe.

HAL9000

Phrenology is back, wrapped up with facial recognition in a 21st century pre-crime package by university researchers. Too soon?

facial recognition, human skull
© Reuters / Chris Helgren / Thomas Peter
The focus of US policing is shifting from enforcement to prevention as mass incarceration falls out of favor. 'Pre-crime' detection is the hot new thing, accomplished through analysis of behavior and...facial features?

Researchers at the University of Harrisburg announced earlier this week that they had developed AI software capable of predicting - with 80 percent accuracy! - whether a person is a criminal just by looking at their face.

"Our next step is finding strategic partners to advance this mission," the press release stated, hinting that a New York Police Department veteran was working alongside two professors and a PhD candidate on the project.

That statement had been pulled by Thursday after controversy erupted over what critics slammed as an attempt to rehabilitate phrenology, eugenics, and other racist pseudosciences for the modern surveillance state. But amid the repulsion was an undeniable fascination - fellow facial recognition researcher Michael Petrov of EyeLock observed that he'd "never seen a study more audaciously wrong and still thought provoking than this."

Comment: A dangerous tool that no one should possess.


Newspaper

The Ever Changing Rules: UK quarantine for travelers to now include French arrivals

Downing Street rolls back on idea of exempting people from France from 14-day isolation
Eurostar passenger in UK
© Xinhua/Rex/ShutterstockEurostar passengers arrive at St Pancras station in London.
Downing Street has rolled back on the idea of exempting travellers from France from incoming quarantine rules, with only freight drivers and experts working on anti-Covid-19 efforts being able to avoid the 14-day isolation period.

Boris Johnson used his TV address last Sunday to announce that quarantine restrictions would soon be imposed on people entering the UK, but only mentioned those arriving by air. It later became clear that the rules would also apply to arrivals by road, rail and sea.

Later on Sunday, after a call between Johnson and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street said "no quarantine measures would apply to travellers coming from France at this stage".

Comment: See also: