In the least surprising development in history, via Associated Press:
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.
This is the same essential story as the last permanent emergency that gripped the West, the War on Terror — a supposed existential threat emerges on the heels of a catastrophic event (9/11). The state then takes advantage of the populace’s fear and panic to draft sweeping new powers for itself. Those powers inevitably are later found to have been used for opaque (and often illegal) purposes beyond the original scope of authority.
Rinse and repeat with climate change, cyber warfare, and whatever other boogeymen, real or imagined, the national security state conjures next.
The AP story continues:
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.
Pair the opportunistic power grabs with the fact that the national security state in the U.S. is now totally beyond popular democratic control, much less any sort of transparency.
Related: FBI Gives Dismissive Reply to Twitter Files Revelations of FBI-Twitter Censorship
Admitted diversity hire White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was recently questioned about the FBI, in clear violation of First Amendment principles, directing censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story on Twitter in the waning days of the 2020 presidential election.
“The latest Twitter files show that the intelligence community was actively involved in discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop story. Does it bother the president…that a government agency like the FBI was involved in suppressing a legitimate news story?” the reporter asks.
“I’m just going to refer you to the FBI. I’m not going to comment from here,” Karine Jean-Pierre replies.
The implication — which is functionally true, by the way — is that the FBI is beyond the control of the elected president, rather than being beholden to him as it is supposed to be.
Combine sweeping new powers with a total lack of accountability, and you have a recipe for authoritarian, CCP-style technocratic hell in which the most important decisions are made by a secretive cabal of centralized bureaucrats whose interests are totally detached from the population they rule over. Which is precisely where we’re headed.
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