QR codes and China: Human Race tracking tools
Headline : China's Xi Jinping is pushing for a global Covid QR code
Quote:
Chinese President Xi Jinping is pushing for a global Covid-19 tracking system using QR codes, to help fast-track international travel and business during the coronavirus pandemic.
China mandated the widespread use of QR-based health certificates earlier this year. The system, which uses an electronic barcode to store a person's travel and health history, has been credited with helping to curb the spread of the virus.
As China encourages people to return to work despite the coronavirus outbreak, it has begun a bold mass experiment in using data to regulate citizens’ lives — by requiring them to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed into subways, malls and other public spaces.
But a New York Times analysis of the software’s code found that the system does more than decide in real time whether someone poses a contagion risk. It also appears to share information with the police, setting a template for new forms of automated social control that could persist long after the epidemic subsides.
The Times’s analysis found that as soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled “reportInfoAndLocationToPolice” sends the person’s location, city name and an identifying code number to a server. The software does not make clear to users its connection to the police. But according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency and an official police social media account, law enforcement authorities were a crucial partner in the system’s development.
from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/b...veillance.html
Is the general public willing to give up their privacy...or blindly unaware of the consequences?
Quote:
The main problem of any international coronavirus app would be maintaining the privacy of the data, said Raina MacIntyre, head of the Biosecurity Research Program at the University of New South Wales' Kirby Institute.
MacIntyre suggested that a central database of information managed by the World Health Organization or a United Nations agency might be the least controversial way of creating a Covid tracking app.
"(But) will individuals consent to another government that isn't their own government accessing their data? That may be the price to pay for travel," she said.
from... https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/23/asia/...hnk/index.html
