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It’s time to track people’s smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin.

Professor Marylouise McLaws, a technical adviser to the World Health Organization’s Infection Prevention and Control Global Unit, praises Singapore, which has a system where the government sends an SMS to citizens, who click a link which uses the phone’s location services to report their location.

www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/2…

It’s an intriguing system, with the advantage that citizens can easily opt out after the crisis, by simply refusing to participate.

We may need to allow government to track everybody’s locations during the duration of the pandemic. But we need to roll back surveillance when the emergency is over. And once government has been given power, it’s really, really hard to roll that back.

Video: Italian mayors berate citizens for breaking quarantine.

“Getting in your mobile hairdressers?! What the fuck is that for? Don’t you understand that the casket will be CLOSED?”

twitter.com/GiuliaRoz…

My first multi-person Zoom coffee break this morning. We discussed bronies and the catechism. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a meeting where either was discussed, let alone both.


I saw this excellent sidewalk art near the house. “Just keep walking” can be seen as inspirational or a threat.📷

. Minnie practices her reading comprehension skills.

Law firm warns work-from-home employees against eavesdropping by Alexa, baby monitors, etc.

Locked-Down Lawyers Warned Alexa Is Hearing Confidential Calls - Bloomberg

Mishcon de Reya LLP, the U.K. law firm that famously advised Princess Diana on her divorce and also does corporate law, issued advice to staff to mute or shut off listening devices like Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s voice assistant when they talk about client matters at home, according to a partner at the firm. It suggested not to have any of the devices near their work space at all.

Mishcon’s warning covers any kind of visual or voice enabled device, like Amazon and Google’s speakers. But video products such as Ring, which is also owned by Amazon, and even baby monitors and closed-circuit TVs, are also a concern, said Mishcon de Reya partner Joe Hancock, who also heads the firm’s cybersecurity efforts.

We don’t have them in the house. The risk seems high, and the potential benefit seems low.

Today on Cory Doctorow's Pluralistic

A law firm is telling employees to switch off smart speakers and similar devices while working from home.

We don’t have any in the house. The payoff seems low in the potential risk seems high.

A Florida city sent power disconnection notices to its poorest residents during the pandemic crisis. The mayor is ducking accountability.

Rashida Tlaib proposes meeting trillion dollar coins, and then using those to send “every person in the USA a $2K prepaid credit card that would receive $1K/month until a year after the crisis’s end."

Each person – children, adults, documented, undocumented, rich, poor – would get the card and the deposits, and progressive taxation would rake it back from those who don’t need it (far more reliable than means-testing, which is a persistent failure).

How “concierge doctors” supply the “worried well” with masks, respirators and tests

One big difference I observed between my life under Canadian medicare (30 years), and UK NHS (13 years) is that in the former, there is no private option, so rich people have to advocate for everyone’s care in order to improve their own. I think the relative fortunes of the NHS and OHIP can be largely explained by this difference. Allowing the rich to opt into a private system reduces the political costs of slashing the public system.

More: Pluralistic: 22 Mar 2020