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COVID, Police Powers & the Surveillance State
- “Images from these protests — including protesters dousing their faces with milk in order to temper the sting of the tear gas — underscore not only the intensity of the response, but a major contrast with the lack of force that’s been used in anti-lockdown protests at state capitols around the country, when the protesters were armed white men.” –
https://www.vox.com/2020/5/27/21271811/george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-lockdown-protests
- “America’s institutional racism explains both Covid-19 toll and police violence – The protests against police brutality over the weekend are not only a story about state-sanctioned violence against black Americans. They are also a health care story that reveals the nation’s structural racism, in two important ways.”- https://www.vox.com/2020/6/1/21276957/george-floyd-protests-coronavirus-police-brutality-racism
Reopening California
- Testing
- “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, along with Dodgers CEO Stan Kasten, announce that Dodger Stadium will now be home to California’s largest COVID-19 testing site, allowing 6,000 people to be tested daily.” –
https://www.latimes.com/sports/dwx6bp2ouwi-123
- “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Friday that bike paths and some beach parking lots would reopen in the city, along with all retail businesses for pickup and delivery.” – https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-mayor-garcetti-holds-briefing-on-citys-coronavirus-response/
Contact Tracing
California
- “Los Angeles County, which at more than 10 million people has a population slightly greater than the state of Michigan, has just 400 of the estimated 6,000 contact tracers it will need under California’s criteria for a broader reopening.” –
National
- “Apple Inc. and Google released their COVID-19 exposure-notification tools [May 20]” – https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-05-20/apple-google-coronavirus-contact-tracing-tools
- “The world’s first contact-tracing app built on the backbone of the API jointly developed by Google and Apple has launched as a large-scale pilot in Switzerland.” – https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worlds-first-contact-tracing-app-using-google-and-apples-api-goes-live/
- Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they have begun contact tracing arrestees. “Who are they associated with? What platforms are they advocating for? … Is this organized crime?… We are in the process right now of building that information network.”
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1266752990951755783
Syndromic Surveillance
- “Patient Data Exchange Barriers Impact COVID-19 Reporting” –
https://ehrintelligence.com/news/patient-data-exchange-barriers-impact-covid-19-reporting
Immunity Passports
- “[B]ioethicists said there are serious scientific and social qualms” about immunity passports – https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/05/27/immunity-passports-for-those-who-recover-from-covid-19-bioethicists-have-serious-doubts/
- Facial recognition has been added as a way of logging in to an NHS app that lets people order prescriptions, book appointments, and find healthcare data. Initially, it will allow faster access to the services on the app, which is separate from the contact-tracing one. But its developers say it could also be used for Covid-19 “immunity passports”.” – https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52807414