The company responsible for creating a network of police snitching apps in the U.S. and Canada is trying to convince the public to use a new app.
Want to report your neighbor for not social distancing, report them for being a George Floyd protester, or perhaps you have seen something suspicious? Chances are pretty good that OCV, LLC has created that app.
OCV has created a mind-boggling 500 law enforcement apps.
“With over nine years of experience serving public safety agencies, OCV, LLC. has developed over 500 custom mobile apps and proudly serves over 40 states and Canada.”
As The Daily Globeexplains, OCV’s latest app allows users to “lookup jail inmates and wanted lists, as well as submit anonymous tips about crime.”
In Rock County, Minnesota, the Sheriff’s department has already received a tip from a concerned citizen. Because who doesn’t want to send police an anonymous tip about their neighbors?
“TheSheriffApp.com will help your office brand itself as innovative leaders in law enforcement within your community and provide easy access to important information to your citizens.”
Want to help re-brand law enforcement’s image? OCV has at least 500 apps that will help convince the public that law enforcement is here to help.
OCV is so good at masking what TheSheriff App’s real purpose is, it is easy to miss.
“App users have the ability to receive instant push notifications from your sheriff’s office, submit a tip, view the most wanted page, see a map of sex offenders in their area and more – all from an app!”
TheSherrifApp is specifically designed to allow users to send anonymous tips to law enforcement. The first thing they mention in their “Common Features” section is submitting a tip.
“Submit tips right from your smartphone. Use your smartphone capabilities to include pictures, GPS location and more in your tip.”
TheSherrifApp has taken public snitching to a whole new level by combining real-time social media accounts.
“Combine all social media accounts into one continuous stream within the app. Updated in real time.”
Would anyone like to guess what the “Main Feature” of TheSheriffApp is? If you guessed public snitching, congratulations.
“Submit a tip with a tap by using our tip submission feature! Users can easily submit tips directly from their smartphone. Take advantage of a mobile app and use your smartphone to be as detailed as possible with your submission: upload pictures, videos… even include the GPS location of an incident! Users also have the option to submit a tip anonymously.”
During the coronavirus outbreak, the news has been littered with stories of neighbors snitching on each other. Private companies like, NextDoor have even gone so far as to shower law enforcement with gifts so they can spread public snitching to every neighborhood in America.
“As part of the chosen group, Charles Husted, the chief of police in Sedona, Arizona would be flown to San Francisco on President’s Day, along with seven other community engagement staffers from police departments and city offices across the country. Over two days, they’d meet at Nextdoor’s headquarters to discuss the social network’s public agency strategy. Together, the plan was, they’d stay at the Hilton Union Square, eat and drink at Cultivar, share a tour of Chinatown, and receive matching Uniqlo jackets. All costs — a projected $16,900 for the group, according to a schedule sent to participants — were covered by Nextdoor.”
Hasn’t law enforcement learned anything about the recent slew of “Karen’s” calling police on black people? The last thing American’s need or want is a “Karen” police app disguised as “TheSherrifApp.” (To find out more about NextDoor’s “Karen” problem, click here.)
If there is to be any hope of police reform, then we must demand an end to the culture of police surveillance, and the corporations who profit from it.
As we are inundated with headlines about violent riots and looting being passed off as mostly peaceful protests, or how the dreaded virus continues to spread in communities around the world, there is another story taking place which directly affects hundreds of millions of people globally that is being blacked out by the mainstream corporate media.
Unlike the aforementioned crises which are being cited as the justification for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, this public health crisis actually has a rather simple solution: to end water fluoridation by no longer adding the toxic substance to the nation’s water supply.
You would think this would be a straightforward process, considering the mountains of studies which conclude fluoride is a harmful neurotoxin attributed to lower IQs and ADHD. Unfortunately, government regulatory agencies have been not only defending this practice for generations, they champion the forced medication as a great achievement in medical history.
Right now, in perhaps one of the most important trials of our time, the Fluoride Action Network is taking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head on in an unprecedented court case that could lead to the end of water fluoridation in the US and possibly worldwide as other nations would likely follow suit.
In this interview, Spiro is joined by Dr. Paul Connett of the Fluoride Action Network to discuss the current court case against the EPA and water fluoridation as the first week of the trial has come to an end and the second, possibly final week is about to begin.
Bill Gates with his father, Bill Gates, Sr. Youtube
James Corbett’s fourth installment of his series on Bill Gates examines Gates’ youth, family history, business strategies, and surprising personal connections (Jeffrey Epstein, for example) that, altogether, reveal a disturbing picture of Gates’ rise to fame, fortune, and power. Of particular interest is the fact that his banker father was head of Planned Parenthood and that the family was connected to a group of wealthy intellectuals who called themselves Eugenicists. That means they advocated so-called public-health programs that secretly sterilize those who are considered by the elite to be unworthy of procreation. This was the same program that, later, was applied by Hitler to create a super race in Nazi Germany. After the fall of the Nazi regime, American Eugenicists needed to distance themselves from Hitlers’ sterilization program, so they changed their vocabulary. Eugenics henceforth was called population control. This finally connects the dots between present vaccine design and the Gates’ life-long support of ‘population control’. -GEG
Before Bitcoin became the newest trend for silicon valley bros, it was a tool for hackers and revolutionaries who wanted to undermine the banking system. In fact, this was the original vision of the cryptocurrency’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto, and the group of anarchist hackers called “cypherpunks” that developed the technology.
It appears that this original vision was not missed by the US government, which has been developing plans to contend with a potential cryptocurrency rebellion. Documents obtained by The Intercept through a freedom of information act request show that the US Department of Defense has created war game scenarios in which a rebellion of Gen Z revolutionaries used cryptocurrency to undermine and evade the establishment.
In one of the war games, the Pentagon prepared for hordes of Gen Z hackers who used cyberattacks to steal money and convert it to Bitcoin. The revolutionary group in the war game was given the name “Zbellion.” This exercise happened two years ago, in 2018, but it was set in the future year of 2025. In the scenario, Gen Z was involved in protests all over the world and waged a “global cyber campaign to expose injustice and corruption and to support causes it deem[s] beneficial.”
It was noted that Gen Z sees themselves “as agents for social change” and believe that the “system is rigged against them.”
In light of the protests that have developed around the world over the past months, activists are starting to revisit the original spirit of the technology, and are seeing its potential as a tool for revolutionary movements. The details of the Pentagon war games were not made public until Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz suggested freezing the financial accounts of demonstrators who are spotted at the ongoing protests against police violence.
Nathaniel Whittemore, a bitcoin and cryptocurrency consultant, and strategist, previously told Forbes that, “One of the most important tools in the authoritarian toolkit is the ability to freeze the funding of legitimate political dissent. By separating the infrastructure of money from the infrastructure of state power, bitcoin makes it that much harder for this type of politically motivated confiscation.”
“In the wake of unprecedented central bank action around the Covid-19 crisis, it seemed like the most relevant narrative of bitcoin in 2020 was as a hedge against inflation. It appears, however, that its capacity for censorship resistance might be just as relevant,” he added.
In Indian Country, there is a collective experience known as blood memory. Words seem to fail explaining this phenomenon because, first and foremost, blood memory is a feeling or a knowing, but my interpretation is that blood memory is an embodied remembrance passed down from generation to generation. Some people refer to blood memory as akin to genetic or ancestral trauma or epigenetic inheritance. The bottom line when understanding blood memory is, simply, that we pass down in our familial lineages experiences and memories. Sometimes they are good and joyful and sometimes they are traumatic and rooted in grief.
As the coronavirus spreads, North America’s Indigenous Peoples hold a unique experience of stress and fear because of this blood memory. In the 18th century, as European settlers sought to colonize Indigenous lands, they weaponized germs, giving blankets infected with smallpox to tribal communities to slow down Native resistance and to decimate Native populations. In addition to smallpox, measles and influenza were also brought to North America during these early periods of colonization. It is estimated that together these diseases killed 90% of Native Americans.
Colonial violence led to other public health injustices and crises within Indigenous communities. In the 19th century, the federal government forced Native peoples onto reservations, disenfranchising Native populations and creating to this day vast injustices in access to public health services. During the 1970s, the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act led to the sterilization of Native women. According to Time magazine, between 1970 and 1977 at least 25% of Native American women of childbearing age were sterilized.
This history matters in this moment because our communities remember. As individuals, our bodies remember. And because of this, Native people may be experiencing anxiety and distrust in our government’s commitment to public health.
This is why “indigenizing” community care is so critical as we work to protect Indigenous communities and people from COVID-19.
In mid-March, as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to put stress on cities across the country and as the federal government slowly acknowledged the crisis, putting millions at risk, I wrote an article aimed at grounding our community in the cultural and spiritual practices that fortify our spirits. It included a call for an Indigenous response to the pandemic.
Now, when we are having to practice “social distancing,” is a perfect time to learn traditional medicines—tinctures and syrups, traditional foods, plant medicines, and fermentation. Traditional medicines that support immune and respiratory systems and are also antiviral include: osha, fire cider, garlic, elderberry, lemon balm, and oregano. While these traditional food ways aren’t guaranteed to cure or prevent COVID-19, we know that they can support resilience and contribute to healthier life ways.
Community is central in the Indigenous response. Identify who in our community is most vulnerable and strategize the best ways to protect them.
Working collectively at community care is more important now than ever. When we are able to quiet all the worries, the media, and public frenzy, we can see a bigger picture: This moment is an opportunity to come together in community, in care, and in preparation. Grave threats like climate change and pandemics are real—we know this as crisis scenarios become more frequent and more extreme.
Community is central in the Indigenous response. Identify who in our community is most vulnerable and strategize the best ways to protect them. Think about food security, and not in an individualistic sense, but in a collective sense, ensuring that there is abundance to share.
All communities can reflect on some universal questions: Are we overly dependent on food and materials coming from nonlocal sources? Do we have energy security in case the electrical grid is damaged by extreme weather or we cannot access fossil fuels? What are the most fundamental collective values we will draw upon in high stress moments? How do we make decisions? And how do we not turn on each other?
As the pandemic progressed through April, these questions became more urgent. We have seen American society fall into toxic individualism; masses began to panic shop and hoard supplies, creating shortages of food and health care supplies across the country. We have also witnessed exacerbation of the inequities in this country—access to health care, water rights, housing, income, and job security.
This is especially true in Indian Country.
In the Navajo Nation, one of the largest tribes in the U.S. and where the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has been growing exponentially, there aren’t enough doctors, hospital beds, and respirators. To be sure, this kind of problem isn’t new; the coronavirus has just amplified the consequences of underfunding health services in Indian Country. While these communities struggle to respond with emergency health care, they are also facing food and water shortages. In the Navajo Nation, it is estimated that 1 in 3 families haul water to their homes every day. It can take multiple hours to drive to a water-filling station. Strict but necessary stay-at-home orders disadvantage Navajo families’ ability to survive, let alone protect themselves from COVID-19 by washing their hands.
Yet Indigenous communities are showing how community care and self-determination can provide security and solutions during times like this.
Former Navajo attorney general Ethel Branch quickly organized a COVID-19 relief fund that, as of April, had raised $600,000 to provide support to Navajo and Hopi families across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. The Navajo are designing technology and social media systems to connect community members far and wide, enabling urban family members to fill out forms so that supplies can reach their families living in rural areas. Many Navajo do not have access to wifi or cellular networks.
The result of this community organizing is food and water delivered safely across the 16 million acres of the Navajo Nation. This effort to support families across vast distance is no small feat and requires a deep understanding of how to navigate supporting a community this large. It makes sense for the help to come from within—accounting for language, knowing how best to reach people and collect data, and of course understanding the environment and landscape itself.
Indigenous values are woven throughout implementation. Elders are being prioritized, culture and language are being integrated and honored, and above all the organizers and volunteers are practicing compassion and care for the whole, rather than individualism.
The Lummi, in the coastal Pacific Northwest, are showing us how self-determination benefits tribal communities. Decades ago the Lummi declared themselves a self-governing nation. This has enabled more financial flexibility and health autonomy, as the tribe works outside the bureaucracy of the Indian Health Service. Lummi medical teams led the way in responding to COVID-19 by creating preventative measures in their community long before the federal government did. They turned a fitness center into a field hospital to be ready as cases emerged.
The Lummi response stands as a model for other tribal communities—all communities, in fact—for how self-determination can create meaningful infrastructure and better allocate resources.
Because of its self-governing status, the tribe is not reliant on federal programs for accessing emergency funds. In April, many tribes worried about how they would receive funding from a stimulus bill that provided $10 billion to tribal governments. Would federal and state bureaucracy create barriers to slow the distribution of “emergency” funds while tribal members face their normal food, water, and health care shortages?
While these examples illustrate the potential of nations and communities, I want to shine light on what individuals are capable of when we reclaim our Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge.
“Although I can’t make monetary contributions to elders during this time, I can use my fishing skills to help put ancestral foods on the table,” says Autumn Harry, who lives in Numu territories in northern Nevada. Photo from Autumn Harry.
In northern Nevada, in Numu territories, Autumn Harry is putting her passion and traditional knowledge of fishing to use during this time. “Living in a rural community, it is difficult to access healthy, nutrient-dense foods. Due to the pandemic, our nearest grocery stores are still getting ransacked and items are being hoarded, forcing our rural communities to pick from the scraps. Although I can’t make monetary contributions to elders during this time, I can use my fishing skills to help put ancestral foods on the table,” says Harry.
Throughout March and April, Harry fished for trout in the mornings. She would take her catch home and create sterilized and safe packages for elders, demonstrating that we as Indigenous people have knowledge useful not just in this COVID-19 crisis but for generations to come.
There is no sugar coating this moment. It is hard, it is unfair, and it is extremely sad. That said, it is a moment of profound clarity for tribal communities, for the United States, and for the world: The systems that are supposed to offer us health, safety, and shelter do not work; they put profit over the well-being of countless citizens. As challenging, as scary, and as dark as this time is, it is a political and spiritual opening for people everywhere.
We will survive COVID-19. And when this pandemic has stabilized, I encourage you not to forget the feelings and the lessons of this moment. How did your community take care of one another? How did your government take care of you?
Biomedical research ultimately protects public health, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, in explaining his support for controversial research.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt.
But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it’s possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)
Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek’s requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: “Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic…. scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.”
The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.
A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
The project proposal states: “We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”
In layman’s terms, “spillover potential” refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.
According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.
Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.
Dr. Fauci is renowned for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated first in his class from Cornell University Medical College in 1966. As head of NIAID since 1984, he has served as an adviser to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.
A decade ago, during a controversy over gain-of-function research on bird-flu viruses, Dr. Fauci played an important role in promoting the work. He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations, such as investigating possible anti-viral medications, that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.
The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus.(Emphasis added.) This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn’t been deliberately infected contracted the disease.
The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.
Dr. Fauci defended the work. (Emphasis added). “[D]etermining the molecular Achilles’ heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected,” wrote Fauci and two co-authors in the Washington Post on December 30, 2011. “Decades of experience tells us that disseminating information gained through biomedical research to legitimate scientists and health officials provides a critical foundation for generating appropriate countermeasures and, ultimately, protecting the public health.”
Nevertheless, in 2014, under pressure from the Obama administration, the National of Institutes of Health instituted a moratorium on the work, suspending 21 studies.
Three years later, though—in December 2017—the NIH ended the moratorium and the second phase of the NIAID project, which included the gain-of-function research, began. The NIH established a framework for determining how the research would go forward: scientists have to get approval from a panel of experts, who would decide whether the risks were justified.
The reviews were indeed conducted—but in secret, for which the NIH has drawn criticism. In early 2019, after a reporter for Science magazine discovered that the NIH had approved two influenza research projects that used gain of function methods, scientists who oppose this kind of research excoriated the NIH in an editorial in the Washington Post.
“We have serious doubts about whether these experiments should be conducted at all,” wrote Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard. “[W]ith deliberations kept behind closed doors, none of us will have the opportunity to understand how the government arrived at these decisions or to judge the rigor and integrity of that process.”
Correction 5/5, 6:20 p.m.: The headline of this story has been corrected to reflect that the Wuhan lab received only a part of the millions of U.S. dollars allocated for virus research.
Not Alone? Four “Mysterious Signals” Captured From Outer Space
A team of scientists headed by Shivani Bhandari, an astronomer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s federal agency responsible for scientific research, has made a breakthrough discovery by pinpointing the precise location of four fast radio bursts (FRBs).
FRBs are very mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from somewhere in the universe. The average pulse ranges for a few milliseconds, caused by high-energy sources, which are not entirely understood.
CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia detecting FRBs. h/t CSIRO
Bhandari’s new research, published on June 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that four FRBs came from massive galaxies forming new stars. They said FRBs originated not from the center of galaxies, but rather from the outer edges.
“These precisely localized fast radio bursts came from the outskirts of their home galaxies, removing the possibility that they have anything to do with supermassive black holes,” said Bhandari.
Bhandari’s team found exact locations for FRB 180924, FRB 181112, FRB 190102, and FRB 190608 by using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.
Source of FRBs. h/t CSIRO
Bhandari said, “This first detailed study of the galaxies that host fast radio bursts rules out several of the more extreme theories put forward to explain their origins, getting us closer to knowing their true nature.”
Co-author of the study, CSIRO Professor Elaine Sadler said FRBs could not have come from a superluminous stellar explosion or cosmic strings.
“Models such as mergers of compact objects like white dwarfs or neutron stars, or flares from magnetars created by such mergers, are still looking good,” Sadler said.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who co-discovered FRBs, said:
“Positioning the sources of fast radio bursts is a huge technical achievement and moves the field on enormously. We may not yet be clear exactly what is going on, but now, at last, options are being ruled out. This is a highly significant paper, thoroughly researched, and well written,” said Burnell.
According to another paper (dated February 3) by a team of astrophysicists in Canada, a “mystery radio signal” was recorded as repeating based on a clearly discernible pattern. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,” the team said. A summary of some of the key findings are as follows:
“Between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019, detected a pattern in bursts occurring every 16.35 days. Over the course of four days, the signal would release a burst or two each hour. Then, it would go silent for another 12 days.
“…The signal is a known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 180916.J0158+65. Last year, the CHIME/FRB collaboration detected the sources of eight new repeating fast radio bursts, including this signal. The repeating signal was traced to a massive spiral galaxy around 500 million light-years away.”
Both findings suggest astronomers are one step closer to understanding the source of these mysterious radio signals coming from deep within the universe. Could this mean we’re not alone?
If you install updates on your phone without reading the details then you might get an unwanted surprise. The latest involves contact tracking technology.
Contact tracing technology, in theory, will notify users when they have entered the presence of a person with the coronavirus. This project was begun in an effort “to protect people and get society back up and running,” according to an April 10 announcement via Apple’s newsroom. Even if this technology supposedly works, surveys have shown that three in five Americans are either unable or entirely unwilling to use the technology.
Veteran and MMA champion Paul Lazenby condemned this update on Twitter: “Contact tracing slipped discreetly into your latest IOS update. No notice given, no attention drawn to it. I wonder how many people really understand what a terrifying sign this is.”
He acknowledged that there appears to be an option to toggle the tracing technology on and off, but even then, whether the technology would stop tracking you without your consent is unknown.
Google, which is coordinating with Apple to lay the groundwork for this contact tracing system, has a history of tracking users even after they believe they have deactivated tracking technology.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) had previously scorched Google’s senior privacy counsel Will DeVries at a March 2019 hearing for that fact. He complained that Google technology still monitors customers even after they had supposedly turned said technology off. Hawley compared this fact to the iconic lyrics from “Hotel California,” quipping “It’s like that old Eagles song, ‘You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.’”
Ars Technica transcribed the wording of the new update’s description, which includes attributes such as “iOS 13.5 speeds up access to the passcode field on devices with Face ID when you are wearing a face mask and introduces the Exposure Notification API to support COVID-19 contact tracing apps from public health authorities.”
Among the specific features are the “Exposure Notification API to support COVID-19 contact tracing apps from public health authorities” and the “Option” to “automatically share health and other essential information from your Medical ID with emergency services when you place an emergency call (US only).”
Contact Tracing: Your governors, red or blue, are coming after you
A driver gets tested for COVID-19 at a drive-through testing center. CREDIT: Reuters
Red-state governors threaten their own citizens with arrest if they don’t comply with contact tracing investigators — up to six months in jail in Texas!
It was late morning on Tuesday, May 26, when James Daggett heard a knock on the door of his apartment home in Cedar Park, Texas, about 20 miles north of Austin.
When he answered it, two uniformed officers wearing badges and facemasks stood and stared.
One officer appeared to be a sheriff’s deputy and had a gun holstered on his side. The other wore a white uniform.
They said they had an important document to deliver that required his immediate attention.
The man in the white uniform handed him an envelope containing a letter from the Williamson County health department, demanding that he read it closely and follow its orders. What followed was a barrage of questions about his health, how many others he had living in his home, where he may have traveled recently.
As Daggett, 35, tore open the envelope and started to read the letter, the two men vanished from his doorstep as quickly as they had arrived.
James Daggett lives in Cedar Park, Texas, just north of Austin
These were just two of the foot soldiers in an army of 4,000 “contact tracers” hired by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, according to the Houston Chronicle, who signed a $295 million contract with Albany, New York-based MTX Group Inc., which partners with Google and SalesForce to data-mine the public and store their data forever in the Google Cloud.
The job of the contact-tracer investigators is to build a web, at the center of which are people like James Daggett, who just happened to test positive for COVID-19.
They reconstruct the spokes that come off the central hub – James’s family members, friends, the guy he may have sat next to on an airplane or at the local diner last night, or in the adjoining cubicle at work.
All it takes is to spend 10 or 15 minutes sitting or standing within six feet of another human being who was infected. These are all potentially infected persons who must be tracked down and sent into quarantine, then interviewed to get a list of their contacts.
In the end, one case such as that of James Daggett can ensnare hundreds of healthy, innocent Americans, and send them into lockdown, simply because they happened to breathe the same air that James breathed, or stood next to someone who did.
Contact tracers are trained to make sure all of these people, healthy or not, get thrown into complete isolation, away from their children, spouses and other family members while they get monitored for at least 14 days. Their release date is at the discretion of the public health authorities. The potential for abuse is great and could lead to continued rolling lockdowns throughout the country for months or even years. It is that very potential that has government watchdogs on alert.
As of this writing, every state has plans to exponentially expand their contact-tracing workforces.
………
Bye Bye Fourth Amendment
John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and founder of the Rutherford Institute, said citizens are not generally required to speak to an officer about anything, much less their personal health.
“But if they have reasonable suspicion that you’ve committed a crime, they can hold someone for questioning,” he said. “Just an intimidation tactic.”
Whitehead said privacy rights are gone in today’s America, as the Fourth Amendment has been “shredded over and over and over again” since 9/11. The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans’ rights against unreasonable searches and seizures of their personal property, papers and effects.
“The point is, who’s behind all of this? It’s Google and these big corporations,” Whitehead said. “They want to make the money on this. The dangerous thing I’m warning people about in all of this is if they get your DNA.”
He said Amazon, which built the intelligence cloud for all 17 intelligence agencies, “is now handing over your biometric information, your DNA, your fingerprints. There’s no privacy now. They can get whatever they want. And if they have it, either by police records, cases, or Ancestry.com, the FBI has access to that. A lot of this will drill down to this testing, where they get your DNA.”
What’s disappearing in today’s America, he said, is the legal principle of “bodily integrity.”
Once the state has your data and has turned it over to corporations, you will be vulnerable to them targeting you for various medical treatments [vaccine anyone?], as well as the possibility of discriminatory action by your employer.
“Here’s the key and people don’t realize this,” Whitehead said. “Access to healthcare data by big corporations will enable them to build a profile on people’s ailments, and target them for marketing campaigns; they will give that information over to employers and you could end up getting discriminated against. Landlords could ask you to leave their building. And they could also give it over to police. Police will have access to most of this information anyway because most of the police chiefs across the country are being trained by the FBI.”
Further arming the surveillance state
Americans must push back, now, or wave goodbye to their civil liberties.
….
Another red state goes all in for tracing, threatening arrest
In Georgia, GOP Gov. Brian Kemp has hired 1,000 contact tracers. He has given his contact-tracing program a new Orwellian name, “The Healthy Georgia Collaborative.”
In a report by Fox 5 Atlanta, health reporter Beth Galvin stated that she had received her information on Georgia’s contact tracers from the North Georgia Health District. Here’s how Galvin punctuated her May 28 report:
“If you’re in quarantine and you’re supposed to be checking in every day and you’re not, your health district will check in with you, and if you still don’t comply you could face a misdemeanor.”
“All information collected is provided voluntarily, and will be kept confidential according to HIPAA standards,” according to the state’s press release.
In an effort to clarify the state’s position, I called Jennifer King, the public-information officer with North Georgia Health District, who provided the following statement:
“All persons identified as infectious persons are required to comply with the quarantine ordered by the state (please refer to the attached ORDER FOR HOME QUARANTINE). They are required to check in daily while under quarantine in one of three ways: They may choose to have us call them to monitor, they may monitor through the application on their mobile device, or they may call the Georgia Poison Control Center. Information other than this requirement may be provided voluntarily and will be kept confidential according to HIPAA.”
The attached order provided by King states in bold print: “TAKE NOTICE that failure to comply with this Quarantine Order is a misdemeanor offense pursuant to O.C.G.A 31-5-8.”
Governors such as Kemp in Georgia and Jay Inslee in Washington are publicly stating that compliance with their contact-tracing spies will be “voluntary.”
But to say the program is “voluntary” is blatantly dishonest linguistic trickery. Remember how, in the early days of the lockdowns, we were told the draconian rules were just “temporary?”
The politicians and bureaucrats lied about “temporary,” knowing they would later shift to “new normal,” making “social distancing” and “no more handshaking” fixtures in a permanently reordered society.
Voluntary is the new temporary. It’s only voluntary until they say it’s not. It’s only voluntary until you refuse to volunteer. Then it becomes mandatory.
The scenario works something like this: Citizens will be asked to voluntarily quarantine and report daily to the local health authorities. If the citizen fails to submit to quarantine or to check in on a daily basis, the case becomes mandatory.
At that point, your medical privacy rights under the HIPAA law no longer apply. You have become an enemy of the state.
“The information can be given to a public-health agency if the government says it’s required to prevent an imminent threat to public safety,” Whitehead said. “And guess who gets to determine the definition of an imminent threat? The public official who is sitting somewhere far away in an office with drapes and flowers on his desk that we pay for.”
The new normal: Enslavement to the state
With contact tracing in place as part of the “new normal,” very few governors are likely to return to mass lockdowns like they did in late March and early April. They will simply apply the lockdowns to individual persons through contact tracing.
Watch the disturbing video below from a woman in California who went through that state’s training program for contact tracers.
It will actually be possible for some healthy people to go in and out of multiple 14-day lockdowns, depending on who they happen to come in contact with at work, in restaurants, or other places where people gather.
Imagine a salon worker or barber who comes in close contact with dozens of customers per day. If one of them happens to test positive, that barber will get outed and sent into lockdown.
The only way to escape this endless loop is to accept the vaccine being pushed by Bill Gates in his repeated statements to the media that “we cannot go back to normal until the whole world is widely vaccinated.”
Whitehead said the most terrifying aspect of contact tracing is it turns people into government snitches, using fear to encourage a turn-in-your-neighbor mentality.
That’s the mentality that has existed in all totalitarian societies throughout history, from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia and Communist China. After the state-run media whips up an atmosphere of fear, people are easily led and will turn on each other if they think it will protect themselves or their family.
“Fear builds its own prison walls,” Whitehead said. “Everybody becomes a suspect and this time we are using the word “lockdown;” that’s prison terminology. We are prisoners in our own homes now. We can be reported by a neighbor if you cough, you don’t wear a mask.”
How did people end up in the Nazi camps? Whitehead said he was curious so he studied history to find out.
“Almost 85 percent of people who wound up in the camps were reported by their neighbors,” he said. “That’s where we are going. We’re following that model. Everyone is going to be nervous. You’ll be afraid to speak. First Amendment rights are dwindling. Anybody who speaks the truth today is going to look like a rebel or a radical.”
That’s why the Fourth Amendment was written, he said, to protect Americans against such abuses. But today’s politicians and judges have little respect for it.
“All my research and study shows that we’re headed down a really bad path and I’m afraid that people are going to give in,” Whitehead said. “We are being psychologically re-engineered to accept really tight control over our movements, how we think, and how we relate to other human beings.”
What to do if you are called by a contact tracer?
“If people want to take a Fourth Amendment stand, they don’t have to give over any information, their name or whatever when asked. They’re not required to. One question I would ask is: ‘Am I being charged with a crime? Why would you be contacting me?’ If they show up at the door, you can say the same thing.
“Now, the caution is that you could get arrested, but the only thing that’s going to change things around in this situation is either the people stand up and say ‘I’m not going to take it,’ or they take it. If you take it, it’s going to get really bad. But I’m afraid that, this is what I see generally, most people believe what they see on the mainstream media; they’re going to fall into the game.”
One man who has decided not to “take it” is James Daggett in Texas.
“People need to understand that this is how they’re handling this,” Daggett said. “It’s very heavy-handed…That’s what tyrants depend on. People wilting in the heat of the moment. If I am in any way impeded from carrying out my normal life, then I am going to contact an attorney.”
Americans need to know that the warnings being given about contact tracing are not some vague conspiracy theories.
“It’s reality,” he said. “There were guys with guns at my door.”
As Whitehead says, the only way to tip the scales and turn things away from tyranny is to take a stand and refuse to cooperate with the burgeoning army of health spies.
The time to make that stand is now.
Leo Hohmann is an independent freelance journalist and author of the 2017 book “Stealth Invasion.” If you appreciate the research and reporting of LeoHohmann.com, please consider a donation of any size.
Harvard prof with $4 million home imagines future without yours
Friday, May 15, 2020
|
Bob Kellogg, Billy Davis (OneNewsNow.com)
A constitutional law professor who teaches at Harvard says the COVID-19 pandemic provides a great opportunity for America: Replace the U.S. Constitution with a more “common-good” document and a more powerful government to enforce it.
Writing in The Atlantic, Harvard Professor Adrian Vermeule says the U.S. Constitution has “outlived its utility” and now the time has come for government to claim a more centralized role in people’s lives.
In the scholarly article, Professor Vermeule writes:
As for the structure and distribution of authority within government, common-good constitutionalism will favor a powerful presidency ruling over a powerful bureaucracy, the latter acting through principles of administrative law’s inner morality with a view to promoting solidarity and subsidiarity. The bureaucracy will be seen not as an enemy, but as the strong hand of legitimate rule.
It’s not clear from the article why this new self-described government “bureacracy” will not be seen as the “enemy” of the public nor what happens to people who do hold such a view of government’s “inner morality.” But there are some estimates about past results in history.
Elsewhere in the article, the professor imagines this newly realized American society would mean “Libertarian” concepts such as property rights and economic rights “will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.”
A footnote to the article states it is part of “The Battle for the Constitution,” an ongoing project of The Atlantic that invites debate on the topic.
“He’s actually saying some things that I think are really, really scary,” observes civil liberty attorney John Whitehead, “like doing away with property rights, redistributing resources by the government.”
If the Harvard professor ever gives up his own property, he would be surrendering a nice accommodation: the professor lives in a 4,078-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Cambridge with an assessed value of $4.7 million, the City of Cambridge website shows.
Whitehead, a longtime advocate for constitutional liberties, and his Rutherford Institute often represent clients in cases where 4th Amendment rights are threatened by a bullying police officer, for example, or a school administrator has punished a child for exercising his 1st Amendment rights.
During the current pandemic, Whitehead is witnessing some of his worst fears being discussed — mandatory contract tracing, tip lines for snitching on neighbors, and screening checkpoints — in the name of public safety.
“As long as ‘we the people’ continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security,” Whitehead writes, “things will get worse, not better.”
OneNewsNow reported this week that the health director for Ventura County, California announced COVID-19-posititive people would be removed from their homes if there are not enough bathrooms to keep family members separate.
“I’m telling you,” Whitehead tells OneNewsNow, “they’re using this coronavirus pandemic situation to push their agenda and it’s one of the most dangerous agendas I’ve seen in recent years.”
Regarding the professor’s open call for more government and less freedom, Whitehead says he was alarmed by the communist-sounding demands. It is even more alarming, he adds, that such beliefs are likely being taught to impressionable law students at the Ivy League school.
“If you don’t have property rights,” Whitehead warns, “that means you are the property of the government.”
He acknowledged that there appears to be an option to toggle the tracing technology on and off, but even then, whether the technology would stop tracking you without your consent is unknown.
A constitutional law professor who teaches at Harvard says the COVID-19 pandemic provides a great opportunity for America: Replace the U.S. Constitution with a more “common-good” document and a more powerful government to enforce it.
“He’s actually saying some things that I think are really, really scary,” observes civil liberty attorney John Whitehead, “like doing away with property rights, redistributing resources by the government.”
“I’m telling you,” Whitehead tells OneNewsNow, “they’re using this coronavirus pandemic situation to push their agenda and it’s one of the most dangerous agendas I’ve seen in recent years.”
