When I first heard the term ‘track and trace’ it had all the hallmarks of a slogan or another of these irritating alliterative expressions that has entered the lexicon such as ‘trick or treat’, ‘data not dates’, and the ‘face and space’ of ‘hands, space, face’. This seemingly innocuous phrase which implies finding those who may be infected with COVID-19 or those who may have been in proximity to them as a public heath measure is, of course deeply sinister. If it only stopped at track and trace it might make some sense. But to track and trace has been added Home Secretary Priti Patel’s proposals to have ten thousand daily checks on people purporting to be in quarantine and now the revelation that the University of Oxford has been tracking people after vaccination via their mobile phones without their permission. All this suggests that the ‘nanny state’ has been gender realigned to become ‘Big Brother’. The Orwellian, 1984, reference points for our present circumstances are copious.
Track and trace is mainly a pain in the neck. Such is my desire for a pint of draught beer inside a warm cosy pub that, along with my sons, we all duly beeped our apps on the way into some pubs at the weekend. But it is noticeable how it was previously only one person in the party who had to do this, now it is everyone, and the staff member responsible must stand and see you do it rather than trusting you to flash your mobile phone at a QR code stuck to the pub door. These poor folk have no choice. Their businesses are on their uppers and the city authorities—certainly known to have done it in my home town of Hull—will be down on them like a ton of authoritarian bricks if they don’t play the COVID-19 game. Under normal circumstances my passport is swiped at up to 100 international airports annually, I carry a mobile phone and my use of credit, debit and loyalty cards is prolific. If Big Brother is watching me, he must be exhausted. But it simply cannot be true, as it says in the NHS COVID-19 app, that no personal information is gathered. How do they know who you are, where you have been and who to contact if you have been near an infected person? No amount of technical information and disclaimers will convince me otherwise. Witness the mission creep over the vaccine passport.
Superimposed on our visits to the pub, which are being monitored, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail last week ran stories of Priti Patel’s plans to check up on those returning from countries not on the diminishing and barely existent Green List for international travel. To achieve this, ten thousand visits will be carried out daily. In fact, The Sun reported this story in April and also revealed that a private company would be hired to do this. It appears that the ‘magic money tree’ has been shaken once more. Presumably at vast expense, our own money rendered to the government in taxes will be used to snoop on us. I have no idea of the cost of this venture but let us assume that the people involved will work an eight-hour shift and take at least an hour per visit (the houses will not all conveniently be located in the same street). If that is the case, then over 1000 people will need to be employed. Someone in the UK will have a job. In the most recent reports, it was stated that the police would also be involved. At least it might get them back on the streets but, surely, they have better things to do. All this for a virus that does not infect the vast majority of the population in any country regardless of the measures taken which is symptomless in two-thirds of people who test positive and from which over ninety-nine percent of those infected survive. Even medical super brain Professor Chris Whitty, our Chief of the Medical Staff, says that smoking will have killed more people than COVID-19. I would ask ‘why not track, trace and surveil smokers?’ but I do not want to give him any ideas.
None of the above is good news for anyone, but at least we knew it was happening. Now we come to the revelations in The Sunday Telegraph that University of Oxford researchers have been using mobile phone data to follow the movements of ten percent of those attending vaccine centres. I think the research and the outcome—that people who have been vaccinated are more mobile than those who have not been vaccinated—is fascinating and worth exploring. But that is hardly the point. The research was done without the specific consent of the people being followed and that is simply unethical, even if it was—as claimed—passed by a research ethics committee at Oxford. The only attempt at reassurance I saw was that the data were only available to the few people directly involved in the research. That is a sine qua non of all research involving human participants, unless specifically consented otherwise, but it does not obviate the need for consent. We are not witnessing a slide towards an authoritarian state. That implies we can slide back up it. We are witnessing a ratchet and each click is yet another irreversible and corrosive step which removes our freedom and hands it over to the state.
Opinions from the Unity News Network (UNN) editorial team & various contributors. | UNN always clearly distinguishes between news and opinion pieces and as an open minded outlet we publish views from a variety of people and organisation that do not necessarily reflect the views of UNN or its writers. Articles published under UNN Opinions are always opinion pieces and if published on behalf of a contributor will contain that authors name at the start of the piece.
