Pull the plug: We are slipping into a digital surveillance panopticon

A huge thank you to the Truth Reporter for submitting this opinion piece.  

Pull the plug.

I would much rather not have to write this article, in fact I spent most of this morning whether or not to write it at all. After a few cups of coffee and some reflection I decided to proceed simply because I had to decide whether I could put myself forward as a libertarian who values individual freedom and not share the techniques and ideas here. Could I sleep at night if people lost their freedom or suffered harm when I could have spoken out? No. So strap in readers and save your freedoms – the time to act is now.

The first thing we have to understand is what we are protecting ourselves from and why.  In this case, our enemy is government intrusion into our lives facilitated and enabled by the COVID19 situation. 

I will not be going into an analysis of the evidence surrounding COVID19 as the subject is too vast to deal with in this article so I will simply state my understanding and position so you can decide if you agree with my analysis – obviously if you think my view on these issues is widely off the mark you can probably ignore my advice.

One.  Given the widespread analysis that the death rate from COVID19 is very low indeed the response has been disproportionate in the extreme and counterproductive. 

Two. It is impossible to ignore the gathering fusion between NGOs, government and the public sector and the possibility that the lockdown is being exploited to modify the entire social contract between the public and the state.

If you think that lockdown is a great idea and that Bill Gates and the government are 100% dedicated to your ongoing wellbeing then this might not be the article for you. 

My chief concern is that we are slipping into a digital surveillance panopticon which will be used to limit freedoms and enable a system of coercive control which is utterly incompatible with the liberty we enjoyed up until a few weeks ago.  

I have very little confidence that the new NHS contact tracing app is as secure and anonymous as is being purported, I am pretty sure that the app will require that you give it permission to access the entire gambit of your phone’s functions. Do not be surprised if the app wants to access contacts, location, wifi, Bluetooth, camera, microphone – basically turning your phone into a pinpointing mechanism with eyes and ears and a big label saying who you are.

What I fear is that there will be a multimedia blitz similar to the current ‘stay at home save lives’ agenda fused with the Thursday clapping ritual that will propagandise people into accepting this app as the norm. With smartphones reaching near universal adoption we could soon be in a situation where it will not be socially acceptable not to have this app. 

If you remember the film WarGames from the 80’s you’ll be familiar with the lines ‘Strange game – the only way to win is not to play..’ 

My belief is that we are going to have to pack up our counters and put the board away if we want to win and this will inevitably translate into behavioural change if we wish to preserve our privacy.  Be under no illusion, you will have to do things differently if you want to maintain the level of privacy you enjoy now. I am going to attempt to explain some strategies that will allow you achieve this without having to be labelled as a malcontent and pushed into the social wilderness. 

The first rule of computer software is ‘garbage in garbage out’. This should be your mantra from now on in relation to everything online. Your privacy strategy should assume that any information you divulge into any online system could be used against you so therefore consider very carefully if it is 100% essential that you need to use it.

Up until very recently the NHS could be trusted to keep your data secure but with the advent of this new tracking app I fear this is no longer the case.

So here’s a few bullet points.

1. Close all social media accounts with your real details on. If you like being on social media then make new accounts with pseudonyms, give out no real data about yourself.  If your friends think you’re mad and disown you then maybe they weren’t your friends in the first instance.
2. End your mobile phone contract, get a pay as you go deal and don’t give your real name – if necessary you can buy top-ups for cash at a newsagents. 
3. If you must have a smartphone then consider getting a phone that doesn’t use Android or IOS, this leaves you with a very restricted choice of a few Blackberry models, the Passport is the nicest. 

If this is all sounding a bit extreme then that is probably because it is, but then none of us expected that due to a virus with a sub 1% fatality rate that the government would basically end liberty and free movement. Even less expected is that the government would cosy up to known globalists like Bill Gates with a mass vaccination agenda. 

The continuous use of the term ‘new normal’ in the political discourse should be a red flag to anyone who understands the overall direction of travel that society is taking at the moment. If you want a glimpse of the future then look at the smart cities in China with their facial recognition systems and social credit scores. The further you let your technology lead you down this pathway the harder it will be to reject it because when you suddenly realise that you’ve gone too far you will be far too deep inside the system to ever escape.

If you want freedom then you are going to have to reject some of the conveniences that you have been bribed with over the years and be prepared to walk away. There was a very profound statement that was made a few years ago – ‘If the online service is free then it is safe to assume that you are the product’ – this has never been more true than it is now.

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