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“We Need An Army Of Contact Tracers” – Meet The Enforcement Arm Of The “New Normal”

As the people of the world grapple with a pandemic that is demonstrably less deadly than originally reported, the public is being primed to accept an exponential increase in invasions of personal liberty and privacy. Every day the public grows more weary of lock downs which seem to never end, and the bankrupting of individuals and businesses around the world. Amidst the frustration and protest a solution is being presented.

To return to normal, we are told, we must accept certain changes to how our world operates. Of course, this is actually a push to a “new normal” which will mark the world after COVID-19. Just like the attacks of September 11, 2001, there is the world we knew before, and there is the post-9/11 era. We are currently in the middle of the COVID-19 era and a shift to post-COVID19 life will not happen without the completion of local, state, national, and international programs which identify potential infectees, test them, and, if positive, quarantine them in their homes or other government facilities.

This is what is known as a contact tracing program. You have likely heard the term in recent days and weeks because a number of local and state bodies within the United States are considering or already launching contact tracing programs. Nations like China, Singapore, India, South Korea, and Israel have implemented these programs but have also faced criticism from digital rights advocates for violations of privacy protections.

So what exactly is contact tracing?

Contact tracing is a process of identifying individuals who may have come into contact with an infected person, collecting information about their contacts, and then tracing the contacts of infected individuals. All persons who may have come into contact with an infected individual are tested for infection, treated for the infection, and their contacts traced as well.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing calls for digital contact tracing using cell phones to notify individuals when they may have come into contact with an infected person or visited a hot spot of infection. Digital contact tracing apps use Bluetooth to track encounters, a move which is supposed to anonymize actual location data. Other forms of contact tracing apps involve the use of location data gathered from cellular networks.

Additionally, tech giants Apple and Google have promised to help slow the spread of the virus with new tracking apps that the public can download to report themselves as infected. Using Bluetooth, the phones will warn app users when they are near an infected person or a hot spot. The programs will use data from Android and iPhone users who volunteer for the program later this month. Jennifer Granick, a surveillance and cybersecurity attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union told Politico that the joint effort between the tech companies “appears to mitigate the worst privacy and centralization risks.” However, “there is still room for improvement.”

Microsoft is collaborating with the University of Washington on their own project which the university promotes as a privacy based contact tracing app. Researchers with the University of Washington and UW Medicine worked with volunteers from Microsoft to develop CovidSafe. The researchers stated that the app will alert users about potential exposure to COVID-19, but will do so without giving up anyone’s privacy.

“With CovidSafe, all information is stored locally on your phone unless you choose to share that you’ve tested positive,” explained Justin Chan, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Only then is your data sent to a secure server, and the app alerts anyone who has been nearby. After these notifications are sent, all the information is deleted.”

CovidSafe is not the only attempt to build a privacy-based contact tracing program. In April, a team of researchers launched Coalition, a free contact tracing app designed to protect users’ privacy and protect communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Coalition claims to utilize secure Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and cryptography to protect a user’s identity by generating random anonymous IDs. The app uses Coalition’s Whisper Tracing, an open source privacy-first protocol that randomizes a user’s device identity and does not share identifiable information with the cloud.

Building a Contact Tracing Army

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced efforts by NY state to hire thousands of contact tracers. The state’s contact tracing program is being developed with $10 million from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and support from Johns Hopkins University. Cuomo stated that applicants will need to go through a training program and pass an online exam before being granted the authority of contact tracer. The state’s program will involve identifying COVID-19 positive individuals, interviewing them about contacts in the previous two weeks, and then those contacts must isolate for two weeks.

By late April, calls for contact tracing had grown so loud that Congressman John Garamendi introduced a bill that would “expand volunteer opportunities within AmeriCorps and the Federal Emergency Management Agency”. Garamendi is the Co-Chair of the AmeriCorps, a nationwide volunteer force created by former President Bill Clinton in 1993. The Orwellian bill – “Undertaking National Initiatives to Tackle Epidemic Act” or the UNITE Act – would allow AmeriCorps and FEMA to create a national contact-tracing corps.

“The coronavirus pandemic has put an unprecedented strain on our society, and our nation requires a significant scaling of testing and contact tracing in order to flatten the curve and lift stay-at-home orders,Garamendi stated.

Coincidentally, the UNITE Act lines up with recent calls for a contact tracing “army”. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control called for more contact tracers in the state. Dr. Joan Duwve, the Director of Public Health for DHEC, said being able to test someone rapidly was necessary.  “We need an army of contact tracers to respond in a short time to someone who has a positive diagnosis,” Duwve said.

On the opposite side of the country, California Governor Gavin Newsom has partnered with the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco to train more than 3,000 employees to become “coronavirus detectives“. During a live streamed press conference Newsom described the efforts as a training academy designed to build an “army” of 20,000 people who can test, trace, and isolate people who may be infected. Sonia Angell, California Department of Public Health director and State Health Officer, also stated that the new contact tracing program will be connected to California’s existing digital disease surveillance platform. Angell claims the database will be confidential.

The push for international contact tracing programs has also blossomed in nations like South Korea and China, who are praised for their aggressive approaches to slowing the growth of the virus. Forbes noted that South Korea has had a massive drop in COVID-19 diagnoses largely due to “mass rapid testing and comprehensive digitally-enabled contact tracing”. South Korea has also used GPS phone tracking, CCTV cameras, credit card transaction monitoring, and automated text alerts as part of a comprehensive universal contact tracing program.

The Chinese government approach is what you would expect from a totalitarian communist state: an all encompassing app that pretty much “controls your life.” Bloomberg describes China’s contact tracing app as a “public-private ‘health code’ system” which issues one of three risk assessments in the form of a colored QR code. “A green QR code, which denotes a low risk of having the virus, is the general default, while coming into contact with an infected person can trigger a yellow code and a mandatory quarantine. Red is for a likely or confirmed case,” Bloomberg reported. It does not take an extremely paranoid mind to see how this system could be easily abused.

The Indian government recently launched their contact tracing app –  Aarogya Setu – which quickly became the fastest downloaded app on record, with more than 83 million users. Although India is not the first nation to implement a nationwide contact tracing program, the nation lacks strong privacy and data protection laws for its more than 1.3 billion citizens. The Guardian reported that the pandemic is being “used as a pretext to erode privacy and freedom of speech in the name of ‘winning the war’ against coronavirus.” In April The Guardian revealed that a draft government memo explained how the data gathered by the contact-tracing app could be “de-anonymized” by government officials.

Israel’s attempted grab for tyrannical health surveillance powers were recently hampered by a decision from the Supreme Court which banned the intelligence community from tracing the phone location of those infected with COVID-19. The Israeli Shin Bet service was given emergency powers through the end of April before the court warned of a “slippery slope” where the surveillance tool could be used against innocent individuals. Whitney Webb recently reported that at least three tech companies involved in the build out of the “coronavirus surveillance system” have connections to Israel’s government and the usual Big Tech players.

Following The Orders of the WHO

In early April, Dr. Michael Ryan, the head of the World Health Organization’s team responsible for the international containment and treatment of COVID-19, called for looking into families to find potentially sick individuals and isolate them from their families.

“Due to lock down, most of the transmission that is actually happening in many countries now is happening in the household at a family level,” Ryan stated. “In some senses, the transmission has actually been taken off the streets and pushed back into family units… Now we need to go and look into families, and find those people who are sick and remove them and isolate them in a safe and dignified manner.

Ryan was also involved in the now-infamous Event 201, a global pandemic simulation, conducted on October 18, 2019, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and John Hopkins University Center for Health Security. Ryan’s bio states that “from November 2013 to October 2014 he worked with GPEI as Middle East Polio Response Coordinator” and partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (among others) for a vaccination program which reached 25 million children in eight target countries as part of 44 mass polio vaccination campaigns.

Ironically enough, the WHO released a document in 2019 which states that under no circumstances should contract tracing be used. The document, first reported on by independent researcher Kenny Palurintano, details the WHO’s views on Non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) in response to a pandemic. In section 6.1, “Contact Tracing,” under “quality of evidence”, it states, “There is a very low overall quality of evidence that contact tracing has an unknown effect on the transmission of influenza.” Additionally, under the “Executive Summary”, in Table 1, the WHO lists contact tracing under the heading “Not Recommend In Any Circumstances”.

Despite the WHO’s own documents denying the validity of contact tracing, officials in Ventura County are heeding the call of WHO official Dr. Michael Ryan. At a May 4 press conference, Ventura County Public Health Director Dr. Robert Levin said those who live in homes where they could expose family members to COVID-19 could be removed from their homes and moved into other health facilities.

“We also realize that as we find more contacts, some of the people we find are going to have trouble being isolated. For instance, if they live in a home where there is only one bathroom and there are three or four other people living there, and those people don’t have COVID infection, we’re not going to be able to keep the person in that home,” Levin stated. “Every person who we’re isolating, for instance, needs to have their own bathroom. And so we’ll be moving people like this into other kinds of housing that we have available.”

The Ventura County Public Health board did not elaborate on what other kinds of housing might be made available to those unable to quarantine at home.

If there is a silver lining to the growing support for contact tracing, it might be the public’s own hesitance to join. According to Forbes, nation-states need about 60 percent of their population to adopt and regularly use the tool for it to be effective. Forbes reports that most cities are not likely to achieve 60% or even 40% compliance. Unfortunately, Forbes reminds us, “It’s a relentless fight. And it takes an army of tracers.” Forbes also notes that cities will need to “force changes of behavior” before reopening society. Contact-tracing apps are being seen as one of the conditions of ending lockdowns—mandating and enforcing their use might become a logical next step.

How exactly the cities, states, and nations will enforce the use of contact tracing apps remains to be seen, but we are already seeing a rise in reports of arrests of individuals who violate orders to close businesses, stay home, and practice social distancing. What should we expect to see when an individual or an entire community chooses to opt-out of contact tracing surveillance programs?

It is important to understand that contract tracing is only one part of an overall strategy which poses a danger to liberty and privacy. In addition to creating mobile apps which snitch on you, Apple, Facebook and Google are also sharing data with the government to help determine if the public is following social distancing guidelines. MIT Technology Review reported that at least one company is selling an app that uses machine learning Artificial Intelligence to monitor social distancing. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Amazon is using similar software to enforce social distancing between their warehouse staff. There are also reports of “pandemic drones” flying above the skies of Connecticut and Maryland to monitor social distancing and take temperatures.

Together these technologies represent the foundation of the Technocratic State, built on top of the fears of a public which has been conditioned to accept any and all relief from the terrifying round-the-clock coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the public accepts the COVID1984 Technocracy in the name of “getting back to normal” it’s likely the world we have known will be regarded as a relic of a past era, a quaint idea of what life was like and what it could be, if only the public could defeat the new invisible enemy, COVID19. However, it’s important to understand the institutions which are benefitting from the current pandemic. Only by acknowledging the true power players – those who maneuver behind the scenes to profit and enslave – can the free hearts and minds of the world defeat the true enemy: COVID-1984.

Stay tuned for my next investigation which will delve further into the web of Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and the Gates funded programs and companies which are profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Derrick Broze
Derrick Broze
Derrick Broze, a staff writer for The Last American Vagabond, is a journalist, author, public speaker, and activist. He is the co-host of Free Thinker Radio on 90.1 Houston, as well as the founder of The Conscious Resistance Network & The Houston Free Thinkers.
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/category/derrick-broze/

16 Replies to ““We Need An Army Of Contact Tracers” – Meet The Enforcement Arm Of The “New Normal”

  1. DHS / Fusion Centers have been doing this for a decade, Contract Stalking.
    We refer to ourselves as Targeted Individuals. The FBI has Infragard and Citezens Corp.
    They are testing military grade RF weapons on innocent civilians.
    DEWS maim torture and slow kill covertly.

  2. I just discovered Last American Vagabond and find it to be the most highly reputable journalism out there on the COVID crisis. I really appreciate the thorough reporting, the links to sources, and the overall expert deconstruction of all the myriad ways in which the public is being manipulated right now. Kudos, bravo, and keep doing what you’re doing.

  3. Anyone is free to assume that a coordinated global lockdown, a trial run of medical marshal law, and an astonishingly quick reprogramming of social mores can just happen overnight, without the forethought of extensive, coordinated planning. For anyone paying attention, however, recent events have exposed not only serious corruption, but the dire threat to freedom and the vulnerable position the average citizen occupies. Bill Gates is not a health expert, not a scientist and not an elected representative. Yet he and other cohorts of a shared vision assume greater prominence during the crisis, more brazen about what they see is required, as if testing a chokehold on the world. What kind of citizen is required for their schemes to work? Do you want to be that?

    Coronavirus and the Fog of War

    https://www.minds.com/darzoum/blog/coronavirus-and-the-fog-of-war-1096601089459326976

  4. I would just like to know,If you don’t have a smart phone, then what? and if you do but don’t take it with you when you go out doors?

    1. We will be punished by not being allowed to join others until we do… or so they hope …. I shall be coming out shootin….
      Enough of this FASCIST TAKE OVER..

  5. Just yesterday i read in the news Axel Voss/member of the EU parliament wants advantages for those which use the contact app, like be the first to visit restaurants, theatres etc.

    Again the politics of nudging here, and the majority will fall for it.
    Contact tracer army reminds me too much of Gestapo maybe thats why i have not read about if there is such in germany here, our politicians love to nudge us all day until the majority goes the wanted way.

    Ar least smartphones are not mandatory yet, so i dont have one, no app for me.

  6. The same top lot who invented HITLER hoping to take all Europe, then moved all the Gastapo and Stasi scientist over to carry on the Fascist World Order, and here we are, its right in your face over a NON EXISTENT excuse to make you cower away as all you rights are removed , This was ALWAYS the plan, Just have to bring the numbers down of, as Hellery calls the Deplorable’s, by collapse of food chain break down, on purpose, farms either flooded or droughted out from producing by Chemrtails and HAARP so as to cause starvation, or a poisoned nano chipped 5G activated Mandatory Vaccines to cause early death of millions..
    These inhumans need to be led away and disposed of, you cannot reason with the insane.

  7. Paper Please. Vee vill keep you safe, Ja.
    It’s for the good of the collective comrade.
    We’re all in this together but keep your distance.
    You don’t have the badge of Covid-Safe?
    (Alarm Sounds, STASI team assembles)

  8. Suddenly ALL psychos / Eugenicists are going all out ” to save humanity” all over the world. How very nice of them. Like on 9-11 there is a bad enemy out there ( which like on 911 was concocted by these same “Nice” people ) and they are coming to the rescue of the world. ? !
    Frankly I prefer WW-3.
    It will never stop after this. Their technology is making quantum leaps and they want it all . They will not let us alone and let life take its course. We not only have to make life difficult for them. We must proceed to eliminate THEM. There is no half way. Your house is full of cockroaches. You have to eliminate every one of them. ‘Protest’ is testosterone gone dry. There is no non-military solution. Every mobile phone installation must be decimated. Every mobile phone smashed. There is no decent solution. You want this world , you will have to fight for it. The mobile network is a powerful tool in THEIR hands.
    The mobile phone is the final enslavement of humanity. Smash every mobile phone you see. The new paradigm is ” eliminate all mobile phones” .
    How do we peace loving, decent dudes mutate to being the terrorist for the psycho terrorist. Gates , Fauci et al are terrorists. The state will not proceed to eliminate them. So where does that leave us. Christ was supposed to come down and help us,with his “fiery sword”. He has written us off. This is WW-3 and covid-19 is when it started.
    There is no alternative way. We have to forget this nice cozy dream world, say goodbye to it, and accept this fact. It is better to die for freedom than to live in a Bill Gates / Fauci world. Hit these bastards, or they will squash humanity. Eliminate their very DNA. A world without hope, is a world without that spark of freedom, illusory or not , in our soul.
    I feel so sad looking all the football teams of this world trying to play their game, but without spectators. The human devoid of the spirit.

    It is easy to sit on this nice seat, in front of this computer and day dream. Blowing off my head with the indignation I feel.. It is the hope that there are great people in this world in high places, with high intellect, who value freedom above all else. AND THE HOPE IS THAT THEY WILL ACT AT THE CORRECT TIME.
    This hope is wearing thin. Donald Trump has too many comfort corners. The moral fiber is lacking. A group of people in the MIC and tied up with the Russians ,maybe. Lovers of life, humanity and freedom. But this is what Israel is meant to prevent. The ever present scum of the Rothschild has been created for this express purpose. To prevent the overthrow of the cabal.

    You do not have to publish this. I know you feel the same way I do. Let some responsible people glance my writings. And smile. We cannot let go . The answer is someplace out there. There is a God out there who will help us if we do not lose heart. We just have to ask Him.

  9. Excellent site. Superb research. Thanks for the hard work. You are not the only one getting real desperate as we all face the reality of what is to be. All wealthy people doling out their cash, “investing” in what they know is pure BS, scaring us little by little each coming day. And led by Bill Gates. So all that talking by the prophet David Icke has come to pass. All this enthusiasm to keep an eye on every one on this planet. So the purpose of 5G is now well established.
    It is time all sane people ‘looked the other way’ and turn to God, away from the Satanic ‘reality’ being presented.
    “Contact tracing”. Ever heard of such BS. Our solace and answer lies within us, as we face our soul. “Do we really want to be a part of this planet “. “WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO OUR KIDS. AND THEIR KIDS”. Advancements in technology, where nanobots are happily cruising in our arteries, under the control of external AI, the very slaughter of our personal existence.
    ” OK, you are 65 years old tomorrow, and we shall be switching you OFF tomorrow” !! “It is for the good of humanity, we will be making use of some of your organs, if we find them useful’. “Say your goodbyes” ” lucky you, free of prison planet'”. ” Wait a minute, not so fast. You will reincarnate under AI programmed control, when and where it is deemed necessary.” ” Your soul is your curse, not allowing your total freedom “. ?! “Next time around say your prayers five times a day, to our lord and master Lucifer, who has made all our knowledge and technology possible, and you may get a better deal.”

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