Contact-tracing app may become a permanent fixture in major Chinese city

One of China's major tech hubs is planning to make a health and movement tracking system developed to fight the COVID-19 epidemic a permanent fixture in daily life. Officials in the city of Hangzhou, home to Alibaba and other Chinese tech concernts, said on Friday (Chinese language) the local government wishes to create …

[alain williams]

Hong Kong

is the next place where they will want to roll this out. Very useful.

[Anonymous Coward]

They already co ntrol everybody through the social credit system...

And everything there needs to be done with a phone that is attached to your ID and monitored by government approved apps. It makes no difference at this point if this new app is installed or not. They are all robots that drram of electric sheep.

[BebopWeBop]

Of course, it will be 'welcomed' - more control over what people do and who they see, and all in the name of public health.

[Anonymous Coward]

Public Health is the new Think Of The Children.

I'm not sure how they will use it to ban porn, but their fertile minds will think of something - e.g. causes a serious shortage of toilet roll in times of national emergency.

[Julz]

So

How many here think that some form of this will be rolled out here (wherever here is for you)?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: So

Oh, I reckon that Priti Vacant is already taking notes ...

[Chris G]

Re: So

Going by what I have read on the home grown UK 'health app' they may ahead of or collaborating with their Eastern friends.

The same apoears to be the case for a number of other locations.

[Guus Leeuw]

Do you?

Dear Sir / Madam,

Can I kindly ask whether Robbie Harb actually reads the text before it is posted?

Best regards,

Guus

[Wade Burchette]

"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery." -- Thomas Jefferson

[Anonymous Coward]

@Wade Burchette - Define freedom!

Good! Now define slavery!

Looking back into the history of slavery in US we can find this little gem:

[quote]The Three-Fifths Compromise, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, allocated Congressional representation based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three fifths of all other Persons".[/quote]

It seems the Land of Freedom had no problem with slavery. It's all a matter of definition.

[doublelayer]

Re: @Wade Burchette - Define freedom!

So Jefferson was a hypocrite about slavery, being happy to make others do it while not wanting to do it himself. What else is new? I think the inherent injustice and hypocrisy of basically all of history has been realized before. The question that now concerns us is the present, and whether we like the person who said it, the point still may have validity to the present. Similarly, we should keep in mind the failings of people in the past so we don't repeat them. In this situation, for example, we would be keeping in mind that freedom for some didn't mean freedom for all, so we should be very careful to ensure that everyone gets the benefits we create or maintain now.

[Ken Hagan]

Yeah, but that dude is sooo old. He can't possibly have anything relevant to say about modern society. I mean, he'd never even *heard* of mobile phones.

[Drew Scriver]

China: we want to track everyone* so we're going to do just that.

The West: we want to track everyone* but we're still stuck on figuring out how to get the masses to accept it.

*Leaders are exempt, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spyzhou now Hangzhou later

... all for social distancing which should have been a temporary measure (weeks) as a lesser alternative to full lockdown. If 8+ weeks of full lockdown didn't contain the virus, then social distancing with contact tracing wont work either. In which case the virus will continue to spread, so all we have done is flatten the curve at great cost economically and to freedom. Clap clap.