I’m incensed. I’m so furious that I’m writing this column on the one day of the week when I’m ‘resting’ from the swamp that is the Westminster MSM and the shenanigans of the covid empire.

It was one article – one! – which made me so furious. The DT published a report yesterday evening under this headline: “Millions ‘unwittingly tracked’ by phone after vaccination to see if movements changed – A report revealed that data from one in ten peoples’ phones were tracked in February” (paywalled link). Given how our esteemed papers copy from each other, one might have thought that at least The Times or the DM would’ve picked this up today – but nooo, not one peep! The only paper which did so was The Sun, with a brief mention hidden in their ‘covid’ news, copying the DT report and publishing it twelve hours later (link). ‘Tis quite a feat when such copies usually hit the online editions four hours later.

That alone shows how seriously the MSM, the government’s propaganda branch, regards this unbelievable breach of our privacy: ’tis totally unimportant. At a time when every Cummings tweet is sufficient to elicit acres of pixels and print this concerted silence is beyond belief.

Are the chief editors waiting for marching orders from Matt-the-Han, from BJ or from Gove – or rather, from their various spokespeople? Are they waiting for their ‘senior sources’ to tell them what to write? I can’t wait to read the whitewash, the explanations and excuses they’ll come up with tomorrow! Perhaps they believe it’s best to spread a blanket of silence over it all, in the hope that by tomorrow it’ll all be forgotten and buried under the avalanche of the latest covid ‘news’. 

So without further ado, here are some extensive quotes, just in case the report will be pulled later:

“A report from the SPI-B committee of Government scientists admitted that data from one in ten peoples’ phones were tracked in February, without their owners’ express knowledge.

The figures were used by researchers at Oxford University, who carried out studies for the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which advises the Sage group of Government scientific advisers.

Using “cell phone mobility data for 10 per cent of the British population”, the Oxford University experts found 4,254 individuals were vaccinated.

This group was then tracked through 40 “CDR [call data records] with corresponding location observations” every day, and monitored for behavioural change by analysing their data for the week prior and week after the vaccination event.” (paywalled link)

Firstly, look at the admission that 10% of the British population were tracked without their knowledge. You do the maths – and marvel that this broad sweep caught the proud sum of 4,245 vaccinated Brits! Keep in mind that the general aim was to ‘monitor for behavioural changes’: so ethical! Frankly, I don’t give a fluff if this was for the ‘noble aim’ to do research on vaccination! 

Next, see how the ‘sources’ are squirming to explain that it’s not hurting anyone, that it’s all oh so very anonymous and that they of course didn’t look any further than mobility, of course not! First, this is what the researchers found out:

“By comparing the movements of the vaccinated people against a different control group the scientists found that their “average pre-vaccination mobility increased by 218 meters [sic]”. (paywalled link)

Words fail me! Tracking millions of people behind their backs is worthwhile for SPI-B to find out that 4,254 jabbees became ‘more mobile’ by a staggering 218 meters? The explanations and reassurances of the ‘sources’ the DT contacted is making everything worse:

“A Government spokesman said: “All the data sets used in this research are set out in the paper which makes clear that the mobile phone location data used is GDPR-compliant and has been provided from a company that collected, cleaned, and anonymized the data. The data is at cell tower rather than individual level and the researchers were granted access to the dataset under a research contract with ethical approval provided to the researchers from the University of Oxford, working on behalf of SPI-B”. “ (paywalled link)

What ‘company’ would that be? Don’t expect to be told! But it’s all according to the GDPR data protection laws, so all is well – as if government or SPI-B wouldn’t breach those regulations in their noble fight to make us compliant to their covid regulations! We’re then reassured with another statement from ‘a government source’, telling the reporter that it’s not ‘individual surveillance’ because it’s based on cell phone data and isn’t “GPS tracing data which is commonly used by some large commercial companies for targeted advertising.” (paywalled link) – how very reassuring!

And see: this tracking doesn’t hurt, it’s so ‘anonymous’ and anyway, Big Tech has such data already, for advertising purposes – as if that intrusion hasn’t been talked about as illegal under GDPR rules already! Moreover, the project was ‘approved’:

“[…] by an Ethics committee at Oxford University, with the data “provided by the company as part of the Covid-19 response of sharing data for the public good. […] Only a small group of pre-approved researchers had access to the data.” (paywalled link)

Of course we believe that, don’t we! And why would anyone complain when told that this intrusion is ‘for the public good’, just like all the other covid restrictions! I can already hear the muzzle-stasi accuse people of being selfish, of undermining the fight against covid, of endangering people when they do not want to allow access to their private data by ‘pre-approved researchers’ , especially when ‘an ethics committee at Oxford’ had given their agreement.

Note that we’re not told which “Ethics Committee” this was, just as we’re not told which company it was that dealt with these data. Here’s the anodyne explanation by that ‘source’ or ‘spokesperson’ – they’re all anonymous so we don’t even know if this is one and the same person:

“This data is incidental and automatically generated when people use their mobile phones and is part of the general terms and conditions. Data was extensively anonymised by the company before it is used for research. Users are given a new token of identification each month to preserve anonymity and the only basic demographic data that is shared is age within a two-year bracket and self-reported sex.” (paywalled link)

Excuse me if I’m wrong, but if a company is ‘extensively anonymising data’ then clearly these data were previously not anonymous, right? And why should we believe that the nudge unit SPI-B which permitted this research in the first place isn’t keeping such non-anonymised data for later use? I cannot but agree with this statement:

“Campaigners against greater state surveillance in the UK said Britons would be “disturbed to discover they were unwittingly tracked and subjected to behavioural analysis via their phones”. (paywalled link)

Indeed – but since nobody knew or was told that their movements were tracked ‘for the public good’, why would anyone be upset in the first place? It’s this secrecy on which SPI-B relies. Don’t forget that these secretly obtained data will inform their next ‘nudges’. This last statement is spot on:

“Silkie Carlo, a spokesman for Big Brother Watch, said: “No one expects that by going to get a vaccine they will be tracked and monitored by their own Government. […] Between looming Covid passports and vaccine phone surveillance, this Government is turning Britain into a Big Brother state under the cover of Covid. This should be a wake up call to us all.” (paywalled link)

It should be a wake-up call indeed – but how can people be woken up when nobody knows what government, what the covid empire, what SPI-B are actually doing? I wonder how many other secret, totally ‘ethical’ surveillance schemes are being run behind our backs.

More than ever it seems fair to say that becoming a slave to one’s smartphones makes it easy for government to put us into chains. They don’t need ‘informed consent’, they do it anyway, in secret – and all for finding that 4,254 vaccinated people enlarged their radius of movement by 218 meters. That’s a fine result for ‘the public good’, well worth sacrificing the privacy of millions of us!

Please share this column far and wide before the SPI-B ‘nudge units’ tell their willing helpers in the propaganda branch of the covid government how best to pooh-pooh this report and bury it by producing hordes of big fat squirrels.

And finally – ponder this: is its ‘ethical’ to treat people who unwittingly were made to participate in this behavioural ‘experiment as if they were lab animals being used in ethically approved behavioural experiments inside a zoological laboratory? Is it? I’m still furious!

KBO!

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