In Australia, a team from the university of NSW (UNSW) has developed an AI-driven early warning detection system for epidemics, called EpiWatch. The system curates, prioritises and filters incoming global data to capture and detect early epidemic signals – essentially a risk analytic tool, which will help governments prioritise responses and stop early spread.
The UNSW EpiWatch team anticipates “many more pandemics will emerge, and are striving to provide an end-to-end solution that will help prevent the next pandemic and ensure health security for all”.
The recent pandemic which started in 2020 witnessed in many countries the fast mobilisation of a raft of Government responses that included social distancing, fines, lockdowns, imprisonment, mask wearing, contact tracing and PCR testing. We must also not forget the relentless and heavy-handed campaign to take a provisionally approved experimental mRNA therapy, mandates and proof of vaccine certificates in order to work, have surgery, see loved ones, marry, bury loved ones, study, shop, worship, play or travel.
While an early detection system may be a useful innovation, the omnipotent view that it will “ensure health security for all” is concerning. The epidemic system is one thing, what is more important to know is how and for what reasons politicians, global organisations such as the WHO, profit seeking companies, foundations, NGOs and powerful bureaucrats will use this information. Another vital component not factored into this equation is an individual’s health and human rights. In Australia many liberties were breached over the past three years and continues to be breached by government and business to this day. Case in point: there are thousands of healthy doctors and nurses willing to work, but cannot because vaccine mandates are still in force.
With the current global mindset held by the various dominating governmental and business superclass, AI systems such as EpiWatch may provide them with even more powers to enforce a complete surveillance state and it will be conveniently enforced under the guise of public health or public confidence in health and safety. Both surveillance systems and government responses are at a high risk of being deployed with very little investigation and debate.
History has demonstrated that new governmental powers obtained in times of crisis frequently outlast the initial danger. After 9/11, governments throughout the world hastened the powers of law enforcement, gave state departments and agencies broader capabilities with little accountability, increased distrust of and discrimination against vulnerable groups and systemised mass surveillance as a ‘necessary’ safety response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the constant replay of restrictions, use of the military and police, locking down and restricting the movement of healthy individuals, shutting down industries and then ‘here are your freedoms back’ may now act as a catalyst for harms of this nature. In Australia, authorities and businesses took advantage of the public health emergency to enact intrusive surveillance and restrictions with almost zero checks and balances in place.
EpiWatch and other start-ups alike are willingly playing their part in a much larger surveillance ecosystem and are failing to incorporate clear privacy and mitigation tools against potential abuse of power by state and non-state actors.
Today, security agencies, government ministers and bureaucracies are ushering in problematic digital technologies. What we do as a society next will determine the future of our health systems and laws, the safeguarding of our bodily integrity, privacy, national sovereignty and other fundamental liberties.
It is crucial for the public to consider and openly debate whether specific new surveillance techniques are desirable and necessary in a democratic society. Greater engagement is needed to reject exaggerated or unrealistic claims made by developers of high-tech AI, AR (Augmented Reality) or ML (Machine Learning), and pressure needs to be exerted on elected officials to control the bureaucracy, respect existing laws and enact laws with robust privacy and bodily autonomy protections. Nations are implored to take the initiative. However, only people, communities and global cooperation will be able to rein in present power excesses, imbalances and slow the ‘spread’ of the developing AI and digital surveillance state threatening to capture every person and nation.
Dijana Dragomirovic is CEO of the Australian Medical Network, where this article first appeared.
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Slaves to the phone … A good start to The Resistance would be if all right thinking people refused to carry one … I for one do not.
“The recent pandemic which started in 2020…”
There was no pandemic.
https://sciencefiles.org/2022/11/17/g20-erklaerung-digitale-komplettueberwachung-verabredet-wurden-sie-auch-von-ihrem-regierungschef-verraten-und-verkauft/
No bueno.
And Fishy Rishi totally on board with it.
OMG Schwab looks transformed into Grandpa Klaus on a cruise in that shirt! He’s not at all Bond villain-like!
Yes well, the three amigos aren’t fooling anyone. A polished turd is still a turd.
“While an early detection system may be a useful innovation”
It might be in the hands of a state that could be trusted or where there were functioning checks and balances on state power. All of these failed utterly during covid, as did the final backstop – the vigilance of the masses. So for now my vote goes to getting the state out of our lives as much as possible, so we can fend for ourselves – we’re almost certainly going to be better off.
On the subject of surveillance, look what the crafty gits of the G20 have been up to in Bali.
*If you hit a wall just copy the url to another browser*
https://www.theepochtimes.com/g-20-promotes-who-standardized-global-vaccine-passport-and-digital-health-identity-scheme_4869188.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=imctgm01
This epoch times article confirms the comments I have just made: we need digital ID to protect us from the next “pandemic.”
NO WE DON’T!
There hasn’t been an epidemic in my lifetime and certainly not a pandemic. There is no reason to expect one. No reason whatsoever, therefore digital ID is not required.
What damn use is confirmation of ID now for the C1984 given that even pfisser admits their gunk does not prevent transmission?
Digital ID is not about safety, it is about control.
Couldn’t believe it ! Mark Steyn covered it ! The Chunts are going full throttle , which is why the jabs are still being pushed !!
I know. They are beyond disgusting. This was always inevitable though. I wonder if scientific evidence will ever be resurrected from 2019 because these buggers are above the law and data and scientific rationale underpinning protocols and new initiatives mean precisely sweet FA to these tyrants. We can wave all the studies in the world which contradict what they’re doing at them and it doesn’t matter a jot. They have the power to change laws and make what should be illegal legal based on nothing but BS, psychopathic megalomaniacs that they are.
The real problem with articles such as this and clearly a sceptical author is that there is no initial and forthright dismissal of the ‘next epidemic / pandemic.’ As if these turn up like number 9 buses.
“In Australia, a team from the university of NSW (UNSW) has developed an AI-driven early warning detection system for epidemics, called EpiWatch.”
Marvellous, but why? How many people have died in epidemics in the last 120 years worldwide? Relative to population size not many and it’s an odds on bet that more have died of hunger.
“EpiWatch (team) anticipates “many more pandemics will emerge, and are striving to provide an end-to-end solution that will help prevent the next pandemic and ensure health security for all”.
“The recent pandemic which started in 2020…”
No. We haven’t had a “recent pandemic,” it was all a propoganda campaign designed to stoke fear and thereby enable a mass injection campaign designed to chip, maim and kill.
As we all know this was a pandemic in name only. More accurately a Scamdemic.
The problem here is that once again the author has ceded first base. By accepting the false premise that we have just gone through a ‘pandemic’ it places common sense and a proper interpretation of facts and events on the back foot.
The attempt to roll back the totalitarianism cannot be successful if it is based on rearguard actions.
We have not had a pandemic, nor even an epidemic, ergo there is no need for half-baked computer models dictating that when ten people in Manchester have turned up at a surgery with the sniffles or an outbreak of pimples the whole bloody world needs to shut down.
The arguments and conclusions drawn regarding the abuses which the emergence of EpiWatch and the rest are undoubtedly likely to foster are sound but in conceding a ‘pandemic’ in the first place it is very difficult to refute the apparent need for AI systems to detect “the next one.”
Epidemics have disappeared from the planet for these principle reasons – general improvements in health, including diet and massive improvements in sanitation. Another epidemic is not imminent by any stretch and the likes of EpiWatch are really wasting their money, or ours as doubtless taxpayers will fund this malarkey.
Unless of course EpiWatch have been tipped the wink…..
Yes I noted that as well. Also in the link I shared, the Indonesian minister says “So for the next pandemic…”, like it’s an inevitability. He’s obviously got some inside intel that we don’t then!
Well the WHO did foretell of 10 years of “pandemics” (a.k.a “scamdemics”), so we can’t say we weren’t warned. Gatesy is another one who seemed pretty confident with his forecast of “the big one”. Quite the soothsayers these lot aren’t they?
“Quite the soothsayers these lot aren’t they?”
Aren’t they just.
‘We haven’t had a “recent pandemic,” it was all a propoganda campaign designed to stoke fear and thereby enable a mass injection campaign designed to chip, maim and kill.’
Absolutely right. There were two ‘murdemic’ humps in UK excess mortality, both caused by focussed persecution (murder) of the frail-elderly and chronically seriously ill and obese. At spring-20. the means were desertion, midazolam and aggressive intubation, together with denial of proven existing remedies. At new year 20/21, the means was lethal injection. The perpetrators will answer for their crimes.
Basically, this is more model output that will be take as actual fact. Do we never learn? Seems not.