Lost your livelihood during this time of record unemployment? Wrestling with the impossible choice of feeding your family or getting evicted and living on the street? No worries, you can apply to be a contact tracer and earn up to $22 an hour ratting out your family, friends, neighbors, and enemies!
Build your future career rooting out those who think they know someone who caught COVID-19, maybe someone in their small apartment complex was recently infected and shares the laundry room. Well, if the team can’t connect with them over the phone, you can send someone in protective gear to not so politely knock on their door.
Gestapo tactics anyone?
It’s been estimated only 15% of Gestapo cases started because of their surveillance operations. The inefficient Gestapo only numbered 16,000 in a population of approximately 66 million so they depended on family, friends, and neighbors to do their dirty work for them. [1] A far greater number of Gestapo cases began following tip-offs from members of the public by widespread petty and false complaints. Every allegation, no matter how trivial, was investigated with meticulous and time-consuming thoroughness. An estimated 42% of these denunciations were false. Authorities debated changing the system, but ultimately decided to keep it because it was great for keeping everyone in line, it’s estimated approximately 42% of accusations were personally motivated.
A Berlin stoker reported a prostitute who gave him a venereal disease. Husbands and wives informed on each other. A housewife in Mannheim told Gestapo her husband was making derogatory comments about Hitler’s regime. Turns out the wife wanted her husband out of the way to continue a love affair with an off-duty soldier. In another case, two married doctors were involved. The wife accused the husband of carrying out illegal abortions. This led to his arrest and imprisonment. The husband claimed his wife had a vengeful motive. The husband had passed on a sexually transmitted disease to his wife while carrying on a love affair of his own. Their motive, revenge!
[1] Nazi leadership introduced a hostile environment and initiated measures, whether through legislation or violence, to establish an ethnically defined “people’s community.” By being largely compliant, those who were not excluded had helped to create an even more hostile environment, one in which it was possible to carry out terror in broad daylight without significant unrest or intervention on behalf of the persecuted.
Ever since Coronavirus lockdown measures went into effect, police stations have been inundated with calls denouncing neighbors for excessive public outings. The avalanche of complaints about joggers, overly frequent trips to the supermarket, people not wearing masks has increased exponentially.
And now it’s been announced, several companies are partnering with the United States government offering $17-$22 an hour for ordinary citizens to turn in their family, friends, neighbors and enemies to authorities. What motivates these people to inform on their fellow-man? Money? Fear-based insinuations? Perceived threat of virus? Hostility toward those disparaged as “other”? Are these people convinced it’s their civic duty? Maybe resentments or grudges?
Isn’t it enough Apple and Google, announced on April 10, 2020, they expect Digital Contact Tracing (DCT) to be released in May with the “Coronavirus 2019 Enhanced Tracking Technology for iOS and Android”; wireless radio signals warning people someone they have been in contact with ‘may perhaps’ be infected?
[3] Are we to continue remaining passively on the sidelines while government continues to step on our Constitutional [4] [5] Fourth Amendment rights which prohibit “unreasonable searches and seizures” requiring warrants be supported by probable cause determining what is permissible surveillance at the federal and state levels?
In Katz v United States; defined an unreasonable search as; “when the government engages in warrantless surveillance of individuals under circumstances in which they have a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’ the use of eavesdropping devices violates privacy.
[3] Arguably, the [4] [5] Fourth Amendment issues could be avoided by making use of the so-called ‘special needs doctrine’; accordingly, a warrantless search would not pass the Katz test to be predicated on a ‘special need’, relating to national security, and whether individuals can be subject to quarantines, forced medical testing, mandatory vaccines and involuntary RIFD microchip implant devices, raising the question of government “seizures” (of the body).
There is a complex point to be made about compliance when ‘special needs’ are not conducted for a traditional law enforcement purpose, and circumstances make securing a warrant impracticable, the Supreme Court has ruled warrantless searches may be permissible. However, the ‘special needs doctrine’, is highly controversial.
In Ferguson v City of Charleston, the Medical University of South Carolina subjected unwitting pregnant women to tests for cocaine use; those who tested positive were then charged with criminal child abuse. Ultimately, the Supreme Court noting the ‘special need doctrine’ cannot serve law enforcement purposes. Because the women were threatened with criminal sanctions based on a non-consensual search, the ‘special need’ could not justify the search.
In the context of ‘Contact Tracing’, application of a ‘special need’ consideration would likely preclude any sort of criminal penalty. Therefore, a person could not face criminal sanctions for a quarantine violation based on information obtained through a non-consensual search i.e. “Enhanced Tracking Technology”.
Now back to applying to be a ‘Contact Tracer’ earning up to $22 an hour ratting out your family, friends, neighbors, and enemies, snitching on rule-breakers, wantonly lying about marginalized people, narcing on annoying neighbors, getting even with an ex. When do we stop tattling on one another?
So, think about it, how willing are you to trade in your own privacy and the privacy of others for profit?
And lest we forget [2] [6] Eva-Maria Buch studying foreign languages at Humboldt University; she was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union. On October 10th, 1942, Eva was arrested by a Gestapo officer who said she’d be treated more leniently if she named other collaborators within the group, she replied: ‘That would make me as low as you want me to appear.’… Eva Buch was guillotined at Plötzensee Prison, Berlin August 5, 1943. She was 22 years old.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Remember Evangelical Christians; Matthew 7:2: “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”… Because you might be the next one who finds the Gestapo kicking down your door!
[1] Careless whispers: how the German public used and abused the Gestapo
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/careless-whispers-how-the-german-public-used-and-abused-the-gestapo-1.2369837
[2] Jewish Germans Had Their Lives Destroyed by Nazis During Kristallnacht. Their Neighbors Let It Happen
https://time.com/5449578/kristallnacht-lessons-bystanders/
[3] Would COVID-19 digital contact tracing programs violate the Fourth Amendment?
https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/10007-would-covid-19-digital-contact-tracing-programs
[4] “Seizure of a Person” ~ 4th AMENDMENT
https://letourvoicesecho.wordpress.com/seizure-of-a-person-fourth-amendment/
[5] Know Your 4th Amendment Rights
https://letourvoicesecho.wordpress.com/know-your-4th-amendment-rights/
[6] Eva-Maria Buch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva-Maria_Buch
Kristeen Irigoyen-Hernandez
Human Rights Advocate, Researcher/Chronological Archivist and member in good standing with the Constitution First Amendment Press Association (CFAPA.org)
Kristeen Irigoyen-Hernandez aka Lady2Soothe Follow @OurVoicesEcho
Let Our Voices Echo 