In a video from the Davos World Economic Forum, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla talks about a pill containing a chip that sends a wireless signal to the “relevant authority.”
“Imagine the compliance,” he says. Whenever someone says “compliance” like this it gives me the chills.
I don’t know the details of this technology, but I tend to look at these new developments through the lens of what an authoritarian government could do with them. I helped the U.S. government spy on people in other countries for 12 years. That is a function of government, to gather intelligence on external threats, accepted and justified. But it is NOT the function of the U.S. government to spy on its own citizens
With recent revelations about the FBI, CIA and DHS collecting data on American citizens and intending to control information to the American public, contrary to the rules of engagement that I understood during my tenure and contrary to the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, we should be nervous about this. We should question every new technology that comes along.
Even with the intended application of the technology, we are on that slippery slope. Americans are free to take their medication or not take it. What happens in the case of “noncompliance”? When will we be in a state where taking our medicine is subject to “compliance” and what enforcement actions will be forthcoming? Will Covid vaccines be subject to “compliance”? Flu shots? Happy pills?
I suppose one could argue that this would be good for people who are senile, or to monitor to see whether someone has taken the wrong medicine. But these are problems easily solved externally. Do we want a more intrusive process just because we are too lazy to make less intrusive processes work properly.
The worst part of writing an article like this is that there is no substantial political support for the right to privacy. Neither political party seems to think it is important and all are perfectly willing to violate the privacy of the average citizen when convenient to meet a political goal that might get more votes in the short term. There is no balance on this issue, as we were promised in our two-party system. Congressmen who will stand up for this are few and far between, and no part of the executive branch has been designed to protect privacy for American citizens.
I experience the same feeling of chagrin when I wrote the article Disinformation Board is “Paused” – But Where Is the Rage? Do Americans see the danger of a government body attempting to control infromation?
Americans take their freedoms too much for granted.
We may come to regret that.