SEVERAL years ago, I mentioned that the Spanish Government had been using mobile phones to monitor its population of 46,000,000 people and how similar methods were being discussed by the British State. Ministers were discussing how a new National Health Service (NHS) app might be used to identify smart phone users. In other words, Bluetooth LE technology wanted to allow the Government to identify all users on the spurious basis that if one person is found to have coronavirus everyone in contact with that individual will be notified and asked to keep their distance. The official memo in which these plans were discussed even revealed that at some point in the future the app will begin “to enable de-anonymisation,” although we were not told why it should be necessary for the State to get its slimy hands on the details of those considered to be in the infected person’s circle of family and friends.

According to the UK Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, the NHS was “working closely with the world’s leading tech companies”. Needless to say, the potential for abuse is enormous and whilst it was being claimed that the app would be designed to safeguard the health of those said to have contracted the virus, it seemed that it would only be a matter of time before the germinating seed of national groupthink reached the stage whereby the State had a free hand to ostricise people based on their refusal to submit to a vaccination or, potentially, even as a result of their commitment to certain political beliefs.

Whilst the media transformed ordinary hospital workers into living saints, this new system did eventually appear and the health service itself has since become a vehicle for increasing surveillance, control and repression. Whilst the typical mantra remains “the NHS saved my life,” it could help to ruin the lives of many others.