The infernal world designed by the French Senate. End of freedom

The French Senate, one of the two French legislative chambers, albeit with rather limited powers, has prepared a study document which speaks of “Digital crisis management”. This is an official study by the French state body in which various hypotheses are made of the use of AI and data in the health and safety fields.

Here, in the midst of preventing the fall of space objects through the study of trajectories, or the study of digital data to prevent the dangers of nuclear or biological weapons, we also talk about health and social control. Let's see what the Senate study says, which you can find directly HERE :

Although rarely presented as such, devices such as the health pass or the health passport fall into the category of restrictive instruments , as a condition, de facto or de jure as the case may be, of access to certain places and certain activities. In itself, this is nothing exceptional: the “real” passport, the international vaccination card or the driver's license do the same thing, which is to authorize or forbid, one of the main functions of public power.

And here we already admit the REPRESSIVE nature of the Health Pass

But the nature of the bond changes as soon as it is exercised through control , if necessary accompanied by sanctions . And it is precisely here that digital technology could be the most "efficient".

It should be noted that there are more implicit, but no less effective forms of control or coercion: an entrance portal to the subway that would start to ring very loud when a contagious person or a person who should be confined passes by. it is not even necessary to transmit this information to the authorities responsible for supervising compliance with the rules. In early 2021, the press reported the case of a linked box, worn around the neck , which would ring (with a sound of 85 decibels) in the event of a company's employees failing to comply with the removal rules.

How beautiful is the future where it is expected, it is imagined, that the sick will be put a ring around their neck to prevent them from leaving home….

It's not over, afterwards we pass from the possibility of passing from an “insurance” and not a “solidarity” social security system; or rather less supportive, the following is said:

Rather than drastically restricting the individual freedoms of the entire population or a part of it that might consider this unacceptable ^{38 ( * )} , digital technology could make it possible to internalize a fraction of the collective cost corresponding to the behavior of each individual or group of people .

Applied to confinement, the reasoning would be the following: every exit from my home involves a risk, not only for me but also for the health system as a whole. If I still prefer to have my freedom to come and go, and actually leave the house, it is legitimate for me to take on a fraction of the additional cost paid by the company due to the outbreak , for example in the form of a small increase in my contributions. social if the number or duration of my outings exceeds a certain threshold.

This additional cost would still be minimal : it is in fact an insurance logic (the additional cost is distributed among all the people who choose to travel, this is by no means prohibited), and not a sanctioning logic , the principle of which is totally different (it is forbidden to leave the house, the penalty is calculated to be dissuasive, and the higher is the lower the possibility of "being discovered").

Such a model, of course, only works in the event of a low-intensity epidemic , where the overhead imposed on the health system can be absorbed by the commitment of additional financial resources. It is therefore not suitable for acute crisis situations, where stronger measures are required, and corresponds more to situations in which it is relevant to "live" with a circulating disease, with some adaptations.

In detail, the precise calibration of this solution then depends on society's preferences and political arbitration . We could therefore imagine, taking the example of the alternative to confinement:

– a "universal" or "Beverly" system, where each exit counts in the same way for the calculation of the additional premium, whatever the individual risk factors or the reasons for the exit;

– an "insurance" system stricto sensu, or "Bismarckien", where those who run a greater risk (the elderly for example), and consequently are more likely to burden the health system, pay a higher price for each of their exits;

– a system of "accountability" , where the additional cost does not depend on the risk one runs for oneself, but on the risk one makes others run, depending for example on one's own state of health (vaccinated / immunized or not), reasons for the trip (from vital professional activity to going to the disco) or circumstances (in the city, at rush hour, etc.). The latter model is more "fair" but also more intrusive, because it requires more data to be exploited. Depending on the criteria adopted, it may also involve assessing the "legitimacy" of the reasons for leaving (such as paper certificates, however), as well as their binding or pre-selected nature.

Regardless of their differences, all these models have in common a principle of solidarity and mutualisation of risk

here is another way to enforce collective social control: Are you elderly and leave the house? Then you will pay more for health care. Are you going to a party? You will pay more for health care. Do you have a cold and leave the house? You will pay for the risk of making others sick. Even if they say the opposite, in reality, the whole system encourages the behaviors considered "Acceptable" by the political power, all controlled by checking the geolocation data, cameras etc.

Virtually the end of personal freedom. This is a future imagined by the French Senate: is it also what you want?

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The article The infernal world drawn by the French Senate. End of freedom comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-mondo-infernale-disegnato-dal-senato-francese-fine-della-liberta/ on Thu, 22 Jul 2021 14:09:03 +0000.