Topic: Quarantine App

New South Wales, Australia, has introduced a contact-tracing app that requires quarantined individuals to take a selfie within 15 minutes of a ping to verify their location via GPS. Failure to respond to the app's prompts can result in police visits to the individual's home.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that by the end of September 2021, full vaccination will be required for entry into UK nightclubs. Despite the lifting of restrictions on "Freedom Day," Johnson was forced to quarantine after being "pinged" by the NHS contact tracing app. The app has caused widespread labor shortages, known as the "pingdemic," affecting healthcare workers and the food supply chain.

Police in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia, are utilizing the G2G Now app to monitor individuals in mandatory quarantine. The app uses facial recognition and GPS data, requiring users to submit a selfie within five minutes of a random push notification to prove they are at their registered address. Critics view this as a violation of human rights and a form of digital house arrest.

A report from Moscow details Russia's strict COVID-19 quarantine measures, which require infected individuals to install a "Social Monitoring" app. Users must take a selfie every four hours to prove they are at their place of residence; failure to do so results in a 4,000 ruble fine. The hosts compare these tracking measures to potential future developments in Western countries.

Poland has implemented a mandatory app for quarantined individuals that requires them to upload selfies at random intervals to prove their location. The hosts joke about the difficulty of enforcing such measures on people with older flip phones, suggesting the government might eventually issue "Obama phones" or tracking bracelets to ensure total compliance with digital surveillance.