Australia's Orwellian App
While Americans have returned to their lives, shirking lockdowns and refilling football stadiums, Australians remain barricaded inside, quarantining under say-at-home orders from their government. Their endless stream of lockdowns is getting even more worrisome as a new phone application is being used to track, record, and report those stuck in home-based quarantines.
When you read Nineteen Eighty-Four, you scoff a little at the absurdity of society, asking, “How could the population let it get to that point?” That point being constant observation by Big Brother, an intensely policed state, ministries constructed with the goal of lying by means of retaining order, being arrested merely for thinking thoughts and asking questions. Inevitably, being brainwashed into believing that one plus one truly does equal three. This government-ran insanity seems extreme, and likening elements of it unto what is happening in Australia might seem like an exaggeration—but the status quo perpetuated in Nineteen Eighty-Four didn’t just come into being one fateful day. One domino tips another, and so on.
What Is The App?
Currently, the application in question is in the trial phase, being tested in South Australia by those who are required to be in quarantine. Those citizens who are in quarantine or are wanting to return to South Australia from travel abroad are required to download the SA Health app.
The application uses geolocation and facial recognition to track the person, who is required to be in quarantine. At random intervals, the app will contact the person, asking for verification of their current location. The person then has 15 minutes to respond with a picture, verifying their identity and status within their mandatory lockdown.
"We don't tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes.”
— Premier Steven Marshall to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
If the person fails to provide adequate proof, or doesn’t respond at all, the South Australian police are dispatched to their location. What’s more, the application requires various daily observations to be input by the user—which are able to trigger a police visit as well.
Sara Garcia and Rory McClaren with ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) spoke with Premier Steven Marshall on August 23rd, 2021, where they quoted him as saying, “We just use it to verify that people are where they said they were going to be during the home-based quarantine.” Additionally, he stated that South Australians should be proud to have the chance to pilot the national program for home-based quarantine. Marshall has hopes that the program and application can be rolled out to international travelers after its current rounds of testing.
Australians chose this method of quarantine tracking over other alternative measures. Robert Carling, an economics senior fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies, was quoted by Fox News, saying, “It is home quarantine Australian style, and the alternative is hotel quarantine Australian style, under police guard, which people hate.”
Currently, pilot testing for the application is voluntary, with only about 20 participants involved thus far. ABC reports participation of around 50 people. Their goal is to tout the successful implementation of the app as an alternate method for required 14-day quarantines.
It’s Either This or That
It’s difficult to say with complete certainty that South Australians, or any Australians for that matter, actually want this application initiative. Current news columns and input from Australian government officials would have us believe that this was a route chosen by the people—after all, Australia is a democracy. The alternative to home-based quarantine in Australia is currently quarantining at a hotel or a quarantine facility if you are returning to the Northern Territory—such as the Howard Springs Centre of National Resilience.
Fees for the 14-day quarantine period at hotels and Howard Springs are incredibly steep, running upwards of $2,500 per person, or $5,000 per family. It’s small wonder why people would be more inclined to vouch for a program that allows them to be at home, rather than forking over thousands of dollars to be in a copy-and-paste internment camp or hotel room. In lieu of supporting an app that spies on them, it seems like a vote for the lesser of two evils.
The Australian government is clearly suffering from the binary problem. They believe there is only this choice or that choice. Black and white thinking, taken to such a high degree that they are willing to blatantly, in few minced words, state a complete distrust of their own population. Which begs a question that Conor Friedersdorf asks in his recent column in The Atlantic—how long can a democracy maintain emergency restrictions and still call itself a free country?
Covid-19 has provided the world with many important take-aways—economic preparation given the advent of a pandemic. The ability to go remote and have a large percent of your workforce operate from home. Being able to implement researched vaccines in a positive, hastened way. The list can go on as there’s no shortage of important tactics we need to remember going forward.
However, a fundamental take-home point that seems to be brushed under the rug is what society and its leaders will do in the name of public safety. Covid-19 tested our willingness to obey governmental rule, with the pendulum swinging wide toward the side of willful, blind adherence. This new application in Australia is an apex example of such unaware cooperation. The critical problems of the world are shaded in black and white—they can either lock you in a hotel room or lock you in your home. Either way, they’ll be watching you. Either way, they’ll say it’s for your own good, for the health and safety of everyone else. Who are you to say otherwise?
If you speak out, claiming that neither option seems appropriate, you’re labeled a heretic that seeks to harm the health of those around you. If you aren’t with them, you’re against them. Even if you really just want what’s best for everyone, without treading on the ides of freedom and liberty.
Viewing everything as we see our sports teams, our party system, the moral themes of our movies—everything as this jersey or that one, red or blue, good or evil—it’s a prison. One that we can only break out of if we reject a binary form of consciousness and notice the dominos tipping before it’s too late.
Feature photo created by the Boston Globe/Adobe
