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Police App Encourages People To Report Neighbors Who Violate Stay-At-Home Orders

Police App Encourages People To Report Neighbors Who Violate Stay-At-Home Orders

Via MassPrivateI blog,

How do you encourage people to turn against each other during the COVID-19 pandemic?

The answer is not that complicated, especially if you live in the City of Bellevue, Washington.

Four years ago, when the city created the MyBellvue app, it was touted as being a quick and easy way to report things like downed street signs, potholes, street light issues and noise complaints.

Fast forward to 2020 and public fears of COVID-19 have encouraged law enforcement to turn neighbors into government snitches.

Geekwire revealed how the Bellevue Police Department has turned a public service app into a report on your neighbors app.  You can report these incidents through the MyBellevue app on your electronic device or the MyBellevue portal.

“Police in Bellevue, Wash., are asking residents to report violations of the state’s “stay home” order online in an effort to clear up 911 lines for emergencies.”

A recent Associated Press article revealed that people are all to happy to report on their neighbors.

“Snitches are emerging as enthusiastic allies as cities, states and countries work to enforce directives meant to limit person-to-person contact amid the virus pandemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives worldwide. They’re phoning police and municipal hotlines, complaining to elected officials and shaming perceived scofflaws on social media.”

LA Mayor Offers Snitches Rewards For Reporting On Neighbors

According to a CBS LA4 article Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city would reward snitches.

Four businesses have been referred to the city attorney’s office for misdemeanor filings.

“You know the old expression about snitches, well in this case snitches get rewards,” Garcetti said. “We want to thank you for turning folks in and making sure we are all safe.”

When law enforcement encourages Americans to turn against each other we all lose. We become a nation controlled by fear.

“Suspected violations are tracked in the MyBellevue app and generate a heat map that shows where gatherings have been reported. The map shows hot spots of activity throughout the City of Bellevue, which is about 10 miles from Seattle.

The Bellevue Police Departments’ MyBellevue page claims police need the public’s help monitoring their neighbors.

“The vast majority of people in our community are following the “Stay Home” order and are being safe,” said Chief Steve Mylett. “But we need your help in reporting violations where there may be a large amount of people at risk.” 

The MyBellevue customer assistance portal spells out exactly what this is app is really meant for now.

  • Report Gatherings: You may report gatherings here in violation of the State mandate to “Stay Home”

  • Contact Your Police Sector Captain: Got an issue affecting your neighborhood? Contact the sector captain for your area! A captain is assigned to each of three geographical sectors — North, South and West — and is ultimately responsible for issues taking place in their sector. 

When city services apps get turned into a glorified version of DHS’s “If See Something, Say Something” we all lose. As Geekwire notes,

“Sometimes there is a need to implement extreme measures but often these crises are used as justification to implement surveillance and data collection measures for purposes beyond that crisis,” the ACLU of Washington’s Jennifer Lee said.

Reporting on your neighbor apps fly in the face of the freedoms Americans have enjoyed for centuries.

The MyBellevue mobile app can be found at the Apple store and Google Play store. Two recent reviews spell out how everyone should view apps that encourage Americans to report on each other.

Leo Rosas said, 

start sarcasm “Yes daddy, step on me harder, oh yes take my constitutionally protected rights away!* end. YOU SOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES! tell on your neighbors for leaving their house is BS you have no clue where they are going or for what. Since no crime has been committed in traveling, the police have no right to know where you go or why. There is no right to Abridge constitutionally protected free travel! Y’all were sworn to protect and uphold the constitution, covid doesn’t change that.”

Matthew Harphan said,

“I bet Hitler is rolling in his grave, super Jealous of your app used to violate civil rights through unconstitutional enforcement during Corona virus. You swore an Oath to Uphold and Defend the Constitution.. this is pathetic. I expect better from police. Despicable”

Now is the time to fight for our freedoms before a panicked nation willingly gives them away.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 18:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dXaV8H Tyler Durden

Liberty of Movement and Assembly

Some recent comments have faulted people (like me) for not being “principled libertarians” because we support various restrictions in a time of epidemic, including restrictions that we agree are extraordinarily burdensome. As it happens, I don’t claim to be a principled libertarian: There’s a reason the subheader of the blog says “Often libertarian” (though of course that reflects the aggregate of the cobloggers as well). But more broadly, I think that many facets of liberty rest on certain assumptions, and sometimes can’t extend to situations where those assumptions don’t apply.

Some examples, of course, are familiar. Sexual liberty is very important, for instance (as a matter of libertarian principles, whether or not you think the U.S. Constitution is properly interpreted as protecting it). But it rests on assumptions of individual capacity to make potentially risky decisions that might not apply to, say, young children, or mentally handicapped people. Likewise, the right to procreate is very important. But if we were living on a spaceship that was limited to recycling a sharply constrained amount of air and food, that might call for limits on the number of children one has that wouldn’t be justifiable in our current world of plenty.

Liberty of movement and of physical association—coming together for political, religious, social, professional, recreational, or other purposes—is likewise tremendously important. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is just one particular express elaboration of this liberty. But the premise behind the liberty is that people assembling together can choose to be “peaceable,” and thus physically safe for each other and for bystanders, and we should punish only those who deliberately abuse the right (by acting non-peaceably).

Contagious disease, unfortunately, has the property that I can sicken or even kill you with it entirely inadvertently, without any choice on my part. It’s not like carrying a gun, which I might misuse but which I can choose to use properly. It’s like carrying a gun that every so often (and largely unavoidably) just shoots a bullet in a random direction, without my pulling the trigger.

What’s more, not only can I sicken or kill you when you’ve voluntarily agreed to be around me (e.g., agreed to go to a political rally or a religious service where many potentially infected people gather): I can end up helping cause the sickness or death of other parties with whom you later come into contact, or those even more steps removed.

Libertarians often articulate the basic principle that people cannot initiate the use of force or fraud against others. But I don’t think it makes sense to see the “force” prong as limited to deliberate injury; causing sickness or death to others inadvertently may be less morally culpable, but it is just as injurious. Right now, our bodies (at least until the availability of highly reliable tests for not being infected, or, better yet, being immune) are, for most of us, a potential source of infection and thus injury and death to third parties. The normal conditions that have justified liberty of movement and assembly in the U.S. for all my life unfortunately do not apply right now.

Now of course this raises all sorts of complicated questions. Obviously liberty emerged at a time when contagious diseases were both much more common and more deadly than they are today, because of the absence of effective prevention and treatment—consider, for instance, tuberculosis. Some amount of unintended risk created for others was seen as acceptable.

My sense is that our society is now insisting on a much lower threshold of acceptable risk, perhaps because we have gotten so used to a very low death toll from casually communicated illnesses (mostly from the flu and similar diseases). One can certainly debate whether we have adopted too low a threshold: Perhaps massive restraints on travel and assembly might be acceptable for diseases with the lethality of Ebola or some unvaccinatable-against mutation of smallpox, but shouldn’t be acceptable for this strain of coronavirus.

And of course this is further complicated by the uncertainty of just how reliable various protective measures might be: For instance, if it we were confident that wearing a certain kind of mask would prevent the wearer from infecting others, then there would be much less justification for banning mask-wearers from traveling and gathering with others. Unfortunately, so much remains unknown about the facts here.

But the broader point is that the normal conditions that justify liberty of movement and travel—that make this liberty consistent with the libertarian judgments that each of us should have the right to do things that don’t physically harm others—are regrettably not present when each of us (with no conscious choice on our parts) is potentially highly lethal to people around us. However peaceable we might be in our intentions, our assembling is a physical threat. Our judgments about liberty, I think, need to reflect that.

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Liberty of Movement and Assembly

Some recent comments have faulted people (like me) for not being “principled libertarians” because we support various restrictions in a time of epidemic, including restrictions that we agree are extraordinarily burdensome. As it happens, I don’t claim to be a principled libertarian: There’s a reason the subheader of the blog says “Often libertarian” (though of course that reflects the aggregate of the cobloggers as well). But more broadly, I think that many facets of liberty rest on certain assumptions, and sometimes can’t extend to situations where those assumptions don’t apply.

Some examples, of course, are familiar. Sexual liberty is very important, for instance (as a matter of libertarian principles, whether or not you think the U.S. Constitution is properly interpreted as protecting it). But it rests on assumptions of individual capacity to make potentially risky decisions that might not apply to, say, young children, or mentally handicapped people. Likewise, the right to procreate is very important. But if we were living on a spaceship that was limited to recycling a sharply constrained amount of air and food, that might call for limits on the number of children one has that wouldn’t be justifiable in our current world of plenty.

Liberty of movement and of physical association—coming together for political, religious, social, professional, recreational, or other purposes—is likewise tremendously important. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is just one particular express elaboration of this liberty. But the premise behind the liberty is that people assembling together can choose to be “peaceable,” and thus physically safe for each other and for bystanders, and we should punish only those who deliberately abuse the right (by acting non-peaceably).

Contagious disease, unfortunately, has the property that I can sicken or even kill you with it entirely inadvertently, without any choice on my part. It’s not like carrying a gun, which I might misuse but which I can choose to use properly. It’s like carrying a gun that every so often (and largely unavoidably) just shoots a bullet in a random direction, without my pulling the trigger.

What’s more, not only can I sicken or kill you when you’ve voluntarily agreed to be around me (e.g., agreed to go to a political rally or a religious service where many potentially infected people gather): I can end up helping cause the sickness or death of other parties with whom you later come into contact, or those even more steps removed.

Libertarians often articulate the basic principle that people cannot initiate the use of force or fraud against others. But I don’t think it makes sense to see the “force” prong as limited to deliberate injury; causing sickness or death to others inadvertently may be less morally culpable, but it is just as injurious. Right now, our bodies (at least until the availability of highly reliable tests for not being infected, or, better yet, being immune) are, for most of us, a potential source of infection and thus injury and death to third parties. The normal conditions that have justified liberty of movement and assembly in the U.S. for all my life unfortunately do not apply right now.

Now of course this raises all sorts of complicated questions. Obviously liberty emerged at a time when contagious diseases were both much more common and more deadly than they are today, because of the absence of effective prevention and treatment—consider, for instance, tuberculosis. Some amount of unintended risk created for others was seen as acceptable.

My sense is that our society is now insisting on a much lower threshold of acceptable risk, perhaps because we have gotten so used to a very low death toll from casually communicated illnesses (mostly from the flu and similar diseases). One can certainly debate whether we have adopted too low a threshold: Perhaps massive restraints on travel and assembly might be acceptable for diseases with the lethality of Ebola or some unvaccinatable-against mutation of smallpox, but shouldn’t be acceptable for this strain of coronavirus.

And of course this is further complicated by the uncertainty of just how reliable various protective measures might be: For instance, if it we were confident that wearing a certain kind of mask would prevent the wearer from infecting others, then there would be much less justification for banning mask-wearers from traveling and gathering with others. Unfortunately, so much remains unknown about the facts here.

But the broader point is that the normal conditions that justify liberty of movement and travel—that make this liberty consistent with the libertarian judgments that each of us should have the right to do things that don’t physically harm others—are regrettably not present when each of us (with no conscious choice on our parts) is potentially highly lethal to people around us. However peaceable we might be in our intentions, our assembling is a physical threat. Our judgments about liberty, I think, need to reflect that.

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UN Blasted As “Absurd & Immoral” For Appointing China To Key UN Human Rights Panel

UN Blasted As “Absurd & Immoral” For Appointing China To Key UN Human Rights Panel

In what will no doubt be taken as a direct shot across the Trump administration’s bow, China has been appointed to a key United Nations human rights post. 

Fox reports on Saturday: “China has been appointed to a panel on the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council, where it will help vet candidates for important posts — despite its decades-long record of systematic human rights abuse that the U.S. has said fueled the coronavirus pandemic.”

UN file image

The timing couldn’t be worse, given the soaring tensions and weeks-long war of words between US and Chinese officials, both floating bombastic charges against the other of intentionally spreading COVID-19. 

President Trump has even taken to calling the deadly virus the “Chinese virus” – given as he said last month: “It could have been contained to that one area in China where it started.” He followed at the time by saying of China “certainly the world is paying a big price for what they did.”

Jiang Duan, minister at the Chinese Mission in Geneva, will represent Beijing on the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Consultative Group, alongside four other international representatives. 

A Geneva-based human rights watchdog called UN Watch, meanwhile, slammed the development as “absurd and immoral” for the UN to allow China to have a hand in selecting human rights officials for the top body.

“Allowing China’s oppressive and inhumane regime to choose the world investigators on freedom of speech, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” UN Watch said in a statement, according to FOX.

The Human Rights Council, itself long subject of controversy – especially after the Saudis recently occupied a top spot on the bloc – examines freedom of speech, war crimes, and disappeared persons issues around the world.

The central irony is that China – itself long documented to have an extensive ‘political prison’ system and with more recent charges of “disappearing” doctors and scientists who have tried to blow the whistle over its COVID-19 response – will now have a key role in selecting the top human rights body’s make-up.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UJ7UkW Tyler Durden

2 Passengers Die Aboard “Coral Princess” Cruise Ship Amid Another COVID-19 “Nightmare At Sea”

2 Passengers Die Aboard “Coral Princess” Cruise Ship Amid Another COVID-19 “Nightmare At Sea”

Two people on the Coral Princess cruise ship died overnight, after the ship reported 12 positive cases of coronavirus on Thursday, according to an announcement from the ship’s captain, who said the ship likely wouldn’t arrive in South Florida on Saturday as planned, but would rather make landfall on Sunday.

The captain didn’t say whether the deceased had tested positive for the virus, but he confirmed they were treated in the ship’s medical center.

“I know how difficult this news is to bear, but given the current situation, we remain committed to transparent and consistent communication with you,” he said. “This information will need to be shared with shoreside authorities and will become public, so I wanted you to hear it from me first,” the Captain said, according to a recording of the announcement provided to the Washington Post.

Appearing to follow a similar playbook to the Zaandam – another Carnival-subsidiary-owned cruise ship that docked along with another ship in Port Everglades this week after several passengers and crew had died of the virus, and the ship had been refused entry to several ports – Princess Cruises said guests who are deemed “fit to fly” are expected to start disembarking Sunday and will transfer straight to Miami International Airport to catch flights home. Meanwhile, anyone with respiratory symptoms who is not too sick to require immediate hospitalization, or who is recovering from being sick previously, will stay on the ship until they are cleared by doctors on board.

The ship is carrying 1,898 people, including 1,020 guests. It left San Antonio, Chile, on March 5, a week before the cruise line announced it would suspend operations after the debacle with the “Diamon Princess”, which became host to what was at the time the biggest outbreak outside mainland China after it docked in Yokohama.

At least 12 infected individuals who traveled aboard the “Diamond Princess” eventually died from their infections.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XgmlOW Tyler Durden

Half A Million Chinese People Entered America At The Height Of The COVID-19 Outbreak

Half A Million Chinese People Entered America At The Height Of The COVID-19 Outbreak

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Around half a million Chinese people, some of them infected with coronavirus, entered America from December to February at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, new figures show.

The numbers, which were obtained from Commerce Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection records, were compiled by ABC News.

They show that in the three month period when coronavirus was raging across China, 759,493 people entered the U.S. from China.

This number included 228,000 Americans who were returning home, meaning that roughly half a million were Chinese citizens or people living in China who were visiting the U.S. for tourism, business or to see family.

This number of people were pouring into the U.S. while the World Health Organization was simultaneously insisting that no country should enforce any kind of border controls to stop the spread of the virus.

President Donald Trump restricted travel from China from February 2nd onwards, but that was too little too late because the outbreak (which was subsequently covered up by China for two months) had started in Wuhan in November, according to Johns Hopkins University.

According to Dr. Vinayak Kumar, an internal medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic, out of the total figure arriving in the U.S. from China, “a large number might have been infected at the time of travel.”

The numbers illustrate “how globalized our world has become,” he added.

However, infectious disease specialist Dr. Simone Wildes suggested that the virus outbreak was the price of globalization and that Americans would just have to get used to it.

“It shows that globalization is here, and we have to be better prepared to deal with the impact this will have on all our lives in so many ways,” he said.

The data also shows that “From December, January and February on travelers entering the U.S. from eight of the hardest-hit countries: 343,402 arrived from Italy, 418,848 from Spain and about 1.9 million more came from Britain.”

As we document in the video below, while three quarters of a million people, some of them infected with coronavirus, were entering America, political leaders were telling Americans to go out and congregate in huge crowds, including at Chinese Lunar New Year parades.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:05

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Tucker Carlson On Fauci’s Quarantine Call: Pushing “National Suicide” While He Has Job Security

Tucker Carlson On Fauci’s Quarantine Call: Pushing “National Suicide” While He Has Job Security

Tucker Carlson on Friday night blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci for his lately publicly urging the Trump administration to declare a federally-imposed ‘stay at home’ order across all 50 states, while also underscoring the FOX host still considers the White House coronavirus task force member and nation’s top infectious disease expert to be an “impressive person”.

“We’ve interviewed Dr. Fauci respectfully on this program, and we’d gladly do that again if he came back, and he will come back. He’s an impressive person. But that does not mean that he’s never wrong,” Carlson said. “On the question of this pandemic, Fauci has been wrong repeatedly.”

Carlson expressed he’s particularly bothered by Fauci’s recommendation of a national quarantine given that economic devastation would be pretty much assured. The night prior Dr. Fauci told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a coronavirus town hall: “I don’t understand why that’s not happening.” He said further, “You know, the tension between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into,” and added, “But if you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that.”

Carson slammed Fauci’s “extreme measures” as tantamount to “national suicide”:

“More than 10 million Americans have already lost their jobs. Imagine another year of this. That would be national suicide, and yet, that is what Anthony Fauci is suggesting, at least. Now, we’re not suggesting that Fauci wants to hurt America. We don’t think he does, he seems like a very decent man. But Fauci is not an economist or for that matter someone who fears being unemployed himself. Like most of the people around him. This is not an attack, this is just an observation. Fauci has bulletproof job security. He’s not thinking that way. He has the luxury of looking at the world through the narrow lens of his profession. He doesn’t seem to think much outside that lens.”

Carlson aired the clip of Fauci saying, “I know it’s difficult, but we’re having a lot of suffering, a lot of death. This is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.”

To this Carlson responded:

“Inconvenient? 10 million Americans out of work and staring at poverty. That is not inconvenient, as you just heard Dr. Fauci put it. It’s horrifying. In fact, it’s a far bigger disaster than the virus itself by any measure. Tony Fauci, decent as he may be, can’t see that because he doesn’t think it’s his job to see it. But even a doctor should be able to think beyond the models. Our response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation. Poor countries are unhealthy countries, always and everywhere. In poor countries, people die of treatable diseases. In poor countries people are far more vulnerable to obscure viruses, like the one we are fighting now. You want to keep Americans from dying before their time? Then don’t impoverish them. For all his credentials, his experience, his apparent personal decency, Dr. Anthony Fauci does not seem to understand any of this and we should never let someone like that run this country.”

Meanwhile much of the mainstream media has directed its ire at the last nine “hold-out” states which have “dragged their feet” on the issue.

Many governors have expressed that they don’t see the need to take such a drastic step that could decimate their local economies, leaving social distancing to the ‘good judgments’ of counties, towns, and individuals.

The nine states that have resisted state-wide ‘stay-at-home’ or ‘shelter in place’ orders are Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — though it should be noted that Oklahoma has passed measures that come very close yet without giving a final formal directive.


Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 16:45

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xSvvqc Tyler Durden

Restrictions on Interstate (and Intrastate) Travel in an Epidemic

Generally speaking, state governments can’t bar people from entering a state, or for that matter traveling within the state. Such prohibitions might normally violate the Commerce Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or a substantive due process right to travel.

But the law has long recognized that a state faced with real danger of contagious disease can restrict these rights: A state “may exclude from its limits … persons afflicted by contagious or infectious diseases,” Railroad Co. v. Husen (1877), and this extends to quarantines that aim at people who might be infected (or might get infected), not just to exclusion of people who have actually been infected, see, e.g., Compagnie Francaise v. La. State Bd. of Health (1902). Those cases both reflect longstanding American practice, and remain good law today. Edwards v. California (1939), which generally bars states from excluding migrants because they are poor and likely to become public charges, did not overrule those cases: As Justice Jackson’s concurrence noted,

The right of the citizen to migrate from state to state … is not … an unlimited one. In addition to being subject to all constitutional limitations imposed by the federal government, such citizen is subject to some control by state governments. He may not, if a fugitive from justice, claim freedom to migrate unmolested, nor may he endanger others by carrying contagion about. These causes, and perhaps others that do not occur to me now, warrant any public authority in stopping a man where it finds him and arresting his progress across a state line quite as much as from place to place within the state.

Of course, this right cannot be enforced in a way that violates the Constitution: The government generally can’t, for instance, quarantine Catholics but not Protestants. In particular, the right is subject to the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

But of course that Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures. When there really is an epidemic, and people from outside a state seem to pose a higher risk than people within the state, I think that (for instance) stopping all cars at the border or all cars with out-of-state plates, and perhaps ordering them to quarantine themselves for some days if they are from outside the state, is likely to be seen as a reasonable seizure.

Nor would the seizure become unreasonable because of the absence of probable cause or a warrant. Warrants aren’t required to stop or even search cars; and while stopping a car for law enforcement purposes would usually require at least individualized suspicion,

Out-of-state plates might indeed produce individualized suspicion (not proof, but that’s not necessary at this stage) that the driver has recently been out of state.

The Court has recognized that these requirements may be relaxed when “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable”—and it seems to me that stopping cars to find out who needs to be quarantined, rather than who needs to be criminally prosecuted, is a classic example of such a special need.

To be sure, there is very caselaw that deals specifically with the Fourth Amendment and communicable diseases. (Hickox v. Christie (D.N.J. 2016) seems to canvass what limited precedents there are.) But based on the general thrust of the cases—coupled with the fact that judges likely don’t want to deny government officials the temporary tools they need to stave off likely tens of thousands (or more) deaths in this extraordinary time—I expect these sorts of restrictions are likely to be upheld.

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Restrictions on Interstate (and Intrastate) Travel in an Epidemic

Generally speaking, state governments can’t bar people from entering a state, or for that matter traveling within the state. Such prohibitions might normally violate the Commerce Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or a substantive due process right to travel.

But the law has long recognized that a state faced with real danger of contagious disease can restrict these rights: A state “may exclude from its limits … persons afflicted by contagious or infectious diseases,” Railroad Co. v. Husen (1877), and this extends to quarantines that aim at people who might be infected (or might get infected), not just to exclusion of people who have actually been infected, see, e.g., Compagnie Francaise v. La. State Bd. of Health (1902). Those cases both reflect longstanding American practice, and remain good law today. Edwards v. California (1939), which generally bars states from excluding migrants because they are poor and likely to become public charges, did not overrule those cases: As Justice Jackson’s concurrence noted,

The right of the citizen to migrate from state to state … is not … an unlimited one. In addition to being subject to all constitutional limitations imposed by the federal government, such citizen is subject to some control by state governments. He may not, if a fugitive from justice, claim freedom to migrate unmolested, nor may he endanger others by carrying contagion about. These causes, and perhaps others that do not occur to me now, warrant any public authority in stopping a man where it finds him and arresting his progress across a state line quite as much as from place to place within the state.

Of course, this right cannot be enforced in a way that violates the Constitution: The government generally can’t, for instance, quarantine Catholics but not Protestants. In particular, the right is subject to the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

But of course that Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures. When there really is an epidemic, and people from outside a state seem to pose a higher risk than people within the state, I think that (for instance) stopping all cars at the border or all cars with out-of-state plates, and perhaps ordering them to quarantine themselves for some days if they are from outside the state, is likely to be seen as a reasonable seizure.

Nor would the seizure become unreasonable because of the absence of probable cause or a warrant. Warrants aren’t required to stop or even search cars; and while stopping a car for law enforcement purposes would usually require at least individualized suspicion,

Out-of-state plates might indeed produce individualized suspicion (not proof, but that’s not necessary at this stage) that the driver has recently been out of state.

The Court has recognized that these requirements may be relaxed when “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable”—and it seems to me that stopping cars to find out who needs to be quarantined, rather than who needs to be criminally prosecuted, is a classic example of such a special need.

To be sure, there is very caselaw that deals specifically with the Fourth Amendment and communicable diseases. (Hickox v. Christie (D.N.J. 2016) seems to canvass what limited precedents there are.) But based on the general thrust of the cases—coupled with the fact that judges likely don’t want to deny government officials the temporary tools they need to stave off likely tens of thousands (or more) deaths in this extraordinary time—I expect these sorts of restrictions are likely to be upheld.

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India Drags China To International Court For COVID-19 War

India Drags China To International Court For COVID-19 War

Via GreatGameIndia.com,

As a direct impact of extensive GreatGameIndia reporting on the sinister aspect of Coronavirus being manufactured as a biological weapon, now India has dragged China to international court for waging COVID-19 War. India’s complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Council seeking compensation from China specifically presents as evidence  GreatGameIndia‘s report on how Chinese biowarfare agents stole Coronavirus from a Canadian lab and weaponized it at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In addition to the Indian complaint, a $20 trillion lawsuit has also been filed against China for waging a Biological war in Texas Federal Court, alleging that it unleashed the coronavirus as a bioweapon upon the world.

GGI has come under massive attack for reporting these stories from so-called fact-checker organisations like NewsGuard who themselves are funded by Bill Gates to clear their name. The mainstream media owes GGI a big apology for slandering our name, failing to ask the basic question of ‘conflict of interest’.

The Complaint

The International Council of Jurists (ICJ) and All India Bar Association have moved the United Nations Human Rights Council seeking compensation from China for “surreptitiously developing a biological weapon capable of mass destruction.”

The complaint was penned by senior advocate Adish C. Aggarwala, the Chairperson of All India Bar Association and President of International Council of Jurists, in the backdrop of the spread of deadly coronavirus, which has claimed thousands of lives across the world.

“It is humbly prayed that the UNHRC may be pleased to enquire and direct China and to adequately compensate international community and member states, particularly India, for surreptitiously developing a biological weapon capable of mass destruction of mankind,” Aggarwala stated in the complaint.

The advocate demanded remuneration from China for inflicting serious physical, psychological, economic and social harm on the world. Aggarwala also pointed out the effects of the pandemic on the Indian economy, the imbalance in demand and supply of commodities and migration of marginalized people.

“The economic activity of the country is put on hold, in turn causing a huge dent on the local economy of the country as well as in general, the global economy,” the complaint added.

The complaint further claimed that China meticulously hatched a conspiracy to spread the coronavirus in the world and violated provisions of International Health Regulations (IHR), International Human Rights and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Laws and UDHR clauses.

“It remains a mystery as to how the virus has not spread to all provinces of China but at the same time, has spread to all countries in the world. The speculation only increases the likelihood of the COIVD-19 being a carefully assembled biological weapon, aimed at crippling major countries in the world leaving only China as the beneficiary,” the complaint pointed out.

The complainant further claimed that the virus was developed in the Wuhan Virology Lab from where it was carefully deployed to affect a miniscule 0.001% of the Chinese population.

He said that the neighboring country deployed the coronavirus virus in a bid to control the economy of the world by buying up stocks from countries that are on the brink of economic collapse.

The Chinese government had deliberately censored information and hid the early warnings given by Dr. Li Wenliang, who was, in fact, reprimanded and initially punished by local authorities in China, he said.

“The government also did not sufficiently contain and curb the travel of infected persons from further contaminating the world.”

GGI Impact

It complaint states that the Chinese government has meticulously planned the execution and spread of the Novel Coronavirus and the same can be inferred in the way China has taken regard of the situation as also of the curious case of the spread of the virus all over the world. As pointed earlier, it remains a mystery as to how the virus has not spread in all provinces of China but at the same time, has spread to all countries in the world.

The complaint further presents as evidence findings of GreatGameIndia‘s investigation cited by India’s national daily on how Chinese biowarfare agents stole Coronavirus from a Canadian lab and weaponized it at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A group of Chinese scientists in Canada were accused of spying and were stripped of their access to Canada’s National Microbiology Lab, sometime in August 2019 and the said lab is known to contain some of the world‟s deadliest pathogens. These scientists then were sent to a High security biochemical Wuhan Lab, which is one of the world‟s most heavily guarded labs. That these scientists later developed the COVID-19 virus and released it to the outside world somewhere in the early days of December 2019 in Wuhan, from where the virus spread.

Further the complaint also blasts the mainstream media’s agenda for suppressing these facts being raised by prominent experts and influential personalities worldwide.

The purpose of developing such a potent and deadly virus remains a secret. However, there are solid evidences to show that the Chinese government intends to utilize the same to take control of the world’s economy. The hypothesis of biological warfare behind the global pandemic had already been raised by Russian experts some weeks ago.

Like any opinion that is slightly different from the official version of Western governments and their media agencies, the thesis was ridiculed and accused of being a “conspiracy theory”. However, as soon as the official spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the second largest economic power on the planet publishes a note attesting to this possibility, it leaves the sphere of “conspiracy theories” to enter the scene of public opinion and official government versions.

$20 Trillion Lawsuit Against China For Waging Biological War

In addition to the Indian complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a $20 trillion lawsuit has also been filed against China for waging a Biological war, alleging that it unleashed the coronavirus as a bioweapon upon the world by U.S. lawyer and conservative activist, Larry Klayman, his Company Buzz Photos and his group Freedom Watch.

First page of the class action lawsuit brought by Larry Klayman against China for waging a Biological War. Find the full document here Source: Freedom Watch

In the lawsuit, Klayman argued that because China had already agreed by Biological Weapons Convention treaty to outlaw such weapons c. November, 1984, these actions cannot be official governmental actions of the People’s Republic of China and therefore, China cannot claim legal immunity from the class action lawsuit.

Klayman added in a statement, “There is no reason why the American taxpayer should, contrary to the establishment in Washington, D.C., have to pay for the tremendous harm caused by the Chinese government. The Chinese people are a good people, but their government is not and it must be made to pay dearly.”

Klayman is seeking $20 trillion in damages and has called for affected Americans to sign up at his website Freedom Watch USA and become part of the class action lawsuit. The case has been filed in a Texas Federal Court.

Klayman is not the only one calling out China’s Biological Warfare activities. Chinese mishandling of the virus has attracted global criticism and numerous prominent personalities have come forward urging the international community to conduct an investigation into these serious matter and take action.

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Tyler Durden

Sat, 04/04/2020 – 16:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39EPKoR Tyler Durden