THE THREE COMPANIES BEHIND THE LEADING PROPOSAL TO BUILD A “NATIONAL CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM”, AN INITIATIVE SPEARHEADED BY JARED KUSHNER, BOAST DEEP TIES TO GOOGLE, INTELLIGENCE-LINKED VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS AS WELL AS ONE OF LAST YEAR’S EERILY PREDICTIVE “PANDEMIC” SIMULATIONS.
On April 7, Politico reported that the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was spearheading an all-private sector taskforce that aims to build a “national coronavirus surveillance system” in order to “give the government a near real-time view of where patients are seeking treatment and for what.”
This proposed nationwide network, according to that report, would be used to better inform government decision-making regarding which parts of the United States may “safely relax social-distancing rules” and those that may not. Politico treaded lightly in its discussion of such a system’s likely effects on civil liberties, but did note that some critics have compared this proposed system “to the Patriot act enacted after the 9/11 attacks.”
According to Politico, three companies collectively sent out a memo on March 22 to three administration officials – Jared Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. The memo was “widely circulated” throughout the administration relative to other submitted proposals. Those companies – Collective Medical, PatientPing and Juvare – asserted in the memo that they could collectively “supply the government with information on where and how many patients are seeking care across 80 percent of the U.S. ‘in short order.’”
Two of those companies, Collective Medical Technologies and PatientPing, declined to comment on the memo and its contents. A representative from Juvare, however, stated that the company has “spoken with officials across several federal agencies including FEMA, HHS and the CDC about its various emergency preparedness and data tools.”
Though the article downplayed the privacy concerns such a system would create, it failed to note the direct and troubling ties of these three companies, not only to Silicon Valley giants with dubious records regarding data privacy and coordination with U.S. intelligence agencies, but also ties to controversial simulations that took place last year and seemingly predicted the current coronavirus crisis. (more...)
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