from Mint Press News
New COVID-19 Security Measures Will Make Health a Prerequisite for Travel
As the multi-sector, global response to the coronavirus tightens the noose
around civil liberties, CommonPass stands out as one of the most appalling
and dangerous attacks on basic human rights in the name of public health.
by Raul Diego
October 26th, 2020
By Raul Diego
Imagine standing at a TSA security checkpoint on your way home for the
holidays. Youre getting ready to go through the awkward travel procedures
instituted almost immediately after 9/11 when the Transportation and
Security Administration (TSA) was created and air travel in the United
States morphed into a search and seizure operation with the implied
possibility of your detention and interrogation.
The initial outrage such expressions of implicit state violence caused early
on eventually gave way to begrudging acceptance. But now, a new layer of
security, that could restrict freedom of movement even further, is being
rolled out at several ports of entry in partnership with health technology
industry leaders, academic institutions, and government health entities in
more than three dozen countries.
A new digital certificate called CommonPass, designed to serve as a
clearance mechanism for passengers based on a health diagnosis underwent its
first transatlantic test on October 21 under the watchful eye of the Centers
for Disease Control (CDC) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at
Heathrow Airport in London. There, a group of select participants embarked
on United flight 15 to Newark, New Jersey after being screened and tested
for COVID-19 at the point of departure in a largely ceremonial exercise that
included initiative co-founders, Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins.
The apps first trial run took place with much less media fanfare last month
on a Cathay Pacific Airways flight from Hong Kong to Singapore and marked
the beginning of the CommonPass pilot project launched by The Commons
Project non-profit organization in-tandem with the World Economic Forum.
Travel industry insiders claim that CommonPass will allow international
travel to resume before a COVID-19 vaccine is made widely available by
applying standard methods for certification of lab results and vaccination
records of travelers through the CommonPass Framework, based on criteria set
by the governments of each port of entry.
CommonPass Overview
A graphic from a Commons Project presser lays out the basics of the
CommonPass
J.D. OHara, CEO of one of the worlds largest travel services companies and
one of the participants at Wednesdays CommonPass trial run, hailed the
apps ability to verify health
information in a secure, verified manner, while Roger Dow of the U.S.
Travel Association released a statement praising it for paving a way
forward for the global economy in the wake of the pandemic.
As the multi-sector, global response to the coronavirus tightens the noose
around civil liberties, CommonPass stands out as one of the most appalling
and dangerous attacks on basic human rights in the name of public health and
is rife with a potential for abuse so great, that it behooves us to find out
more about the people and interests behind it.
Feudal revivalists
In medieval times, the commons denoted the de facto and collective
ownership of land, which peasants used to plow, sow and harvest or raise
sheep and cattle. The rise of the land-owning classes in post-Magna Carta
Europe, and England in particular, slowly eviscerated this form of communal
privilege through the enclosure system, which redistributed the commons to
the proto-capitalist class in partnership with the monarchies and create the
system of oppressive labor exploitation known as feudalism.
Starting in 1604, the Enclosure Acts of England created legal property
rights for land that had belonged to the farmers and shepherds, forming the
basis of modern-day capitalism. Today, that scene is being repeated as the
Internet, an information commons is being carved out by Big Tech and led
by organizations like The Commons Project, which avails itself of a name
that connotes the total opposite of its purpose.
Co-founders Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins are the non-profits CEO and
Chief Medical Officer, respectively. Perkins began his career over thirty
years ago at the Center for Disease Control and, for nearly a decade, worked
at the RAND corporations health care policy division, RAND Health Advisory
Board. Meyer, for his part, is a Yale law school graduate, who was writing
President Clintons speeches years before receiving his graduation diploma
from the storied institution. Both have extensive career histories in the
fields of health and technology, though in very different areas and with
strange bedfellows along the way.
In 2009, Perkins became the Chief Technology Officer for a publicly-traded
cross-national operator of hospitals and clinics called Vanguard Health
Systems. Vanguard had been established with funding from Morgan Stanley and
controlled by the Blackstone Group since 2004, maintaining control all
though the companys IPO in 2011. Two years later, Vanguard was acquired by
Tenet Healthcare, creating the third-largest investor-owned hospital company
in the United States with a total of 65 hospitals nationwide and over 500
healthcare facilities.
Paul Meyer CommonPass
Paul Meyer, center, is pictured in a screenshot of a media briefing touting
CommonPass
Besides being one of the biggest healthcare companies in the United States,
Tenet is also one of the most notoriously corrupt. The same year it bought
Vanguard, it was slapped with a major whistleblower complaint that disclosed
the companys fraudulent practices. That lawsuit resulted in a $514 million
settlement. A more recent case involving a conspiracy between Oklahoma
orthopedic surgeons at one of its facilities was settled for $66 million in
2019. But, Tenets problems go back even further to the early 2000s when
fraud and performing unneeded surgeries led to a multitude of lawsuits and
even a Senate investigation.
The Vanguard deal marked the end of Perkins tenure there, who chose to take
a $1.9 million package instead of joining the newly merged conglomerate like
its CEO and much of its staff did. He would move on to create a company of
his own called Sapiens Data Science; a health tech platform that provides
access to credible scientifically validated data algorithms and looks to
create a new revolutionary health ecosystem.
Meyers background is more complicated, and his arrival on the healthcare
scene runs through different channels linked to American intelligence cover
operations dating back to NATOs war in Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia
during the early Clinton years. It is his involvement with an infamous
human-trafficking outfit known as the International Rescue Committee or IRC,
that should be cause for concern given his role in The Commons Project and
flagship CommonPass app.
The Meyer of Kosovo
Before he was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum or Henry
Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and even before becoming a Term Member
of the Council on Foreign Relations and receiving MITs 2003 Humanitarian of
the Year award, Paul Meyer found himself in war-torn Kosovo installing a new
Internet infrastructure system to replace the one destroyed in the war, only
days after NATO bombs had stopped shelling the Serbian people.
Barely out of law school and having spent two years writing President
Clintons speeches as the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was transpiring,
Meyer was tapped by the IRC to lead a UN and private relief effort called
the Internet Projekti Kosova (IPKO) or Kosovo Internet Project, with
tech-savvy local Akan Ismaili to handle the complex technical issues and
Teresa Crawford from the Advocacy Project to uplink satellites in the
region with the stated purpose of reuniting displaced Albanian families. The
system was set up atop a building used by the British KFOR Civil-Military
Cooperation CIMIC and British Royal Engineers were also brought onto the
project, among others.
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Eventually, the IRC gave the project to a non-profit organization dedicated
to providing wide access to the Internet in Kosovo. IPKO is today the
largest telecom, internet, and cable TV company in Kosovo. Meyer remains
involved through the IPKO Foundation, which he co-founded to provide free
technology education to Kosovar students.
By the 1950s, the IRC was known to be an integral link in the CIAs covert
network led by Tony Blair protégé and former British Foreign Minister, David
Miliband since 2013. In 2018, the IRC was embroiled in a child-sex
trafficking scandal dubbed the sex-for-food scandal covered extensively by
Whitney Webb in a recent article. The organizations cover-up of dozens of
sex abuse, bribery and fraud allegations resulted in the U.K. government
withdrawing its funding from the organizations. However, no IRC employees
were prosecuted over the 37 incidents detailed in the report.
Currently, the IRC is very involved in the implementation of a biometric ID
system for refugees of the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, a project funded by
the Rockefeller Foundation-backed ID2020 Alliance, which also funds The
Commons Project. IRCs Mae La initiative, however, receives most of its
funding through the notorious CIA-cutout USAID and intends to create a
blockchain-based digital identification system using iris recognition
technology to give refugees access to IRCs services in Thailand. Long term
goals include rolling health, work and financial data together into a single
ID system, that will determine access to food, healthcare and mobility.
We want your DNA
The difference between IRCs Mae La project and The Commons Project is a
question of class. Class status, to be specific. But, it is essentially the
same idea and covers the same interests of the groups and individuals who
form part of the Commons Projects board of trustees; many of whom have been
part of the digital tracking and healthcare technology space for years.
People like Linda Dillman, who ran Wal-Marts implementation of RFID
employee tracking technology as the retail giants CIO or the former Chief
Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Bryan Sivak, who is now a Managing Director at Managing Director at Kaiser
Permanente, one of the largest healthcare insurance plan providers in the
nation. Other trustee affiliations stand out, as well, such as Will
Fitzpatrick, General Counsel to the Omidyar Network and George W. Bushs
Assistant Secretary of Defense, Health Affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder,
Jr.
At the core of these efforts is the desire to create a DNA-based population
screening agenda, which people like Perkins and Meyer are forcefully pushing
forward. Perkins worked as the CMO at a company called Human Longevity,
Inc., which combines state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and expert analysis
with machine learning, to help change medicine to a more data-driven
science.
DNA sequencing
A microbiologist demonstrates a whole-genome DNA sequencing machine called a
MiSeq at CDC HQ in Atlanta. David Goldman | AP
Meyer developed a precursor to CommonPass in 2016, when he merged his mobile
health services company, Voxiva, which implemented the first nationwide
digital disease surveillance systems in Peru and Rwanda in partnership with
the CDC, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with Sense Health to form
a health messaging service called Wellpass Meyer described as an integrated
platform
[that] helps overcome the challenges of deploying fragmented
engagement and population health solutions.
Dubious technology
The reliability of the DNA-based, algorithmically-deduced health diagnoses
used for the CommonPass trial run must also be called into question given
the history of the company furnishing the technology. Prenetics, Ltd is the
Hong Kong-based, Alibaba-funded company that also performed the COVID-19
testing for the UKs Premier Leagues Project Restart, which used a similar
health status app called Covi-Pass, covered by this author in June.
Mass-Tracking COVI-PASS Immunity Passports Slated to Roll Out in 15
Countries
COVI-PASS will determine whether you can go to a restaurant, if you need a
medical test, or are due for a talking-to by authorities in a post-COVID
world. Consent is voluntary, but enforcement will be compulsory., Bill
Gates, COVI-PASS, COVID-19, digital health passport, Privacy, Surveillance,
tracking,
MintPress News | Raul Diego | Jun 29
Prenetics COVID tests rely on DNA-based technology it acquired in 2018,
when it purchased DNAFit; a company founded by South African businessman
Avrom Avi Lasarow, who came on board after the merger as Prenetics Chief
Executive Officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Lasarow, who also
heads the Premier Leagues coronavirus testing program, just settled a civil
case against him in the U.S. last May for nearly $60,000 surrounding
allegations of deceptive health claims.
Lifestyle genetics pioneer Lasarow has a long track record of settling out
of court over such issues, including a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission in 2015, which accused Lasarow Healthcare Technologies
Ltd., aka L Health Ltd., and two other defendants of making false or
unsubstantiated claims regarding a melanoma detection app. As part of that
settlement, Lasarow was prohibited from making any misleading or
unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits or efficacy of any product
or service.
Prenetics has been reportedly working on establishing a partnership with
VSTE Enterprises, the same company that developed the V-Code technology that
underpins Covi-Pass, since May. Nevertheless, such red flags pale in
comparison to the individuals and organizations that are behind CommonPass,
itself, who have plans for a much vaster digital enclosure based on DNA
population screening technologies through initiatives like the The Commons
Project, which aims to fundamentally transform medicine and impose new
limits on our freedom of movement as the CommonPass rollout is slated to
quickly expand to other routes across Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe and
the Middle East.
A common thread
Just as Bushs Aviation and Transportation Security Act opened the doors for
certain technology and security sectors to flourish in the wake of 9/11,
this novel health-focused expansion of the national security state has
bypassed all levers of democratic power to allow for the entrenchment of a
far larger and more dangerous group of entities, within the health,
technology and life sciences industries together with an increasingly more
powerful clique of federal health agencies and officials, like Robert
Kadlec, who are pushing for a full spectrum surveillance society.
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COVID-19 Vaccines
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Taking your shoes off at the airport and exposing your body to radiation has
become routine now at every airport in the nation and most temporary laws
passed through emergency legislation remain on the books nearly two decades
later. Precedent demands that we assume the same will occur with the
majority of the new restrictions on our freedom of movement and quality of
life currently being implemented throughout the country and the world.
Rolling back these draconian measures is not in any of their plans, as
promised by the president of the U.S. Travel Association, Roger Dow, who
confidently asserted after Wednesdays successful CommonPass trail run, that
the app will let us navigate out of the crippling economic fallout of
COVID-related travel restrictions and quarantine requirements, adding that
it will pay further dividends for more seamless and convenient travel even
once the pandemic has subsided.
