Liberty News

Tourists are being invited to Thailand under a mandatory 14 day covid quarantine scheme, but with innovative idea that the whole of the island of Phuket will be declared as the quarantine zone.

Visitors to Phuket under the Phuket Sandbox scheme will be required to wear a wristband that will track their location at all times. Presumably the system is designed to alert the police of any attempt for the tourists to escape the confinement zone.

Note the term 'sandbox' is a computing term meaning an offline experimentation area where new designs can be tested before going live in the real world system.

The news regarding wristbands was confirmed as officials in Phuket this week began preparing the security protocols that will be put in place for all foreigners arriving on the island from July 1. Thai news site Manager reported on some of the security protocols that will be put in place, which include security checkpoints on the main road leading to the island screening everyone arriving or trying to leave.

The checkpoints will feature facial recognition cameras that will be able to detect any tourist who tries to leave Phuket before the 14 day mandatory quarantine period.

The conditions of entry into Thailand are extremely onerous and require that visitors are doubly vaccinated, pay for a series of 4 PCR covid, tests, book in with state approved quarantine hotels, buy covid health insurance, and apply to the local embassy for permission to travel to Thailand. And of course to take the risk of having their holiday totally written off in detention should they fail a covid test.

And by the way, all bars, discos, and gogos etc are currently closed due to a coronavirus lockdown.

Officials ludicrously said they expect approximately 129,000 foreigners to visit Phuket under the Sandbox scheme. The scheme is unlikely attract any tourists as at all, but may appeal to visitors who have business or family in Thailand who may prefer to spend their 2 weeks quarantine on the beach rather than locked up in a hotel room.

Update: Prisoner tracking centre opens

26th June 2021. See article from forum.thaivisa.com

A visitor tracking centre for the Phuket Sandbox has been set up on the resort island, with 70% of its equipment installation complete. Phuket will be the first province to 'welcome' fully vaccinated foreign visitors, with the whole resort island being defined as a quarantine zone, from July 1st.

The centre will be used, along with the Mor Prom and Mor Chana apps, to track the movements of foreign tourists on Phuket. Tourists will be required to install one of the apps upon arrival. If an infection is found, the information will be sent to health investigators so tourists can be incarcerated in state quarantine facilities, euphemistically called 'field hospitals'.

On the positive side there is no mention of the prison bracelet being part of the tracking arsenal.

Update: Prison rules

28th June 2021.

The Phuket snadbox scheme has now officially passed into Thai law as noted by its publication in the Royal Gazette.

However this latest round of bureaucracy has inevitably added a few restrictions and hassles.

Firstly visitors have to book the required 3 PCR tests on Phuket at 2800 Baht each prior to travel and present the receipt to the Thai embassy when applying for a certificate of entry. You will need a 4th test should you want to move on to the rest of Thailand after your 14 days of Phuket quarantine, and get paperwork to show the Phuket border guards.

Richard Barrow reports on conditions contained in the official description of the scheme:

Tourists must have an active tracking system on them at all times. They must go straight to hotel in a specially arranged car. Cannot leave hotel until first test results. Must report to handler at hotel every day. Cannot stay overnight elsewhere.

Tourists are being invited to Thailand under a mandatory 14 day covid quarantine scheme, but with innovative idea that the whole of the island of Phuket will be declared as the quarantine zone.

Visitors to Phuket under the Phuket Sandbox scheme will be required to wear a wristband that will track their location at all times. Presumably the system is designed to alert the police of any attempt for the tourists to escape the confinement zone.

Note the term 'sandbox' is a computing term meaning an offline experimentation area where new designs can be tested before going live in the real world system.

The news regarding wristbands was confirmed as officials in Phuket this week began preparing the security protocols that will be put in place for all foreigners arriving on the island from July 1. Thai news site Manager reported on some of the security protocols that will be put in place, which include security checkpoints on the main road leading to the island screening everyone arriving or trying to leave.

The checkpoints will feature facial recognition cameras that will be able to detect any tourist who tries to leave Phuket before the 14 day mandatory quarantine period.

The conditions of entry into Thailand are extremely onerous and require that visitors are doubly vaccinated, pay for a series of 4 PCR covid, tests, book in with state approved quarantine hotels, buy covid health insurance, and apply to the local embassy for permission to travel to Thailand. And of course to take the risk of having their holiday totally written off in detention should they fail a covid test.

And by the way, all bars, discos, and gogos etc are currently closed due to a coronavirus lockdown.

Officials ludicrously said they expect approximately 129,000 foreigners to visit Phuket under the Sandbox scheme. The scheme is unlikely attract any tourists as at all, but may appeal to visitors who have business or family in Thailand who may prefer to spend their 2 weeks quarantine on the beach rather than locked up in a hotel room.

Update: Prisoner tracking centre opens

26th June 2021. See article from forum.thaivisa.com

A visitor tracking centre for the Phuket Sandbox has been set up on the resort island, with 70% of its equipment installation complete. Phuket will be the first province to 'welcome' fully vaccinated foreign visitors, with the whole resort island being defined as a quarantine zone, from July 1st.

The centre will be used, along with the Mor Prom and Mor Chana apps, to track the movements of foreign tourists on Phuket. Tourists will be required to install one of the apps upon arrival. If an infection is found, the information will be sent to health investigators so tourists can be incarcerated in state quarantine facilities, euphemistically called 'field hospitals'.

On the positive side there is no mention of the prison bracelet being part of the tracking arsenal.

Court documents show Google admits privacy is almost impossible on Android

Last year, the Arizona Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of unlawfully collecting Android users' location data, even for users that have opted out. Last week, a judge ordered Google to unredact some sections of documents submitted in court.

The documents revealed not only Google's objectionable data collection policies, but also its employees admitting the policies are confusing and should be changed. Documented employee comments include:

So there's no way to give a third party app your location and not Google? This doesn't sound like something we would want on the front page of the [New York Times.]

Even after a user turned off location in the settings, Google still collects location data, the unredacted documents revealed.

In fact Google tested versions of its OS that made privacy settings easy to find. It saw the popularity of those settings as a problem and solved the problem by burying the settings deeper in Android's settings menu, and even pressured phone manufacturers, such as LG, to make those settings harder to find.

US Amazon customers have one week to opt out of a plan that would turn every Echo speaker and Ring security camera in the US into a shared wireless network.

The network called Amazon Sidewalk, involves the company's devices being used as a springboard to build city-wide mesh networks that enables the devices to stay online even if they're out of range of the user's home wifi. The network will also extend the range of tracking devices such as those made by Tile.

The feature works by creating a low-bandwidth network using smart home devices such as Amazon Echoes and Ring security cameras. At its simplest, it means that a new Echo can set itself up using a neighbour's wifi, or a security camera can continue to send motion alerts even if its connection to the internet is disrupted, by piggybacking on the connection of another camera across the street. Other devices lower bandwidth devices, such as smart lights, pet locators or smart locks, can use Sidewalk all the time.

Sidewalk has come under fire for the lack of transparency with which Amazon has rolled out the feature, as well as the limited time available for users to complete the tricky process required to opt out.

Users can disable Sidewalk in the settings section of the Alexa or Ring apps, but have until 8 June to do so. After that, if they have taken no action, the network will be turned on, and their devices will become Sidewalk Bridges.