WASHINGTON - June 25, 2020 - Three states have just imposed quarantines,

But unless there is a viable enforcement mechanism, there will almost certainly be violations which will cause unnecessary deaths.

The best way to enforce quarantines, suggests Banzhaf, is to use inexpensive and readily available computer voice-recognition software.

So, to help insure compliance with a quarantine order in any location with a land-line telephone, a computer could easily be programmed to call the person quarantined, at random times several times each day at that land-line telephone number, and ask him to repeat a sequence of random words (to insure that the voice it hears is not prerecorded) to be sure that he is remaining in his home.

If he fails to answer several computer-initiated calls, or if another person pretends to be the person subject to the quarantine, the computer would immediately alert authorities by placing a robocall or sending an email or text.

A very similar verification process could be used by having the person quarantined called by a computer from time to time on his cell phone, since a GPS-equipped cell phone can be located with great precision with simple monitoring/tracking programs.

If the quarantined person left his cell phone at his residence while he went out, and several computer calls to that phone went unanswered, authorities would be alerted to a probable violation.

Also, if the quarantined person leaves his cell phone behind when he goes out, and tries to have someone try to impersonate his voice if a computer call comes in, the voice-recognition software will note the deception and notify authorities, suggests Banzhaf.

Since it is quick, easy, and inexpensive to set up such a monitoring system to monitor compliance with either a voluntary or mandatory quarantine, the remaining question is whether the authorities will have the political courage to use it, or will they put many lives at risk by hoping for a very high level of completely untested voluntary compliance, says Banzhaf.

http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf

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