GPS LIE DETECTOR? Flagrant False Claim #Ewaste Watchdog (GPS Tracking Monitour interview)

Wow, haven't followed up that much since the MIT SenseAble City Lab and BAN GPS tracking project was pulled to MIT legal office about a year ago.  Readers are aware that this blog tracked many of the devices into places that BAN didn't want to talk about - like a University reuse operation in Faisalabad, or modern 21st century EcoPark in Hong Kong (no longer obscured in Monitour).

Well I just ran across a little video produced in 2017 by Luen Hai - Decoding the Connection.  In it, at about minute 6, a Hong Kong reporter identifies Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network as an important expert in e-waste imports to Hong Kong.  Then Jim says on screen that 54% of the GPS trackers the organization placed in e-waste was shipped to Hong Kong.

If you know about this study, you may think I made a typo. The numbers are so specifically wrong. But this is Jim's recorded voice, in his own words... screenshots with subtitles below.

1. "These little trackers, and I can show you one, they are like little lie detectors"



IRONY of IRONIES...  Listen to what Jim tells the filmmaker about the GPS "lie detector"...  Full video at bottom below.





2.  "They just go out there and they tell you precisely where that electronic device ended up."



3.  "And so we then found out that about 54 percent of the 205 trackers..."


4.  "that we put out in the United States went to Hong Kong."



5. "And that was news to us, certainly to the world."




You all know that only about 35% of the 205 trackers placed in the USA were exported ANYWHERE at all.  Below is a screenshot from MIT Senseable City Lab of the final count of the 205 GPS trackers.  Inside USA = 136.  Outside of US  = 69.  69 / 205 = 34% (rounding up). And outside the USA includes Canada and Mexico!


Moreover, we showed last year that some of the devices appear to be in densely populated areas (one appears to be located in a Hong Kong restaurant), likely reused.  The racial profiling of Hong Kong as a "primitive" area of "rice paddies" is itself disgusting racism.  Hong Kong has a higher per capita income than the United States of America!

There were some pretty junky looking recycling yards BAN brought film crews to, but BAN did NOT bring film crews to a single reuse facility or to Hong Kong's massive 21st century EcoPark facility (where some devices were claimed to have been sent).

I thought maybe Jim's claim that 54% of the GPS devices winding up in Hong Kong was an editing mistake (that maybe he meant of the 34% exported at all, 54% of those went to Hong Kong, or 54% of printer scrap, or something).  But that's why I took the screen shots FAIR USE above.  In a single sentence, he says 54% of the devices PLACED IN THE USA went to HONG KONG.

Remember, this NGO's testimony to Interpol and USA Congress about 80% of e-waste being exported was presented by the UK Barrister as "common knowledge" in the horrible framing of #freehurricanebenson #freejoebenson   The same watchdog spokesman composed a spectacular false claim about Agbogbloshie (A Place Called Away) the year before Benson's arrest, and introduced Mike Anane to an Interpol gathering as an expert eyewitness (Anane claimed that Agbogbloshie was a lush green fishing village in 2002 - a lie that flabbergasts any Accra resident).

The GPS tracking study is turning out to be a LIE DETECTOR all right.




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