I got free academic access to this dataset. The data is anonymized and aggregated to the census block level (500 people). It does not allow for the kind of tracking that the article is fear mongering about.
No such thing as anonymity data
CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
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Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#12I was involved with this. SafeGraph data is aggregated to the CBG level and has differential privacy applied.
You don’t have to guess. The data is self-serve purchasable from their website so you can go take a look at what it looks like. Go find a blog post of theirs and you’ll get a coupon code so you’re not paying and then you can look at what the data looks like.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#13Google had a creepy Covid functionality that automatically downloaded without my consent to my phone. Big tech is just chomping at the bit for the government to give them the go ahead to track everyone and enforce a 'papers please' society.
On the other hand, we could have a zero Covid planet. A place without pandemics. Bill Gates is the hero we need.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#14I got free academic access to this dataset. The data is anonymized and aggregated to the census block level (500 people). It does not allow for the kind of tracking that the article is fear mongering about.
Not full anonymity if you can see where the phones are moving from-to
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#15Google had a creepy Covid functionality that automatically downloaded without my consent to my phone. Big tech is just chomping at the bit for the government to give them the go ahead to track everyone and enforce a 'papers please' society.
On the other hand, we could have a zero Covid planet. A place without pandemics. Bill Gates is the hero we need.
Zero Covid was and always will be a scam.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#16Time to go back to a non-connected Garmin GPS while in the car and slip my phone into a mesh bag when not in use :(
So glad I don't own a newer car with a cellular modem built into it. Hope I can die and be buried with my current "dumb" cards.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#17Google had a creepy Covid functionality that automatically downloaded without my consent to my phone. Big tech is just chomping at the bit for the government to give them the go ahead to track everyone and enforce a 'papers please' society.
On the other hand, we could have a zero Covid planet. A place without pandemics. Bill Gates is the hero we need.
>we could have a zero Covid planet
No we couldn't have. It's never been done in history and is probably impossible to do.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#18Location tracking is a huge business and honestly CDC is probably the actor we should be least concerned about in that marketplace. I think the real story is the commodification of our physical presence and the resulting surveillance capitalism models it further enables and normalizes.
Good point. I think the real value of this story is not that this data is readily available, but that the government is also consuming it - which most people (rightly!) have a problem with. If that's the wake up call it takes to make people pay attention to just how bad "surveillance capitalism" is, then I'm all for it.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#19Location tracking is a huge business and honestly CDC is probably the actor we should be least concerned about in that marketplace. I think the real story is the commodification of our physical presence and the resulting surveillance capitalism models it further enables and normalizes.
It's feasible to be concerned about both corporate and government surveillance at the same time.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#20See the issue here is that this data exists at all and it’s purchasable by any group. I feel like the CDC are the least scary people buying this data. And from the looks of it they used it for medical research, which if similar in style to other medical research is bound by boards and ethics committees. What we aren’t writing about in this article are the groups using this data Cambridge Analytica style to sway polit…
Yeah. I have no problem with researchers getting anonymized data. CDC, snoop all you want. It's the business guys I don't like having it.