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Google 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.
Google 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Anonymized... for you.
See 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…
Google 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.
It was simply a feature that downloaded. It did nothing if you didn't turn it on.
How do you know though? Google is constantly tracking your every move by default without you turning anything on.
So even if this feature had an on/off it was more by the grace of Google than by any strongly enforced anti-tracking feature.
See 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…
Headline feels a little misleading, they didn’t track phones per se, they bought data from one of the dozens of cellphone data-brokers that continue to operate despite legislation and congressional action/in-action.
Furthermore with regards to the misleading headline, apart from a few counties in California there were no "lockdown orders" in the US. There were closed businesses [0], and there were suggestions that individuals stay home. There were no widespread orders with the force of law telling individuals that they must stay in their homes.
[0] who I feel for, especially when things like small hardware stores had to shut down while Home Depot could remain open.
See 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…
Problem is that once they use it for a benign reason, use of the data will expand into other, less palatable uses.
Some people focus their attention on limiting the government's ability to collect this information, but just go about ignoring businesses being legally allowed to keep and sell this data. Now the government is leveraging privatized markets for all of their spying needs and it is neatly kept out of the courts.
As the article points out, it wasn't just the CDC performing these kinds of analysis. News organizations were doing the same thing.
If we want to curb government surveillance, we need to curb corporate surveillance by legally enshrining a right to privacy that limits the information that companies can collect and sell. Which, ironically, will mean government regulation and enforcement.
Headline feels a little misleading, they didn’t track phones per se, they bought data from one of the dozens of cellphone data-brokers that continue to operate despite legislation and congressional action/in-action.