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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

#41

Post by PragmaticPulp »

stephbu wrote: post #37
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is ethical. The CDC was acting unethically here, though I'm sure they feel everything they do is ethical because they are above question when performing their mission.

Pretty much every cellphone/app user dimension is available for a price on the open market. What you do think Facebook et.al, sells when an app user allows background tracking? Is it unethical to study behavior of the populous? If anything bringing it into a clinical study probably brought more oversight in terms of ethical handling, and aggregation/anonymization of data than the source would provide.

> What you do think Facebook sells

Facebook doesn't sell data. They place ads, but the data stays in-house.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#42

Post by mynameishere »

0daystock wrote: post #5

Location 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.

least concerned about

Why are people saying this sort of thing about the CDC? They have proven themselves out-of-control, irrational dictators.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#43

Post by verdverm »

edmcnulty101 wrote: post #8

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.

I'm on a Pixel and Google Fi, no such thing happened to me. Are there other entities that might have hand their hand in this? (State, Telco, phone manufacturer)

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#44

Post by 0daystock »

mynameishere wrote: post #42
0daystock wrote: post #5

Location 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.

least concerned about Why are people saying this sort of thing about the CDC? They have proven themselves out-of-control, irrational dictators.

Because they're an organization which is still bound by public laws and social norms, whereas the real sinister use of our location data goes entirely unnoticed and is far, far more insidious than will ever be printed in the subservient press.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#45

Post by native_samples »

0daystock wrote: post #44
mynameishere wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

least concerned about Why are people saying this sort of thing about the CDC? They have proven themselves out-of-control, irrational dictators.

Because they're an organization which is still bound by public laws and social norms, whereas the real sinister use of our location data goes entirely unnoticed and is far, far more insidious than will ever be printed in the subservient press.

Are they? Didn't they somehow unilaterally suspend rent payments for the entire US, even though that is well outside their granted authority? And what social norms did lockdowns involve, exactly?

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#46

Post by starwind »

EricE wrote: post #16

Time 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.

If you use an android, you can set it so that it does location just off GPS which is a lot less precise and doesn't seem to update as often. The other day I went downtown for a ballgame, sushi after, and then home, and the only place it picked me up for the day was the light rail station when I bought my ticket early that afternoon

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#47

Post by 0daystock »

native_samples wrote: post #45
0daystock wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're an organization which is still bound by public laws and social norms, whereas the real sinister use of our location data goes entirely unnoticed and is far, far more insidious than will ever be printed in the subservient press.

Are they? Didn't they somehow unilaterally suspend rent payments for the entire US, even though that is well outside their granted authority? And what social norms did lockdowns involve, exactly?

A federal judge vacated the nationwide freeze on evictions that was put in place and the lockdowns were not merely the result of US health officials conspiring. Your criticism of the CDC is valid but I believe it is misguided; the manufactured moral outrage I'm speaking about distracts us from the real abuses of power happening behind the veil, and they are far more shocking than what is reported here.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#48

Post by cm2187 »

samschooler wrote: post #2

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…

Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has, I am not sure I agree with your assessment that it is the least scary people. But I agree that the problem here is not that the CDC is buying it so much that this data is available to be bought.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#49

Post by Enginerrrd »

spookthesunset wrote: post #15
newbamboo wrote: post #13

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.

Zero Covid was and always will be a scam.

There was probably a window in time when cases were less than a few thousand or so when such a thing could have been possible. That's the real game in fighting emerging diseases. Early detection, identification of reservoirs and rapid vaccine development and aggressive isolation and ring vaccination if possible.

But I agree, it's absolutely laughable to think enforced social distancing could ever control a fully airborne disease, already so widespread, and with an R_0 over 4, especially now with the current rate of emergence of immunity escaping variants. Check out BA.4 and BA.5 in south africa right now, both of which seem to elude immunity from BA.1 just 6 months after Omicron's emergence.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#50

Post by chrisco255 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #20
samschooler wrote: post #2

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…

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.

Right, because governments have never done anything wrong in the history of the world. It's all those evil business guys.
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