CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by dekhn » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

user_7832 wrote: post #84

loceng wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Fauci as the saviour in Stockholme Syndrome... Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider him a saviour? All I see (as a non American) is folks on the right hating him being considered a saviour... but I don't find a single post glorifying him even on left-leaning reddit.

I'm a democrat who finds fauci completely uninteresting. He's a skillful bureaucrat with health experience but not an effective communicator. I don't think that listening to him and doing exactly what he suggests is the wisest course of action, but it's certainly not the least wise.

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

#92

Post by pstuart » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:00 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #66

cm2187 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quoted post unavailable.

I've yet to find any compelling evidence that says that vaccines do not work (in fact quite the contrary).

Conversations with anti-vaxxers in my circle are no different than those of deep religious conviction -- they believe it because they believe it and nothing can change their mind.

Conversely, I'm more than happy to change my mind if compelling evidence/reasoning presents itself. That's not happened yet. Now its your turn: explain why vaccines do not work and how the immune system cannot be trained by exposure to vaccines.

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

#93

Post by vmception » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

> perform analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation

what? one of these is not like the other

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

#94

Post by beej71 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

djbebs wrote: post #11

anonquixey wrote: post #10

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

There is definitely data that can't be worked backwards.

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

#95

Post by pstuart » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

user_7832 wrote: post #84

loceng wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Fauci as the saviour in Stockholme Syndrome... Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider him a saviour? All I see (as a non American) is folks on the right hating him being considered a saviour... but I don't find a single post glorifying him even on left-leaning reddit.

Pro-vax, pro-science here. I respect him for trying to help our society in dealing with infectious disease but do not worship him (that's saved only for David Bowie).

My take on anti-vaxxers is that they have a "religious" relationship to their belief system and therefor project their personal assumptions onto others.

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

#96

Post by rootusrootus » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

JaceLightning wrote: post #57

What's crazy is how far we've changed. The whole opinion of roe v Wade was predicated on the fact the government had no right to people's health information: > In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether…

> Now we have vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and CDC surveillance.

Not coincidentally, Roe is about to be a memory too.

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

#97

Post by pstuart » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #90

user_7832 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fauci as the saviour in Stockholme Syndrome... Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider him a saviour? All I see (as a non American) is folks on the right hating him being considered a saviour... but I don't find a single post glorifying him even on left-leaning reddit.

It's just the psychological term used as part of explaining Stockholm Syndrome behaviour. It doesn't mean it's conscious behave or a conscious belief.

meh. not the best explanation or even use of the term.

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

#98

Post by beej71 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

stephbu wrote: post #4

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.

It's too bad about the headline. When I see something like that, it's hard to tell what in the article is factual and what is hyperbole.

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

#99

Post by caconym_ » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

stephbu wrote: post #73

crtasm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook sells targeted advertising, they don't sell the underlying data AFAIK?

Ads is just one of their businesses, consider FBLogin and 3rd party data-access e.g. full-name, date-of-birth, email address, friends, the list goes on...

I don't use FB, but don't you typically have to explicitly opt in to this kind of sharing?

There is a world of difference between that and companies you can't really opt out of doing business with if you want to live in mainstream society (cell providers, banks, etc.) making you click 'agree' on some 50k line dump of legalese and then selling granular, non-anonymous personal data to anyone willing to pay.

Frankly, the hysteria around "Big Tech" "selling your data" is misplaced and probably paid for by the lobbying arms of the real abusers. "Big Tech" is far from blameless, but it's a teddy bear compared to how other industries treat us.

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

#100

Post by version_five » Tue, May 03, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

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…

> CDC are the least scary people buying this data

Most buyers probably just want to target advertising at me, or otherwise grab my attention. The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. And they seem to think they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you?

I don't agree with anybody tracking me, but even say insurance companies which is the other worst thing that comes to mind have limited purview in what they might be interested in