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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

#101
post #66
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.

> along with the Milgram experiment that people should lookup

Don't bother, the experiment was so unethical it cannot be replicated properly. Furthermore, the way it was presented to the public was deceptive; only some of the results were widely reported and some of those suppressed results draw into question the popular narrative of the experiments outcomes.

For instance, it is popularly claimed in undergrad psych classes that the Milgram experiments showed people comply with authority. But what is meant by authority is left unqualified. In the popularly described versions of the experiments, the authority ('the experimenter') presented themselves as a scientist and used appeals to the value of science to persuade the test subjects ('the teachers'.) What they never deigned to teach me in my undergrad psych class is the compliance rates fell when the presentation of the authority was changed, and also fell when the experiments were performed away from the context of Yale University in New Haven. This suggests that people don't blindly comply with authority; personal value systems play a role in determining how likely somebody is to comply with a particular sort of authority. This seems wholly unsensational to me; somebody who values science is more likely to comply with a scientist. Somebody who likes cops is more likely to comply with cops. And nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann enthusiastically complied with nazi authorities because Eichmann was a nazi (contrary to his claim of merely following any authority blindly.)

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

#102
post #66
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.

Complaining about negative karma, downvotes, or dislikes is pretty much the best way to receive more of it.

Going on the attack against your imagined perception of your downvoters and then the platform itself and all of its users is also pretty justifiably worth downvoting.

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

#103
post #66
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.

If there is another forum I would hope similar comments are also downvoted or deleted there because it's completely unrelated to the discussion, and you're also taking the opportunity to take cheap political shots at easy targets. Don't do that. Dr. Fauci doesn't even work for the CDC. You're better than this, you don't have to set up these rhetorical traps to have a discussion.

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

#104
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.

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.

Okay but you can't take someone to court for being unethical-- and the government in my experience doesn't care much if you complain they're not ethical. So while I don't disagree I'm not sure what the effect of this actually is, if any

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

#105
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments have a long and storied record of data abuse, from the Stasi in East Germany to LoveInt at the CIA.

Humans have a long and storied record of using tools and information to do malicious things. But we also have a long and storied record of using tools and information to produce the incredible advances of the past few centuries, where the median life expectancy has nearly doubled from the baseline over the past 50k years. Personally, I would really prefer a system where health information was centralized and easily t…

Are you suggesting that this location information is "health" data and is okay for them to use and store?

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 airb…

Sure, it would have originally been rational to try to contain it until widespread vaccination could happen. That was no longer an option as soon as:

(a) Trump decided that his followers should treat it by injecting bleach, fish tank cleaner, and horse dewormer (b) the WHO and the CDC decided it wasn't an airborne disease because apparently they were still relying on research from 1949 C.E. (c) the CDC decided not to tell Americans that masks were effective (because they didn't want panic buying) (d) Biden's COVID czar decided to ostrich the whole thing

Now we're just fucked; everyone will get it, the question is how many times and how bad the next variants. And whether we'll ever develop effective treatment for long covid.

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

#107
post #86

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…

The mental gymnastics of this comment. > bound by boards and ethics committees Is there any evidence an ethics committee was party to this? If in fact, one was, they found it ethical to consume personally identifiable data without those persons’ authorization?

I don't think ethics committees are worth the chairs they sit on, but "personally identifiable data"? How did you conclude that it was personally identifiable?

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

#108
post #86

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…

The mental gymnastics of this comment. > bound by boards and ethics committees Is there any evidence an ethics committee was party to this? If in fact, one was, they found it ethical to consume personally identifiable data without those persons’ authorization?

https://www.cdc.gov/os/integrity/hrpo/index.htm

I assume this classifies as research so it should be subject to the same ethical requirements.

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

#109

And they wonder why silly conspiracy theories gain traction in the public? Honestly this is the dumbest thing to do in secret. The CDC was supposed to be apolitical and gave that up entirely during the pandemic, and now it appears they are quite horrible at politics.

It wasn't a secret. It's literally on their website with the sources listed. What exactly is secret. The dashboard they have lists the source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mobility

Ctrl-F "the mobility metrics are"

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

#110
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't even have the power to study gun violence.

What does this have to do with anything?

The CDC declared gun violence a public health crisis and started butting into the issue with their "We are science" attitude.
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