Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 442 posts

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

#131

Post by ChrisLomont »

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…

>The whole opinion of roe v Wade was predicated on the fact the government had no right to people's health information

The Due Process violation is not about government right to health information. It's about the govt not being able to deprive people of things without due process.

Here's the full SC ruling [1]

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113

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

#132

Post by throwaway0a5e »

darkerside wrote: post #128
version_five wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Can someone name a scarrier (sp) entity that could be tracking you? ... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? Unless you buy into conspiracies, the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, and is constrained by constitutional checks and balances.

>... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex?

The mafia is easy. Pay them and they DGAF what you do. Creepy ex is more or less a non-issue because any threat of violence one person can bring can be matched by another one person.

It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but potentially capricious organizations (like the CDC, or any other federal bureaucracy, obviously the trigger happy ones are higher on the list), the kind of organizations who can send a dozen thugs to kick in your door and who have diffused responsibility across so many people you can't "get even" that you don't want coming after you.

>the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you,

Every horror in history was committed with the best of intentions.

Edit: and to be clear, I'm not too worried about the CDC themselves, I'm worried about the legions of useful idiots that will happily take whatever they say and run with it. If the CDC makes BS or politically charged recommendations there is a myriad of other institutions (government and otherwise) that will see that as their ticket to do whatever bad thing they were already fishing for a reason to do. I don't want anyone having my data. But given the choice I'd rather have people who want to sell me penis pills and time shares have my data than people who want to tell me how to live.

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

#133

Post by giantg2 »

jerkstate wrote: post #40
LorenPechtel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are animal hosts, we can't get rid of it.

Of course we can, the question is, at what cost?

That seems to be theoretical. Are there any examples of eradicating a zoonotic disease that caused a pandemic (without it going away naturally)?

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

#134

Post by tdfx »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #121
version_five wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions Do you think the average American knows more about these issues than the CDC? If so, how did they go about getting their knowledge?

You are absolutely correct from a theoretical standpoint. Completely neutral, independent medical experts should, on average, make better health decisions than an uninformed populace.

The problem is when we transfer those assumptions to the real world, all of the most important adjectives in that prior sentence start to fall apart. The managers in the CDC are not neutral or independent. They are by and large bureaucrats who have professional reputations, career trajectory, office politics, and other competing incentives that compete and often conflict with their stated goal of making the "best health decisions" for everyone.

This has resulted in the absurd patchwork of logically inconsistent mask and vaccine rules that we've all be subjected to for the past 2 years. For me, this has firmly demonstrated that the structure of these institutions and their methods of public communication have lost the public trust and we cannot give them broad, sweeping powers.

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

#135

Post by renewiltord »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #132
darkerside wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can someone name a scarrier (sp) entity that could be tracking you? ... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? Unless you buy into conspiracies, the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, and is constrained by constitutional checks and balances.

>... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? The mafia is easy. Pay them and they DGAF what you do. Creepy ex is more or less a non-issue because any threat of violence one person can bring can be matched by another one person. It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but potentially capricious organizations (like…

[flagged]

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #17
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.

>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.

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

renewiltord wrote: post #135
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? The mafia is easy. Pay them and they DGAF what you do. Creepy ex is more or less a non-issue because any threat of violence one person can bring can be matched by another one person. It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but potentially capricious organizations (like…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by throwaway0a5e »

renewiltord wrote: post #135
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? The mafia is easy. Pay them and they DGAF what you do. Creepy ex is more or less a non-issue because any threat of violence one person can bring can be matched by another one person. It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but potentially capricious organizations (like…

[flagged]

Don't be obtuse.

The Nazis gassed people because they thought that eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead to a better society. Sure the people at the top knew it was questionable but the guy loading the train had spent a decade reading newspapers full of junk and thought he was deporting undesirables.

The American Indians who's culture was systematically destroyed, all those people the eugenicists sterilized, the black communities that were turned into crap over the 50s and 60s, all of that was done by people trying to their little part make the world a better place.

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

#139

Post by tepitoperrito »

darkerside wrote: post #128
version_five wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Can someone name a scarrier (sp) entity that could be tracking you? ... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? Unless you buy into conspiracies, the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, and is constrained by constitutional checks and balances.

I don't approve of using the term conspiracies as a way to denounce the questioning of true intentions or possible problem areas.

Unless someone can prove that no one involved in the tuskegee "incident"[0] is no longer employed or influential at the CDC I will just resign myself to thinking that THEY are the conspiracy theorist, a conspiracy to seem infallible or at least incorruptible. Such a concept is of course ridiculous, don't turn off your brain with an appeal to authority.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

EDIT: spelling

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

#140

Post by chaps »

jonathankoren wrote: post #113
chaps wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes. Location data is health data. It has been since 1854. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...

Just because data is used in understanding something related to health doesn't mean that it's "health data" in a legal, protected, or regulatory sense. Nor does it mean that they should have de facto access to the data without limitations. Hell, the closest thing I'm aware of that's close to it (at least under HIPAA) is the name or address of a hospital that a person's visited.

Would you be okay if the CDC purchased data from period-tracking apps to track periods? Or how many bottles of soap I purchase in a year? Or how much booze everyone buys?

Post reply on HN