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.
CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
161–170 of 442 posts
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#162Earlier 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.
They don't even have the power to study gun violence.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/18319/priorities-f...
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#163Earlier 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…
Those horrors in history were created through the combination of good intentions (also integral to the best of human history), and the dehumanization of subgroups. What exactly do you fear from the CDC, and who do you fear they will do it to? Not just a challenge, a genuine question.
The CDC has a historical record of such things. What makes you think human beings are incapabale of repeating such crimes against humanity?
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#164Earlier 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…
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Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#165Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 bureaucr…
If your concern is changing rules over time that seems more optimal than maintaining the most draconian rules both from a freedom standpoint and a public health one. Essentially you want enough exposure to push herd immunity or lockdown never ends, but not excessive exposure or the health system collapses. If you track the number of people in hospitals over time especially in terms of local hotspots it explains the CDC’s behavior quite well.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#167Time 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.
You better rip out your TPMS since those can be tracked. Same with anything that has bluetooth since those are widely tracked on highways for monitoring traffic flows. Oh and license plate readers, not sure how you block those. Can you live a cash only life as well since credit cards are obviously tracked. Do you own a home? Is it in your name or did you set up an LLC to purchase it? I'm not trying to be a jerk, just…
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#168Earlier 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.
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 ri…
The Tuskegee Experiment started 90 years ago and ended 50 years ago. I don't know what proof you need, but the simple facts of human biology basically guarantee that anyone who had any power during that timeframe is no longer working at the CDC.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#169Location 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.
That said, this kind of thing does seem like it has the potential to effectively be an end run around needing a warrant to do this kind of tracking on an individual basis. If it's not allowed for the government to track any particular person without a warrant but they can just buy the tracking data from a brokerage and claim "we didn't do the tracking" - that's a bit problematic to say the least.
I do agree with other posters though that the real crux of it here is that this kind of data should be illegal to have on its own anyways UNLESS ordered by a court to collect it for the purposes of a warrant.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#170See 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…
Their charter is disease control. How you 'live your life' is orthogonal to that mission - they're responsible for stopping you from infecting other people with communicable diseases. That is also your own responsibility, and just because responsibilities aren't always things you want to do doesn't mean they're oppression.