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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

#191

Post by cgio »

darkerside wrote: post #149
tepitoperrito wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not denouncing, just answering a loaded question by putting my finger in the barrel. I think we can talk about our concerns in a realistic way without resorting to baseless speculation. It's fair to question whether the CDC should be using this data. The thing about Tuskegee is that it wasn't a conspiracy. It started in 1932, in a time when the majority of Americans probably would have supported it if they knew about…

I don't believe conspiracy necessarily has to be for a goal that is against majority support. I.e. someone may conspire against a minority. Conspiracy is by virtue of not disclosing actions or their goals. I.e. the subjects of the study would definitely see it as a conspiracy against them.

The relevant argument here would be the extent to which this approach to scientific experimentation was normal at that point in time and how it compares to current protocols. I.e. whether CDC aligns with scientific research protocols and therefore the focus would be on whether these protocols are strong enough to warrant broad access to data without consent.

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

#192

Post by StanislavPetrov »

jiveturkey wrote: post #151
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faraday bags are quite inexpensive.

Effectively leaving it at home? Once you unwrap it at your destination, haven't you not only given up your travel history (maybe not to an intermediate location), but also flagged yourself as someone that is hiding something? I guess my point is, you can't hide yourself from the government this way. From some random third party, sure.

>Effectively leaving it at home? Once you unwrap it at your destination, haven't you not only given up your travel history (maybe not to an intermediate location), but also flagged yourself as someone that is hiding something?

For me the utility in having a cell phone is the convenience. If my car breaks down or if I get a page on my 1-way pager that I deem important enough to call back then giving a random datapoint of my location is a conscious decision that I can make. This is vastly different than creating and offering up a record of everywhere I go to the government, the phone company and all of the 3rd parties along the way that hoover up my info as I pass by.

>but also flagged yourself as someone that is hiding something?

Or someone that values their privacy.

>I guess my point is, you can't hide yourself from the government this way.

The government can track you with satellites, helicopters or simply park someone outside your house and follows you every time you go out if they so choose, and there isn't much you can do about it. What you can do is refuse to voluntarily input all of your movements and activities into a massive database that can be accessed, retrieved and data-mined at will.

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

#193

Post by tepitoperrito »

slg wrote: post #168
tepitoperrito wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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, 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…

There are doctors, lawyers, administrators, and talking heads in their 80s who are well known and respected in their fields today. My knowledge of biology and arithmetic puts them at around 30 years old in the year 1972. That's the year the program ended.

If not the CDC then maybe we should just question everyone's motives and I apologize for trying the sensationalist approach.

EDIT. Maths. Unedit. Still maths

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

#194

Post by mistrial9 »

I knew this was happening at the time, and I contacted several people generally past my level of influence, to tell them.

The significant first paragraphs here show, not only is this a PR effort, but noting US Constitution protected places (churches), intimate family ties (school) and by law, other sovereign nations (First People lands in North America) show to me, a non-lawyer, that there is going to be a serious penalty sought legally by someone, somehow.

I say, nail these companies to the wall. The industry was bursting at the seams to sell this, with super-fancy data viz eye-candy ala Palantir and crew. There is lust for this, not just the money. Mapbox I am looking at you.

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

#195

Post by ClumsyPilot »

version_five wrote: post #100
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…

[flagged]

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

mullingitover wrote: post #170
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…

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. 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 wan…

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by StanislavPetrov »

vkou wrote: post #171
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, just difficult. License plates happen to be incredibly susceptible to getting muddy.

In a world where being the wrong kind of skin colour can consistently get you pulled over and harassed for a 'broken tail light' and 'smelling weed in the car', it takes a lot of social privilege to think that driving around with an unreadable license plate is a workable solution.

Come to New York City where every 3rd car on the road has an illegal paper license plate or no license plate at all and then get back to me about "social privilege".

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

#198

Post by elihu »

BeefWellington wrote: post #153
mensetmanusman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government having it is the most scary, because they have a monopoly on violence.

The second amendment contradicts this idea.

I think the more complete formulation is that the government has a monopoly on the legal use of violence. (Which I suppose isn't really true in all contexts: violence by private citizens can be legal when defending private property, for instance. But aside from small carve-outs for personal security, self-defense, and private property it generally holds.)

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

#199

Post by sfink »

This is an excellent use of the data, a proof that it is worthwhile for the data to exist, and a terrifying demonstration that we need to grow the hell up with respect to data privacy.

It actually sounds like the anonymization and aggregation was done pretty well for this. There's no such thing as 100% anonymity, but there are useful levels of anonymity.

The fact that we don't have a standardized way of blessing data with varying known levels of privacy, checked and enforced by law, is kind of ridiculous in 2022.

If you want to maximize privacy here, then let's pass laws to prevent doctors from knowing the gender, age, and weight of any of their patients.

I 100% agree that privacy is handled way, way too loosely in general, and this does look like the CDC was a lot more interested in a grab bag of use cases than it was with maintaining anonymity. But surely that's an indictment of our societal failure to regulate data brokers? It shouldn't be up to the CDC to act counter to their mission.

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