I’m not sure how this is a story as mobility data has been shown on the cdc COVID data tracker web site for over a year [0] that lists the source.
(disclosure, I did not work on these data)
CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
71–80 of 442 posts
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#72Earlier 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.
What does this have to do with anything?
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much every cellphone/app user dimension is available for a price on the open market. What you do think Facebook et.al, sells when an app user allows background tracking? Is it unethical to study behavior of the populous? If anything bringing it into a clinical study probably brought more oversight in terms of ethical handling, and aggregation/anonymization of data than the source would provide.
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...
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has Care to elaborate? CDC has historically been an extremely powerful organization devoted to the safety of the US public.
The event that is being referred to is probably when the CDC decided it had the authority to suspend evictions in the entire United States. It did not, as was decided by the Supreme Court.
The same happened with mask mandates.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#75Headline 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.
How is the CDC's behavior here unethical? Every person involved has consented to everything involved. Just because you personally don't like it doesn't mean people aren't allowed to willingly give up their privacy. That's how freedom works.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Governments have a long and storied record of data abuse, from the Stasi in East Germany to LoveInt at the CIA.
Right, because businesses have never done anything bad with data, it's all those government guys. The government of course being the one tasked with improving the health and welfare of the population, not with turning a profit.
No post body was provided.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#77Headline 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.
Importantly this didn't give them the easy ability to pinpoint individuals for not complying with lock down. The point is to know how impactful policies were
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#78And 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.
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Problem is that once they use it for a benign reason, use of the data will expand into other, less palatable uses.
The problem is that this data is available for anyone to purchase. And anyone includes groups that you don't want to have it. Some people focus their attention on limiting the government's ability to collect this information, but just go about ignoring businesses being legally allowed to keep and sell this data. Now the government is leveraging privatized markets for all of their spying needs and it is neatly kept ou…
How could you even prevent the government from accessing the data if any random company with a few bucks can get it?
If you had really strong safeguards, maybe you can stop the government from accessing it directly but what kind of safeguards are going to stop contractors of contractors of contractors from doing what every other private company does?
Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. I have no problem with researchers getting anonymized data. CDC, snoop all you want. It's the business guys I don't like having it.
Governments have a long and storied record of data abuse, from the Stasi in East Germany to LoveInt at the CIA.
>> Yeah. I have no problem with researchers getting anonymized data. CDC, snoop all you want. It's the business guys I don't like having it.
> Governments have a long and storied record of data abuse, from the Stasi in East Germany to LoveInt at the CIA.
"Governments" is far too coarse-grained of a category; it invites sloppy thinking.