[HN Gopher] CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans f...
___________________________________________________________________
CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed
lockdown orders
Author : KoftaBob
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-05-03 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| shawn-butler wrote:
| 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.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The CDC was supposed to be apolitical and gave that up
| entirely during the pandemic
|
| If the politicians politicize a pandemic, and the CDC's job is
| to fight disease, then anything the CDC does becomes political
| by definition. Seems like that's on the politicians.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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"
| stephbu wrote:
| 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.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| 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.
| tsol wrote:
| 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
| stephbu wrote:
| 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.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > What you do think Facebook sells
|
| Facebook doesn't sell data. They place ads, but the data
| stays in-house.
| crtasm wrote:
| Facebook sells targeted advertising, they don't sell the
| underlying data AFAIK?
| stephbu wrote:
| 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...
| caconym_ wrote:
| I don't use FB, but don't you typically have to
| explicitly opt in to this kind of sharing?
|
| There is a world of difference between that and companies
| you can't really opt out of doing business with if you
| want to live in mainstream society (cell providers,
| banks, etc.) making you click 'agree' on some 50k line
| dump of legalese and then selling granular, non-anonymous
| personal data to anyone willing to pay.
|
| Frankly, the hysteria around "Big Tech" "selling your
| data" is misplaced and probably paid for by the lobbying
| arms of the real abusers. "Big Tech" is far from
| blameless, but it's a teddy bear compared to how other
| industries treat us.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| 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.
| mindslight wrote:
| Exactly! We need real privacy legislation, with consent framed
| similarly to the EU's GDPR. Without some type of general
| reform, every little bit of outrage about how our personal
| information is being abused is just a surface distraction.
|
| Furthermore with regards to the misleading headline, apart from
| a few counties in California there were no "lockdown orders" in
| the US. There were closed businesses [0], and there were
| _suggestions_ that individuals stay home. There were no
| widespread orders with the force of law telling individuals
| that they must stay in their homes.
|
| [0] who I feel for, especially when things like small hardware
| stores had to shut down while Home Depot could remain open.
| beej71 wrote:
| It's too bad about the headline. When I see something like
| that, it's hard to tell what in the article is factual and what
| is hyperbole.
| space_fountain wrote:
| 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
| tootie wrote:
| I also take issue with the liberal use of the term "lockdown".
| As far as I can tell, the only thing close to a lockdown was
| issued for a time in San Francisco. Everyplace else just barred
| indoor gatherings. You could go outside as much as you pleased.
| And even businesses were open for takeout or reduced occupancy.
| JaceLightning wrote:
| 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 to have an abortion.
|
| Now we have vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and CDC
| surveillance.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >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
| brimble wrote:
| > vaccine mandates
|
| We've had those for decades.
|
| > vaccine passports
|
| These must not be a federal thing, because I still don't really
| know what people mean by this. Is it a state thing?
|
| > and CDC surveillance
|
| Private surveillance that the CDC _and anyone else_ can buy. I
| agree that collecting this info in the first place, let alone
| selling it, should be very, very illegal.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Now we have vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, and CDC
| surveillance.
|
| Not coincidentally, Roe is about to be a memory too.
| eddyg wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the breakdown of how much of the
| location data SafeGraph/Veraset gets is from "free" apps that
| commoditize developers when they integrate various advertising
| APIs.
| EricE wrote:
| 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.
| post_break wrote:
| 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 that I've had
| the same thoughts as you and just realized it's impossible.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| It's possible, just difficult. License plates happen to be
| incredibly susceptible to getting muddy.
| h4waii wrote:
| "The enemy of good is perfect".
|
| There are acceptable steps to take in order to remove
| yourself and some of your data from the things you disagree
| with, but just because you can't reach step 10 right now,
| doesn't mean you should take step 1.
| starwind wrote:
| If you use an android, you can set it so that it does location
| just off GPS which is a lot less precise and doesn't seem to
| update as often. The other day I went downtown for a ballgame,
| sushi after, and then home, and the only place it picked me up
| for the day was the light rail station when I bought my ticket
| early that afternoon
| anonquixey wrote:
| I got free academic access to this dataset. The data is
| anonymized and aggregated to the census block level (500 people).
| It does not allow for the kind of tracking that the article is
| fear mongering about.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| The average census block has a population of 30 people.
| Millions of census blocks have a population of zero while
| millions more have a population of only a couple of people.
| Surely it must be at the census tract level or higher?
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Census block group, not census block
| dogleash wrote:
| >The data is anonymized
|
| Anonymized... for you.
| djbebs wrote:
| No such thing as anonymity data
| beej71 wrote:
| There is definitely data that can't be worked backwards.
| president wrote:
| Not full anonymity if you can see where the phones are moving
| from-to
| rolph wrote:
| this only works when people take thier phones everywhere they go
| renewiltord wrote:
| I was involved with this. SafeGraph data is aggregated to the CBG
| level and has differential privacy applied.
|
| You don't have to guess. The data is self-serve purchasable from
| their website so you can go take a look at what it looks like. Go
| find a blog post of theirs and you'll get a coupon code so you're
| not paying and then you can look at what the data looks like.
| empressplay wrote:
| In Australia the government freely admitted to using mobile phone
| tracking and tower 'pings' to determine lockdown compliance, the
| state of Victoria at one point using the data to justify
| extending a lockdown in Melbourne.
| 0daystock wrote:
| Location 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.
| EricE wrote:
| Good point. I think the real value of this story is not that
| this data is readily available, but that the government is also
| consuming it - which most people (rightly!) have a problem
| with. If that's the wake up call it takes to make people pay
| attention to just how bad "surveillance capitalism" is, then
| I'm all for it.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| It's feasible to be concerned about both corporate and
| government surveillance at the same time.
| 0daystock wrote:
| Definitely true and I'm of the same mind. Which is why I'm
| dissuading readers from unnecessary moral outrage over petty,
| inconsequential matters like this, and encourage everyone to
| think deeper about technology's role in our lives.
| mynameishere wrote:
| _least concerned about_
|
| Why are people saying this sort of thing about the CDC? They
| have proven themselves out-of-control, irrational dictators.
| 0daystock wrote:
| Because they're an organization which is still bound by
| public laws and social norms, whereas the real sinister use
| of our location data goes entirely unnoticed and is far, far
| more insidious than will ever be printed in the subservient
| press.
| native_samples wrote:
| Are they? Didn't they somehow unilaterally suspend rent
| payments for the entire US, even though that is well
| outside their granted authority? And what social norms did
| lockdowns involve, exactly?
| 0daystock wrote:
| A federal judge vacated the nationwide freeze on
| evictions that was put in place and the lockdowns were
| not merely the result of US health officials conspiring.
| Your criticism of the CDC is valid but I believe it is
| misguided; the manufactured moral outrage I'm speaking
| about distracts us from the real abuses of power
| happening behind the veil, and they are far more shocking
| than what is reported here.
| Clubber wrote:
| I mean maybe. The CDC is just an outlet or a tool that
| was appropriate at the time. I'm sure they didn't come up
| with the eviction moratorium on their own, they were told
| to do that, or at least it was authorized by another
| group. They also knew it would be overturned because they
| have legal council.
|
| Just because it's the CDC doesn't mean there aren't
| strings moving the arms about.
|
| "The principle of a court overruling a public health
| judgment by a qualified organization like the CDC is
| disturbing in the precedent that it might send."
| samschooler wrote:
| 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 political opinion,
| and other less than stellar purposes.
| version_five wrote:
| > 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 agree with anybody tracking me, but even say insurance
| companies which is the other worst thing that comes to mind
| have limited purview in what they might be interested in
| jancsika wrote:
| > Most buyers probably just want to target advertising at me,
| or otherwise grab my attention.
|
| That's not a fair response given the examples provided to
| you.
|
| OP's comment mentioned the Cambridge Analytica case which--
| _if_ true-- is certainly more concerning than someone
| advertising at you.
|
| It's one thing to argue that case was overblown, but it's not
| serious to sweep it into the bin of "otherwise grab my
| attention."
|
| Edit: changed the word "satisfactory" to "fair." It's not
| that the comment I'm replying to wasn't tasty enough for my
| enjoyment or something. It's more that it hand-waved away the
| point OP was making.
| darkerside wrote:
| > 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >... 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.
|
| It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but
| potentially capricious organizations (like the CDC, or any
| other federal bureaucracy) 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Wait, the Nazis put people in gas chambers for their own
| good? News to me.
| version_five wrote:
| Is Godwin still a thing?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Don't be obtuse.
|
| The nazis gassed people because they thought that
| eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead
| to a better society.
| tepitoperrito wrote:
| 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 of your brain with an appeal
| to authority.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
| jpgvm wrote:
| If you are that scared of people that have more knowledge
| than you on topics that take decades of study to understand I
| can't imagine how scared you should be of politicians. On
| average they have close to zero knowledge about anything yet
| wield power to change almost any facet of your life.
|
| Personally I'm sticking with the scientists, atleast they
| earnt that power through real excellence rather than winning
| some popularity contest.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking
| you?_
|
| FBI, CIA, local police, any branch of military, Oathkeepers
| (a group that did track me for a while because I organized a
| pro-voting event in my city)... it's a very long list.
| Basically anyone with a gun and a desire to harm me is a lot
| scarier.
|
| In the past, companies used to assassinate leaders of
| unionization efforts, too.
| josho wrote:
| I know we are getting off track here somewhat. But it's group
| A wants this data to better understand society in order to
| save lives, while every other group want this data to
| increase their profits.
|
| To your point, yes we shouldn't allow tracking. But, whatever
| fix we apply should not be so limited that it only affects
| the CDC, it should be generally applied to stop all groups as
| well.
| version_five wrote:
| > group A wants this data to better understand society in
| order to save lives
|
| In principle, I agree with the idea of anonymous data used
| exclusively and apolitically to "understand society" as you
| say. I just see no evidence that would ever be possible,
| either to trust that it will be kept anonymous or that
| whatever conclusion get drawn from it and acted upon will
| be remotely nonpartisan. It's sad in a sense, but I think
| the only viable solution is to reject any notion of
| tracking, no matter how much anyone swears they'll only use
| it for what they consider good.
|
| That said, I may be missing something but I still think
| it's less worrisome to hear that private companies are
| using information didn't actively hide and provided by
| voluntarily using their product (I still don't like it, but
| I don't think it should be illegal for a company to say
| "we're giving you this tracking device", use it and get a
| discount). Compared with the government, given the whole
| "monopoly of violence" thing or whatever weaker version you
| like, and also as the agent of the people, to be using that
| data, I think is a whole different think. Same as there is
| a difference between an ISP logging your internet traffic,
| and one voluntarily giving that information to the
| government and effectively becoming a government agency.
|
| Anyway, this is going too far astray, and getting too long,
| you see my point about the distinction
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >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?
| tdfx wrote:
| 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.
|
| Simply put, the past 2 years have 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.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Agreed. The data broker that the CDC got this data from is
| SafeGraph. What we really should be asking is what "partners"
| SafeGraph got this data from, and how.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The government having it is the most scary, because they have a
| monopoly on violence.
| dfee wrote:
| 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?
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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?
| cinntaile wrote:
| 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.
| peyton wrote:
| Going off "CDC's Policy on Distinguishing Public Health
| Research and Public Health Nonresearch" linked from that
| page, I would guess this activity they'd call
| "nonresearch."
| cm2187 wrote:
| 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.
| iaw wrote:
| > 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The same happened with mask mandates.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| If you are referring to Health Freedom Defense Fund v.
| Biden, I don't think that was the Supreme Court. It was a
| federal court. I have no idea if anyone has petitioned
| the Supreme Court to hear the case.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| I believe that's in regards to Fauci saying the mandate
| reversals by the Supreme Court are unfortunate and should
| be left to them to decide.
| loceng wrote:
| robonerd wrote:
| > _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.)
| evilduck wrote:
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| I'm well aware that people who love downvotes will
| downvote genuine and thoughtful criticism of something
| they love doing.
|
| It also pulls people out of the woodworks to respond with
| something that's lazy.
| throwaway82652 wrote:
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| You're narrowing the conversation, gatekeeping the
| acceptable scope to "the CDC" in order to make Fauci
| irrelevant - when I am looking at the scope of US health
| and government institutions - which Fauci is party and
| frontman for.
|
| Don't do that. You're better than this.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Fauci as the saviour in Stockholme Syndrome...
|
| Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does
| anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider
| him a saviour? All I see (as a non American) is folks on
| the right hating him being considered a saviour... but I
| don't find a single post glorifying him even on left-
| leaning reddit.
| xapata wrote:
| No, the language of "savior" tends to come from religious
| extremists.
| loceng wrote:
| It's just the psychological term used as part of
| explaining Stockholm Syndrome behaviour. It doesn't mean
| it's conscious behave or a conscious belief.
| pstuart wrote:
| meh. not the best explanation or even use of the term.
| dekhn wrote:
| I'm a democrat who finds fauci completely uninteresting.
| He's a skillful bureaucrat with health experience but not
| an effective communicator. I don't think that listening
| to him and doing exactly what he suggests is the wisest
| course of action, but it's certainly not the least wise.
| pstuart wrote:
| Pro-vax, pro-science here. I _respect_ him for trying to
| help our society in dealing with infectious disease but
| do not worship him (that 's saved only for David Bowie).
|
| My take on anti-vaxxers is that they have a "religious"
| relationship to their belief system and therefor project
| their personal assumptions onto others.
| pstuart wrote:
| I've yet to find any compelling evidence that says that
| vaccines do not work (in fact quite the contrary).
|
| Conversations with anti-vaxxers in my circle are no
| different than those of deep religious conviction -- they
| believe it because they believe it and nothing can change
| their mind.
|
| Conversely, I'm more than happy to change my mind if
| compelling evidence/reasoning presents itself. That's not
| happened yet. Now its your turn: explain why vaccines do
| not work and how the immune system cannot be trained by
| exposure to vaccines.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They don't even have the power to study gun violence.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| They do, they choose not to. That they cannot by some law
| is a myth. Obama even called them out on it.
|
| Obama also had them author a massive study on all aspects
| of gun violence, but the results went quite against what
| the Dems wanted to claim, so it got pretty quiet again.
|
| What happened is they did publish some studies, and one was
| quite bad (to this day the author will not release the
| dataset, for example), but was invoked for a lot of policy.
| Congress chastised them for it, banned them from advocating
| public policy, but they did not ban the CDC from studies
| (and they still do studies, very few - if you search you
| can find them).
| Wohlf wrote:
| Probably because gun violence isn't a disease, and there's
| already several agencies under the DoJ for that.
| smt88 wrote:
| The DoJ is not a research institution, and the CDC
| doesn't only study disease. They study all threats to
| public health, including smoking, heat waves, and bicycle
| accidents.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| sure, just saying that
|
| >virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it
| has
|
| is not true
| giantg2 wrote:
| Actually they do. They have performed some firearms
| research in recent years. The restriction is just that the
| money cannot be spent on studies looking to support gun
| control. They choose to err on the side of caution and
| limit the studies rather than seek clarification through
| the courts on what would constitute supporting a policy.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/funded-
| resea...
| chaps wrote:
| What does this have to do with anything?
| Geonode wrote:
| The CDC declared gun violence a public health crisis and
| started butting into the issue with their "We are
| science" attitude.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Problem is that once they use it for a benign reason, use of
| the data will expand into other, less palatable uses.
| mywittyname wrote:
| 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
| out of the courts.
|
| As the article points out, it wasn't just the CDC performing
| these kinds of analysis. News organizations were doing the
| same thing.
|
| If we want to curb government surveillance, we need to curb
| _corporate_ surveillance by legally enshrining a right to
| privacy that limits the information that companies can
| collect and sell. Which, ironically, will mean government
| regulation and enforcement.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| 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?
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| The _problem_ could also be said to start with software.
| Particularly Apple and Google for allowing specific
| location information to be used in the same app as
| advertising. The _problem_ is that all apps are granted
| access to the internet.
|
| Nip those two things in the bud and the problems will slow
| down, I think. But it's a pipe-dream, I know.
|
| In the early days of Android, I remember reading that
| Android was Android because you had to jump through all
| these permission hoops with j2me (Java 2 Mobile Edition).
| Hence, Android was better and more easy to use than j2me.
| Here we are, 15 years later with exactly the same set of
| permissions problems... with one exception, Android still
| gives out internet access without permission. Many devs
| here would be aghast at the idea of an app not being
| internet connected.
|
| I believe Google did it that way because Steve Jobs had
| done it that way in the iPod and iPhones. (I presume
| there's some HN'ers here that can refute this?) I remember
| my colleagues at the time remarking how refreshing it was
| to not have to deal with permissions (because customers
| disliked all the modal permissions that popped up in
| j2me)... and we all jumped on board the iPhone and Android
| development train, not knowing the problems that we'd have
| down the line.
| landemva wrote:
| More than one facet to the problem and potential solutions.
| How about...
|
| The problem is this data is not owned by the individual.
|
| Which will mean government guidelines and optional private
| enforcement via lawsuit with meaningful minimum penalties.
| Proven wrote:
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Right, because governments have never done anything wrong in
| the history of the world. It's all those evil business guys.
| nickff wrote:
| Governments have a long and storied record of data abuse,
| from the Stasi in East Germany to LoveInt at the CIA.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> 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.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| They also have a long and storied history of helping the
| public avoid widespread disasters and preventing larger
| outbreaks of disease through using data.
|
| Which of these is more common and useful?
| lucb1e wrote:
| Of course one has to keep government( agencie)s in check,
| but to compare the CDC to the Stasi.... I don't know if
| that's really an apt or appropriate comparison
| modriano wrote:
| 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 transferrable to
| healthcare providers, as I think it would be massively
| better if we could learn from the bad outcomes of others
| rather than creating thousands of information silos that
| have to learn these expensive lessons in parallel, and it
| would also allow us to know the prices of healthcare
| services thereby enabling efficient markets to develop.
| chaps wrote:
| Are you suggesting that this location information is
| "health" data and is okay for them to use and store?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Yes. Location data is health data. It has been since
| 1854.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_o
| utb...
| arcticbull wrote:
| 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.
| bendbro wrote:
| pirate787 wrote:
| The U.S. Govt used individuals' Census data to round up
| Japanese-Americans for FDR's World War II internment camps.
| They also lied about it and claimed that they were only
| using anonymized data.
|
| https://exhibits.lib.berkeley.edu/spotlight/census/feature/
| j...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Yes, but those threats already exist regardless and
| stopping the sale of carrier data won't stop them.
|
| Ideally you'd want to stop both, but if I had to choose I'd
| prefer that only the government has access rather than the
| highest bidder (which can be the government if they so
| desire, so in the end you're back at square one anyway).
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Did you know there are many classes of crime that follow
| the pattern you spoke of "It already exists out there,
| and will persist even if I stop, I'm not creating it just
| propagating it..."
|
| One pretty nasty example would be revenge porn.
|
| a lesser one would be piracy of copyright material
| alephxyz wrote:
| OC's point is that the data was _already_ being used for other
| less palatable uses.
| vmception wrote:
| > perform analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of
| people visiting K-12 schools, _and specifically monitor the
| effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation_
|
| what? one of these is not like the other
| prepend wrote:
| 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)
|
| [0] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#mobility
| teeray wrote:
| This data needs to be a liability for companies to hold onto
| rather than an asset
| bob1029 wrote:
| The only way to make this data a liability would be to create
| consequences for its possession or dissemination.
|
| In the financial sector, I feel like a lot of really good
| progress has been made with regard to creating artificial
| forces that strongly encourage proper behavior around PII and
| other sensitive data. Just take a look at PCI-DSS for a good
| example of the lengths you _could_ go to in order to protect a
| customer 's assets and/or identity.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Google had a creepy Covid functionality that automatically
| downloaded without my consent to my phone.
|
| Big tech is just chomping at the bit for the government to give
| them the go ahead to track everyone and enforce a 'papers please'
| society.
| verdverm wrote:
| I'm on a Pixel and Google Fi, no such thing happened to me. Are
| there other entities that might have hand their hand in this?
| (State, Telco, phone manufacturer)
| bsuvc wrote:
| Maybe they are referring to the "COVID-19 Exposure
| Notifications" setting.
|
| Im using a Pixel too, and you can see the toggle if you go to
| Settings, then select Google.
|
| Mine is toggled off, and I don't really know he details of
| how it works, but it seems like you need to download some
| official COVID reporting app to enable it.
| lkbm wrote:
| You probably have it, but it's just a feature. In this case,
| it's a default-off feature that allows contact tracing in a
| particular region if you actively choose to enable that.
|
| Google ships features to my phone with every major update.
| This is just one more--completely opt-in--feature.
| newbamboo wrote:
| On the other hand, we could have a zero Covid planet. A place
| without pandemics. Bill Gates is the hero we need.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >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.
| muzika wrote:
| OP was being sarcastic.
| newbamboo wrote:
| Will you read his new book?[0]
|
| If anyone were in a position to know whether it's
| possible, and how to do it, he'd be on the list.
|
| I think, regardless of his history regarding open source,
| water under the bridge long ago, he is worth taking
| seriously if we want to be prepared for the next one,
| which may come soon.
|
| [0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704751/how-
| to-preve...
| _Microft wrote:
| What about SARS-Cov? The first one, not SARS-Cov-2.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| There are animal hosts, we can't get rid of it.
| jerkstate wrote:
| Of course we can, the question is, at what cost?
| giantg2 wrote:
| That seems to be theoretical. Are there any examples of
| eradicating a zoonotic disease that caused a pandemic
| (without it going away naturally)?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Zero Covid was and always will be a scam.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| 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 airborne
| disease, already so widespread, and with an R_0 over 4,
| especially now with the current rate of emergence of
| immunity escaping variants. Check out BA.4 and BA.5 in
| south africa right now, both of which seem to elude
| immunity from BA.1 just 6 months after Omicron's emergence.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| 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.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It was simply a feature that downloaded. It did nothing if you
| didn't turn it on.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| > It did nothing if you didn't turn it on.
|
| How do you know though? Google is constantly tracking your
| every move by default without you turning anything on.
|
| So even if this feature had an on/off it was more by the
| grace of Google than by any strongly enforced anti-tracking
| feature.
| lkbm wrote:
| > Google is constantly tracking your every move by default
| without you turning anything on.
|
| They are. And you decided to take issue with a default-off
| feature instead. Of all the tracking features your phone
| has, this one seems like the least creepy. It's not like
| they're "asking consent" for every other feature they ship.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Time to go back to leaving the phone at home, like when it was
| wired to the house
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Faraday bags are quite inexpensive.
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