{"id":1462669,"date":"2022-05-03T17:14:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1462669"},"modified":"2022-05-03T17:14:38","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:14:38","slug":"cdc-used-location-data-from-millions-of-phones-to-see-if-americans-obeyed-covid-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cdc-used-location-data-from-millions-of-phones-to-see-if-americans-obeyed-covid-orders\/","title":{"rendered":"CDC Used Location Data From Millions Of Phones To See If Americans Obeyed COVID Orders"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcdc-used-location-data-from-millions-of-phones-to-see-if-americans-obeyed-covid-orders%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1462669&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/03\/CDC.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span>Documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that the agency tracked location data from at least 20 million phones to monitor compliance with COVID-19 policies, according to a new report revealed on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>A Freedom of Information Act request from CYBER \u2014 a cybersecurity podcast hosted by Vice\u2019s Motherboard \u2014 revealed that the CDC \u201cbought access to location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the United States\u201d to perform \u201canalysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation,\u201d according to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/m7vymn\/cdc-tracked-phones-location-data-curfews\"><span>Vice<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The CDC paid data broker SafeGraph $420,000 for one years\u2019 access to location data \u201cderived from at least 20 million active cellphone users per day across the United States,\u201d according to the CDC documents, which add that the data \u201chas been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Cybersecurity researcher Zach Edwards explained to Motherboard that \u201cThe CDC seems to have purposefully created an open-ended list of use cases, which included monitoring curfews, neighbor to neighbor visits, visits to churches, schools and pharmacies, and also a variety of analysis with this data specifically focused on \u2018violence.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Among the \u201cpotential use cases\u201d for the data listed by the CDC included:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><span>\u201cTrack patterns of those visiting K-12 schools by the school and compare to 2019; compare with epi metrics [Environmental Performance Index] if possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><span>\u201cExamination of the correlation of mobility patterns data and rise in COVID-19 cases [\u2026] Movement restrictions (Border closures, inter-regional and nigh curfews) to show compliance.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><span>\u201cExamination of the effectiveness of public policy on [the] Navajo Nation.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>The documents further show that \u201calthough the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly,\u201d they \u201cintended to use it for more general CDC purposes.\u201d Indeed, some of the use cases \u2014 including research data for \u201cphysical activity and chronic disease prevention such as visits to parks, gyms, or weight management businesses\u201d \u2014 have little to do with COVID-19.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The CDC purchased SafeGraph\u2019s \u201cU.S. Core Place Data,\u201d \u201cWeekly Patterns Data,\u201d and \u201cNeighborhood Patterns Data.\u201d The latter product \u201cincludes information such as home dwelling time, and is aggregated by state and census block.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Although the CDC used SafeGraph\u2019s data to analyze compliance with stay-at-home orders as early as September 2020, the CDC later bought access to the data \u201cbecause SafeGraph no longer wanted to provide it for free,\u201d according to Vice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cCDC has interest in continued access to this mobility data as the country opens back up. This data is used by several teams\/groups in the response and have been resulting in deeper insights into the pandemic as it pertains to human behavior,\u201d one section reads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Neither SafeGraph nor the CDC responded to Vice\u2019s multiple requests for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies for breaking news, investigative reporting, sports, podcasts, in-depth analysis, books, and entertainment for a reason: because we believe in what we do. We believe in our country, in the value of truth and the freedom to speak it, and in the right to challenge tyranny wherever we see it. Believe the same? <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/utm.io\/ueuP8\"><i><span>Become a member now and join our mission<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that the agency tracked location data from at least 20 million phones to monitor compliance with COVID-19 policies, according<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":1481461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1462669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1481461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1462669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1462669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1462669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}