Coronavirus: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Mar 19 21:06:58 PDT 2023


https://www.theepochtimes.com/cdc-bought-phone-data-to-monitor-americans-compliance-with-lockdowns-contracts-show_5118737.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01376
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23696559-cuebiq-cdc-order
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23696555-cdc-safegraph-contract

CDC Bought Phone Data to Monitor Americans’ Compliance With Lockdowns,
Contracts Show

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased
data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns,
according to contracts with the firms.

The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought
access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.

The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19
pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to
continue critical emergency response functions related to evaluating
the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders,
closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to
mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community
transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch
Times, state.

The CDC said it would be using the tracking data to “assess
home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the
percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.”
The data could also be integrated with other information “to provide a
comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the
COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders,
business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical
interventions in states and cities.”

Under a heading labeled “potential use cases” for the data, the CDC
said it could be used to try to connect the forced closures of bars
and restaurants with COVID-19 infections and death rates, as well as
try to assess the impact of state restrictions on close contact
between people outside of their home.

The data could also be used to monitor adherence to mandated or
recommended quarantines after arrival from another state and to
examine the correlation of mobility patterns and spikes in COVID-19
cases at facilities such as churches, concerts, and grocery stores. It
would also enable examining movement restrictions such as curfews to
show “patterns” and “compliance,” the contracts state.

The contracts were previously reported on by Vice News, but the outlet
only released a screenshot of a single page. Together, the contracts
run 71 pages. Both were signed in 2021, the same year new medical
codes for COVID-19 vaccination status were approved.
Early Research Published, Unclear What Purchased Data Used For

The CDC, early in the pandemic, received the data for free from the
firms, SafeGraph and Cuebiq.

CDC researchers in 2020 published two studies utilizing the data. One
focused on data from four U.S. metropolitan areas, finding that people
moved around less when measures such as social distancing were
imposed. Another found that harsh lockdown orders led to decreased
movement, while there was more movement after states began lifting the
orders.

Other researchers have also used the mobility data for studies.

No CDC studies were published after the agency bought the data and a
CDC spokesperson did not provide examples of what the purchased data
were used for.

“For COVID-19, the insights derived from these data provide essential
information on the impact and effectiveness of policies and COVID-19
mitigation measures (e.g., jurisdictional stay-at-home orders and
business closures) that had profound effects on communities,” Scott
Pauley, the spokesperson, told The Epoch Times via email.

“These data provide important insights to protect public health and
have been used to understand population-level impacts of COVID-19
policies and can shed important light on other pressing public health
problems, like natural disaster response, and toxic environmental
exposures. CDC does not and could not use these data for monitoring
compliance with COVID-19 orders or individual tracking,” he added.

While the data is deanonymized, it can be used to identify people,
researchers have shown.

“The data CDC received were aggregated and anonymous, had extensive
privacy protections, and could not be used to identify individuals.
They cannot be tied to an individual and have multiple layers of
privacy protections to prevent misuse or re-identification,” Pauley
said.

Firms like SafeGraph and Cuebiq receive phone data from applications
before passing it on to customers in sets. The sets from SafeGraph
included “neighborhood patterns,” which showed how often people
visited places of interest, where they came from, and where else they
went. The sets from Cuebiq included a “shelter-in-place index” that
measured the percentage of mobile devices at home during a certain
period of time, and an out-of-state traveler set to estimate what
percentage of people who came from another state were “failing to
shelter in place.”

A SafeGraph spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email that the firm
“compiles and provides objective, verifiable facts about physical
locations around the world—like the address or operating hours of a
particular point of interest,” adding the data it sells cannot be
“de-anonymized,” or “used to identify or to ‘track’ the movements or
behavior of individual persons.” That’s accomplished in part by
introducing “randomized noise,” the company said.

Cuebiq did not respond to a request for comment.
Congressional Concerns

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the top Republican on the Senate
Subcommittee on Investigation, expressed concern with the purchase of
the mobility data, asking the CDC who approved the purchase and
whether it shared the data with other agencies.

“It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during
the pandemic and whether it continues to do so. In response to
COVID-19, the CDC should have been prioritizing the development of
treatments, effective testing, and vaccine safety rather than tracking
Americans’ daily lives,” Johnson wrote to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle
Walensky.

Walensky said in response that the data was part of “us[ing] the best
science available to inform our understanding of the public health
impacts of interventions and to inform recommendations.”

The CDC has also utilized location tracking data from Google, but
never paid for the data, Walensky said.

She also said that the data that was purchased was not shared with any
other agency, or any private companies.


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