New documents obtained by Vice News revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked the location data from tens of millions of Americans to make sure they were being compliant with Covid restrictions and lockdowns.
According to the report, The CDC paid “highly controversial data broker” SafeGraph $420,000 to gain access to the cell phone location data. The documents show that the CDC used Covid-19 to gain access to the data very quickly.
The data included where people live, where they work and where they travelled.
According to the documents the CDC’s tracking was “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.”
Cybersecurity researcher Zach Edwards told Vice,
“The 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.”
Even though the data was ‘urgently’ needed for the pandemic, the CDC and SafeGraph have extended their purchase of cell phone data access because the CDC claims they need the location tracking data to monitor as the country ‘opens back up.’
The CDC claims the are using the cell phone data to pin point interest for physical activity and for preventing chronic disease. They also claim they need to track people in order to monitor “population migration before, during, and after natural disasters” saying,
“The mobility data obtained under this contract will be available for CDC agency-wide use and will support numerous CDC priorities.”
SafeGraph had reportedly been banned from the Google Play Store over privacy concerns, something they deny.
