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Collected Item: “CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders”

Give your story a title.

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Text story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

This is a news story from Vice by Joseph Cox. The CDC bought access to location data harvested from millions of phones in the United States. Although it was originally purchased for lockdown related reasons, it is intended to be used for non-COVID purposes too. The way they did this was through purchasing data from SafeGraph. The author of this piece mentions how the decision to do this was not without controversy, as it brings into question the freedom of movement and the rights to privacy. Google has banned SafeGraph from its app store in June.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

cybersecurity, tracking, phone data, lockdown, SafeGraph, CDC, United States, ASU, HST580

Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vymn/cdc-tracked-phones-location-data-curfews

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Joseph Cox

Give this story a date.

2022-05-03
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