March 23, 2023 - Epoch Times
10:22
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| According to government contracts that we here at the Epoch Times were able to get our hands on, well, it turns out that the CDC has been using taxpayer money to purchase the cell phone tracking data of millions of Americans in order to monitor how compliant they were with government lockdowns. | |
| You heard that right. | |
| According to these documents that you can see up on your screen, the CDC paid over $600,000 to two separate companies in order to gain access to the location data of at least 55 million cell phone users. | |
| Meaning that whether you were sitting on the couch watching TV, whether you were at the golf course with your buddies, or whether you were on a hike with your kids, as long as you had your trusty cell phone by your side, Well, the CDC was very likely monitoring your whereabouts. | |
| Although, of course, they'll make the argument that the data was anonymized, and so they did not technically know where you were. | |
| They only knew that there was a dot on the map that happened to go wherever you went. | |
| However, before we dive into the details of their tracking, let me break down for you the specifics of what these contracts actually reveal. | |
| And I hope that, by the way, if you appreciate content like this, you do take a quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons, which quite literally forced the YouTube algorithm to share this video out To start with, these contracts were signed during the time of the pandemic, and therefore, they were approved under emergency review, which, for your reference, is much faster than a typical government contract review. | |
| And the stated goal of the endeavor behind these contracts Was to provide the CDC with, quote, 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, reopenings, and other public health communications related to mask mandates and other emerging research areas and community transmission of SARS-CoV-2. | |
| Then, in terms of what this tracking looked like in practice, the document goes on to say that the CDC was using this tracking data to, quote, assess home-by-hour behaviors, such as curfew analysis, by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific periods of time. | |
| Then, within this purchase order, they go on to write that this cell phone tracking data will be integrated with the information that the CDC already had access to in order to weave together a more complete picture and provide, quote, a comprehensive picture of movement and travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school reopenings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities. | |
| And so essentially, if you remember back to the years 2020 and 2021, that was when the CDC was recommending that all these different jurisdictions throughout the country, they should be shutting down their bars, their restaurants, their movie theaters, their schools, their small businesses, their clubs, their parks, and almost everything else. | |
| And then, according to these new contracts, the CDC was then purchasing the cell phone data in order to see whether their recommendations were, for one, actually being followed, and then secondly, whether they actually worked or not. | |
| The CDC was essentially mapping out whether there was indeed a connection between these different forced closures and forced lockdowns and a lowering of COVID infections and COVID deaths. | |
| Well, at least that's one thing that they were doing. | |
| Because according to these documents, the CDC was also using COVID as just a pretext for why they needed to expedite the purchase of this data. | |
| But the documents clearly show that the CDC intended to use this data for much more than just COVID. And we know this because in a separate section of this document, a section where the CDC actually lists out exactly what they're planning to use this data for, they elaborate that they will be using this data for non-COVID-related programs as well. | |
| Here's part of what that section states. | |
| The CDC also plans to use mobility data and services acquired through this acquisition to support non-COVID-19 programmatic areas and public health priorities across the agency, including, but not limited to, travel to parks and green spaces, physical activity and mode of travel, and population migration before, during, and after physical activity and mode of travel, and population migration before, during, and The mobility data obtained under this contract will be available for CDC agency-wide use and will support numerous CDC priorities. | |
| Then, right below that, the CDC goes on to list 21 specific use cases for this tracking data. | |
| You can see it up on screen for yourself. | |
| And indeed, there are many use cases listed there that are not linked to COVID at all, such as, quote, research points of interest for physical activity and chronic disease prevention, such as visits to parks, gyms, or weight management businesses. | |
| And exposure to place-based environmental exposures, like places with high air pollution and area-level incidents of pollution-related outcomes like asthma, as well as, quote, meaning that according to the justification for this purchase, according to the CDC's justification for why they needed to spend $600,000, the CDC said that they will be using this data not just for COVID, but for a wide array of other public health-related projects as well. | |
| Which sounds all well and good until the obvious question pops into your mind. | |
| Doesn't this mean that the CDC is tracking me? | |
| And here's where things get a little weird. | |
| Because on the one hand, this data is anonymized. | |
| Meaning that your little dot on the map, it cannot be traced back to your specific phone number, your specific SIM card, your specific IP address, or anything like that. | |
| However, even though this data is anonymized, research has shown again and again that this cell phone tracking data can be used to identify almost anyone. | |
| In fact, according to this article in Nature magazine, researchers found that if a quote, data set where the location of an individual is specified hourly, just four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals. | |
| And if you think about it, logically, that would seem to make sense. | |
| Because even if you're just a dot on a map without a name and without any identification numbers, well, the people at the CDC who are monitoring you, they can still see where you go to work, they can see where you do your shopping, they can see which bar you go to, and they can see the location where you sleep. | |
| And that's enough data points to positively identify almost anyone. | |
| Although, I will mention that we here at the Epoch Times, we did reach out to one of the companies that actually sold the data to the CDC, And they got back to us saying that they put certain safeguards in place to protect people's privacy. | |
| Here's what they wrote to us in an email. | |
| Quote, Meaning that they claim that certain safeguards are in place in order to stop government officials from stalking their ex-wives when they should be doing lockdown research. | |
| And speaking of lockdown research, it should be noted that after the date of this purchase agreement, the CDC has not published any studies using this data. | |
| $600,000 worth of tracking data has yet to show up in any of their published research, which if you think about it is a bit odd because you would imagine that if their lockdown policies were proven to be effective by the use of this data, well, then the CDC would publish those findings. | |
| But again, from the date of those purchases, from that date up until today, no such studies have been published. | |
| We here at the Epoch Times, we in fact reached out to the CDC in order to ask them what this data has been used for thus far. | |
| And one of their spokespeople got back to us. | |
| And he wrote a fairly lengthy email, but within that body of that email, there are no actual concrete examples of what the purchase data was used for. | |
| Regardless though, just for your reference, let me read to you a part of what that email said. | |
| This is again an email from the CDC to us here at the Epoch Times. | |
| For COVID-19, the insights derived from this data provide essential information on the impact and effectiveness of policies and COVID-19 mitigation measures. | |
| 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. | |
| The CDC does not and could not use these data for monitoring compliance with COVID-19 orders or individual tracking. | |
| Which might very well be true, but again, according to that paper in Nature magazine that we looked at earlier, well, certain scientists that have looked into it beg to differ. | |
| All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment, I wanted to mention that the sponsor for today's episode is a super cool company called Secure. | |
| And they're a cool company for people that actually care about their privacy. | |
| Because listen, if you don't think that these giant tech inglomerates and all these different alphabet agencies within the U.S. government are spying on your messages, well, then frankly, you are not paying enough attention to the news. | |
| However, all that can be in the past because with Secure, they have awesome proprietary technology that has all your messages and all your emails actually go through Switzerland as they're making their way back and forth between you and your recipient. | |
| And so let's say you're here in America and the person you're messaging is over in Canada, Mexico, or anywhere else in the world. | |
| Well, it doesn't matter because all your messages are actually going through Switzerland back and forth from one to another, meaning that they are not subject to the Cloud Act and they are only subject to Swiss laws, which are some of the safest in the entire world. | |
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| They care about getting the facts out, which is why they sponsor a company like ours. | |
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| Regardless, if you'd like to go deeper into these contracts, I'll throw all the links down into the description box below this video so you can peruse them at your own leisure. | |
| And also, I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| Do you think that this type of tracking is a net positive? | |
| Because it does allow the CDC to see how effective their measures actually were, and that way they can plan better for the future, not just for COVID, but for other outbreaks as well. | |
| Or do you think that our privacy outweighs any possible benefits and therefore the government should not even be involved in this type of work at all? | |
| But then on the other hand, if you believe that to be true, the fact remains that this data is publicly available. | |
| And technically, anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars can purchase it. | |
| And so what's the problem with the CDC being one of those buyers? | |
| I'd love to know your thoughts. | |
| Please leave them in the comments section below. | |
| I'll be reading them tonight as well as into later this week. | |
| And then until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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