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

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

One firm was paid $420,000, and another $288,000 by the CDC. It bought location data access from at least 55 million cell phone users.

The contracts were approved in an emergency review based on the COVID-19 Pandemic. “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions elated 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 Epoch Times obtained the contracts.

According to the CDC, it will use the tracking data for its own purposes. “assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.” Data could also be merged 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.”

A heading will be labeled “potential use cases” The CDC stated that the data could be used by the CDC to link the closures of bars or restaurants with COVID-19 infection and death rates. It also can be used to evaluate the effects of state restrictions on close personal contact between people.

This data could also be used for monitoring compliance with recommended quarantines or mandated quarantines upon arrival from another state. It could also be used in order to examine the correlation between mobility patterns, spikes in COVID-19 at facilities such churches, concerts, and grocery store. It could also allow for the examination of movement restrictions, such as curfews. “patterns” “compliance,” These are the terms of the contracts.

Vice News had previously reported on these contracts but released only one page. They total 71 pages. Both were signed by the parties in 2021.

Early Research published, but it is not clear what the data was purchased for

The data was provided free of charge by SafeGraph, Cuebiq, and CDC to the CDC during the early stages of the pandemic.

In 2020, CDC researchers published two studies that used the data. The first study examined data from four U.S. metro areas and found that people move less when social distancing measures are in place. Another study showed that people moved less when there were strict lockdowns in place, but more after the states relaxed them.

Researchers have also used mobility data to conduct studies.

After the purchase of the data by the agency, no CDC studies have been published. A spokesperson for the CDC did not give examples of how the purchased data were used.

“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 Epoch Times’ spokesperson, said 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 concluded.

Researchers have proven that although the data cannot be anonymized, it could be used to identify people.

“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 spoke.

Cuebiq and SafeGraph receive data from mobile applications, which they then pass on to customers as sets. SafeGraph provided the sets. “neighborhood patterns,” It showed how frequently people visited places of special interest, what their origin was, and where they went. Cuebiq also included: “shelter-in-place index” The percentage of mobile devices at the home was measured over a period of time. A traveler from outside of state set out to estimate how many people were coming from another state. “failing to shelter in place.”

The Epoch Times was informed via email by a spokesperson for SafeGraph that the company “compiles and provides objective, verifiable facts about physical locations around the world—like the address or operating hours of a particular point of interest,” It is not possible to add the data it sells. “de-anonymized,” Or “used to identify or to ‘track’ the movements or behavior of individual persons.” Part of this is achieved by introducing “randomized noise,” The company stated.

Cuebiq didn’t respond to our 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 replied that the data was part “us[ing] the best science available to inform our understanding of the public health impacts of interventions and to inform recommendations.”

Walensky stated that the CDC also used location tracking data from Google but had never paid for it.

She stated that the purchased data was not shared with any agency or private company.