Tag: Government Agencies

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

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

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

The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence [Turki bin Faisal Al Saud] among its investors. Google banned the company from the Play Store in June.

The CDC used the data for monitoring curfews, with the documents saying that SafeGraph’s data “has been 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.” The documents date from 2021.

Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely follows the data marketplace, told Motherboard in an online chat after reviewing the documents: “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 with this data specifically focused on ‘violence.’” (The document doesn’t stop at churches; it mentions “places of worship.”)

Related:

Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics

Location data broker SafeGraph stops selling information on visits to abortion providers

SafeGraph Provides CDC and 1000+ Organizations With Data to Fight the COVID-19 Crisis

Google Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence Head:

On its website SafeGraph says “We believe places data should be open for all.” In April 2017, Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, invested in SafeGraph as part of a $16 million Series A funding round. SafeGraph said it had “assembled the deepest policy thinkers.” Beyond Faisal Al Saud, SafeGraph said it had enlisted the help of former U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, author Sam Harris, Meghan O’Sullivan who ran Iraq and Afghanistan policy under President George Bush, former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Obama Mona Sutphen, and former German Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, among others. Peter Thiel is also an investor in the company.

More investors: SafeGraph Raises $16 Million Series A

Disinformation Board to Tackle Russia, Migrant Smugglers

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a new panel to tackle disinformation

Disinformation Board to Tackle Russia, Migrant Smugglers

Related:

Recommended YouTube video: DHS Creates “Disinformation Governance Board” – It’s About The Empire! (Source)

Deep State Response, Dept of Homeland Security Will Establish Disinformation Board with Obvious Agenda

Who Is Nina Jankowicz? Head of Joe Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board

Before her work advising the Ukrainian government, Jankowicz managed democracy assistance programs for Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She holds an MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) is one of the main components of the regime change organization National Endowment for Democracy (NED); that is, NED channels its funds through four organizations, and NDI is one of them, to “promote free, fair, transparent democratic elections but in such a way that it would assure that power went to the elites and not to the people”.

WikiSpooks

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev (Orange Revolution)

Elon Musk is Surveillance Valley

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

by Yasha Levine

The latest outrage to hit the wire is that the board of Twitter has agreed to accept Elon Musk’s buyout proposal, which will give Elon full control of the company and allow him to take it private. There’s lots of howling all around, as if they sky is falling. If you ask me, Twitter — and social media in general — is garbage tech that mostly wastes our time and poisons our minds. But regardless of where you stand sale of Twitter to a Twitter-addicted oligarch, to me the deal just further proves the thesis of my book, Surveillance Valley. The Internet is an extension of the American Empire.

Elon Musk is Surveillance Valley (Archived)

Clearview AI Walks Back Earlier Claims, Is Now Willing To Sell Its Sketchy Product To Anyone With Money And A Pulse

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

If only Clearview had managed to remain under the radar. If it had, it could have been the stealth privacy assassin multiple entities (both public and private) desire, but are unwilling to admit to using publicly. Even the rest of the facial recognition tech field wants nothing to do with Clearview and the billions of images/data points it has scraped from the public web. Clearview remains alone in its extreme odiousness — a villain rising head and shoulders above its already questionable competition.

Clearview AI Walks Back Earlier Claims, Is Now Willing To Sell Its Sketchy Product To Anyone With Money And A Pulse

Face scanner Clearview AI aims to branch out beyond police:

One of its biggest known federal contracts is with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly its investigative arm which has used it to track down both the victims and perpetrators of child sexual exploitation. Clearview in March also started offering its services for free to the Ukrainian military, in part to help identify dead Russian soldiers using Clearview’s repository of about 2 billion images scraped from Russian social media website VKontakte.