> These Covid-19 decree violation scores were calculated by analyzing nearly two billion global positioning system (GPS) pings to get “real-time, ultra-granular locations patterns.”

How did they acquire this data? At what point did 10 million Americans consent or opt-in to sharing this information with PredictWise?

None of this shocks me

Cell carriers sell location data.

This is horrifying. I'm very curious how they obtained the relevant data to track each cell phone, and even more curious how anyone gave permission to be tracked.

It doesn't sound like they do - from their whitepaper https://www.predictwise.com/whitepaper:

> PredictWise has collected hundreds of thousands of respondents reporting party identification and models voters through survey, mobile data, and location data compiled through mobile devices

> PredictWise’s database includes verified data on 50 Million+ unregistered voters, sourced through credit files and portal registration data (e.g. Crate&Barrel), and is carefully purged of duplicates or registered voters, updating daily. PredictWise (PW) machine learning models predict the party of unregistered based on survey respondents from hundreds of thousands of Americans and can apply support scores to turnout your electorate.

> We make full use of the probability models on the file, ensuring that each individual will get a score reflecting his or her exact position. The end result is a continuous score for each cluster ranging from 0 to 100 for every American represented on the file.

So, they have a few hundred thousand survey fills/app installs. Then they combine the data against 50 million public records, and then they extrapolate it out for the entire voter population. So they may have one or two given devices in an area and then their model says what that represents across everyone.

I was under the impression that e.g. phone carriers in the US fairly freely sell that kind of data to whoever pays for it, and can do so legally except for less than a handful of states states with useful general privacy regulations? (general in contrast to sector-specific ones like HIPAA)

They can still be bound by what their privacy policy states. For example, AT&T is pretty open and clear about what they do with your data (a lot). https://about.att.com/privacy/full_privacy_policy.html

This is either cell carrier data or data that is gathered from those "free" apps and games people love to install and grant all permissions to.

There are several ways I can think of.

First, people were willingly installing COVID-19 contact apps to alert them if they were in contact with a confirmed-positive case. Despite all of “us” (security-paranoid people) shouting at the top of our lungs that This Is A Bad Idea.

Second, your phone is constantly listening to a list of SSIDs and bluetooth identifiers to connect to and broadcasts a small amount of info - like your MAC address -, which can uniquely fingerprint your device. Supermarkets, for example, have used this for years to track shoppers. They can easily track your phone without GPS just by listening what it broadcasts and where from. And it is also then not a surprise when Apple decided to remove the functionality to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth from the “drawer” and instead of for it to only “disconnect from nearby networks until tomorrow.”

Here is the article about WiFi and retail stores https://lifehacker.com/how-retail-stores-track-you-using-you...

It was actually nice to get notified that I had been exposed to COVID 2 days before I came down with symptoms. I was able to avoid my coworkers and prevent me from spreading it to them and their families.

In most things I would agree to the adage about those who would give up their freedom for safety deserve neither freedom nor safety, but the right to not share my location data to help people be aware of a deadly pandemic and protect themselves is not something I would consider a freedom, and it was given up to protect other people's safety which is a noble cause.

We always sacrifice liberty for these "noble" goals, don't we? But once you do, there is never getting them back. See: PATRIOT Act. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

If there is a liberty to expose innocent people to potentially deadly diseases I don't want it for myself or others.

If that's a step towards hell then God is not good.

> "If there is a liberty to expose innocent people to potentially deadly diseases I don't want it for myself or others."

But you don't get to make that decision for OTHERS. If you are worried about COVID, stay home and wrap yourself in a bubble. There's a certain amount of risk that comes with living with people.

Meh, I don't have to countenance the opinions of selfish people

> "Meh, I don't have to countenance the opinions of selfish people"

And the rest of us don't have to inject untested, unproven chemicals into OUR bodies just so YOU can have a false sense of security and virtue signal.

Freedom all around.

This is scary, but also seems still fairly limited.

FTA: “PredictWise harvested location data from tens of millions of US cellphones during the initial Covid lockdown months“

“two billion global positioning system (GPS) pings”

So, that’s, at most, 2 × 10⁹ pings for 10⁷ cellphones, or 200 pings per cellphone, over, say, 2 months. That’s about 3 pings per day per phone.

“high-dimensional data covering over 100 million Americans”

That would make it at most 20 pings per American, on average, so (again assuming 2 months) at most about two a week.

The GSM infrastructure must have way more tracking points about telephone locations (possibly with lower resolution)

I invite interested readers to go back in time and read comments and articles posted here from mid 2020 through late 2021. Take note of how often claims that this sort of thing was certainly not going to happen.

As Ricky said, atodaso.

You had to figure something like this would eventually come out. I thought it would be the government, but politics isn't far from off.

Also would like to know how data was obtained.

US citizens were given secret Covid "decree violation" scores based on invasive surveillance and, in particular, that data was combined with Republican voter rolls to allow Democrats to specifically target Republicans

Downvotes with no response per usual hn trash, but if you actually read the story, you will find that this is actually what the story is about.

For those wondering how this kind of data is obtained:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/nepxbz/i-gave-a-bounty-hunte...

sounds like a badge of honor IMO .

I would hope to have no change in my 'score' before and after....ideally i wouldn't adjust my lifestyle for meaningless fears....but I guess I never cared about opinions except my own.

I have interpreted this the exact opposite as you've stated.

I believe "wouldn't adjust my lifestyle" nets you a pretty handsome score and that's a problem.

At least I consider it a problem, though I would also consider higher score a badge. It's not opinions they are interested in, it's obedience or lack thereof.

This is the same dataset that was used 2000 Mules, isn't it?

This website is clearly pushing an agenda. If you actually read the whitepaper they are quoting, there is no such thing:

> PredictWise targeted Republicans who scored high on our measure of Covid-19 decree violation (folks who were on the go more often than their neighbors) and Republicans who scored low on our measure of Covid-19 decree violation (folks who mostly or always stayed at home) in the swing state, Ohio, and asked survey questions.

The dataset is entirely based on people who took a mobile survey. They than used that to generate a "model" that took a best guess on an advertising data set. They then claimed that they got 40k successful advertising conversions for their ads. How cute.

Even if you don't like ad tracking, this is a ton of hyperbole. They may as well be giving you a score about how much you like chocolate chips based on your age and location.

So, US citizens WERE given a secret Covid "decree violation" score. It didn't say ALL US citizens haha!