Mar 21, 2023
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased the cell phone data of 55 million Americans to track their whereabouts during the height of Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns. According to contracts obtained by The Epoch Times senior reporter Zachary Stieber, the public health agency paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. This combined spending of $628,000 gave the CDC access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users in the United States. (Related: Postal Service accused of sharing private info of 68M households obtained from COVID-19 tests.) The contracts were approved under emergency review using CDC's COVID-19 pandemic protocols. The agency claims in the contracts that the purchase of location data would provide it "with 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, re-openings and ot