To illustrate how such data could be used, she explained how Google collaborated with the state of California during the COVID-19 pandemic to mine people\u2019s search data and other personal data. They developed a \u201cvaccine willingness score\u201d for each individual person whose data they analyzed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
As a tip, use a privacy search proxy<\/a>, and preferably one you run yourself. The two I run in the link previously are the docker containers put out by the projects with checks for new versions daily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.theburningplatform.com\/2023\/10\/01\/a-panopticon-of-epic-proportions-cdc-awards-260-million-to-track-disease-outbreaks-in-massive-surveillance-scheme\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n Guest Post by <\/strong>Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to establish a national \u201cpublic-private\u201d network to sweep up unprecedented amounts of individual and community data and develop artificial intelligence (AI)-driven models to predict disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That infrastructure will then help local, state and national health officials identify and implement appropriate \u201ccontrol measures\u201d to manage potential disease outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As part of this effort, the agency last week announced an estimated $262.5 million in grant funding<\/a> over the next five years to establish a network of 13 infectious disease forecasting and analytics centers to coordinate this work across the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The funding provides roughly $20 million each to 11 universities that were actors in COVID-19<\/a> modeling and response. The list includes the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which oversaw the Event 201 simulation<\/a> and the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health, where Ralph Baric<\/a> initiated gain-of-function research<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two of the centers will be private entities \u2014 Kaiser Permanente Southern California and a \u201cdisaster preparedness organization\u201d called International Responder Systems LLC<\/a>, whose relevant experience includes running tabletop exercises for weaponized Anthrax<\/a> outbreaks and helping to manage the Ebola outbreak in West Africa<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some centers will work with U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) researchers and bioengineering firms to develop new AI and machine-learning-based modeling tools and platforms to track and predict disease outbreaks across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others will work with insurance companies, healthcare providers, local health departments and others to collect data from people\u2019s search histories, personal communications, social media posts, wastewater, health records and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They will also pilot new tracking and prediction tools in adjacent neighborhoods or among specific demographic groups and scale up \u201csuccessful\u201d pilot projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The grantees will form the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADM) through cooperative agreements with the CDC<\/a>, which will be an active partner in the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.<\/a>, author of \u201cGoogle Archipelago<\/a>: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,\u201d told The Defender<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat they\u2019re constructing is a panopticon of epic proportions, which will be inescapable in the future and will make for surveillance, not only of people\u2019s behaviors, but also, as they\u2019ve said themselves, of their very thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said the COVID-19 pandemic response provided a paradigmatic example of the dangers of predictive modeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe use of modeling is a very poor predictor of infectious disease, and it has been abused in the past, in particular with reference to COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rectenwald, who is also a presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, cited the work of Neil Ferguson, the physicist at Imperial College London who, along with his team, created the epidemiological model in early 2020 that predicted the catastrophic global death toll from COVID-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferguson\u2019s model was used to justify social distancing, masking and lockdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But his predictions \u2014 which were criticized at the time by experts such as Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D.<\/a> \u2014 turned out to be wildly exaggerated<\/a> in real-world tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would anticipate further abuses with this CDC modeling network being set up,\u201d Rectenwald said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018A National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The network is spearheaded by the CDC\u2019s new Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics<\/a> (CFA), set up by the Biden administration to model, predict and control the course of disease outbreaks across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe think of ourselves like the National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases,\u201d Caitlin Rivers, Ph.D., a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist and associate director for science at CFA told The Washington Post<\/a> last year when the White House formally launched the initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMuch like our ability to forecast the severity and landfall of hurricanes, this network will enable us to better predict the trajectory of future outbreaks, empowering response leaders with data and information when they need it most,\u201d the CDC said in its funding announcement <\/a>for the initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as the weather forecast helps people to decide whether to take an umbrella with them when it predicts rain, for example, a disease forecast can help people decide if they should bring a mask, or have a birthday party inside or outside, Rivers told the Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July, Eric Rescorla, former chief technology officer at Mozilla who was tapped to be chief technologist for CFA, told Politico<\/a> it is \u201ca startup in government\u201d that will need a lot of government funding and that will work very closely with private industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The surveillance \u2018the American people want and deserve\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA was formally established<\/a> as part of the CDC in January of this year, but it has been in the works at least since January 2021, when Biden announced plans for the agency in the administration\u2019s first national security memorandum<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA received its first $200 million in August 2021 from the American Rescue Plan Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky<\/a>, who consistently pushed<\/a> for legislative and other changes to \u201cmodernize the public health data policy framework\u201d when she was in office, said at the time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis new center<\/a> is an example of how we are modernizing the ways we prepare for and respond to public health threats. I am proud of the work that has come out of this group thus far and eager to see continued innovation in the use of data, modeling, and analytics to improve outbreak responses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA began making grants in Oct. 2021, awarding<\/a> $21 million to five academic institutions \u2014 including Johns Hopkins and Harvard \u2014 and $5 million to the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy to develop disease modeling<\/a> capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA worked with academic partners<\/a> to model, predict and \u201cwarn\u201d the government of the omicron spread from November to December 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In December 2022, the CDC renewed its partnership with Peter Theil\u2019s CIA-linked data mining firm Palantir<\/a>, signing a $443 million contract<\/a> \u201cto employ scalable technology to plan, manage, and respond to future outbreaks and public health incidents\u201d \u2014 an award meant, in part, to \u201chelp support innovation\u201d for CFA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this year a GOP House subcommittee tried to cut funding<\/a> to the center, but CDC Director Mandy Cohen<\/a> told STAT News she was fighting for the funding. She said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFolks want us to be ready to know of threats and to respond quickly. Well, we need data and visibility to do that. And so that is money that will help us to see threats and respond to threats faster. And that\u2019s what I think the American people want and deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Rectenwald warned that rather than protecting people this system will be a threat to anyone who doesn\u2019t comply with coercive public health directives. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe surveillance that they\u2019re unrolling here has great potential for infringement on privacy and also for targeting individuals and groups for non-compliance, and as such, abuses of their civil rights and liberties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis system will be capable of locating individuals and communities that are not abiding by the coercive measures being \u2018recommended.\u2019 And then they can impose even harsher restrictions on these same people. So this is a very, very pernicious prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA reveals \u2018a revolving door\u2019 between biotech, government health agencies and the DOD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rectenwald told The Defender that the CFA collaboration reveals a revolving door phenomenon that we see in government more generally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have government officials being drawn from the private sector and then granting awards that go back to the companies for which they worked, or to which they\u2019re headed. There\u2019s a lot of collusion underway here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFA is headed by Dylan George, Ph.D.<\/a>, who has spent his career moving between U.S. government health agencies, and the DOD and just prior to being tapped to head up CFA, he had a five-month stint at biotech firm Ginko Bioworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ginkgo Bioworks is one of the only private firms explicitly named as a partner on one of the CFA grant awards, with Northeastern University. It is also a key partner<\/a> in developing other global pandemic surveillance<\/a> and predictive programs, such as the Rockefeller Foundation\u2019s Pandemic Prevention Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides Ginko and Palantir, CFA\u2019s website indicates it partners with \u201cmany\u201d public and private organizations. In April 2022, CFA convened a conference called \u201cCFA: 101 for Industry<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n native advertising<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the conference, George, along with representatives from Databricks, Peraton, Microsoft, RTI, Dell Technologies Redhat\/Carahsoft, Optum Serve and Maximus Public Health Analytics, gave presentations on the importance of \u201cpublic-private partnerships\u201d to CFA\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The industry representatives also discussed their current and past collaborations with CDC to develop the tracking and analytic tools and platforms CFA hopes to ramp up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Panelists included Michelle Holko<\/a> \u2014 formerly of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), principal architect scientist at Google Cloud for healthcare and life sciences at the time of the conference in 2022, and currently chief strategist for Defensive BioTech<\/a> \u2014 who spoke on the origins of CFA\u2019s disease forecast research in DARPA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holko, also a former fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Johns Hopkins Center for Biosecurity, talked about the value of Google search histories and personal digital interaction data to affect public health outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They provide key information, she said, \u201cbecause, you know, a person\u2019s desire and willingness to get vaccinated has a huge impact on what\u2019s to happen with a public health crisis,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018A new age of public health\u2019: example data collection, prediction and control projects<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Data can be used to understand people\u2019s desire, but also \u201ceverything that\u2019s going on in their environment, and in their thoughts and in their circle,\u201d Holko said<\/a>, which has serious implications for public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To illustrate how such data could be used, she explained how Google collaborated with the state of California during the COVID-19 pandemic to mine people\u2019s search data and other personal data. They developed a \u201cvaccine willingness score\u201d for each individual person whose data they analyzed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then they positioned mobile vaccine vans in neighborhoods with low vaccine rates but some willingness to be vaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey were able to take a 25% gap between the lowest quartiles of the Healthy Places index and the highest quartiles and just flip that right upside down,\u201d she said, adding that such targeting addresses a health equity issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Holko also talked about the value of wearables in capturing biological data, which, she said, might make it possible to detect a pathogen inside of a person\u2019s body even if they aren\u2019t experiencing symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rivers added that it would be important for public health agencies like CFA to get the things they need \u2014 like the ability to go out and swab anyone whose data they need directly \u2014 rather than having to depend on other adjacent data sources like biometric data, social media data, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers at RTI presented their RTI Synthetic Population<\/a> project where they have modeled a \u201csynthetic population\u201d of over 300 million individuals, each representing a U.S. person, with their attributes, age, race gender, income, education attainment, job and whatever other data they can glean, which they then use to project epidemiological events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were many such presentations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The overall takeaway was that the contemporary availability of massive amounts of data has created a \u201cnew age of public health\u201d and a mandate for new tools to capture and analyze data using novel applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n George said many of the people in the room had been dreaming of a forecasting network like CFA for almost a decade, and they had been \u201cright to be opportunistic\u201d about the \u201cwindow of opportunity\u201d that presented itself for them to finally set it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u2018extremely ironic\u2019 list of grantees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The OADM is the first major initiative by CFA and sets up its infrastructure across the country. The 13 centers in the network will act as networks themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the CDC put it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, CDC has worked collaboratively with state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments, public health organizations, academia, and the private sector to improve and scale outbreak response and provide support to leaders to prevent infections and save lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis national network will build on these collaborations and improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and advanced analytics for ongoing and future infectious disease threats and public health emergencies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Awardees include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rectenwald said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s extremely ironic that these universities and institutions have been chosen to undertake the research and modeling. For example, the University of North Carolina Gilling School of Global Public Health initiated gain-of-function research, which was then undertaken in Wuhan, but funded by the NIH through EcoHealth Alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo isn\u2019t it ironic that this school, the university research center that had a great deal to do with the gain-of-function research that led to COVID-19, is now getting 4.5 million annually for five years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s an outrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will distribute $260+ million to establish \u201ca National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases\u201d \u2014 using mass data collection to predict and control disease outbreaks. But critics warn it will be subject to dangerous errors.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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