GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, a ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an investigation into the CDC for tracking Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic via phone data.
Indeed, the CDC paid one company $420,000 to access location data for at least 20 million cell phones per day. While the CDC claimed it needed access to the data to help fight the pandemic, documents show the data was used to support “non-COVID-19 programmatic areas and public health priorities, per a Vice Motherboard investigation.
“Just because data exists, doesn't mean that the government should be using it to track Americans, I would think that that really raises some very serious constitutional issues," Johnson told Just the News.
“It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during the pandemic and whether it continues to do so,” Johnson wrote in a letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Thursday. “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 is demanding answers on the purchase and use of location data, including whether the agency used other mechanisms to monitor Americans throughout the pandemic.
