Posted on 11/16/2022 7:50:19 PM PST by bitt
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is facing a class action lawsuit after colluding with Google to repeatedly auto-install contact-tracing spyware on the smartphones of over a million Massachusetts residents without their permission or consent.
According to a class action lawsuit filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan nonprofit civil rights organization, the Department of Public Health rolled out the contact tracing app it worked with Google to create in April 2021.
“The App causes an Android mobile device to constantly connect and exchange information with other nearby devices via Bluetooth and creates a record of such other connections. If a user opts in and reports being infected with COVID-19, an exposure notification is sent to other individuals on the infected user’s connection record,” the NCLA explains in the complaint, Wright v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Initially, the app which obtains users private locations and health information was voluntarily installed.
But then in June, DPH ramped up its contact tracing program and allegedly began surreptitiously installing the surveillance app on residents’ phones.
“On June 15, 2021, DPH worked with Google to secretly install the Contact Tracing App onto over one million Android mobile devices located in Massachusetts without the device owners’ knowledge or permission,” the complaint states
The government agency and tech giant’s “misguided effort to combat Covid-19” is a brazen violation of civil liberties, state and federal law and the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions, the NCLA contends.
“Plaintiffs are individuals who own and use Android mobile devices and live or work in Massachusetts,” the nonprofit group states in the suit. “DPH installed its Contact Tracing App onto each of the Plaintiffs’ Android devices without their awareness or permission, which amounts to a computer crime under federal and Massachusetts law. See 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2); Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 266, § 120F. No statutory authority supports DPH’s conduct, which serves no articulable public health purpose, especially since Massachusetts has ended its statewide contact-tracing program.”
“Conspiring with a private company to hijack residents’ smartphones without the owners’ knowledge or consent is not a tool that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health may lawfully employ in its efforts to combat COVID-19. Such brazen for civil liberties violates both the United States and Massachusetts Constitution, and it must stop now.
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But, each person had to activate it once installed.
Threads on FR back then told us how to be sure it was not activated.
That spyware was already on your phones, everywhere. Massachusetts Public Health just got to utilize it for themselves.
They don’t need telescreens everywhere. We carry them in our pockets.
Bump
>They don’t need telescreens everywhere. We carry them in our pockets.
And pay for the privilege of being spied upon.
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