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Massachusetts, Google Installed ‘Spyware’ Onto Phones To Track COVID Cases Without Users Knowing, Lawsuit Alleges
Daily Caller News ^ | November 16, 2022 | Trevor Schakohl

Posted on 11/17/2022 4:09:03 PM PST by george76

The Massachusetts Public Health Department (DPH) allegedly “worked with” Google to install its COVID-19 contact tracing app onto more than one million android devices without users’ permission or knowledge, a New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) lawsuit claims.

The app was first released in April 2021, but the DPH had a version secretly installed onto devices beginning that June after few Massachusetts residents installed it voluntarily, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. The app allegedly causes devices to emit and receive Bluetooth signals even when users do not opt into COVID-19 exposure notifications, and nearby devices that feature the app consequently exchange data that can be linked to specific device owners and locations.

The DPH, Google and other third parties including app developers, device manufacturers and network providers can access such data and use it to determine device owners’ identities when it is written onto mobile devices’ systems, the lawsuit claims. It summarily accuses the department of installing “spyware that deliberately tracks and records movement and personal contacts onto over a million mobile devices without their owners’ permission and awareness.”

...

“The Massachusetts DPH, like any other government actor, is bound by state and federal constitutional and legal constraints on its conduct,” NCLA Litigation Counsel Peggy Little said, according to a press release. “This ‘android attack,’ deliberately designed to override the constitutional and legal rights of citizens to be free from government intrusions upon their privacy without their consent, reads like dystopian science fiction — and must be swiftly invalidated by the court.”

....

The DPH even re-installed the contact tracing app onto some Android users’ devices after they discovered its presence and deleted it, the lawsuit alleges. The NCLA claimed Tuesday it did not know of any other state using a “similar surreptitious strategy of auto-installing contact-tracing apps,” citing at least two dozen other states that utilized contact tracing apps in the lawsuit.

Most of the app’s over 1,900 reviews on the Google Play Store featured one-star ratings at press time. Reviewers complained of the app “hiding itself in ‘settings’ instead of appearing as an icon alongside all other apps on the device,” the lawsuit says.

The suit asks the district court to force the DPH to work with Google to uninstall the app from android mobile devices whose owners did not give installation permission.

“The Department of Public Health (DPH) has not received any documentation related to this lawsuit and does not comment on pending litigation,” the department told the Daily Caller News Foundation.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: bluetooth; climatechange; contact; contacttracing; covid; covid19; covid1984; emergency; google; greatreset; healthemergency; massachusetts; newworldorder; nwo; publichealth; signals; tracing

1 posted on 11/17/2022 4:09:03 PM PST by george76
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To: george76

What’s the procedure to discover if this is on a phone?


2 posted on 11/17/2022 4:18:48 PM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: VanShuyten; ShadowAce

You can check out, but never leave .. as it apparently re-installs it self automatically.


3 posted on 11/17/2022 4:23:14 PM PST by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

“as it apparently re-installs it self automatically.”

Yes, every update I had to remember to go change it.


4 posted on 11/17/2022 4:30:08 PM PST by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: george76

There needs to be jail time for this.


5 posted on 11/17/2022 4:30:55 PM PST by I want the USA back (Our news media isn't worth camel spit. Neither is the democrat party. H)
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To: Openurmind

What’s the name of this app?


6 posted on 11/17/2022 4:33:42 PM PST by ConjunctionJunction (Vim vi repellere licet)
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To: ConjunctionJunction

Honestly can’t remember. It has been awhile since I had to deal with it, they stopped doing it to mine. But I do not set up a google account association and always shut off ALL apps but text, contacts, and camera. But even though I had no google account they kept putting it back and turning my bluetooth back on. And I think this was everywhere, because I was in Az during that covid tracking stuff.


7 posted on 11/17/2022 4:48:27 PM PST by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: ConjunctionJunction

Guess I should have said I “delete or disable all apps” but text, contacts, and camera...


8 posted on 11/17/2022 4:50:17 PM PST by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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To: george76

PODCAST: Defend Your Liberties and Resist the Biomedical Security State!

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, author of “The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State,” joins Sara to explain how the government – through federal edicts and bureaucrats at every level of government and the health sector – ripped away basic freedoms during the COVID pandemic and many Americans eagerly accepted it.

Kheriaty also explains how the COVID “biomedical security state” was just the first step and that government figures are now emboldened to impose similar restrictions over the supposed public health emergency posed by climate change. He also explains how Americans can fight back against this encroachment of our liberties.

https://saraacarter.com/defend-your-liberties-and-resist-the-biomedical-security-state/?utm_source=jeeng&jem=77a21ec1590b5ac52af431e28910995a


9 posted on 11/17/2022 5:20:13 PM PST by Grampa Dave (Vote Republican! They might not be perfect, The other side is insane and hates your family & you!)
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To: george76
Covid-19(84)

Covid-19(84) is not the Mark of the Beast.

(I'm just saying that for the thread)

BUT:

The parallels are downright eerie.

A clear warning of things to come.

Covid-19 came as a snare. Now it's not THE snare.

But still, it came as a snare. UPON THE ENTIRE WORLD.

A snare that came upon the entire world and institutionalized Global tyranny almost overnight.

Determining if you can travel, buy and in some cases sell.

Or if you can even work a job.

Tyranny upon tyranny.

The parallels are just too eerie and too spot-on.

This is a very clear foreshadowing of Revelation chapter 13 and the sheep are blind to it.
10 posted on 11/17/2022 5:33:28 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: Grampa Dave

[how the COVID “biomedical security state” was just the first step...]

...towards the fulfillment of Daniel 7:23 and a New World Order. /shiny side out


11 posted on 11/17/2022 5:38:33 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: VanShuyten; rdb3; JosephW; martin_fierro; Still Thinking; zeugma; Vinnie; ironman; Egon; raybbr; ...

12 posted on 11/17/2022 5:51:04 PM PST by ShadowAce (Linux - The Ultimate Windows Service Pack )
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To: VanShuyten; ConjunctionJunction; Openurmind
 
 
Here it is - is more of a setting than a standalone "app". Under "Biometrics and security", not "Privacy" in the settings.
 
 
 

13 posted on 11/17/2022 6:14:05 PM PST by lapsus calami (What's that stink? Code Pink ! ! And their buddy Murtha, too!)
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To: george76

I remember this when it was first made public a couple of years ago.

To check your phone, go to your Settings. Then look at Google Settings in there. Mine says: Covid-19 Support; Covid-10 Exposure Notifications.

I find I can’t uninstall it; but my notifications are off. I can only turn it on by tapping on it & following the directions.

I must have shut them off back then. Please share more info if you know something else that I don’t.


14 posted on 11/17/2022 7:01:40 PM PST by ZephyrTX
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To: ZephyrTX; lapsus calami

Thanks!


15 posted on 11/17/2022 8:11:23 PM PST by ConjunctionJunction (Vim vi repellere licet)
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To: lapsus calami; ZephyrTX

I found it on my phone Settings=>Google. The info there about it says that it’s an auto-download from Android updates, and it is set up in the off mode. They say it has to be turned on by the user. It also says you can download an app specific for your region. Maybe that’s the one in the article that Mass was forcing on its people.


16 posted on 11/17/2022 8:54:03 PM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals)
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To: VanShuyten
 
 
It also says you can download an app specific for your region. Maybe that’s the one in the article that Mass was forcing on its people.
 
Yup, that's probably it. The rest of us random marks got it in an OS update package. Integrated spyware by Google - not a bug but a feature.
 
 

17 posted on 11/17/2022 9:11:58 PM PST by lapsus calami (What's that stink? Code Pink ! ! And their buddy Murtha, too!)
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To: george76

The communists in Mass. can do what they like


18 posted on 11/18/2022 3:21:03 AM PST by ballplayer
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To: lapsus calami

Yes, that is it. A google setting not an app.


19 posted on 11/18/2022 4:10:05 AM PST by Openurmind (The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children. ~ D. Bonhoeffer)
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