In a two-hour grilling before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Tuesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sidestepped a barrage of questions regarding the federal government’s response to COVID-19.

In sometimes contentious testimony, Walensky, whose term as CDC director ends June 30, defended the government’s actions in a range of areas, including guidance on school closures, statements that the vaccinated did not spread COVID-19, social media censorship, masking guidance, the lab-leak theory and nursing home deaths.

Walensky also admitted the agency did not collect data from hospitals on the number of patients who were vaccinated against COVID-19 versus those who weren’t — but used the pandemic as an opportunity to call for more data-collection powers for the CDC, one of several recommendations she made as the basis for granting the agency more money and authority.  (See link for article)

_______________

And speaking of an opportunity for data collection and more power:

https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/us-intel-community-buying-swaths-of-commercial-data-replicating-mass-surveillance-program/

US INTEL COMMUNITY BUYING SWATHS OF COMMERCIAL DATA, REPLICATING MASS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM

by  | Jun 13, 2023

A report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday shows the intelligence community is purchasing massive amounts of Commercially Available Information (CAI) that can “reveal sensitive and intimate information about individuals.”

CAI is data that is available for purchase, often to non-government entities, and is typically labeled as anonymous. However, the ODNI report, dated January 2022, says, “Although CAI may be ‘anonymized,’ it is often possible (using other CAI) to deanonymize and identify individuals, including US persons.”

The CAI poses a significant threat to Americans, as it “can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals,” the document said. “Even subject to appropriate controls, CAI can increase the power of the government’s ability to peer into private lives to levels that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other social expectations.”

As such information has become more available, intelligence agencies have begun vacuuming up vast amounts of data. While ODNI does not reveal the full scope of the information purchases, it names Accenture, Acxiom, CoreLogic, Epsilon, Intelius, LexisNexis, Oracle (Datalogix), Thomson Reuters and Verisk as major contractors working with the US government.   (See link for article)

For more: