Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports: The Trump administration is requiring states to submit personal information of people vaccinated against Covid-19 — including names, birth dates, ethnicities and addresses, raising alarms among state officials who fear that a federal vaccine registry could be misused. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is instructing states to sign so-called data…
Category: U.S.
The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA
Paige St. John reports: The dramatic arrest in 2018 of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was all the more astounding because of how detectives said they caught the elusive Golden State Killer— by harnessing genetic technology already in use by millions of consumers to trace their family trees. But the DNA-matching effort that caught one of…
Agents raid home of fired Florida data scientist who built COVID-19 dashboard
This is troubling. Jeffrey Schweers reports from Florida: State police brandishing firearms Monday raided the home of Rebekah Jones, the former Department of Health data scientist who built the state’s much-praised COVID-19 dashboard before being fired over what she said was refusing to “manipulate data.” “They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at…
Public interest groups take aim at Pasco sheriff’s data-driven policing programs
Unsurprisingly, there is pushback against a Pasco sheriff’s program (previously noted on this site, here). Neil Bedi and Kathleen McGrory report: Civil liberties groups are vowing to take action after a Tampa Bay Times investigation revealed organized harassment of Pasco County residents and data-driven profiling of Pasco’s schoolchildren by the Sheriff’s Office. One public interest law firm…