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.
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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.
DPH’s contact tracing app is still employed by the government agency to date and is repeatedly reinstalled on plaintiffs’ cell phones after they delete it, surveilling their every move.
“When some Android device owners discovered and subsequently deleted the App, DPH would re-install it onto their devices,” the complaint states. “These secret installations not only invade owners’ reasonable expectation of privacy, but they also intrude upon owners’ property right in their mobile devices by occupying valuable storage space. Because the Massachusetts and United States Constitutions prohibit governmental entities from unreasonable searches and uncompensated takings, this Court should enjoin DPH’s unconstitutional scheme.
Approximately two dozen states used Google-created contract-tracing apps, but only Massachusetts secretly auto-installed the tracking software on its residents’ mobile devices without knowledge or consent, the NCLA asserts.
The Massachusetts Department of Health may be the only government agency under fire for colluding with Big Tech to devise a surveillance mechanism, but millions of Americans nationwide were also contact traced during the Covid pandemic by a voters analytics firm help Democrats target swing voters.
As the Gateway Pundit reported in October, Predict Wise tracked over 100 million Americans from their cellphones and assigned “Covid-19 decree” violation scores throughout the Covid lockdowns.
The firm assigned a Covid-19 decree score based on how much an individual adhered to lockdown restrictions and stayed home. “Compliers,” were assigned low Covid decree violation scores, while those who disregarded quarantine measures and traveled away from their homes were given high Covid decree violation scores.
After harvesting location data from tens of millions of US cell phones, PredictWise provided the data to its clients which include the Democratic National Committee, the Democrat Parties of Arizona, North Dakota, Ohio, Florida and South Carolina Democrat campaigns to develop campaign ads.
