Department Of Public Health Agrees To Destroy Data From COVID-19 Tracking App: NCLA

BOSTON, MA — The Massachusetts Department of Public Health agree to destroy all data collected through its “MassNotify” Covid-19 tracking app, according to the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

"DPH deployed this insidious spyware not only on the phones of Massachusetts residents and workers, but even on people’s Android phones who were just passing through the Commonwealth," the NLCA said in a media release. "DPH now agrees to destroy all its data collected through the app and binds itself not to install any similar technology on Android devices without their owners’ permission during the next five years."

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DPH auto-installed MassNotify on "on more than a million smartphones without the owners’ knowledge or consent between March 18, 2021 and May 11, 2023 under former DPH Commissioner Margret Cooke."

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DPH coordinated with Google to automatically install MassNotify on smartphones in a misguided and futile effort to combat Covid-19 with contact tracing," according to the NLCA, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group.

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“Throughout NCLA’s battles with state authorities over unlawful Covid-era policies, we referred to these power grabs as ‘Governors Gone Wild,’" Mark Chenoweth, the president and chief legal officer of the NCLA, said in the release.

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"Few states held a candle to Massachusetts when it came to Covid craziness, but the Bay State stood alone in the Orwellian spying on its own citizens exposed by this case,” Chenoweth said.

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