Hundreds of thousands of bikers converged at the massive Sturgis Rally, one of the biggest gatherings during the pandemic. Mapping their phone data shows where they traveled across the US.
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 6 years ago • 25 commentsBy: Aaron Holmes, Business Insider
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Hundreds of thousands of bikers converged at the massive Sturgis Rally, one of the biggest gatherings during the pandemic. Mapping their phone data shows where they traveled across the US.
Some bikers at the rally said they enjoyed the freedom of coming together in groups, something that many states had prohibited over the last few months.
Jim Urquhart/
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Hundreds of thousands of bikers converged in Sturgis, South Dakota, in the first week of August for a massive annual rally. It was one of the biggest public gatherings in the US since the COVID-19 outbreak.
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Newly released phone location data shows where people traveled to attend the rally. The data shows people converging from much of the US — especially the Midwest and the South — including Texas, Georgia, and Arizona.
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Over the past week, there has been an average of 100 new COVID-19 cases per day in South Dakota, a rate that has steadily risen since last month.
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the US, hundreds of thousands of bikers traveled to a massive annual rally earlier this month in Sturgis, South Dakota, where public health officials have not implemented a lockdown or required people to wear masks.
Newly published phone location data shows that the rally brought people together from all corners of the US, especially the Midwest and the South. Hundreds of thousands of people traveled to Sturgis from states currently experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks, including Arizona, Texas, and Georgia.
How location data can help track and stop the spread of COVID-19
Test, trace, and treat have become three major words when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, but when it comes to stopping a second wave of COVID-19 cases, tracing might be the key. But while other countries have aggressively traced new cases, the United States is still behind, even though companies have access to location data that could help.
Data aggregated by location data firm X-Mode Social shows tens of thousands of mobile devices that arrived in Sturgis in the first week of August, excluding devices that were already active in the area in the months before the rally. In a video published on Twitter, data-visualization group Tectonix GEO mapped the movement of phones across the US that were present at the rally.
Location data companies like X-Mode Social track the precise location of smartphones across the globe using software built into apps that people download. The practice has drawn backlash from privacy advocates, but location data firms and their partners insist that people's movements are anonymized and not directly tied to their identities.
"We are allowed to make our own choices," one rally attendee told The Times. "If we get it, we chose to be here."
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SD knew a long time ago when the rally would be and did absolutely nothing. SD can go pound sand.
I hope I’m not the only person who finds that creepy and invasive.
Very old news actually.
the NSA, the cell phone makers and carriers do it every day.
Article from 2013
Too true and I foil their tracking as much as possible. Airplane mode works wonders for that because it prevents your phone from sending data.
OK, but I assume the NSA is working with cell phone carriers to track terrorists and such, and that the information of innocent people would remain confidential. And yet here, we have the vacation movements of law-abiding people just published on the internet. No names . . . so far.
Right there with you on that!