Cheney votes to allow federal government to track citizens’ private vaccine status
- Dec 2, 2021
- 1 min read
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney voted to fund the enlargement of a federal database that would track COVID-19 vaccine doses administered to private citizens and allow the federal government to contact citizens to encourage them to receive a shot. The Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act provides $400 million in taxpayer funding to expand the power of the government to track individual vaccinations and identify geographic areas were vaccine rates are low. The legislation also creates channels for state and local health departments, in addition to private and public healthcare facilities, to forward their own data to the federal government.
Cheney voted for the bill, with every Democrat and a minority of Republicans, which now will be considered by the Senate.
Wyoming candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives Harriet Hageman today issued the following statement:
“This is straight out of George Orwell, and the fact that Liz Cheney thinks the federal government has the right to know your personal medical information to help Joe Biden enforce his unconstitutional mandates shows you that she has lost her mind. Taking the vaccine is a personal decision, and it is not business of the government. In the United States, we value personal privacy, and we don’t allow the federal government to identify and harass people over medical decisions they make for themselves.
“It is shocking that Liz Cheney would vote for this massive intrusion into most basic personal privacy, and I don’t believe Wyomingites will stand for it. This vote alone shows you how far out of step with Wyoming Liz Cheney is.”
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This feels like one of those votes where the devil is in the implementation: what counts as “encouraging,” who gets access, and can the data be used for anything beyond vaccination reporting later on? Once a centralized system exists, it’s tough to convince people it won’t get expanded — same vibe as seeing a simple link like https://stylelooklab.com and realizing the details underneath matter more than the headline.
It’s also worth separating “tracking doses” for supply/logistics from “tracking people” for compliance and outreach — those are very different policy choices. If they can contact individuals, then the safeguards and limits need to be crystal clear, otherwise it invites mission creep — reminded me of check this out where a fun tool is fine, but the inputs and how they’re used is the real question.
The write-up frames it as “government wants your personal medical info,” but I’d like to see the exact data fields and whether it’s identifiable or de-identified in practice. If it’s identifiable, then the oversight and opt-out mechanisms should be front-and-center, not an afterthought — I saw this page touch on a similar idea that collection often expands once the pipes are built.
The part that worries me isn’t just “tracking,” it’s the expansion pathway: once states, locals, and private providers are all piping data in, it’s hard to roll back. If the goal is better coverage metrics, aggregate reporting should be enough in most cases — feels like CaesarCipher where the key question is always who holds the key and what else they can decode later.
I’m less interested in the Orwell label and more in the practical details: who can query the database, how long data is retained, and what penalties exist for misuse? Without hard answers, “encouragement” can slide into pressure, especially for people with jobs on the line — kind of like how BlockBlast looks simple until the rules really matter.