According to a Wall Street Journal report, government officials across the U.S. are using location data from millions of cellphones in a bid to track American’s movements during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and how they may be affecting the spread of the disease.
Byron Tau for The Wall Street Journal:
The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data, people familiar with the matter said. The data comes from the mobile advertising industry rather than cellphone carriers.
The data—which is stripped of identifying information like the name of a phone’s owner—could help officials learn how coronavirus is spreading around the country and help blunt its advance. It shows which retail establishments, parks and other public spaces are still drawing crowds that could risk accelerating the transmission of the virus, according to people familiar with the matter. In one such case, researchers found that New Yorkers were congregating in large numbers in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and handed that information over to local authorities, one person said.
The growing reliance on mobile phone location data continues to raise concerns about privacy protections, especially when programs are run by or commissioned by governments.
MacDailyNews Take: No location data is truly anonymized. It can be cross-matched with other publicly-available data to identify and track individuals. The idea of any government using cellphone tracking to monitor its citizens’ movements, regardless of the reason, is chilling.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. — Benjamin Franklin
[Fixed apostrophe. Thanks, cococanuck!]
And it will never be turned off again….
Polite Applause
You’re assuming they weren’t already using this data
If it slows the pandemic enough to stop it then I’m in favour
So the “local authorities” had no clue people were congregating in the park without this data. Laughable.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.“
Benjamin Franklin.
So can we stop with the bullshit of Apple being the defender of privacy and put it with the law, where it belongs?
Who elected Apple?
Apple is the defender of privacy. The law is less trustworthy than private enterprise in protecting all that’s worth preserving.
We elected Apple to protect our privacy and defend the right to that privacy when we rationally decided to buy Apple’s products because of their built in encryption, lack of backdoors, and principled defense of First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment Rights.
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
William Pitt
If the information is anonymous, what’s the harm?
I think this is a step in the right direction. Whatever works in this trying times is welcomed.
Being young, masks, and VENTILATORS work better. This doesn’t, it is a shopping list for a police state.
LOL, anonymized location data. What an oxymoronic term. “Gee, look, this phone has been at 1313 Mockingbird Lane for the past 4 days. But I can’t figure out who it belongs to.”
iCal check:
Did MDN object to the Patriot Act when it was first signed into law? Of course not. MDN is a shill for the GOP first and foremost. Only now when MDN is desperate for controversy to push the ad clicks does it question the tough law & order that the GOP always prominently pushes in its propaganda. The people should not have to pick an unelected corporation to “protect” them. Snowden proved, by the way, that Apple doesn’t protect anybody. You iOS apps betray your private data as much as anything else. The only way people will ever have privacy is if they elect representatives who will amend the Constitution to include proper citizens’ device and data protection rights. The original signers never dreamed of the internet or how bastardized it could become.
When a private citizen wants to recover their phone, that they tracked to the home of Mr. light fingers, we shall see if they get action, in the past many people got excuses from the police….