US Government, Tech Industry Discussing Ways To Use Smartphone Location Data To Combat Coronavirus (washingtonpost.com) 43
The U.S. government is in active talks with Facebook, Google and a wide array of tech companies and health experts about how they can use location data gleaned from Americans' phones to combat the novel coronavirus, including tracking whether people are keeping one another at safe distances to stem the outbreak. From a report: Public-health experts are interested in the possibility that private-sector companies could compile the data in anonymous, aggregated form, which they could then use to map the spread of the infection, according to three people familiar with the effort, who requested anonymity because the project is in its early stages. Analyzing trends in smartphone owners' whereabouts could prove to be a powerful tool for health authorities looking to track coronavirus, which has infected more than 180,000 people globally. But it's also an approach that could leave some Americans uncomfortable, depending on how it's implemented, given the sensitivity when it comes to details about their daily whereabouts.
No (Score:3)
I will get rid of all my electronics and go back to a land line.
NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE!!! (Score:5, Informative)
- Mossad Lt Colonel Rahm Emanuel
Oct 31, 2012 [youtube.com]
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Landline would be static. You're always in the same spot! ;P
This is extremely sinister (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup. Stories like this will give the people that believe the entire thing to be a hoax more ammunition.
I don't believe the virus is a hoax, but there are those that are saying it is.
Truth of the matter is, governments around the world will use the crisis to fast-track ideas they've been wanting to implement for years because they know the panic allows them to declare public safety more important than citizens' rights, privacy, or any other silly notion that stems from basic freedoms. Much like 9/11 was
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Anonymous? (Score:2)
You can't anonymize location. There is inherently no way for most of this info to be anonymous.
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Disable cell chip (pull SIM or use airplane mode). Wifi into your network, VPN, use "wifi calling" or a good voip provider.
Second idea, pool all of your individual accounts among friends/family into a single family account. Tada no one knows who accounts 4, 5, and 6 are only that they are running around a different state collecting teh virus.
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And you think wifi doesn't track location? Hell, wifi tracks location *BETTER* than the cell network. Plus, cell phone has GPS receivers that can then send that data over the internet. But even without that, virtually every wireless AP is physical world mapped in huge databases. MAC address alone basically pinpoints someone to less than a 1 block radius. Multiple MAC addresses found by the wifi radio along with signal strength can pinpoint you into within a few feet.
If you have wifi enabled and are on the i
Re: Anonymous? (Score:2)
It is literally where those Google (Maps?) statistics come from, about how frequented shops are at different times/days.
Yes, even if GPS is disabled.
So did I, not long ago. (Score:2)
https://m.slashdot.org/thread/... [slashdot.org]
Props for saying it earlier though.
Never let a crisis go to waste. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can track me specifically for $1,000 a month. (Score:2)
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Privacy whore. (Score:2)
Are you really so dumb that you cannot imagine the bazillion ways, a Cardinal Richelieu type could use that tracking against you, whenever you do not obey his insane demands?
Imagine you having your driving to a restaurant that serves meat to hide, because they decided it is illegal for people like you to eat meat. Or how about you jist happened to be in the block where somebody "insulted" our desr leader Trump?
Or, yeah, you may have your masturbation to hide. Your opinion too. Your money. Your firstborn wit
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Inevitable, and highly desirable, for pandemics (Score:1)
As a SPECIES, it would be absolutely insane to not provide a means to track globally everyone by the devices a vast number of us carry, in order to accurately track who was exposed to what, when.
Imagine the accuracy one could obtain around how long an area was infected, or if someone not presenting symptoms was spreading a virus early (especially combined with security camera footage).
Now of course, you wouldn't want this misused at other times. But I can see there is no way around us as a species desiring
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Utilitarianism is the ultimate justifier of any injustice against the individual, no matter how egregious.
And also, once information exists, it is impossible to prevent abuse.
First, convince me it is unjust (Score:1)
Utilitarianism is the ultimate justifier of any injustice against the individual
Very true!
Now, why is the tracking of an individual to see who they have in contact with, in the context of a virus being spread, unjust.
As an individual who would rather not be sick I find it rather just, that someone who has a virus could have location monitored.
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That's not what will happen. They'll track literally everyone. Because they can. And it will never stop. For safety reasons. I'm not comfortable with the government having that data on me at all times. Not because I'm doing anything wrong, but because it'll get turned into all sorts of other nastiness down the line. Had to speed up to pass that truck on the highway? Well, tracking showed you were doing 80 in a 55 for a half mile. Ticket. And that's a rather benign example.
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Tracking an individual's private movements, against their will, in unjust.
You make it sound just by adding a specific reason why the tracking is done. That is exactly how utilitarianism is used to justify injustice. One states a noble "greater good" sort of reason why, and that makes it sound ok. But that overlooks the fact that the action taken, in-and-of-itself, may still be unjust, which it is in this case.
I am not talking about tracking convicted criminals while in prison, or mental health patients w
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Too late (Score:1, Informative)
They showed the world how to get ready and be ready for wuflu.
They got ready and started to act early.
Why other nations accepted tourists, academics, refugees and illegal migrants.
Asian nations slowed the flow of sick people, tested and tracked the people sick with wuflu.
Used smartphones to track the sick and all contact they had with people not sick.
Told people where the sick had been. About getting tested.
Where citizens could buy ma
The U.S. acted early (Score:3, Insightful)
A big part of the reason why the U.S. is nearly as well off as South Korea so far in growth of infections, is that we blocked direct travel from China early. That one move prevented a huge number of infections.
The recent closure of pretty much any larger group, acted as a just in time second wave preventing a large amount of growth in infections.
You'll see over the coming weeks, that the middle ground the U.S. took will have been fairly effective as well.
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I remember that, and the Chinese government called us names for it, they even got the WHO to call us racists for banning direct flights.
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A big part of the reason why the U.S. is nearly as well off as South Korea so far in growth of infections
That depends on how you look at it. Based on confimed case count (likely under-reported) the US has been seeing exponential growth since March 2, with a doubling time of 2.7 days. Korea (with high testing coverage) dropped below that growth rate on Feb 28, 10 days after the initial spike in new cases that started on Feb 18. The US started taking social distancing measures, only at state level and only in some states, around March 12. Expect the exponential growth rate to decrease not earlier than a week af
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Because the graph of infections in Korea [worldometers.info] and the USA [worldometers.info] are identical. Aren't they?
No they aren't.
Also remember South Korea were doing far more testing, and so finding far more of their cases.
America already has a lot more dead despite having less official cases.
Just give it a few more days and it will be even more obvious America isn't anywhere close to as well off as South Korea.
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America is not nearly as well off as South Korea.
It took South Korea 9 days to get its last 1,000 cases. America did it in less than 1 day.
Korea are doing a lot more testing.
America squandered any advantage it had in delaying the start.
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It's only been another day and America had over 10x as many cases [worldometers.info]. And blew straight past South Korea's total.
LOL, I called it! (Score:2)
I literally called it!
https://m.slashdot.org/thread/... [slashdot.org]
Enjoy the totalitaryan frenzy, guys!
In Wuhan (Score:2)
In Wuhan, everyone has to report their symptoms daily via a smartphone app. If an entire neighborhood has been symptom-free for a time (1 week? 2 weeks?) then movement restrictions are lifted for that neighborhood.
The deep state is loving this! (Score:2)
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Now, they can use the cell data to "make sure" we are staying away from each other. Oh, and once your rights are gone, they won't come back!
Because people never gain rights [history.com] do they [history.com]
REST IN PEACE privacy (Score:1)
yup there goes the rest of our privacy FFFF