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Content type: Examples
After Asian countries used mass surveillance of smartphones to trace contacts and halt the spread of the coronavirus, Western countries such as the UK and Germany are trying to find less-invasive ways to use phones to collect and share data about infections that would work within data privacy laws and retain public trust. Nearly half of virus transmissions may occur before the individual shows symptoms of the disease. At Oxford researchers are working on a notification app that would notify…
Content type: Examples
Facebook's scientists are analysing location data about compliance with social distancing recommendations in various countries using information from a private vault of location information its apps have collected. The analysis shows that only "very modest" changes in habits in the US, France, and the UK, and much more substantial change in Spain and Italy between mid-February and mid-March. Other companies such as Google and Apple, may also be able to contribute insights into public behaviour…
Content type: Examples
Because tracking and limiting the movement of those suspected to be carrying COVID-19 carriers has been a factor in flattening the exponential curve of cases in places like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, Professor Marylouise McLaws, a technical advisor to the WHO's Infection Prevention and Control Global Unit and a professor at the University of New South Wales, believes that we should use travellers' smartphones to electronically monitor their compliance with self-isolation orders.…
Content type: Case Study
Having a right to a nationality isn’t predicated on giving up your right to privacy - and allowing whichever government runs that country to have as much information as they want. It is about having a fundamental right to government protection.
For the first time since 1951, Assam - a state in the north east of India - has been updating its national register of citizens (NRC), a list of everyone in Assam that the government considers to be an Indian citizen. The final version, published in…
Content type: Examples
According to information collected by Le Temps, telco Swisscom will use SIM card geolocation data to communicate to federal authorities when more than 20 phones are detected in an 100 square meters area. Gathering of more than 5 people are forbidden in Switzerland since March 21.
Data collected by the telco should theoretically only come from public areas and not private building. This data will be anonymised and aggregate before being passed to the health authorities (Office fédéral de la…
Content type: Examples
The Belgian Minister of Public Health has approved a programme under which telephone companies Proximus and Telenet will transfer some of their their data to the private third-party company Dalberg Data Insights in order to help combat the coronavirus epidemic; Orange has also agreed "in principle". The details are still to be agreed pending a legal and technical analysis of the proposed project. So far it has been reported that location data and real-time tracking would be used to assess the…
Content type: Examples
Researchers at the University of Oxford are working with the UK government on an app similar to the smartphone tracking system China developed to alert people who have come in contact with someone infected with the coronavirus. The British app, which would be associated with the country's National Health Service,, would rely on the public volunteering to share their location data out of a sense of civic duty rather than, as in China, compulsion. The service would not publish the movements of…
Content type: Examples
Russia has set up a coronavirus information centre to to monitor social media for misinformation about the coronavirus and spot empty supermarket shelves using a combination of surveillance cameras and AI. The centre also has a database of contacts and places of work for 95% of those under mandatory quarantine after returning from countries where the virus is active. Sherbank, Russia's biggest bank, has agreed to pay for a free app that will provide free telemedicine consultations.
Source:…
Content type: Examples
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has authorised the country's internal security agency to use a previously secret tranche of mobile phone geolocation data, gathered to combat terrorism, to retrace the movements of individuals with confirmed cases of the coronavirus and identify people they've interacted with who should be quarantined. After Parliament's Secret Services Subcommittee ended its discussions without approving the measure, Netanyahu said the government would approve…
Content type: Examples
The Ecuadorian government has authorised tracking mobile phones via GPS satellite to ensure that citizens do not break mandatory quarantine after six violators were identified.
Source: https://www.ecuadortv.ec/noticias/covid-19/romo-vigilancia-epidemiologico-covid19-?
Writer: Ecuador TV
Publication: Ecuador TV
Content type: Examples
Among the Chinese companies making efforts to help the country respond to the coronavirus are the technology giants Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, Tencent, Xiaomi, and Foxconn. In order to fight misinformation, Baidu created a map layer on top of its standard Map App that shows real-time locations of confirmed and suspected cases of the virus so that people can avoid hot spots. Qihoo 360 has launched a platform travellers can use to check if anyone on their recent train or plane trips has since…
Content type: Examples
India has begun stamping the hands of people arriving at airports in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka to specify the date until which they must remain in quarantine. The government is also using airline and railway reservation data to track suspected infections and find hand-stamped people who had promised not to travel. Kerala authorities have used telephone call records, CCTV footage, and mobile phone GPS systems to trace contracts of COVID-19 patients, and published detailed time and…
Content type: Examples
Technology entrepreneurs within Belgium would like to introduce a health code app similar to China's Alipay Health Code that would control individuals' movements based on their health status. The government has engaged privacy experts from the Belgian data protection authority and Ghent University to consider the possibility, despite the country's strict privacy laws, which have no equivalent in China..
Source: https://www.apache.be/gastbijdragen/2020/03/18/hoe-het-…
Content type: Examples
A phone-tracking system used by SAPOL for criminal investigations was used to better understand where a coronavirus-infected 60-year-old couple, who had travelled from Wuhan to visit relatives, roamed in Adelaide in order to identify people who might have been exposed, according to the South Australian police commissioner. Police used a program that only requires a phone number to initiate a download of where the phone has been used; to use it they must meet a legislative threshold…
Content type: Examples
UK: O2 shares aggregated location data with government to test compliance with distancing guidelines
Mobile network operator O2 is providing aggregated data to the UK government to analyse anonymous smartphone location data in order to show people are following the country's social distancing guidelines, particularly in London, which to date accounts for about 40% of the UK's confirmed cases and 30% of deaths. The project is not designed to monitor individuals. Lessons from the impact on London of travel restrictions could then be applied in the rest of the country. The government says it has…
Content type: Examples
BT, owner of UK mobile operator EE, is in talks with the government about using its phone location and usage data to monitor whether coronavirus limitation measures such as asking the public to stay at home are working. The information EE supplies would be delayed by 12 to 24 hours, and would provide the ability to create movement maps that show patterns. The data could also feed into health services' decisions, and make it possible to send health alerts to the public in specific locations.…
Content type: Examples
As governments look into surveillance, geolocation and biometric facial recognition to contain the coronavirus, even if they violate user data privacy, the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI is allegedly negotiating a partnership with state agencies to monitor infected people and the individuals with whom they have interacted. The data mining company Palantir is already collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, while…
Content type: Examples
As governments look into surveillance, geolocation and biometric facial recognition to contain the coronavirus, even if they violate user data privacy, the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI is allegedly negotiating a partnership with state agencies to monitor infected people and the individuals with whom they have interacted. The data mining company Palantir is already collaborating with the CDC and NIH, while the White House convened a task force of technology companies to…
Content type: Examples
China: Manufacturer Telepower adds fever detection and facial recognition to point-of-sale terminals
According to a company announcement, Telepower Communication (Telpo), a leading Chinese manufacturer of smart point-of-sale systems and intelligent hardware, has integrated into its terminals new features to support a wide variety of contactless use cases. The company’s family of terminals for catering, retail, payment, security, and other applications, include biometric, fever-detecting facial recognition, and ticket validation technology. The technology supports accurate identification of up…
Content type: News & Analysis
In the last few days, PI and its Network have been recording and documenting the measures being proposed by various governments, international institutions and companies to help contain the spread of Covid-19.
In a recent development, the Guardian have reported that the UK government is the latest to seek to use mobile phone location and other traffic data from telecommunication operators to help with measures the government may develop next as part of the response to Covid-19.
It comes…
Content type: Key Resources
Tech companies, governments, and international agencies have all announced measures to help contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.Some of these measures impose severe restrictions on people’s freedoms, including to their privacy and other human rights. Unprecedented levels of surveillance, data exploitation, and misinformation are being tested across the world.Many of those measures are based on extraordinary powers, only to be used temporarily in emergencies. Others use exemptions in data…
Content type: Examples
US government agencies are considering a range of tracking and surveillance technologies as part of efforts to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. These include: geolocation tracking and facial recognition systems to analyse photos, both to enable contact tracing. Palantir is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to model the virus outbreak, and other companies that scrape public social media data have contracts in place with CDC and the National Institutes of…
Content type: Examples
The coronavirus action plan announced on March 3, alongside many measures for managing the NHS in the crisis, will also allow the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to appoint judicial commissioners (JCs) on a temporary basis in the event that there are insufficient JCs available to operate the system under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Home Secretary, at the request of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, will also be allowed to vary the time allowed for urgent warrants to be…
Content type: Examples
A new surveillance system to detect cases of COVID-19 in England was established by Public Health England (PHE) and the NHS to strengthen existing systems and to prepare for and prevent wider transmission of the virus. Some NHS hospitals have been asked to take part in the plan, which involves testing samples from patients with severe respiratory infections who do not meet the current definition for COVID-19 in intensive care units (ICU) and Severe Respiratory Failure (ECMO) Centres. …
Content type: Examples
Thailand's National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC) provided a SIM card to every foreigner and Thai who had travelled from countries that have have been designated as "high risk" for COVID-19 infections (at the time, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Italy, and Macau). According to NBTC secretary-general Thakorn Tanthasit, the AoT Airports' new application had more than 7,000 downloads in its first five days. The sim card will be used together with the AoT Airports application…
Content type: Examples
With 6,300 COVID-19 cases and more than 40 reported deaths, the South Korean government launched a smarphone app (Android first, iPhone due on March 20) to monitor citizens on lockdown as part of its "maximum" action to contain the outbreak. The app keeps patients in touch with care workers and uses GPS to keep track of their location to ensure they don't break quarantine. The government said the tracking was essential to manage the case load (at the time, 30,000 people) and prevent "…
Content type: Examples
The "safety guidance texts" sent by health authorities and district offices in South Korea are causing information overload and have included embarrassing revelations about infected people's private lives. A text may include, for example, a link to trace the movements of people who have recently been diagnosed with the virus. Clicking on the link takes the user to the website of a district office that lists the places the patient had visited before testing positive. In one case, a man in his…
Content type: Examples
A document awaiting approval from the federal authorities outlines the measures Russia may need to adopt in the event of a widespread COVID-19 outbreak. In "emergency mode". The proposal's Plan A allows for cancelling all international sports, cultural, scientific, and social events in Moscow; surveillance of those who test positive along with tracing their contacts from video surveillance camera records and geolocation data as well as disinfection of their home and everywhere they and their…
Content type: Examples
Russian authorities are using surveillance cameras, facial recognition systems, and geolocation to enforce a two-week quarantine regime affecting 2,500 people. Chinese citizens are banned from entering Russia; Russians and citizens of other countries who arrive from China are required to go through two weeks of quarantine. Police raid hotels to find Chinese citizens who arrived before border controls began, and bus drivers have been ordered to call their dispatchers if they see Chinese citizens…
Content type: Examples
The German mobile operator Deutsche Telekom announced in a press conference on RKI Live that it had passed on, anonymised, its users' movement data to the Robert-Koch Institute to study the extent to which the population would follow the government's restrictions. RKI president Lothar Wieler said this data is also available for purchase, but was given to RKI at no charge.
Source: https://frask.de/coronavirus-deutscher-mobilfunkbetreiber-gibt-bewegungsdaten-weiter/