02 Jun 2020
A mix of city data and reports from building superintendents and porters provides evidence on how New York City’s residents’ behaviour has changed during the lockdown. Among the findings so far: residents are recycling 27% more, particularly clear glass, and total garbage collected has dropped
02 Jun 2020
The AI firm Faculty, which worked on the Vote Leave campaign, was given a £400,000 UK government contract to analyse social media data, utility bills, and credit ratings, as well as government data, to help in the fight against the coronavirus. This is at least the ninth contract awarded to Faculty
01 Jun 2020
The Delaware County of New Castle is participating in a pro-bono programme run by the Cambridge, Massachusetts start-up Biobot Analytics, which analyses sewage for the coronavirus in order to estimate the number of people infected in a particular area, hoping to use the results to make better health
01 Jun 2020
Between March 29 and May 28, residents of Nashville, Tennessee submitted 3,748 reports of potential violations of the Safe at Home order, including locations such as restaurants, parks, churches, and funeral homes, and violations such as promoting live music while it was prohibited, or failing to
01 Jun 2020
Concerns that contact tracing could expand to purposes beyond public health gained some weight when the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington told press that law enforcement was using “contact tracing” to investigate protesters arrested after the murder of George Floyd
27 May 2020
Immunity passports, under consideration in a number of countries, may violate US disability law, enable discrimination, and create a two-tiered exclusionary society. They are not really comparable to vaccination cards for diseases such as yellow fever or meningitis, which are required for entry into
05 Jun 2020
After problems with its TraceTogether contact tracing app, Singapore is planning a comprehensive contact tracing system in which it will distribute to all its 5.7 million residents a wearable device that will identify people who have interacted with people carrying the coronavirus. The devices can
03 Jun 2020
The lack of data protection laws and the absence of a privacy commission are contributing factors to Pakistan’s failure to investigate or remedy security flaws in the country’s recently-launched COVID-19 tracking technology, which partially depends on a system originally developed to combat
01 Jun 2020
While acknowledging the WHO’s advice that retaining antibodies to the coronavirus after recovering from COVID-19 is not yet scientifically confirmed to confer immunity, the International Air Transport Association believes that immunity passports could be important in helping air travel resume
01 Jun 2020
Italy has launched Immuni, one of the first contact tracing apps based on the Apple-Google API. The app is opt-in, and includes an explanation of the privacy and security measures in its setup. The app collects anonymously bluetooth tokens that are automatically randomised, but does not collect GPS
06 May 2020
Serbian MPs voted 155-0, with one not voting and one abstention, to lift the state of emergency that was declared on March 15 and repeal 11 emergency ordinances covering work, tax, debt, and criminal justice on the basis that the conditions for lifting it have been met. The change lifts curfews and
13 May 2020
The Slovak Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional parts of the newly amended telecommunication law that permitted state authorities to access telcommunications data for the purposes of contact tracing. The parliament approved the legislation in March, but the court ruled that the need for
08 May 2020
As part of their preparations to ease the lockdown, French authorities have added AI tools into the CCTV cameras in the Paris Metro to detect the number of passengers who are wearing face masks. The system is also being used in outdoor markets and buses in Cannes. Although it is mandatory to wear a
13 May 2020
Taking advantage of the pandemic to close US borders, the Trump administration is also spreading coronavirus infection by deporting detainees to receiving countries such as Guatemala, where 20% of infections are deportees. Guatemala has only two hospitals and a scattering of smaller regional medical
