Posted on 04/03/2020 2:53:01 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Paris (AFP) - Google will publish location data from its users around the world from Friday to allow governments to gauge the effectiveness of social distancing measures put in place to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the tech giant said.
The reports on users' movements in 131 countries will be made available on a special website and will "chart movement trends over time by geography," according to a post on one of the company's blogs.
Trends will be display "a percentage point increase or decrease in visits" to locations like parks, shops, homes and places of work, not "the absolute number of visits," said the post, signed by Jen Fitzpatrick, who leads Google Maps, and the company's chief health officer Karen DeSalvo.
"We hope these reports will help support decisions about how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic," they said.
In Europe and the United States, technology firms have begun sharing "anonymised" smartphone data to better track the outbreak.
Even privacy-loving Germany is considering using a smartphone app to help manage the spread of the disease.
But activists say authoritarian regimes are using the coronavirus as a pretext to suppress independent speech and increase surveillance.
And in liberal democracies, others fear widespread data harvesting and intrusion could bring lasting harm to privacy and digital rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Going to have to go dark.
The data would be flawed by essential service movement, travel, shipping, and delivery, local and national.
Somewhere Eric Blair has a big smile on his face.
Guess my cell phone will have to be shielded. Turning it off won’t do any good. They can track you even with it off.
Let’s attach our phones to drones and all “meet” in the park! Lol
How do you shield your phone?
Faraday cage.
Big Brother is not watching you.
Obviously google has all this data on us. Authorities also using cell phone location data. The biggest loss after this covid-$h!t is over, will be our freedom.
The fascists in government rushed to gain more control over us, and they will never let go of it.
On the road to China...
My wife and I have one cellphone and we don’t use it unless there’s a compelling reason. Babbling with friends or relatives is not a compelling reason. It’s turned off probably 95 percent of the time.
We still like our land line which gives us a household phone, not an individual person’s phone.
I do believe that violates CA Constitution of right to privacy.
There are some serious fools running that company.
Cell phone= Mark of the beast?
That’s why I got one of the rare offerings with a removable battery.
Turning your phone off only keeps the phone in standby. You need to pull the batteries if you actually want it off. But they thought of that and made the batteries inaccessible.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=cell+phone+faraday+bag&i=electronics&crid=37R6OEZS3SPYE
Definitely in China.
Does Google still get access to location if I turn off the GPS. I know it is still available for 911, but I don’t know if they still get GPS constantly or if they also get cell phone tower info and WiFi router data. I generally turn off GPS unless I specically want it for a minute or two.
“Turning your phone off only keeps the phone in standby”
By turning it off I mean powering it down. When my phone is “powered down” the battery holds its charge virtually forever which suggests the phone is doing nothing but monitoring the button on the side.
Do you think it’s in standby when powered down as I describe?
If so then you’d need to keep it in a metal box to shut it off from the world.
And Bill Gates and co. is working on various vaccines; along with them there may (it’s being studied) be injected a sensor to verify you have it.
Possibly, you could be denied access to various public areas without it.
That’s one step away from something worse along similar lines.
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