An article that I found interesting this week was one from the Wall Street Journal called “Government Tracking How People Move Around in Coronavirus Pandemic”. This article was written on March 28th and discussed how the U.S. government is now heavily looking into location data that comes from mobile user’s devices around the country to aid in the fight against the novel coronavirus. It was revealed that federal, state, and local governments are obtaining this data from mobile advertising industries, not cellphone carries, in an estimated 500 cities. Their ultimate goal behind collecting this data is to learn how the virus is spreading and disclose what areas are the biggest contributors to the rapid spread. The government has told the public that the geolocation data they are collecting is wiped of any identifying information of the mobile users like their name or any other private information that comes with their phone. With the help of this data, they hope to realize what public places are still attracting crowds of ten or more that would be viewed as places for rapid spread. Knowing where the crowds are would then lead them to close these public areas such as parks and other establishments to avoid any additional contact with the virus. The article also talked about how not only would the data give them insights as to where people are congregating but also whether or not people are complying with the stay-at-home orders and county/city lockdowns. Although there is valid reasoning behind the collection of this data, a lot of privacy concerns come up with it. To me and probably the majority, the idea of the government tracking us is kind of weird and uncomfortable to thinking about, but definitely wondering what you think and whether or not this is beneficial? Also what other privacy issues do you think this could introduce?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/government-tracking-how-people-move-around-in-coronavirus-pandemic-11585393202?mod=tech_lead_pos1
At a usual time, I would say that this is a blatant invasion of privacy and that there is no justifiable reason that the government should do this. Though, this outbreak is the justifiable reason. I think that this outbreak is going to change the way we do things in this country in more ways than we can think of now. Like 9/11, there will be a definitive before and after. That being said, I think that we can expect technology like this to be more of a norm in our American life, for better or for worse.
The ethics behind it aside, I think that this breach of privacy is a necessary evil in this case. Any way we can slow the spread of this deadly disease so that we can sooner continue life as usual, I think we should try it.
Even though we may need to remove our personal opinions on the issue because they’re doing this in order to track our safety, this is still an invasion of privacy no matter how you look at it. We would have to truly trust government officials in order for us to be ok with this, and many people don’t. For example, if they are tracking to see if we aren’t complying with the stay-at-home orders, they might turn to harsher consequences that are being controlled by our very locations. The article below discusses the consequences of the government’s growth in power over our privacy. If they are amping up how much they track individuals to understand the spread of the virus after the virus passes they might have a hard time scaling down on that power they’ve given themselves. Some experts have even said tracking our locations might not even be as useful as they say, and we don’t know when they would even stop.
ArjunKharpal. (2020, March 27). Use of surveillance to fight coronavirus raises concerns about government power after pandemic ends. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-surveillance-used-by-governments-to-fight-pandemic-privacy-concerns.html