Coronavirus: Google Releases Location Data To Help Authorities Check Lock-downs
Coronavirus: Google Releases Location Data To Help
Authorities Check Lock-downs
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Location
data is being released by Google in 131 countries so officials can see if
people are obeying self-isolating rules
Alphabet’s Google division has on
Thursday published data for 131 countries that shows whether people are obeying
self-isolating and quarantine rules.
The ‘Community Mobility Reports’ from the search engine giant
showed whether visits to shops, parks and workplaces dropped in March, Reuters
reported.
March is when many countries around the world brought in their
lock-down rules, and readers can click
here to see the Google reports on their particular country.
Community Mobility Reports
The Google data comes after surveillance firm NSO Group this
week claimed it was in
talks with governments around the world about using its tracking software,
which is already being tested by some nation states.
Google’s analysis of location
data meanwhile has come from billions of users’ phones (those phones with a
Google account that has location sharing enabled).
Google said that its Community
Mobility Reports “were developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent
privacy protocols and protecting people’s privacy. No personally identifiable
information, such as an individual’s location, contacts or movement, will be
made available at any point.”
The Google data is said to
contain charts that compare traffic from 16 February to 29 March on tube, train
and bus stations, as well as supermarkets and other broad categories of places.
Country breakdowns
Italy of course remains one of
the hardest hit countries in the world.
According
to data
from the World Health Organisation (WHO), 13,915 people have died in
that country, with Spain’s death toll currently sitting at 10,348 as of
Thursday 3 April 2020.
The Google data shows that
Italians were obeying the lock-down rules, with visits to retail and recreation
locations, including restaurants and cinemas, falling 94 percent, while visits
to places of work fell 63 percent.
To underline how severe the
impact Coronavirus is having in Italy, even visits to supermarkets pharmacies
in Italy dropped 85 percent and park visits were down by 90 percent.
Meanwhile in the United States,
California, which was the first to implement a statewide lock-down, visits to
retail and recreation locations were cut by half.
But the Google data also showed
that visits to supermarkets surged in countries such as Singapore, and the
United Kingdom.
However, it should be noted that
the UK only implemented its lock-down rules on the evening on 22 March.
According to the WHO data, there
are now 1,018,920 cases of Coronavirus around the world, and a total of 53,292
have died from Covid-19.
According to Reuters, Facebook
has also shared location data with non-governmental researchers that are
producing similar reports for authorities in several countries. But the social
media giant has not published any findings.
Privacy focus
Google explained the reason it is
releasing this data in a blog post, and stressed it was addressing privacy
concerns.
“In Google Maps, we use aggregated, anonymized data showing how
busy certain types of places are – helping identify when a local business tends
to be the most crowded,” Dr. Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer for Google
Health and Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president for Google Geo, wrote
in a blog post.
“We have heard from public health
officials that this same type of aggregated, anonymized data could be helpful
as they make critical decisions to combat Covid-19,” they wrote.
“These reports have been
developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and
policies,” they added. “The reports use aggregated, anonymized data to chart
movement trends over time by geography, across different high-level categories
of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks,
transit stations, workplaces, and residential.”
They said that the insights were
created with aggregated, anonymized sets of data from users who have turned on
the Location History setting, which is off by default.
“Users who have Location History
turned on can choose to turn the setting off at any time from their Google
Account, and can always delete Location History data directly from their
Timeline,” they said.
“These are unprecedented times
and we will continue to evaluate these reports as we get feedback from public
health officials, civil society groups, local governments and the community at
large,” they concluded. “We hope these insights will add to other public health
information that will help people and communities stay healthy and safe.”
Location data
Last month it was reported that European
mobile operators were sharing location data with health
authorities in Italy, Germany and Austria, in an effort to fight the spread of
the pandemic.
Operators apparently shared data
to show whether people were complying with local curbs on movement.
Days later, the British
government reportedly approached at least one mobile operator regarding
location data, to see if citizens were practising social isolation.
The government was said to be in
talks with BT (which owns EE) over revealing mobile data to see if Brits are
social distancing.
Mobile location data has been
used heavily in South Korea in its fight against Coronavirus, as well as in
other countries such as Israel.
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