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U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

washingtonpost.com

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Re: U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

#5
post #4

Wouldn't it make more sense to work with the cell service providers? Surely at least some people turn off location permissions? I would think the cell service providers have much more reliable data.

Technically that data is anonimized, and although its not hard to deanonomize, its not easy to scale

Re: U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

#7
post #3

This should've happened a long time ago. I really think there should be more cooperation between governments and tech companies so they can come up with solutions like this much faster like they did in China

What solutions did they come up with in China?

Re: U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

#8

Conveniently they already have a system that can track associations N hops from any given person.

Will they use it and risk the public asking how they came to know so much, as if by magic?

I'm hoping after this is all over perhaps the public might finally be in a mood more conducive to sitting down and discussing things in a reasonable manner, without the involvement of government and their corporate influence, and ideally on a platform with minimum censorship, and has a solution for dealing with ideological issues that have ruined so much of the rest of social media.

Re: U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

#9
post #3

This should've happened a long time ago. I really think there should be more cooperation between governments and tech companies so they can come up with solutions like this much faster like they did in China

I'd prefer to just get arrested every time I sneeze.

Re: U.S. govt, tech industry discuss using location data to combat coronavirus

#10
post #4

Wouldn't it make more sense to work with the cell service providers? Surely at least some people turn off location permissions? I would think the cell service providers have much more reliable data.

They have cell location data, but could have quite a few people in it. They already have this data, and I would guess that they find it useless for contact tracing. In contrast, Google/Apple and to some degree fb have super accurate traces of exactly which shops and offices you went to.
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