Canada's Pandemic Surveillance



The Canadian gubment, enabled by Telus, tracked 33M Canadian devices' movements by analysing cell tower traffic

This one initially gets the blood boiling, but after you get past the clickbait headline it's really not so bad. Well, it's no worse than what Canada and the "Five Eyes" have been doing for ages. At least during this instance they used it for good.

I'm maybe not so convinced that Telus' "Data For Good" program is what we want though. They've always had an overreach and having been a customer of theirs in various formats over the years, I can assure you Telus customers aren't of any interest to Telus. 

From the article:  

used the location data to evaluate the effectiveness of public lockdown measures and allow the Agency to “understand possible links between movement of populations within Canada and spread of COVID-19,”

And

PHAC’s privacy management division conducted an assessment and “determined that since no personal information is being acquired through this contract, there are no concerns under the Privacy Act,”

The data collection period started Jan 1, 2019 and will continue to Mar 31, 2023. Yay.


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