Canada's Public Health Agency Criticized for Tracking 33M Mobile Devices (nationalpost.com) 49
The Public Health Agency of Canada (or PHAC) "accessed location data from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people's movement during lockdown," reports Canada's National Post newspaper:
"Due to the urgency of the pandemic, PHAC collected and used mobility data, such as cell-tower location data, throughout the COVID-19 response," a spokesperson told National Post... PHAC 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," the spokesperson said.
In March, the Agency awarded a contract to the Telus Data For Good program to provide "de-identified and aggregated data" of movement trends in Canada. The contract expired in October, and PHAC no longer has access to the location data, the spokesperson said. The Agency is planning to track population movement for roughly the next five years, including to address other public health issues, such as "other infectious diseases, chronic disease prevention and mental health," the spokesperson added.
Privacy advocates raised concerns to the National Post about the long-term implications of the program. "I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over — and afterwards," David Lyon, author of Pandemic Surveillance and former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University, said in an email.... Increased use of surveillance technology during the COVID-19 pandemic has created a new normal in the name of security, Lyon said. "The pandemic has created opportunities for a massive surveillance surge on many levels — not only for public health, but also for monitoring those working, shopping and learning from home."
"Evidence is coming in from many sources, from countries around the world, that what was seen as a huge surveillance surge — post 9/11 — is now completely upstaged by pandemic surveillance," he added.
In March, the Agency awarded a contract to the Telus Data For Good program to provide "de-identified and aggregated data" of movement trends in Canada. The contract expired in October, and PHAC no longer has access to the location data, the spokesperson said. The Agency is planning to track population movement for roughly the next five years, including to address other public health issues, such as "other infectious diseases, chronic disease prevention and mental health," the spokesperson added.
Privacy advocates raised concerns to the National Post about the long-term implications of the program. "I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over — and afterwards," David Lyon, author of Pandemic Surveillance and former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University, said in an email.... Increased use of surveillance technology during the COVID-19 pandemic has created a new normal in the name of security, Lyon said. "The pandemic has created opportunities for a massive surveillance surge on many levels — not only for public health, but also for monitoring those working, shopping and learning from home."
"Evidence is coming in from many sources, from countries around the world, that what was seen as a huge surveillance surge — post 9/11 — is now completely upstaged by pandemic surveillance," he added.
do a cost / benefit study (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems like an occasion for a cost / benefit analysis with a look at risk.
Cost includes money, of course, but also cost to supporters of the plan. If very unpopular, heads will roll. Cost also includes cost to citizens via loss of privacy. Where data is gathered, it has a tendency to leak even if there were good intentions.
Benefit would start with an unbiased audit of lives saved. Would 100 saved lives make the program worthwhile? 1000? Statistical analysis of the data could provide other useful information that might indirectly save lives. I can't think of any other benefit to a nationwide spy program.
Risk is more of a long term consideration. Does this program increase the likeliness that additional spy programs will be imposed? Is it the beginning of a trend toward a surveillance society? What implications does it have for political candidates, the justice system, education, and quality of life?
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once you start down that road, by the end of it there will be a rationale for why no one should have any rights
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What saddens me the most is that people are willing to accept far more tracking for convenience apps on their phones than they are to try to save lives.
Re: do a cost / benefit study (Score:2)
complacent (Score:3, Insightful)
Canadians are mostly complacent, docile, majority of them are against real freedoms, they mostly support government initiatives, they allow the judges to do whatever the hell judges want, judicial activism in Canada is rampant, there is no freedom of speech, the majority pretty much trumps minority voices. The government runs various cartels, from the banking system to telecoms and everything else, there is no choice in healthcare. You have to spend a few decades in Canada to appreciate the level of oppression that most do not even understand. This tactic by the government is par for the course, I am sure few are surprised by it and most will find a way to justify it in their minds and very few are ready to do anything about it.
Re:complacent (Score:5, Funny)
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You have to spend a few decades in Canada to appreciate the level of oppression that most do not even understand.
I suspect you would be surprised how many people are happy and proud to live here. I'm certainly happy I don't live in the US. That is one fucked up country next door.
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The US probably says the same thing about Mexico. And Mexico probably says the same thing about Guatemala and so on.
Letting yourself accept slipping standards and lazily setting low expectations... is that what Canada is all a-boot? You're a disgrace to the rank of Kernel.
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The US probably says the same thing about Mexico. And Mexico probably says the same thing about Guatemala and so on. Letting yourself accept slipping standards and lazily setting low expectations... is that what Canada is all a-boot? You're a disgrace to the rank of Kernel.
Well I would rather live in the US than Mexico or Guatemala, so there is that I suppose. I'm truly hard pressed to find things I like about the US better than here though. I know they think they are a beacon of freedom to the world and all that, but meh.
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Judgement went against you hey?
A non-story (Score:5, Insightful)
Criticising the government for collecting data to make informed decisions about a pandemic. There's no attempt to be objective here. The story equates government collection of data with surveillance. Thank you Media. No wonder everyone hates you. What's next? Criticising the government for not making informed decisions?
The data is de-identified and aggregated. Even the COVID-19 app we have in Canada is anonymised. So I guess the national census, which is not anonymised, must be the height of a surveillance state then.
If this is government surveillance to you, then to quote Professor Farnsworth, "I don't want to live on this planet anymore".
Re: A non-story / click-bait (Score:5, Informative)
The National Post is a financial failure, hanging on by the skin of it's teeth, and by publishing clickbait. For a more credible summary of the article, read its last three paragraphs [nationalpost.com].
Talk about "burying the lede" (;-))
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Re:A non-story (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as anonymized data when you have multiple data points available. And if you think the govt has your best interest in mind, you might want to wake up and smell the roses because they care about one thing and one thing only; power and staying in power.
On good way to stay in power: keep your voters alive.
Another good way to stay in power: do what your voters want when it doesn't conflict with your profiting.
In Canada, we're not chest-thumping nationalists. We're a civilization that - on average - cares about the good of the people in general. At the height of lockdown, most of us were more concerned with "am I - and are my neighbors - doing the right things to stay safe." Most of us would have approved such a monitoring project, to assist in identifying if lockdown was being violated en mass, and how, and why, and where, to guide what to do about it. Most of us would have voluntarily given up the location data to help keep us all safe.
Now, we're not perfect, and we're not close (enough) to perfect. And we're individuals, so some of us would've seen things differently. But up here we were pretty strongly biased against the "mah freedums" brigade, and biased towards the "our health" philosophy.
The point I'm making is that while you are absolutely correct, it's worth recognizing that sometimes "staying in power" is beneficial to the people.
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In Canada, we're not chest-thumping nationalists. We're a civilization that - on average - cares about the good of the people in general. At the height of lockdown, most of us were more concerned with "am I - and are my neighbors - doing the right things to stay safe."
And this is where a combination of stereotypes and disproportionate media coverage distort things. Please forgive me if I'm misinterpreting what you're saying here, but the subtext seems to be that Canadians are this way in contrast to Americans.
At the beginning when there were lockdowns, I was considered an essential worker. I was working to help offices who didn't have remote connectivity to have it implemented. Where I live, traffic is generally pretty heavy. If I leave an office 20 miles away at 5PM, it
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And this is where a combination of stereotypes and disproportionate media coverage distort things. Please forgive me if I'm misinterpreting what you're saying here, but the subtext seems to be that Canadians are this way in contrast to Americans.
Honestly, this wasn't a comparison of Canadian versus anyone. It was "this is what the perspective of many Canadians are/were." Think of it like "this is what our climate is like". Doesn't speak to climate anywhere else... at least not intentionally.
At the beginning when there were lockdowns, I was considered an essential worker. I was working to help offices who didn't have remote connectivity to have it implemented. Where I live, traffic is generally pretty heavy. If I leave an office 20 miles away at 5PM, it'll be somewhere between 6 and 6:30 when I get home; 30 mile drives have taken 3 hours if I leave during rush hour. During lockdowns, the roads were empty. It was almost creepy how little traffic there was at the time. Yes, there were concerns raised, but if traffic is any indication, there weren't a whole lot of people defying the lockdown orders, because we too believe in the good of the people in general.
Yeah, me too. As in, essential worker, and the streets were empty as I traversed them. Still, during those early days, there were a lot of unknowns. The case rates were unprecedented and climbing. Deaths were unprecedented and climbing. Loved-ones, espec
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There is no such thing as anonymized data when you have multiple data points available.
Regrettably, that's not true. I'd love to know which individuals are interested in my product, but all the stats say is "7% of Canadians are".
I'd need to design a fake experiment like Cambridge Analytica's and sucker PHAC and Telus into paying for it and running it, respectively. Then I would have data I could trivially de-anonymize.
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So, a couple of things here...
First and foremost, there's no indication that this tracking actually helped matters. From the summary: "PHAC 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""...how did that work out? PHAC paid for the data, and...then what? How did the spokesperson manage to get through the interview without bringing up how this data collecti
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Parent is a typical short-sighted response to how science works and what it is good for. Government's response to a pandemic like COVID-19 is expected to be pitch perfect. Failure automatically means incompetence or inefficiency. No one seems to care about whether anyone actually has a clue about what to do.
Governments can't make good decisions without the science, and science needs data. Here we have a pandemic with phone trackable people. Golden opportunity to collect data to validate better models for n
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The only effective deterent would be if the mandatory punishment were the noose. Let the buggers swing, says I.
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The only effective deterent would be if the mandatory punishment were the noose. Let the buggers swing, says I.
We don't have the death penalty here. I can name good reasons - Milgaard, Morin, Truscott, Marshall, Driskell, Sophonow, Unger, Ostrowski - just off the top of my head without needing to look. There are many more.
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The data is de-identified and aggregated. Even the COVID-19 app we have in Canada is anonymised.
And it is not a secret. All along they have shared the aggregated movement data with the public so we can see the results of our own collective decisions.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tec... [ctvnews.ca]
And this is not confined to Canada, just so you know. Google and Apple both provide this data on a global basis.
https://www.google.com/covid19... [google.com]
https://covid19.apple.com/mobi... [apple.com]
They're already doing it anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Five Eyes" are already collecting & analysing this data anyway & using legal loopholes to get away with it, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
All this story is about is a rare occasion where this long-established spy-domestic SIGNIT infrastructure is actually used to do something good for the majority of the people. Although, they were probably mostly motivated by reducing the economic effects of lockdowns & other restrictions for the 1%.
We're all under constant systematic govt surveillance all the time. I can't imagine a scenario where any elected official or party could make it go away.
For right or wrong, The Big Lie (Score:1)
Telus calls their program 'Telus for Good'. Big lie. I can only think that they call it that because they need to try and work the word 'good' in with their name somehow because of what a shit company they are.
The big three telecom cartel in Canada make USA carriers look damn good (they would be Telus, Rogers, and Bell Canada).
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Telus calls their program 'Telus for Good'. Big lie. I can only think that they call it that because they need to try and work the word 'good' in with their name somehow because of what a shit company they are.
The big three telecom cartel in Canada make USA carriers look damn good (they would be Telus, Rogers, and Bell Canada).
I've read enough stories right here on /. about the sketchy behavior of Verizon and the like to say that is definitely debatable, though Bell is certainly a douchey company, no doubt about that.
Canadians aren't United-Statians (Score:2)
We aren't scared of our government; we believe in regulating just about everything.
Sure, I don't want a private company having any of that data. I'm perfectly fine with my government having it. And provided that my government has revoked any private-company's short-term access to that data, well that's the best of all worlds -- government control without government invention.
We often get confused by USA media. In truth, our Canadian government isn't at risk of abusing such information (with one very larg
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I think you're looking at completely random data, and drawing conclusions.
You quoted 70% to the non-winning party, but we have five (or six) parties. So that's consistent with an even-distribution.
And sure, there's the full gamut of opinions. But I'm not talking about verbal opinions. Those are meaningless.
Let's look at actions.
How many Canadians do you think distrust their government so much that they have: backup electricity/gas/water? I looked at the start of covid. It's almost impossible to find th
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Well, I was talking about pre-covid. I never said we don't have homeless people. I said they have access to top-quality food, care, et cetera, upon request. Many don't request it (pride cometh...). And obviously, that's in large cities, not rural countryside.
As for current times, the only reason I haven't been in favour of the lockdowns is because I think they ought to have been so much stricter and heavier. But, I've got a life that can easily handle that, and I've got a lot to protect. Not everyone
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It's not a free country. It's a democratic country (which I'm against also, but that's a very different conversation). But if you support democracies, then you support the majority vote (which again, I don't). Well, in this case, the majority chose to lock you down.
And we're Canadian. You can easily look at our (incredibly excellent) human rights. You basically have the right to do anything you want, until your actions impede someone else's right to do what they want. That's the only thing we ever enfo
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So you're against both vaccines and disney world? You don't sound like the kind of person with whom I'd want to be friends.
I actually do think the bill will be a good thing. Aside from (a) we've spent past money, what were we saving it for if not for something like this?; but (b) I'm hoping that we spend the next five years spending much much more.
This is a wonderful opportunity. We've basically walked head-long into a desert. Sure, we could turn around and head back. But what's forward? It might stil
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Well, Toronto has expanded from 2 million to over 10 million people in the last twenty years. There are plenty of new cities born from it's wake. I'm in one of them with 300K people. But no, we don't build brand new big cities. That was one of my suggestions.
As for robots and utopia, if you ever believed that (we all did), that was the mistake. Economies don't work that way.
That said, thirty years ago, when I was in high school, I got to spend time with some truly rich folks -- we're talking leaders of
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Google doesn't live here. "GTA" is 6.5 million. GTA is 10 million. 10 million people use Toronto on a daily basis. Additionally, without a map, you won't find the official "GTA" border. It's a megalopolis. I count everything until a break in the buildings -- you know, like every living organism would. So I do count Oshawa, and I don't count Guelph. I now count newmarket, I didn't five years ago.
I certainly can't speak for most other parts of the country. Outside of the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal tria
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Whatever party is elected to government here, at both provincial and federal levels, just don't make a heck of a lot of difference to most people's lives. I personally like some Conservative policies and dislike others, and the same with the Liberals and NDP as well, but none of them are exactly life altering things like they unfortunately are in many places in the world.
Government here is probably just better at seeking things people agree on rather than dividing people over what they don't.
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