Google and Facebook are considering efforts to analyze the collective movements of millions of users to determine how the deadly novel coronavirus is spreading across the US, and to gauge the effectiveness of calls for social distancing.
The results could be shared with government agencies working to head off what could become an unprecedented public health emergency over the next few weeks. Those with knowledge of the plans say every effort is being made to protect user privacy by anonymizing the data. They say a rough picture of how people are gathering and moving around could prove vital to combating the virus, which threatens to overwhelm US hospitals if the current rate of transmission does not change.
Still, the plan may test people’s attitudes towards privacy and government surveillance, amid growing concerns about the ways in which big tech companies track their users. Some companies already share some aggregate data, but it would be new for Google and Facebook to openly mine user movements on this scale for the government. The data collected would show patterns of user movements. It would need to be cross-referenced with data on testing and diagnoses to show how behavior is affecting the spread of the virus.
“As a researcher, I would be interested in analyzing aggregated and anonymized location data related to human behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic crises,” says Margue ..
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