Thursday, March 26, 2020

Toronto is gathering cellphone location data from telecoms to find out where people are still congregating amid coronavirus shutdown


Toronto is gathering cellphone location data from telecoms to find out where people are still congregating amid coronavirus shutdown
City says data will be used to encourage social distancing, but civil liberties experts say it could be against the law The City of Toronto is obtaining cellphone data from wireless carriers to help it identify where people have assembled in groups, part of its attempts to slow the spread of COVID-19, Mayor John Tory said on Monday. But city staff said Tuesday morning the city doesn’t plan to collect such data. 
“We had … the cellphone companies give us all the data on the pinging off their network on the weekend so we could see, ‘Where were people still congregating?’” Tory said during an online video-conferencing event Monday evening hosted by TechTO, a local meetup organization. 
“Because the biggest enemy of fighting this thing is people congregating close together.”
ory said the data will be used to generate a heat map. He did not name the companies that had provided the city with data.

1 comment:

Always On Watch said...

Anonymous,
No kidding! And a no-brainer, too.

Sheesh.