2021-12-25: Canadian Government Tracking Canadians' Location rak
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The National Post reported yesterday [0] that the Public Health
Agency of Canada has been tracking Canadians' locations via
their mobile devices. Recall that Canada has a population of 38
million. Quoting from the article:
The Public Health Agency of Canada accessed location data
from 33 million mobile devices to monitor people’s movement
during lockdown, the agency revealed this week.
[...]
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.
I'm glad that, unlike many parts of Europe and unlike when I
lived in Russia, we are not required to identify ourselves to
the police without cause or carry internal passports. But what
difference does it make if the government can identify your
whereabouts from a distance? The article claims that PHAC
purchased "de-identified and aggregated data" from Telus, but
the general public has known since a NYTimes exposé [1] two
years ago that it's extremely easy to identify individuals
aggregate location data.
As an aside: why are CTV and the CBC mysteriously silent about
this?
(I also find it problematic that private companies retain or
resell location data without informed consent of its customers.
Especially when a telecommunications company collects and
retains location data for mobile devices that do not belong to
its customers: there is no way that Telus has 33 million
customers in Canada. But there is a fundamental difference
between the relationship between government and citizen and the
relationship between corporation and customer.)
[0]
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-public-health-agency-admits-it-tracked-33-million-mobile-devices-during-lockdown
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/19/opinion/location-tracking-cell-phone.html
