Gov’t in ‘early stages’ of using cellphone data for COVID-19 tracking: Bains

The federal government is looking at what other jurisdictions are doing when it comes to using cellphone data to track the spread of COVID-19, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said. “It’s still early stages and we’re engaged with a world class group of people across the country that are working on some early stage technology projects,” Bains told reporters, according to a transcript. The Wire Report first reported in late March that a number of cities and provinces, as well as the federal government, were in discussions about launching apps that would use location data to track exposure to COVID-19. Bains said Friday, according to a transcript, that the government hasn’t “made any final determination in terms of what we want to support and move forward with but we have incredible innovative companies across the country that are stepping up, thinking through these challenges and we’re engaged with them.” He echoed comments Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made early on in the pandemic, repeating that “all options are on the table.” Bains said the government will “deploy all the tools that we need to make sure we protect Canadians’ health and wellbeing. Right now we’re focused on economic measures.” He also said that when it comes to contact tracing, “we want to make sure if we are moving forward in that area that we also deal with issues with respect to privacy in a meaningful way.” A week earlier, Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam said provinces were collaborating on cellphone tracking, and that authorities would consider the privacy implications of using such technologies. Also on Friday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner released a framework to help government institutions consider privacy in their COVID-19 responses. It includes many of the same principles advocates and experts have called for, including for any measures to have legal authority, for “the measures must be necessary and proportionate,” used for a limited purpose for for a limited time, for the government to be transparent and accountable and for de-identified and aggregate data to be used whenever possible. Conservative industry critic Michelle Rempel Garner welcomed the release of the Privacy Commissioner’s framework in a press release Monday, reiterating her call for any agreements to be “rooted in a privacy protection framework.”

Gov’t in ‘early stages’ of using cellphone data for COVID-19 tracking: Bains

Brief | April 20, 2020

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Gov’t in ‘early stages’ of using cellphone data for COVID-19 tracking: Bains

Brief | April 20, 2020

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