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The European Union has some of the strongest data privacy laws in the world. Now hard-hit countries such as Italy and Spain are balancing privacy concerns against public health to get insights from phone location data during the COVID-19 pandemic 1/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/how-coronavirus-pandemic-europe-collecting-phone-data
It's a big moment for European researchers who study how phone location data could guide responses to disease outbreaks. They’ve often felt ignored in past public health crises. Now they're part of government task forces or informally advising during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2/
Some European governments have been collecting phone location data from telecom companies to see if the public is complying with social distancing measures and national lockdowns. For privacy reasons, such data has been anonymized and aggregated for use on a zip code level. 3/
The Belgian “Data Against Corona” task force has proposed using mobile data to investigate public reports of “lockdown parties” that ignore social distancing. They hope to count large gatherings by zip code to see if it's a large-scale problem. 4/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/how-coronavirus-pandemic-europe-collecting-phone-data
European governments are also interested in mobile apps for contact tracing that could alert phone users if they’ve come into contact with COVID-19 cases. This likely involves more tradeoffs between individual privacy and location accuracy. 5/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/ethics/halting-covid19-benefits-risks-digital-contact-tracing
Contact tracing apps could be especially useful early on to quickly detect and isolate infected cases and their contacts before the coronavirus gets widespread. But still useful after the infections peak to help stem a second wave of infections. 6/ https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2003/2003.12347.pdf
Individual European countries will make their own decisions on deploying contact tracing apps. But researchers working with governments emphasized the need to start with the strongest data privacy protection possible and explain tradeoffs if needed to keep public trust. 7/
Phone location data also has limitations in what it can reveal. Not everyone has a phone. Not everyone carries a single phone around with them all the time. Phone location data only shows concentrations of people and not necessarily sick people, unless you use other data. 8/
A medical anthropologist documented the failed attempt to use phone location data to track the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Some people have multiple phones for work and life, whereas others share phones among families and neighborhoods. 9/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6175342/
The same anthropologist also questioned whether government resources are best spent on collecting and analyzing phone location data during a pandemic. E.g. Mobile data not always necessary to recognize when people violate social distancing measures. 10/ https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases20/pr20200325b.html
Also unclear how much usage of phone location data should get credit for Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan having early success in containment. More significant could be early and widespread testing and other basic public health measures. 11/
Germany stands out in Europe and the world for its exceptionally low case fatality rate. Credit there goes primarily to early and widespread testing, more hospital capacity, and public trust in government and obedience in social distancing. 12/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/world/europe/germany-coronavirus-death-rate.html
For now, the European researchers emphasized that no one approach fits all countries hoping to use mobile data to guide decision-making during the pandemic. They’re hoping to encourage more systematic evaluations of what works and what doesn’t 13/ https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/security/how-coronavirus-pandemic-europe-collecting-phone-data
On a final note, the Spanish government task force has put out an international survey to understand the social and economic impacts of both the pandemic and national restrictions on movement and gatherings. (Upper right to change language.) /fin https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/d29378b51fe8496d8dd77f08ce73973f
