Is your privacy being invaded during COVID-19 lockdowns?

[David]

Poll: Do you feel safer knowing that governments around the world are using your cellphone data, to include search histories and metadata such as phone call histories or do you think it's a violation of your rights, and unconstitutional to do in America, at least?

It should be no secret by now that the COVID-19 pandemic is allowing governments around the world to snoop into your business. Some countries go as far as even tracing your search history and metadata which includes who called whom, but not the contents of the call itself. South Korea is one, is the US another?

At the same time many users seem to be opposed to the rationale that their own governments get the same – or even some – of the same data. This is not only true for personal data like Internet search histories and the like, but also for location data, and even general metadata – like whom called whom and for how long (rather than the contents of the call).

Some countries are using apps to support quarantine procedures that would have to be supervised by daily physical visits or provider-based data. Taiwan, South Korea and Poland38 have developed apps that report the location of the phone as well as requests for “selfies” of the patient to confirm they are adhering to quarantine procedures and haven’t simply left the phone at home. For “special cases” (including those without smartphones) Taiwan and Singapore have taken to providing government-issued phones directly.

Source: https://www.aies.at/download/2020/AIES-Studies-2020-12.pdf (and attached document)

Do you feel that this a violation of privacy or moving in the direction of it as such to be used whenever the government wishes?

Below is some good, but concerning data that cellphones in America were doing during the quarantines and lockdowns.

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The above image could indicate that the Great Lakes area has been obeying orders to stay indoors, turned off phones or even left them at home. I'm hoping the former, but at the same time, I feel that this is stepping in the unchartered territory of the US being spy state monitoring the people whenever they wish, pandemic or not, collecting perhaps more data than if movements were made.

Stay-at-home orders have nearly halted travel for most Americans, but people in Florida, the Southeast and other places that waited to enact such orders have continued to travel widely, potentially exposing more people as the coronavirus outbreak accelerates, according to an analysis of cellphone location data by The New York Times.

The divide in travel patterns, based on anonymous cellphone data from 15 million people, suggests that Americans in wide swaths of the West, Northeast and Midwest have complied with orders from state and local officials to stay home.

Anonymous, but tracks movements? Is anyone able to explain to me how that could remotely be anonymous data?

Disease experts who reviewed the results say those reductions in travel — to less than a mile a day, on average, from about five miles — may be enough to sharply curb the spread of the coronavirus in those regions, at least for now.

“That’s huge,” said Aaron A. King, a University of Michigan professor who studies the ecology of infectious disease. “By any measure this is a massive change in behavior, and if we can make a similar reduction in the number of contacts we make, every indication is that we can defeat this epidemic.”

But not everybody has been staying home.

Source: Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread

Of course, not everyone is staying at home. Whether you track data or not, people will get out and move about. The only way to put a stop to it would be employing the National Guard during a state of emergency to ensure people aren't traveling.

Otherwise, I believe that even collecting this "anonymous data" that they have is unconstitutional under the 4th Amendment.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What's your take on this? Does it make you feel more secure knowing that people have reduced traveling from an average of 5-miles to 1-mile per day, or, is it more concerning that your data is being looked at with a fine-tooth comb, gathering more data than they say, quite possibly violating your rights? Is it good during a pandemic?

 

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[island cyclist]

Tracking us by our phone is a violation of our "human privileges", we never ever had any rights. We were only given one right in life and that is to breath air, which in most cases is polluted. Water rights comes to mind, easement rights come to mind and this is how we all got sold out by the crooked politicians. This is it : years ago when you bought raw land and built a house, you gave an easement for telephone lines, now we are being charged for giving corporations the right to use the easements for whatever use they want, like cable. We simply were born with no rights other then "free air". We only are given "privileges" and that is a fact.

 

[David]

Tracking us by our phone is a violation of our "human privileges"

I would like to counter this with the US Constitution, an inalienable framework of human rights.

If they are tracking, this goes against the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now, if they're tracking, anonymously, there is certainly a tie to the SIM in the phone and the account it's held to. Therefore, it can't really be anonymous.

Furthermore, if they're collecting search and medical history like South Korea did in an effort to combat COVID-19, and releasing it to the public, this goes above and beyond.

South Korea has released detailed information on infected individuals—including their recent movements—viewable through multiple private apps that send alerts to users in their vicinity. “They’re essentially texting people, saying, ‘Hey, there’s been a 60-year-old woman who’s positive for COVID. Click this for more information about her path,’” says Anne Liu, a global health expert at Columbia University. She warns that the South Korean approach risks unmasking and stigmatizing infected people and the businesses they frequent.

Source: Cellphone tracking could help stem the spread of coronavirus. Is privacy the price?