Location data used by the Government to help stop the spread of Coronavirus

We know that the speed at which China was able to push back against the Coronavirus was in part due to its use of technology. However much of this use of technology has been met with cynicism from onlookers in the west who are quick to question whether this errs into the realms of government intrusion, surveillance states and privacy breaches.

In China, the “new normal” involves facial recognition technologies which are able to detect elevated temperatures within a crowd of people, social media platforms where users can report others who are ill, and the use of QR codes to enter work premises and apartment blocks.

Despite the seemingly widespread scepticism in the west around this approach, the UK government, with the help of mobile network O2 have decided to take a leaf out of China’s book.

As one of the UK’s largest phone networks, O2 has agreed to help the government analyse smartphone location data to monitor whether UK citizens are following government social distancing guidelines.

O2 is providing aggregated data to the UK government, to allow the government to observe trends in public movement.

O2 is keen to make clear that individual data will not be identifiable. Although O2 and most other mobile networks have the ability to view the location of individual phones; they have confirmed that individual data will be kept anonymous. The project has been designed to help reveal movement trends and control the spread of the Coronavirus, as opposed to track and penalise individuals.

The aggregate data will be used to help the government understand whether its stay at home guidelines and instructions on reduced travel are being followed, as well as how the virus might move. The project will focus predominantly on London data, given that the spread of the virus seems to be further along there than in other parts of the country.

Although the government have been careful to comply with data protection laws (they have only asked one mobile network for its location data given the high levels of risk involved where multiple datasets are combined). Civil society groups are calling for greater levels of transparency from the Government in order to maintain public confidence and trust.