A report submitted to the Commons Ethics Committee shows that the movements of Canadians, including in a liquor store or pharmacy, were monitored – without their knowledge – during the COVID -19 pandemic, by their cell phone.
The society BlueDotwho specializes in assessing public health mobility, wrote reports, using anonymous data, for the Public Health Agency of Canada to help understand citizens ’travel patterns during a pandemic.
The federal government shared one of these reports with the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which this winter investigated the collection and use of public cell phone health data.
A detailed picture of the behavior of Canadians
The report shows that the Public Health Agency obtained a detailed picture of Canadians ’behavior during the pandemic, including grocery store visits, meetings with family and friends, time spent at home and trips to other cities or provinces.
Members of the ethics committee expressed their surprise at the amount of information contained in this report, even though all personal information that would have been possible to identify users of the phones has been removed.
Recommendations
The committee released a report Wednesday following its comprehensive investigation into public health collection of telephone data during the pandemic. Among other things, the committee recommends that the government notify Canadians if it collects data on their movements, and also allow them to opt out of this collection.
Source: Radio-Canada
