[Natural News]: As it turns out, the United States government is looking at a new potential tool to be used in the fight against the ongoing coronavirus pandemic: Big Data.
In a report published Tuesday, The Seattle Times said that the federal government is currently in talks with tech conglomerates Facebook and Google, as well as other tech companies and public health experts, about potentially using data gathered from Americans’ phones in order to help combat the novel coronavirus. According to the report, among those to be explored is its potential capability to track whether people are keeping one another at safe distances to stem the outbreak.
Public health experts have expressed interest in the possibility that the data, when compiled in an anonymous and aggregated form, could be used to track and map the coronavirus, which has infected more than 200,000 people globally.
Caroline Buckee, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been identified as one of the experts involved with the discussions.
According to Buckee, who has used data from cell phones to predict the spread of malaria in Kenya, while the aggregated data may not be “especially useful” for predicting the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, it could prove invaluable when it comes to checking whether people are following the social distancing guidelines imposed by authorities.
Similar measures have been put in place in China, where the collection of information from social media is used in conjunction with facial recognition software. Visitors to office buildings, shopping malls, residential compounds and train stations now have to scan QR codes using their mobile phones, as well as fill in forms requesting their travel history and body temperature.
Despite its strong potential for good, however, experts say the approach could leave some Americans uncomfortable, given the sensitivity when it comes to personal data, as well as details about their daily whereabouts...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...