Epidemiologists are calling for the same thing I called for yesterday from the tech side: let's use the system of real-time population-wide location tracking we've deployed for something more important than selling advertising. https://idlewords.com/2020/03/we_need_a_massive_surveillance_program.htm …https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1242469687834939392 …
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They ask for the aggregated data, but we should give them the individual data. We have it. They can use it. All we need is an enabling act from a rudderless Congress.
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The idea that it's fine for Verizon and Facebook to know where you are at all times, but if the CDC finds out it will be the ruin of democracy, does not hold up to any kind of serious scrutiny. The CDC, unlike Facebook, does not sell political ads or make donations to Devin Nunes
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Note that I am asking for permission for a completely unregulated private surveillance industry to share data for a specific, urgent use with a highly regulated public health authority. The only reason we need permission is because the rules on the latter are too strict!
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Right now, the many companies who track the location of every American who carries an electronic device in real time can share that data with anyone they want to except the only people who need it—epidemiologists. That is absolutely bonkers. Fix it! And then regulate it better!
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Replying to @Pinboard
What happens if we use data for this purpose and we *don't* get better regulations? What happens if the government and the private companies providing the data use their new-found access to solidify political control in such a way that makes passing better regulations impossible?
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Yes, it's true that private companies do largely have this capacity now. I don't think that it's meaningless to give that same capacity to the Trump-controlled government - even in a controlled fashion, and even if it's just the CDC (and again, I don't trust that that will last).
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Replying to @faineg
The Trump controlled government means a lot of things that you probably like—the National Park Service, the NOAA, the Library of Congress, the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Digital Service. Government is a diverse animal and not a monolith.
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Replying to @Pinboard
I like all of those components of government very much. That doesn't mean I trust them with vast hordes of individual data.
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I trust the CDC far more than I trust Sprint or Facebook. Only one of them is regulated and strictly limited by privacy law.
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Eh…outside of healthcare, data privacy in this country isn’t great. I’d be comfortable with aggregated and distributed querying of that data, but not without some strict guardrails.
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