Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Monday, April 27, 2020

Some States Want to Track Your Phone – If You’re OK With That

A smartphone belonging to Drew Grande, 40, of Cranston, Rhode Island, shows notes he made for contact tracing after he heard Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo talk about it. Proposals in several states to use cellphones to track the coronavirus have raised privacy concerns.Steven Senne/The Associated Press

When Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, suggested recently that the state might use residents’ cellphone data to trace the spread of the coronavirus, opponents on both the left and right were aghast.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised the specter of an intrusive government prying into people’s personal lives. Republican state lawmakers drafted a letter imploring the governor “not to attempt to track personally-identifiable cellular phone location data, absent specific user consent or a judicial warrant.”

More

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Health departments won't provide details about COVID patients in the community because of HIPAA and privacy laws. They want to hire an army of contact tracers and expect you to tell them about your interactions.

Will that lead to more information to the public? Not likely.

When they come calling tell them to pound sand and disable any electronic tracking as well.

Anonymous said...

uh...NO

Unless I can have the name and phone numbers of those employees that will be doing the tracking.

Rebel Without a Clue said...

Google already does that. You get a monthly overview of where you have been, new towns visited, miles traveled and whatnot. Especially if you keep any pictures on your G-Drive.

Anonymous said...

They Already do if they want to !!! Next is to Micro-chip you !!!

Anonymous said...

The camel is trying to get his nose under the tent.

Anonymous said...

They already do .
Your IP address and your every keystroke as well.

Anonymous said...

Name, phone numbers, and "addresses"

lmclain said...

It's nothing that a revolution can't fix.

Track THAT.

Or, keep cheering ….

Anonymous said...

Northwest Woodsman: Reminiscent of Nazi Germany or Stalins Soviet Union. Seems like that is the direction in which we are headed. Never trust a politician.