Canadians tracked during pandemic
OT TAWA • Canadians' movements, including trips to the liquor store and pharmacy, were closely tracked via their mobile phones without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic, a report sent to a parliamentary committee shows.
Outbreak intelligence analysts Bluedot prepared reports using anonymized data for the Public Health Agency of Canada to help it understand travel patterns during the pandemic.
The federal government provided one of these reports to the House of Commons ethics committee as it probed the collection and use of mobile phone data by the public health agency.
The report reveals the agency was able to view a detailed snapshot of people's behaviour, including visits to the grocery store, gatherings with family and friends, time spent at home and trips to other towns and provinces.
MPS on the ethics committee expressed surprise at how much detail the report contained, even as all identifying information was stripped out.
“Questions remain about
QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT THE SPECIFICS OF THE DATA PROVIDED ... IF CANADIANS' RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED
the specifics of the data provided ... if Canadians' rights were violated, and what advice the Liberal government was given,” said Conservative MP Damien Kurek.
The committee on Wednesday released a report on its probe into the agency's collection of phone data during the pandemic. It concluded the government should tell Canadians if it collects data about their movements and allow them to opt out.
The Public Health Agency said it took safeguarding Canadians' privacy very seriously and the analysis on Canadians' movements it received “is not about following individuals' trips to a specific location, but rather in understanding whether the number of visits to specific locations have increased or decreased over time.”
“For example, point-of-interest data from Bluedot identifies the number of visits to grocery stores, parks, liquor stores and hospitals,” a spokesman said. “All we receive is the location of the point of interest and the number of visits for a specific day.”
Adam van Koeverden, parliamentary secretary to the minister of health, sent the sample Bluedot report to the ethics committee on Jan. 31. It covers movements in September 2021.
The company said it procured anonymous and aggregated data from third-party vendors so there was no information about the specific device the data came from.
“None of the information ever includes demographic information or specific identifiers or anything like a name, telephone number, email or address,” said Kamran Khan, founder and CEO of Bluedot. “The data and analysis that we do provide are indicators: statistical summaries of anonymous device information, such as the total number of devices travelling between two cities.”