It seems that big brother really is always watching.
Peoples travel habits were tracked, in detail, by their phones during the past two years of the pandemic.
Trips to grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies and other locations were monitored by third parties and shared with a Toronto based company called BlueDot.
What is BlueDot? Via their website and LinkedIN page;
…Using artificial and human intelligence, BlueDot’s outbreak risk platform tracks over 150 infectious diseases globally in 65 languages, around the clock and anticipates their spread and impact. They empower national and international health agencies, hospitals, and businesses to better anticipate, and respond to, emerging threats.
BlueDot was among the first in the world to identify the emerging risk from, and publish a scientific paper on, COVID-19, and delivers regular critical Insights to its partners and customers worldwide to mobilize timely, effective, efficient, coordinated, and measured responses.
BlueDot was founded in 2013 by Dr. Kamran Khan, a practicing infectious disease physician, and Professor of Medicine with the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Toronto. Motivated by his experiences as a frontline healthcare worker during the 2003 Toronto SARS outbreak, Dr. Khan has been studying the outbreak of infectious diseases over the past 15 years to lay the scientific foundation for BlueDot’s early warning system.
Public Health Agency of Canada received data, with redacted personal information, that mapped the travels of individuals and movement habits over the course of the last two years of living with COVID-19.
An ethic committee within parliament received a similar report, as it is looking into cellphone data and how it’s used at Public Health.
This data was used to see how long people were travelling in and away from their neighbourhoods, even over specific time periods (like the Christmas holidays or long weekends) as well as logging specific locations and how many visits that location received.
On May 4, 2022, the ethics committee decided that Canadians should be aware if the federal agency is collecting data and provide an option to opt out.
Canada had originally announced the partnership with BlueDot in March 2020, a timeline of the key events can be read here.
