Canada gov massive geo-surveillance

As privacy watchdogs warned, COVID is creating a precedent for mass surveillance.

Stéphane Hamel, MBA, OMCP
5 min readJan 14, 2022
Photo by Igor on Unsplash

The acceptability of geolocation in the Canadian Covid Alert app was clearly not met, so the government decided to exploit the mobility data of a cellular operator. So, just like that, without transparency, without consent and without control, 33 million Canadians were tracked.

My Precious!

Of course, Telus doesn’t make the raw data available, it’s far too valuable! Telus InsightsLeverage secured, de-identified and aggregated mobility analytics to learn more about mass-movement patterns and trends that affect your sector — all protected by industry-leading privacy safeguards.” In fact, there was a press release (date unknown) to that effect: “Qualified researchers will be able to use depersonalized data from TELUS Insights to measure progress and assess additional opportunities to help stop the spread of COVID-19 without compromising the personal privacy of Canadians.”

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