Privacy: Canadian Public Health Agency tracked 33 million mobile phones
They claim it is anonymized location data – except location data, that says precisely where you are, including your house, can never, ever be anonymized.
Israel government spy agency will track phones of those diagnosed with Omicron
Privacy issues galore but it’s all for a good cause, of course: The Israeli domestic intelligence agency has been granted temporary permission to access the phone data of people with confirmed cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant in order to trace who those people met recently. The agency was given similar powers during earlier waves of the pandemic. Using emergency legislation, the Israeli cabinet voted on Sunday to permit the spy agency, the Shin Bet, to track Omicron patients’ phones…
Oh: School district compiled dossiers on parents and their children if they complained about district policies
An Arizona school district is accused of maintaining extensive dossiers on 47 parents – and their children – for having merely spoken out against district policies. The data was kept in a private but shared Google Drive folder and is said to have included names, photos, personal information, vehicle license plates, photos of children, screen captures of social media posts, and copies of legal documents such as mortgage and divorce papers.
Data broker gave phone location records to government, for Covid tracking
Government has used third-party services to track the locations of all smart phones in a given area. This is made possible by apps that collect location data (but may not make this clear to users) and sell it to data brokers. Data brokers, in turn, have then provided this information to the police and other government agencies, and the example here, gave it to public health authorities. Your smart phone is a literal 24×7 surveillance device to track you in real time.
Privacy: FTC says major ISPs collecting massive amounts of data on users
The FTC says major ISPs are collecting large amounts of data about their customers, and combining it with web browsing histories and third party data to draw conclusions about their customers.