the source reporting the US surveillance is kinda murky at best. Apparently the US sources their information from ad trackers and a company called lotadata which has a "geospatial AI platform "
if most of the tracking data is coming from FAANG its nothing new, however, it may not exactly be accurate with the latest iphone and android devices which have fairly overt controls for the user to restrict data collection.
I’m speculating here, but it’s probably a data broker that gets location data from apps that share it as part of an advertising SDK. Users still need to enable location sharing. So the data ends selects for a cohort of people that installs sketchy apps and grants location permission. Ironically, this is probably the group of people least likely to follow social distancing guidelines.
The fact that commercial companies are the ones conducting the actual work doesn't justify anything, though. The article also explicitly mentions that this has been going on before the outbreak:
> The privacy-or-security discussion has been going on for years. With new digital technologies, it is one of the main ethical problems of human society. Still, the coronavirus can push people to solve the dilemma right about now.
if most of the tracking data is coming from FAANG its nothing new, however, it may not exactly be accurate with the latest iphone and android devices which have fairly overt controls for the user to restrict data collection.