Governments worldwide are experiencing sudden loss of bowel control, and that now extends to your pocket. Google, Facebook, Telekom, O2, Satan, etc., are poised to hand over their juicy location data for the sake of social distancing compliance.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Israelis opened their phones looking for messages from friends or stock quotes, only to be greeted with a bizarre unsolicited government text:

Hello (it addressed each recipient by name). According to an epidemiological investigation, you were near someone sick with the coronavirus. You must immediately isolate at home [14 days] to protect your relatives and the public. … This information will be used only for this purpose and will be erased when no longer needed. Sincerely, public health services.

-NPR

Pandemic Part and Parcel, UK mobile network O2 is already working with the government to analyse anonymous smartphone location data. As with other reports, it is being stressed that this data will not be used to track individuals; but rather group trends. I absolutely believe them.

A spokesperson for O2 confirmed that the company was providing aggregated data to the government so it could observe trends in public movements, particularly in London.

-Sky News

Singapore’s Government Technology Agency and the Ministry of Health developed a handy little app called TraceTogether, which lets you know if you are within 2 meters of any lepers.

to identify people who have been in close proximity — within 2m for at least 30 minutes — to coronavirus patients using wireless Bluetooth technology. No geolocation data or other personal data is collected

-Straits Times

In an effort to maintain it’s #1 Status, Taiwan has decided to go with a mobile phone-based “Electronic Fence“. They brag this nightmare will alert authorities within 15 minutes whenever quarantined citizens leave their homes or turn off their phones. Quarantine violators in Taiwan face handsome fines of up to T$1 million ($32,955).

The goal is to stop people from running around and spreading the infection

-Jyan Hong-wei, head of Taiwan Department of Cyber Security, Poet Laureate

Telekom Austria AG has announced it’s sharing anonymized location data with the Austrian government. Telekom Austria said they got the technology from a spin-off startup out of the University of Grazit. The cover story tech is usually used to measure footfall in popular tourist sites.

In lieu of milk or honey, Deutsche Telekom announced it would be sharing data with the Robert Koch Institute (CDC, but in German) on March 18, 2020. A Telekom spokeswoman confirmed a first data delivery of 5gb to Tagesspiegel Background Digitisierung & KI.

The challenges facing Corona are gigantic. If anonymized mass data can contribute to the slower course of the infection curve and save lives, we are happy to comply with the request for support from the government. …This can be used to model flows of motion – broken down nationwide, at the state level and down to the district-community level

-Telekom spokesperson

Hot off the whirlwind success of K-Pop, South Korea felt confident enough to launch a publicly available map showing citizens who has the germ and where they’ve been. The data is said to contain credit card records and face-to-face interviews with patients, so a retroactive map of their movements may be revealed to all. Text messages from the app provide a link that takes users to the website of a district office that lists the places the patient had visited before testing positive. This has already caused numerous eventualities, including one alert saying a man contracted the virus from an instructor during a sexual harassment class, accusations of an affair, some other lady for insurance fraud, another guy for hanging out with hookers, it goes on and on. (lol just use incognito mode)

“A woman in her 60s has just tested positive,” reads a typical text, “Click on the link for the places she visited before she was hospitalised,”