Covid-19: Europe eyes smartphone location data to stem virus spread

A pedestrian using a smartphone while wearing a protective face mask outside a luxury goods store in Place Vendome, in Paris, France. Contact-tracing apps being considered by European governments would, like Israel’s effort, go well beyond what those governments are currently getting from wireless carriers to identify ‘hot spots’ of disease and human concentration. — Bloomberg

Britain, Germany and Italy are evaluating powerful and invasive tools for what epidemiologists call contact-tracing, the mapping of personal interactions that could spread the virus. These apps would use real-time phone data to pinpoint virus carriers and people they might have infected.

That worries privacy advocates, who fear such ubiquitous surveillance could be abused without careful oversight, with potentially dire consequences for civil liberties.