For non-intrusive tracking of Covid-19, smartphones have to be smarter | John Naughton
Monitoring the pandemic with personal technology is a thorny issue. We can get results without having our privacy on parade
On the weekend of March 20-21 news organisations in the US and elsewhere were reporting that beaches in Florida were thronged with holidaymakers, none of whom seemed to be observing any kind of social distancing. "If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not going to let it stop me from partying," one reveller told a reporter in Miami, conveying the general atmosphere.
As it happens, however, some people were paying attention - employees of two firms, X-Mode and Tectonix, that specialise in the geo-tracking of smartphones. As rumours began to spread that the US government might be thinking of using tracking to map the spread of the virus, they decided to show what they could do with their technology.
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