Ask HN: Privacy During Emergency Situations

1 points by anonuser123456 6y ago ↗ HN

In situations like the Coronavirus outbreak, data companies like Google have enormous amounts of useful data; user locations, contact lists, familial associations etc.

One can easily imagine Google having the ability to provide the CDC with localized information where given a list of infected individuals, provide a list of high risk individuals that should be contacted.

FB may have the same capability.

Is this a reasonable idea, or are there not immediately obvious drawbacks to using data this way?

1 comment

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JohnFen 6y ago ↗

The upside to this is obvious. There are very large downsides, though. For instance, the public and the government (at least in the US) has a strong tendency to overreact to things like this, so the people on such lists may be subjected to what amounts to punitive actions for no good reason.

Hopefully, my efforts to evade, confuse, and hide from spying companies like Google and FB have been effective enough that I wouldn't appear on such lists regardless, though.