1 First a positive from Bloomberg News: ". . .This critical repository of health information started, improbably, with three journalists, a data scientist/biotech investor, and a couple of spreadsheets. Back in late February, the coronavirus was still a sleeper threat in the U.S., with new cases popping up in ones and twos around the country and signs of hidden spread on the West Coast. Officials in the Trump administration held briefings touting the government’s rapid rollout of testing. But they couldn’t answer one important question: How many tests were being done?
“It’s kind of mind-boggling that it’s fallen to a group of volunteers to do this”
Search for the Covid Tracking Project on Google Scholar, which compiles academic literature, and you’ll get more than 500 results, a sign of its standing in the scientific community. The project has helped force states to improve their disclosure of Covid data: In April, it started giving states letter grades on the quality of the data they reported. At first only 10 states got an A or A+; now 40 states and territories have reached that grade.
The project is a demonstration of citizen know-how and civic dedication at a time when the country feels like it’s being pulled apart. Yet it’s confounding that, almost a year into the pandemic, the Covid Tracking Project is doing what might be expected of the U.S. government
Data Heroes of Covid Tracking Project Are Still Filling U.S. Government Void
2 Cautions from TechDirt
Research Shows iOS Covid Apps Are A Privacy Mess
from the with-friends-like-these dept
Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, recently released analysis he did into 493 COVID-19 related iOS apps across dozens of countries. The results are...not great, and highlight how such apps routinely hoover up far more data than they need to, including unneeded access to cameras and microphones, your photo gallery, your contacts, and far more location data than is needed. Much of this data then winds up in the adtech ecosystem for profit, where it winds up in the hands of third parties.
Only 47 of the apps used Google and Apple's more privacy-friendly exposure-notification system, resulting in a number of folks building their own apps with substandard (in some cases borderline nonexistent) privacy standards. Six out of seven COVID iOS apps worldwide are allowed to request any permissions they'd like. 43 percent of all apps were found to be tracking user location at all times. 44% requested access to the users' camera, 22 percent asked for access to users' smartphone mic, 32 percent asked for access to users' photos, and 11 percent asked for full access to user contact lists.
Albright told Ars Technica that while many of these app makers may be well intentioned, they're often working at cross purposes, while hoovering up far more data than they actually need. Data that in many instances is then being sold to unknown third parties: > GO AHEAD AND DIG DEEPER
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