European Commission tells carriers to hand over mobile data in coronavirus fight

As the article says at the end, since this data is anonymized, it is only useful to see how people moved in general before shelter-in-place was implemented. You have to go full tracking on an individualized level to be really useful after that, like South Korea did/does. I wonder if this is the next step in the US and Europe. The next level after that is then requiring you carry a phone with the tracking app (or just set this up with the phone carriers behind the scenes) when you are outside your home. First as a temporary measure for this outbreak, of course, but always extended when it is about to expire, like the Patriot act. The potential for another outbreak will always be with us.

I personally would not like to live in such a country, but who knows if people would care enough to prevent it from happening.

I have this paranoid feeling that officials will now use this pandemic as a shield to attack on privacy on all fronts. Just right now there are few more posts on HN about the same (one more about EU, and another about Toronto). Fight against pandemic now can be used as an excuse to implement whatever measures they could not get through in normal times. And normalize it and later forget to stop doing it.

If this is targeting carriers then the only way around it is to not carry a mobile surveillance device anymore.

Based on past incidents by 3-letter agencies using it to stalk ex-lovers[1], nobody should want this kind of surveillance at all.

[1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...