Markey wrote
“We need assurances that collection and processing of these types of information, even if aggregated and anonymised, do not pose safety and privacy risks to individuals,” Markey wrote.
He asked the government to describe how the data would be collected, anonymised and stored, who would have access to it and which companies were involved in the effort.
“This work would follow our stringent privacy protocols and would not involve sharing data about any individual’s location, movement, or contacts,” a Google representative said in a statement.
Facebook said in a statement that there was no agreement to share location data of individuals with the government.
“In the US, we briefed the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) on the work we do with aggregate, de-identified data maps with researchers — which has been previously reported — and they were supportive of our doing more of it,” a Facebook spokesman said. “We have not received requests for location data from the US government.”
Apple said in a statement that it does not track user locations. It noted that it has participated in White House COVID-19 task force meetings but is focused on telehealth and distance learning.
