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Published: May 6, 2022
Ottawa - Canadians' movements, including their trips to liquor stores and pharmacies, were closely tracked via their mobile phones without their knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report sent to a parliamentary committee.
Secret intelligence analysts at BlueDot prepared reports using anonymized data from the Public Health Agency of Canada to help it understand patterns of individuals' movements during the pandemic.
The federal government provided one of these reports to the Ethics Committee of the House of Commons during its inquiry into the collection and use of mobile phone data by the Public Health Agency.
The report reveals that the agency was able to get a detailed glimpse of people's behavior, including their visits to grocery stores, gatherings with family and friends, time spent at home, and trips to other towns and provinces.
Members of the Ethics Committee expressed their surprise at the amount of detail contained in the report.
Conservative MP Damian Kurek for Battle River-Crowfoot said: "Questions remain about the details of the data provided - whether Canadians' rights were violated, and what advice was given to the Liberal government."
The committee on Wednesday released a report on its comprehensive investigation into the agency’s collection of phone data during the pandemic. It concluded that the government should inform Canadians if it is collecting data about their movements.
For its part, the Public Health Agency said it took Canadians' privacy protection seriously and that the analysis it received about Canadians' movements "is not about tracking individuals’ trips to a specific location, but about understanding whether the number of visits to specific sites has increased or not, or has decreased over time."
A spokesperson said: "For example, the data provided by BlueDot identifies specific points about the number of visits to grocery stores, parks, liquor stores, and hospitals." "All we get is where people center their attention and the number of visits on a given day."
Adam van Koeverden, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, sent a BlueDot report template to the Ethics Committee on January 31. It covers movements in September 2021.
The report provides information on the number of people moving between specific cities, such as the border community of Abbotsford, British Columbia, as well as provinces and territories. It also shows movements across the Canada-US border and compares travel with previous weeks and years going back to 2019.
The Find My Phone application allowed the agency to get a general picture of gatherings occurring in people’s homes, such as the Labour Day weekend. The report included a chart recording the hours people spent away from home in each province between Christmas Day 2020 and the week of September 19, 2021.
Kamran Khan, founder and CEO of BlueDot, said the company’s role is to produce "insights on infectious diseases," not to collect location data directly from mobile devices.
He said BlueDot has no interest in collecting information or spying on individuals’ movements or lifestyles.
He added: "Our only goal is to help protect lives and livelihoods from infectious diseases, which requires information about general population trends."
The company obtained anonymized data, so there was no specific information from a particular device.
He said, "None of the information at all includes demographic information or specific identifiers or anything like a name, phone number, email, or address."
"The data and analyses we provide are indicators: statistical summaries of anonymous device information, such as the total number of devices moving between two cities."
The Public Health Agency gave the Canadian Press an example of how the data is presented to them, showing addresses of beer and liquor stores, number of visits, and the dates they occurred. It did not include any names or personally identifying information.
Edited by: Dima Abu Khair
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