Canadian authorities in talks about COVID-19 tracking apps
By Anja Karadeglija March 31, 2020
In Canada, separate projects are underway that would combine phone location data with positive COVID-19 diagnoses to notify individuals about potential exposure in what their creators say are privacy-friendly ways. Such apps would rely on data from health agencies and need the approval of authorities to be available in app stores.
Various teams around the world have been working on developing apps to trace the potential spread of the virus—from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford to Canadian research centres and independent app developers. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
Several of Canada’s cities and provinces, as well as the federal government, are in discussions about launching apps that would use location data to track exposure to COVID-19, researchers behind two projects say.
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