Argentina: Grandata creates heat map to display quarantine compliance in Argentina

The San Francisco-based big data company Grandata has created a heat map to show which areas of Argentina are best complying with the quarantine lockdown. Grandata used an "anonymised" dataset collected from apps that provide third parties with geolocation information. The heat map shows if an individual has moved more than 100 meters from the place where they spend most of their time, apparently without taking into account the socio-economic contexts of different cities, where individuals might need to travel several kilometers for food and basic services. Moreover, this is the perfect example of the data exploitation industry and data brokers, using data that users probably where not aware they were sharing with third parties like Grandata. Although users consent to sharing data with the apps they use, they have typically not consented for its reuse by Grandata for this purpose; the company takes the view that the data already existed, and is just being exposed. Grandata intends to open-source the technology. 

Sources:

https://www.lanacion.com.ar/tecnologia/un-mapa-online-compara-nivel-movilidad-personas-nid2348911
https://grandata.github.io/covid/#/distancing]

Writer: Sebastian Davidovsky
Publication: La Nacion