In a move that will surely unsettle those who are already concerned about civil rights intrusions, mobile phone carrier Three has confirmed that it is now providing data about its customers’ movements to the government so that it can monitor compliance with the Covid-19 lockdown.
The movement data – where and when people travelled – of some 2.4 million Irish customers has been passed onto the Department of Health and the CSO so that they could be better informed as for “public health” reasons.
If that all sounds very much like a case of Big Brother watching us, then Three sees it differently.
The company says it is only providing aggregated data to the government – which means that the data on your movement gathered from your phone is anonymised and then grouped with other people before the authorities get their mitts on it.
This is then used by the Central Statistics Office to produce a “Staying Local Indicator” for the Department of Health. The CSO says “no personal data” is provided, and that neither they nor the Department of Health have access to personal data or individuals’ movements.
That seems less intrusive, but there are bigger questions which may be overlooked, or, as has largely happened gone mostly unexamined.
Surveillance of citizens by the state remains a thorny subject, and involving service providers such as mobile companies or social media platforms can make even the most reasonable person concerned about the right to privacy.
Former National Security Agency employee, Edward Snowden, lifted a lid on co-operation between countries to enable mass, global surveillance of their citizens. Last year, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA had illegally collected data from private phone records as part of that surveillance.
Much of the distinction in regard to what the authorities can and cannot do in terms of surveillance depends on the purpose of gathering data.
For example, in this country, the Gardai can enter your home without your knowledge and plant a video or recording there for three months, before secretly removing it. The Gardai and the Defence Forces can read your email and tap your phone.
But this can only happen if the purpose of the surveillance is to tackle serious crime or protect the state – and the Gardai or Defence Forces need to apply for permission from the Minister for Justice or from the courts before they can snoop on an Irish citizen. It is presumed that these permissions are only given if the Gardai are dealing with serious crime and serious criminals.
This move by Three seems to me, then, to be a step of sorts in the wrong direction. This involved gathering the personal data of millions of people who are not serious criminals or a threat to the security of the state – even if that data was aggregated afterwards.
The purpose of this particular transfer of data seems to be to enable the government to scold its citizens, in keeping with the increasingly intrusive kind of nanny state this country is becoming.
The CSO were able to tell us that “an estimated 66.2% of the population stayed local (within 10k of home) during the week ending 15 January 2021” and that “Dublin continues to be the county with the highest percentage of the population staying local (78.8%) on week ending 15 January 2021, reflecting its urbanised nature with respect to other counties.”
While this ‘staying local’ indicator compared favourably with Christmas where, to no-one’s surprise, at least half the country moved further than 10km from their home, the CSO would like to remind us, in case we’re feeling smug about it, that in contrast, more than three quarters of Irish people had stayed within 10K during the first lockdown in April.
Of course, plenty of people have a perfectly good reason – and a right – to travel outside of the 10km restriction, so the data doesn’t tell the full story. But it all feels a bit like a line has been crossed – that your phone, from which most people are generally inseparable, can now be used to mark your movements and that can be shared with the state.
It’s all aggregated and anonymous for now, and it’s happening as so many other civil liberty restrictions are, under the pretext that it’s necessary because of the Covid-19 situation.
It still feels a little bit like Big Brother to be honest. If I was a Three customer I’d like to think where I go and when is my own business.