GEOG 323 Reflection 6: Individual Privacy vs. the Greater Good with Big Geospatial Data
Mei-Po Kwan's September 2020 talk for the American Geographical Society entitled "Tracking Movement through Space during COVID-19 and Beyond" highlights the tension between maintaining people's privacy and using data for the public good in efforts like contact tracing for managing the spread of COVID-19. Kwan makes the key point that underprivileged and marginalized groups, who are already likely to be the hardest hit by the pandemic, are also the groups whose daily activity patterns may be the most difficult to track. Thus, the use of big geographic data such as that obtained from cell phone tracking can prove invaluable in helping us delineate the "activity space" of an individual as they move throughout their day. Kwan argues that in the context of a pandemic such as the one we currently face, it is key to examine people's precise spatiotemporal movements in order to gauge how the disease spreads. Because people may not become infected through contact near their place of residence, it is only through plotting these daily paths that we can better understand how people are becoming infected and how we can prevent more people from contracting COVID-19. Leveraging the tracking capabilities of modern geospatial technology can be a major asset to public health efforts to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, a major concern regarding the use of highly specific, precise, and individualized geospatial data tracks is privacy. As Kwan points out, different cultures across the world have varying prevailing views on the tradeoffs between protecting individuals' privacy and making privacy sacrifices for the overall good of society. As a result, while some countries such as China and South Korea have implemented contact tracing procedures that utilize cell phone tracks, this has not happened in the US, where overall public sentiment places individual privacy at a higher premium when compared to public health efforts. While I do believe that protection of privacy is a very real concern especially in the current age of big data and powerful technology, I also think it's important to fully weigh the risks and benefits of using personal data for the greater good, because in certain cases the benefits may outweigh the risks. As Kwan argues, there are many ways to look out for individuals' privacy while using their location data for research and contact tracing. For instance, Bluetooth-based contact tracing can measure an individual's proximity to other people without recording their location, which helps protect their privacy. In addition, abiding by set guidelines and codes of conduct for data use and management can help ensure that individuals' privacy is preserved and confidentiality is not breached. Through such measures as asking for explicit permission to use data, separating geospatial data tracks from their exact geographic background, and destroying the data when analysis is completed, we can strike a balance between protecting individuals' right to privacy and using the capabilities of current geospatial technology to discover new patterns that will help us combat devastating pandemics and other disasters.
References:
American Geographical Society. (2020, September 9). Tracking Movement through Space during COVID-19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDpa3c5ljsA