Nations around the world are rapidly widening their tactics to help stop the spread of the new coronavirus. For many, the pleas to stay home and distant from others haven’t done enough.
The worsening pandemic has some officials looking at a more invasive but powerful tool to flatten the curve — people’s phones.
While not the “Canadian way,” using personal data to track populations is not out of the question for Canada, said Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto. “I wouldn’t take anything off the table or close the door to anything under these difficult circumstances,” he said. “But you can’t deal with a problem you don’t fully understand — tech or not.