Most people have not turned off their location services on their smart phones. 
There are plenty of background programs that are already embedded in various 
apps people use. Geotagged Twitter data has user ID’s attached to it, Google 
tracks most movements and of course records and stares all the voices that 
people use when using the microphone for voice to text etc. Facebook checkin’s 
etc.  are also part of the mix of data sources. In the rural areas for these 
shorter periods of time they are looking at I am not sure how much sampling 
they get compared to more densely populated regions.  Here are some articles on 
the topic:

 

https://brianwebsterconsulting.wordpress.com/2018/07/12/where-will-the-5g-networks-be-built-carriers-are-not-the-only-ones-who-know/?fbclid=IwAR1OJd6xUliSCACfWjPwbfKTAWgZ_73Dqv_R6k3_MXz6ZVXbTJuw84FNm_Y

https://www.newsweek.com/google-tracking-peoples-movements-their-communities-during-coronavirus-pandemic-1495915?fbclid=IwAR29LjfHTA68qM63HCWLX0vSycYIDlY9q3B4AnuOrVEJrBwB6tPQ--CW26g

https://twitter.com/TectonixGEO/status/1242628347034767361?fbclid=IwAR30kyOEx1EcIvs4oXZ00Jd3uH5_euFVEgGlfSMLiBbnBBPMoOGMogXko4o

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html?smid=fb-share
 
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR03RAWL4dJuZg6uXT1TroC_lcQ_xnxAaf5wKNpbKrZYyVeMFPS7R1pTg8c>
 &fbclid=IwAR03RAWL4dJuZg6uXT1TroC_lcQ_xnxAaf5wKNpbKrZYyVeMFPS7R1pTg8c

 

 

Location based data has been available for a while, most of it is supposed to 
be anonymized but you can still glean off a lot of useful information with the 
information. Some of these studies have been put together quite quickly so the 
methodology I see in questions. For instance I see no mention of the makeup of 
the workforce for any given regions. In my area a better than 50% of the 
population could easily be in the essential workforce category being that 
healthcare and the service industry are a majority of the employment. Those 
people are still going to work. Also if you look at the break down of things 
like their letter grades they give to regions the percentages from say a to C 
are very minor and I think that is just to cause more sensationalized results. 
When a 50% reduction in travel is noticed, I would not consider that a D grade 
in a rural area. They are just using numbers from pre and post stay at home 
orders to grade society. 

 

Thank you,

Brian Webster

www.wirelessmapping.com

 

From: AF [mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 3:26 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: Unacast

 

Our local underground facilities location agency says locates are way up.  They 
think people are doing lots of home projects.  

 

From: Ken Hohhof 

Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 1:16 PM

To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' 

Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT: Unacast

 

Opinion:  not very useful.

 

Rural people drive farther to work or shop, that doesn’t mean they interact 
with more people.  I may drive 50 miles to drop off radios for my tech to 
install but not interact with a single person.

 

I saw one analysis that blamed it on Walmart for driving all the local stores 
out of business so people in some areas have to drive 20 miles to buy groceries 
or buy supplies.  But again, what matters is probably how crowded that Walmart 
is and whether you practice distancing while shopping, not how far you drive to 
get there.

 

I imagine anonymized cellphone geolocation data is available for this purpose, 
either from what celltowers you are near, or browser and app data.

 

 

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Mike Hammett
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 1:58 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: [AFMUG] OT: Unacast

 

I've seen a bunch of articles based on "data" put out by Unacast regarding 
geographies that are better or worse at social distancing.

 

They're using travel distance to determine who's good and who's bad.

 

Is their data worth a shit? You could put 10k phones into 10k cars and drive 
them in circles all day and your reported metric would be through the roof, yet 
there was nearly zero additional risk because people were separated.

 

How are they collecting this data? On whose behalf? With what permission?

 

The only useful data would perhaps be in detecting the change in number of 
visible Bluetooth devices from January to now.

 



-----
Mike Hammett
 <http://www.ics-il.com/> Intelligent Computing Solutions
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