April 10, 2020
By Lena H. Sun, William Wan and Yasmeen Abutaleb
A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic (click here) in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House.
Instead, a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control: Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected. Find everyone they interact with by deploying contact tracing on a scale America has never attempted before. And focus restrictions more narrowly on the infected and their contacts so the rest of society doesn’t have to stay in permanent lockdown.
But there is no evidence yet the White House will pursue such a strategy.
Instead, the president and his top advisers have fixated almost exclusively on plans to reopen the U.S. economy by the end of the month, though they haven’t detailed how they will do so without triggering another outbreak. President Trump has been especially focused on creating a second coronavirus task force aimed at combating the economic ramifications of the virus....
It is an invasion of privacy, but, if Americans really want to stop this virus in it's tracks, then having a record of where one traveled is important. For anyone with a smartphone, just leave the tracking settings on and the phone can record exactly where the owner traveled within a timeline that is important to test others for COVID-19.
It would be really great if there was a free app designed specifically for this purpose. The app could be appropriately named and it would remain confidential on a continuous record without necessarily posting it to the owner's Facebook page.
Hospitals would have to have the ability to connect with a person's phone to download travels within a time frame most appropriate in diagnosing potential carriers and/or exposure to the illness. The data would be invaluable.
January 8, 2020
By Geoffrey A. Fowler
The new ‘Off-Facebook Activity’ (click here) tool reminds us we’re living in a reality TV program where the cameras are always on. Here are the privacy settings to change right now.
Ever suspect the Facebook app is listening to you? What we now know is even creepier.
Facebook is giving us a new way to glimpse just how much it knows about us: On Tuesday, the social network made a long-delayed “Off-Facebook Activity” tracker available to its 2 billion members. It shows Facebook and sister apps Instagram and Messenger don’t need a microphone to target you with those eerily specific ads and posts — they’re all up in your business countless other ways.
Even with Facebook closed on my phone, the social network gets notified when I use the Peet’s Coffee app. It knows when I read the website of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg or view articles from The Atlantic. Facebook knows when I click on my Home Depot shopping cart and when I open the Ring app to answer my video doorbell. It uses all this information from my not-on-Facebook, real-world life to shape the messages I see from businesses and politicians alike....
