Mobile phone companies slated to become instruments of state surveillance

by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – National governments across the world are joining with telecom companies to collect private mobile phone user data and erode privacy standards, using the fear of a global pandemic as a justification for tracking citizens.

The European Commission has asked for all private phone user data in the European Union to be centralized, while epidemiologists are requesting that the EU emulate South Korea and China in requiring citizens to download a common phone app that tracks their movements.

“It would be much more efficient [to stop the spread of the coronavirus] if everyone had the same app,” Technical University of Denmark professor Sune Lehmann Jørgensen told Politico.

Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain have already developed apps comparable to the Chinese and South Korean surveillance modalities, as drones now rove Brussels enforcing “social distancing” protocols.

“Rest assured that all offices are watching this closely,” said Andrea Jelinek, head of the European Data Protection Board. “People have other concerns right now than hollowing out data protection standards.”

The Guardian reports that the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) that represents 750 mobile phone companies around the world is developing a global data-sharing network to centralize the data of private users across different providers.

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