EFF releases best practices on protecting privacy when aggregating location data in fight against COVID-19

Previously having called on governments to display evidence on how and how much location surveillance would work in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic; the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released high-level best practices for companies that use aggregated location data in the fight against COVID-19. The EFF recommends companies who create COVID-19 related location tracking apps and services to: (a) get consent from the users who supply the data; (b) aggregate on the highest level of generality that will be useful; (c) share plans with the public before releasing the data; and (d) avoid sharing ‘deidentified’ or ‘anonymised’ location data that is not aggregated. The EFF also highlights that users should be able to review and delete their data at any time and all collected data use should be ended once the pandemic is over.