Re: <nettime> Should use mobile phone data to monitor public health efforts?

[William Waites <ww@styx.org>]

Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com> writes:

> So, is there a possibility to use this data without it turning
> it into an authoritarian power grab? I think there is, under the
> following guidelines:
>
> - Data needs to be deleted after immediate purpose of the analysis
> has been achieved.

The thing is these data are as much necessary for trying to do
immediate contract tracing as they are for post-hoc analysis and
development and validation of new analysis techniques. These are
very important. We can't just rely on non-reproducible analyses that
can't be checked because the data has been deleted. Some of this only
requires an anonymised version of the data, but we also know that
doing that right is very hard.

> - The analysis needs to be restricted to questions developed by
> an external team. So, no fishing simple because the data is now
> available. Mission creep is very often a problem.

For sure, but see above.

> - Questions, methods and results of the analysis need to be published
> after the fact. This will allow public appraisal of the legitimacy of
> the program.

Absolutely.

> - Data needs to be made available to at least two teams that are
> completely independent from one another. This will allow for the
> cross-examination of the quality of the different approaches.

Anonymised data, if we can make such a thing, should be made completely
open and then all the usual activity of analysing and modelling it in
different ways can happen.

For the personalised data, I agree with you, but it should be at least
three teams because if you have two analyses that disagree, it's hard to
tell which one is wrong.

Best wishes,
-w

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