Google, the global software behemoth, has released data around the movement of individuals, gleaned from people’s cellphones. The data shows that around the world there has been a significant decline in people visiting shops, parks, and entertainment venues, and a corresponding increase in people staying at home as a result of lockdowns to help prevent the spread of Covid-19.
According to Google the aim is to ‘chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential’.
The company said that it hoped the data on people’s movements would be helpful to public health officials as they made decisions around how to combat the virus.
Data for South Africa showed that there had been a 20% decline (compared to the baseline) in the number of visits to supermarkets. Visits to parks fell by 50% and visits to workplaces 28%. People were in their homes 20% more than usual, according to the data from Google.
Despite the Western Cape’s emergence as Ground Zero for the virus in South Africa, movement by the residents of that province had declined by more than in the country as a whole. People living in the Western Cape were visiting parks nearly 80% less than they had prior to the lockdown and there was a nearly 30% decline in visits to supermarkets. The denizens of the Western Cape had also seen a 40% drop in visits to workplaces.
It must be hoped that the data will prove useful to public health officials, but it is quite concerning that this again shows that many of us carry Big Brother with us nearly everywhere we go. This could have serious implications for the future. Being able to track the movement of citizens like this will be an invaluable tool for many governments around the world which are rapidly expanding their powers.