Google also confirmed late Tuesday it had been in conversations with government officials, tech giants and health experts about ways to tap its trove of location data, particularly any insights it can derive from its popular maps app. “We’re exploring ways that aggregated anonymized location information could help in the fight against COVID-19. On Monday, White House leaders, tech experts and health officials struck a more unified note, unveiling a portal for roughly 29,000 research papers on coronavirus. Privacy advocates typically look skeptically on such commercial uses of location data, calling for stricter laws governing its use. Relations between tech companies and government officials were severely strained for years after and have improved only gradually.

Source: Washington Post March 17, 2020 18:28 UTC