Google, Facebook and other tech companies are in discussions with the federal government over how they can help fight the novel coronavirus with location data collected from people's phones, according to a report Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The data, which would be anonymous and aggregated, could track whether people are keeping enough distance from each other to curb the spread of Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus.
The strategy could be helpful in studying transmission trends for the virus. But it also comes at a time when big tech companies are already under intense scrutiny over their privacy policies and the trove of personal information they have on consumers.
