{"id":343019,"date":"2017-06-08T02:11:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-07T18:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1500837"},"modified":"2017-06-08T02:11:23","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T18:11:23","slug":"facebook-will-share-anonymized-location-data-with-disaster-relief-organizations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/facebook-will-share-anonymized-location-data-with-disaster-relief-organizations\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook will share anonymized location data with disaster relief organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A new initiative from Facebook will provide aid organizations with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing. It shows the immense potential of this kind of fine-grained tracking, but inescapably resurfaces questions of just what else the company could do with the data.<\/p>\n

In a blog post<\/a> and video<\/a>, Facebook\u2019s public policy research manager Molly Jackman describes the new \u201cdisaster maps\u201d that will be provided to UNICEF, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, and the World Food Program to start.<\/p>\n

Essentially there will be three types of information provided \u2014 sourced, presumably, from GPS and other location indicators provided whenever a Facebook user does just about anything.<\/p>\n

Location density maps will provide rough but recent estimations of where people are distributed, which can be compared to earlier such maps or other measures.<\/p>\n

Movement maps show how users changed locations, from neighborhood to neighborhood or city to city, and when \u2014 this could help direct urgent resources to ad hoc gathering spots or bottlenecks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Safety Check maps show where people have marked themselves safe; if they\u2019re clustering in one area, that may be indicate the limits of a flood\u2019s effects, or a region undamaged by an earthquake.<\/p>\n

One can easily imagine how useful this type of up-to-date information could be to anyone trying to figure out where to send fresh water, set up emergency shelters and so on. Of course, the data is aggregated and de-identified, and the partner organizations must \u201crespect our privacy standards,\u201d Jackman wrote.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, when Facebook flexes its data muscles for good like this, suspicious minds begin to think along other lines.<\/p>\n

What other kinds of population movements does Facebook track, perhaps to better inform advertisers? How can users know if their location is being roped into this kind of experimental data silo? Does this include information gleaned from Facebook plug-ins and cookies? Who has access to the data, and at what level of granularity and de-identification?<\/p>\n

The company is under no formal obligation to explain itself, and I don\u2019t want to suggest any ill purpose exactly. But it\u2019s always troubling when, given a tool that can very easily be used for both humanitarian purposes and self-serving ones, we only hear about the former.<\/p>\n

As usual, unless Facebook and other major data hoarders like Google specifically say they aren\u2019t using your data for something, it\u2019s best to assume that they are.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Facebook<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" A new initiative from Facebook will provide aid organizations with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing. It shows the immense potential of this kind of fine-grained tracking, but inescapably resurfaces questions of just what else the company could do with the data. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-343019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}