data brokers has emerged. These companies have been buying
movement data from hundreds of apps that people have given GPS
access, then selling this on to marketers, researchers and other
groups.[52] Many users may have long forgotten they installed these
apps – be it for fitness, weather forecasts or gaming – let alone
agreed to constant tracking. In 2019, US journalist Joseph Cox
reported that he’d paid a bounty hunter to track a phone using
second-hand location data.[53] It had cost $300.
As location data becomes easier to access, it is also inspiring new
types of crimes. Scammers have long used ‘phishing’ messages to
trick customers into giving sensitive information. Now they are
developing ‘spear phishing’ attacks, which incorporate user-specific
data. In 2016, several residents of Pennsylvania, USA received e-
mails asking them to pay a fine for a recent speeding offence. The e-
mails correctly listed the speed and location of the person’s car. But
they weren’t real. Police suspected that scammers had obtained
leaked GPS data from an app, then used this to identify people
who’d been travelling too fast on local roads.[54]
Although movement datasets are proving remarkably powerful,
they do still have some limitations. Even with very detailed
movement information, there is one type of interaction that is near
impossible to measure. It’s an event that is brief, often invisible, and
particularly elusive in the early stages of outbreak. It’s also one that
has sparked some of the most notorious incidents in medical history.
T 911 of Hong Kong’s Metropole
Hotel at the end of a tiring week. Despite feeling unwell, he’d made
the three-hour bus trip across from Southern China for his nephew’s
wedding that weekend. He’d come down with a flu-like illness a few
days earlier and hadn’t managed to shake it off. However, it was
about to get much worse. Twenty-four hours later, he’d be in an
intensive care unit. Within ten days, he would be dead.[55]
It was 21 February 2003, and the doctor was the first case of
in Hong Kong. Eventually, there would be sixteen other
cases linked to the Metropole: people who’d stayed in rooms