Two agencies’ views on mobile data: protect or collect?

Federal agencies are experimenting with different ways of incorporating mobile data into their missions. Some agencies, like the Federal Trade Commission, are trying to protect citizens from having their data used in ways they may not be aware of. Other agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, are trying to enlist citizens in efforts to gather and share as much data as possible for scientific purposes.

The FTC released a new web-based tool for mobile health app developers on April 5 to provide guidance on how federal laws and regulations apply to the data-gathering features of those apps. Cora Han, an attorney for the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin that this was in response to numerous inquiries on this subject sent to the FTC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration.

“I think the sharing of information with other third parties … is a potential cause for concern, particularly when consumers don’t know that it’s happening and don’t have the ability to make informed choices about their health information,” Han said.

Mobile health apps could easily run afoul of multiple federal regulations pertaining to health information privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protects private health information from illicit access and distribution. The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act regulates medical devices, including mobile apps, which could pose health risks if they don’t work correctly.

Han’s concern is that apps could violate the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices in commerce, including violations of data security. To avoid this, the FTC put together a list of best practices for developers of mobile health apps.

“Be transparent with users about what information your app is collecting and how you’re sharing that information, don’t collect more information than you need to collect, and keep that data secured,” Han said.

Consumers should also make an effort to know what kinds of information are being collected by their apps, how it’s being collected, and who it’s being shared with, Han said.

“There is a wide variety of information they could be collecting that ranges from the steps you take to your diet information, to your weight,” she said. “Some apps connect with fitness monitors and other types of devices like glucose monitors that may collect that sort of information. There may be additional health information, in the form of your health records. … So there is a wide range of information, some of it really quite sensitive.”

Han said that the FTC’s goal is to provide mobile health app developers with the tools and information they need to avoid violating these regulations. She said the FTC wants to encourage them to be thinking about privacy and security from the earliest development of the app.

Meanwhile, Manoj Nair, a geomagnetism scientist at NOAA’s National Geospatial Data Center, is trying to enlist citizens’ help in collecting and sharing as much data as possible about the Earth’s magnetic field. Currently, NOAA collects most of its data on the magnetic field using scientific quality magnetometers.

“”We have data, but not enough data,” Nair said on Federal Drive. “There are gaps in data collection, whether by satellites or by ship or by aircraft, there are gaps in the data both in time and space”

But Nair said that phones have tiny magnetometers built into their circuity, which help the phones triangulate their positions and determine in what direction they’re faced. Although these magnetometers are nowhere near as precise as scientific ones, they can still gather helpful data on the large scale.

“We were wondering, can we use these less accurate magnetometers, within the phones … in a crowdsourcing project, and then try to find a smart way to minimize the noise, and then try to use this data for our own studies for understanding the earth’s magnetic field,” Nair said.

He said that scientific magnetometers are accurate to one nanotesla — the unit used to measure magnetic fields — while the ones in phones vary in accuracy from 100 to 1000 nanoteslas. While usual magnetic field currents involve variations too small to be measured by phones, Nair said that on the large scale the Earth’s magnetic field can vary from around 25,000 nanoteslas in the equatorial region to around 70,000 at the poles.

Nair said the app launched in late 2014, and at this point has around 10,000 users sending about 30,000 data points a day.

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