Santa Fe Standard

Descartes Labs has been providing some states with critical information to inform them of the social distancing participation size, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has been praising New Mexicans. 

Lujan Grisham has been praising residents of New Mexico for following social distancing orders, according to KRQE. She's able to know this information due to a Santa Fe-based company, Descartes Labs, which details the movement of state residents by using smartphone geolocation track.

“This is the kind of problem we are really qualified to look into. It is just unfortunate that it is a global health crisis," Descartes Labs co-founder Mike Warren told KRQE. “We wanted to help the governor with the difficult task she has of managing this pandemic. Most dramatically, the stay-at-home order really reduced peoples’ movement a lot."

The cell phone data the company uses comes from uses in several counties throughout New Mexico, Warren told KRQE. The company doesn't track individuals or know the owners of the phones, Warren said. 

In an interview with CNN, Lujan Grisham discussed the privacy concerns of the geolocation tracking. 

“If there was anything this company or anyone else that was breaching federal or state laws protecting privacy, we wouldn’t have a relationship and we would have the appropriate accountability,” Lujan Grisham said on CNN.

But the company isn't just providing data to New Mexico, according to KRQE. It is also getting nationwide attention for the work it is doing. 

“We are working closely with San Francisco and Bay Area counties as well as the state of Colorado,” Warren told KRQE. “We are very unique here in New Mexico for having such a concentration of national labs and other expertise.”

Warren told KRQE that the company is thankful for the business of states and is happy to be able to help.  

“The science is very important to fight this, and we are privileged to have the people and resources we need to be able to contribute,” Warren told KRQE.