spatial privacy

This page looks at locational privacy, emerging as an issue because the decreasing cost (and increasing sophistication) of geolocation technologies is being used to leverage traditional dataprofiling of individuals and other entities.

It covers -

• locational privacy as a concept
• location-based services
• IBNIS
• spatial privacy legislation
• studies

Questions of rights of assembly and the surveillance of gatherings are explored in a supplementary note elsewhere on this site.

     location

Locational privacy is particularly challenging because much debate about privacy has traditionally been characterised in terms of who you are or what you are doing rather than where you are (and where you have been or where you are going).

'Place' and movement become important with developments such as

• m-commerce systems (retailers or other providers of goods/services are alerted to your proximity through your mobile phone, PDA or other device and accordingly send you an email, SMS or voice message)
• security systems (collars, bracelets, anklets or even subcutaneous radio-frequency ID tags - RFIDs - enable real-time tracking of pets, children, aged relatives or your local sex offender)
• traffic management systems (offering automated payment of tolls or identification of infringements for travel on some roads and urban areas)
• content management systems (preventing access to content per se or enabling differential charging for access to online music, news, video and other content)
• ongoing declines in the cost of tools such as mobile phones, RFIDs and global positioning system (GPS) hardware and software
• the emergence of ambitious traveller monitoring/screening initiatives such as the US Secure Flight program, drawing on passport and commercial travel information
• online 'streetscape' map and photographic databases

One of our more irreverent people has quipped that the technology recasts traditional characterisations - "you are what you eat" - to "you are where eat" and how you got there, ie geodemographics.

That is problematical, as location has been important since the dawn of civilisation - "you are where you live", as works such as Postcodes: the New Geography (London: Longman 1992) by Jonathan Raper & David Rhind demonstrate - but does capture some concerns.

We have discussed particular crime and security aspects of geolocation and 'presence awareness' technologies in the Infocrime & Security guide on this site.

     LBS technology and services

Location-based services (LBS) have been defined as those

that exploit the ability of technology to know where it is, and to modify the information it presents accordingly. LBS technology is inherently distributed, mobile, and potentially ubiquitous.

In essence it involves the integration of communication systems and databases that either use information that is specific to a particular system (eg participants in an automated traffic payment scheme) or draw on - and often enrich - information from other sources.

At the moment the most pervasive LBS tool is the mobile phone. As of late-1999 roughly 39% of the Australian population, 55% of Hong Kong, 38% of Japan, 40% of the UK and 31% of the US had mobiles. (By late-2000 that was around 250 million users in Europe, 100 million in the US and 60 million in Japan). Mobiles and similar wireless devices such as PDAs often utilise cells, which vary from under a one kilometre radius to tens of kilometres.

Identifying the cell which the device is using - the Cell Global Identity (CGI) - enables you to locate the user, with accuracy being determined by factors such as cell size and topography (eg switching to adjacent cells in hilly or heavily built-up locales).

The accuracy of location can be improved through Timing Advance or Observed Time Difference technology (positioning within a cell by timing the transmission of signals) and GPS facilities integrated with the device, in some cases to better than ten metres.

Applications of the technology range from the 'find the bad guy' scenario in US video thrillers to the equally lurid vision of coffee shops and shoe stores sending person-specific SMS or voice messages as you move into their vicinity, the latter involving access to the network operator's database or that of a service provider.

Surveillance schemes such as Digital Angel exploit wireless or wireless-&-GPS technology, typically alerting operators of the schemes if the 'target' moves away from a wireless base station, eg moves outside fifty metres on home detention.

Proposed affinity services, such as the dating service described here, rely on mobile phone-based geolocation technologies. A subscriber to a dating service for example would be alerted by SMS when another subscriber (ideally one with a compatible profile rather than a stalker) was found in the vicinity. Some services plan to enable subscribers to post/access photos from their wireless devices.

The Infocrime & Security guide elsewhere on this site notes that there is no consensus about geolocation technologies aimed at comprehensive accurate and real-time determination of a web surfer's location.

Positive views of the technology appear in the 1996 paper by Dorothy Denning & Peter MacDoran on Location-Based Authentication: Grounding Cyberspace for Better Security and papers in Worlds of E-Commerce: Economic, Geographical & Social Dimensions (New York: Wiley 2001) edited by Thomas Leinbach & Stanley Brunn. Concerns are explored in the 2005 Location Technologies: Mobility, Surveillance and Privacy (PDF) report to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

     IBNIS

Geospatial privacy concerns impinge on the development of 'internet based neighbourhood information systems' (IBNIS), discussed in a complementary note elsewhere on this site.

A 2005 UK Neighbourhoods on the Net (PDF) report commented

As IBNIS become increasingly sophisticated, the issue of privacy becomes ever more important. This issue is not specifically about individual privacy as much as 'aggregate' or 'collective' privacy - what information it is appropriate to hold on the consumption habits and lifestyles of postcode-size populations, how far it should be permissible to characterise these populations in particular ways and the penalties that should be attached to mis-characterisation. A coherent policy framework should include this dimension as a means of clarifying what is currently an opaque area in which local residents are particularly - and sometimes personally - vulnerable to the consequences of misrepresentation.

     legislation

Explicit attention to locational privacy concerns in legislation across the world is uneven.

That reflects differing levels of awareness or concern among advocates, analysts and policymakers. It also reflects differing views on the adequacy of existing legislation. As we've suggested earlier in this guide, there are questions about the ramifications of much digital technology.

Questions include -

• what geographic resolution is available?
• is there adequate regulatory protection for the use of location in traffic data and tools such as automated number plate recognition (APNR) systems?
• do users have control over their locational information?
• who has access to the data, where can it be transferred for processing and how long should it be retained?
• what contractual provisions exist and is there a model contract?
• to what extent can we unbundle identifiers, for example tracking vehicles as a community good but not tracking the individuals in those vehicles
• the extent to which consumers will commodify their locational privacy
• consumer understanding of technologies, business models and regulatory issues, evident in some of the hyperbole about the benefits or disadvantages of ubiquitous "dataveillance".

There are no specific provisions in Australian and New Zealand privacy legislation - location as such is not identified as of concern. Telecommunications legislation covers inappropriate disclosure of location information regarding use of mobile phones.

In Europe some states are moving towards explicit coverage, extending the general protection under the EU Data Protection Directive. UK data protection legislation does not privilege 'location' as one of the categories of 'sensitive' information (ie data relating to racial/ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other beliefs, trade union membership, health, sex life or criminal convictions). There are some limits on disclosure under telecommunications legislation.

In the US the Wireless Communications & Public Safety Act of 1999 (aka 911 Act) makes specific provision for "wireless location information privacy" regarding a telecommunication carrier's use and disclosure of customer proprietary network information (CPNI). 'Location' forms one of sensitive categories of data that require protection by carriers: apart from emergencies they are forbidden from accessing, using or disclosing wireless location information "without the express prior authorization of the customer".

For an introduction to North American mobile phone regimes see in particular the 2002 What Happens When You Make A 911 Call? Privacy & The Regulation of Cellular Technology in the US & Canada paper by Colin Bennett & Priscilla Regan.

There is a succinct introduction to US GIS privacy issues in Michael Curry's paper In Plain & Open View: GIS and the Problem of Privacy, complemented by Harlan Onsrud's Ethical Issues in the Use and Development of GIS (PDF).

     Studies

There is a crisp introduction to some technologies and issues in Mark Monmonier's book Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2002).

For geodemographics and geocoding there is Michael Curry's intelligent Digital places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies (London: Routledge 1998), for us more impressive than the breezy introduction in Michael Weiss' The Clustering of America: How We Live, What We Buy, and What It All Means about Who We Are (New York: Harper & Row 1989) and The Clustered World (Boston: Little Brown 2000).

Geospatial Information System (GIS) technologies and applications are discussed in Nicholas Chrisman's Exploring Geographic Information Systems (New York: Wiley 1997), Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Applications & Management (New York: Wiley 1999) edited by Paul Longley, Michael Goodchild, David Maguire & David Rhind, Geodemographics, GIS & Neighbourhood Targeting (New York: Wiley 2005) by Richard Harris, Peter Sleight & Richard Webber. Other works are highlighted in our discussion of cartography and GIS.

For privacy, intellectual property and other concerns see Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems (New York: Guilford 1997) edited by John Pickles, Geographic Information Systems: Socioeconomic Applications (London: Routledge 1996) by David Martin, Sharing Geographic Information Systems (New Brunswick: Center for Urban Policy Research 1995) edited by Harlan Onsrud, the 1996 paper GIS & Society: The Social Implications of How People, Space and Environment Are Represented in GIS (PDF) by Trevor Harris & Daniel Weiner, Geographic Information Science: Mastering the Legal Issues (Milton: Wiley 2005) by George Cho and GIS & Crime Mapping (New York: Wiley 2005) by Spencer Chainey & Jerry Ratcliffe.

For 'presence' see Intelligent Environments: Spatial Aspects of the Information Revolution (Amsterdam: North Holland 1997) edited by Peter Droege and other works highlighted in the Networks & the GII guide elsewhere on this site. 'Understanding individual human mobility patterns' by Marta González, César Hidalgo & Albert-László Barabási in 453 Nature (5 June 2008) 779-782 highlights that most mobility - and most communications - occurs within a small range, with the bulk of mobile phone calls by an average individual for example being made from a handful of locations.





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