Geolocation

This page considers geolocation technologies and issues.

It covers -

• introduction
• issues
• mapping
• applications
• services
• studies

Other perspectives are provided in the discussion elsewhere on this site regarding geospatial privacy and the discussion of tools such as ANPR.

     introduction

Despite claims that the internet is necessarily and invariably borderless there is substantial expert support for claims that it will be possible to develop geolocation technologies that enable law enforcement agencies (and businesses) to locate an activity within a particular part of cyberspace.

Like activity offline, that geolocation won't work in all instances. The technologies pose a range of policy issues (for example privacy) and operational problems. They've been dismissed by some experts. They have also received cautious support from figures such as Vint Cerf.

One example is the 1996 paper by Dorothy Denning & Peter MacDoran on Location-Based Authentication: Grounding Cyberspace for Better Security. 

Most geolocation services work by matching an individual user's internet protocol address - discussed here - to a geographical location. That matching is broadly similar to identifying the location of a user of a fixed line phone on the POTS by deconstructing national and area codes.

In practice there is no authoritative database that matches single IP addresses with physical locations. That's resulted in fuzziness, with geolocation service providers such as Quova and Akamai needing to develop their own databases.

Geolocation has a range of uses, of which content restriction and fraud management have gained most attention. Some businesses are using geolocation services to deliver location-specific content and, of course, to facilitate the assembly of demographic information.

We'll be adding more detailed pointers, with a discussion of particular technologies and issues.

     issues

A 2005 report for the Canadian government commented that

Location technologies introduce new challenges with respect to privacy policy and law. For instance, how does consent operate when one is in a continuous circuit? Should consent be given only once, when signing up to use the cellphone, when the user is to be tracked every moment thereafter? Significantly, location information may be combined with other data to create profiles with yet another dimension, place, added to the previously existing mix. The parallels with already existing surveillance based on neighbourhood or on virtual movement on the internet suggest that such data will indeed be valuable. While parental tracking of teenagers may raise only privacy issues, important though they may turn out to be, commercial and law enforcement use of such data could well be significant for social sorting. The other, already existing, data are used to enable discrimination and differential treatment for different categories of persons and location data could well add one more dimension to the same processes.

It continued that

Concerns about the misuse of location data are of more than one sort. One concern is that, with the integrated usage of mobile computing devices, location tracking devices and communication networks, there is potential for abuse of such technology through surreptitious or unwarranted tracking of the user. While forms of stalking may spring to mind, other more prosaic misuses may occur when tracking devices are used to regulate users....

Another important concern under the misuse heading is that, in addition to current personal information that has been collected from a user, the use of location-based technology in tandem with wireless technology now adds geographical location information to the catalogue of personal information acquired. Marketing companies are especially interested in such data, indeed with increasing strategic integration between marketing and security agencies, these data may well turn out to have considerable added value. ...

Other concerns include the vulnerability of the new location technologies to unauthorized interception. A number of critics complain that mobile computing devices possess weak communications security. Currently, wireless communication is poorly encrypted, leading many users to wonder how vulnerable they really are to hackers and war-drivers. When mobile computing devices are partnered with GPS and mobile technology, a user’s location and the context they are working within in realtime can become vulnerable to penetration alongside their communication content.

     applications

Internet, wireless and satellite location-based Services (LBS) encompass -

• safety applications - for example automatic caller location schemes for emergency services so that ambulance, fire or other assistance may be sent to the correct location
• surveillance schemes such as Digital Angel - leveraging wireless or wireless-&-GPS technology and typically alerting operators of the schemes if the 'target' (a child, aged care facility resident, sex offender, stalker or person with an AVO) moves away from a wireless base station (eg moves outside fifty metres on home detention) or comes into proximity of a station (eg comes near a school).
• affinity services - such as the dating service described here, using bluetooth, wireless net or mobile phone-based geolocation technologies to signal that a person with particular attributes is in an individual's vicinity
• billing applications - automatic payment services permitting users to receive discounts on services such as calls made based on their location.
• information applications - map or other information actively requested by the user based on current location, for example location-based traffic updates to drivers or directions to desired restaurants or events.
• logistics tracking applications - using vehicle, item based or person-based devices that enable tracking of items or people on a realtime or quasi-realtime basis (eg for managing taxi/parcel delivery fleets).
• advertisement applications deliver location-sensitive content (including SMS and email) through messages to a user's mobile device, whether requested or otherwise

     services

Commercial and free products and services include

• Quova
• EdgeScape
• Verifia's NetGeo
• NetAcuity
• InfoSplit
• IP2location
• activetarget
• Maxmind
• javainetlocator

GeoURL offers a 'location-to-URL reverse directory', based on inclusion of geographical coordinates in website metadata -

This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.

As of September 2005 GeoURL listed 192,590 sites. It competes with the GeoTags location-based search engine.

     studies

The 2005 Location Technologies: Mobility, Surveillance and Privacy (PDF) report to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada considers location technologies and their social impact, "inspired by the recent advent of real-time tracking technologies that create new concerns for Canadians and for Canadian policy provisions". It is complemented by GIS & Crime Mapping (New York: Wiley 2005) by Spencer Chainey & Jerry Ratcliffe.

Studies regarding locational privacy issues are highlighted in the privacy guide elsewhere on this site. They include Michael Curry's paper In Plain & Open View: GIS and the Problem of Privacy and Digital Places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies (London: Routledge 1998), Harlan Onsrud's Ethical Issues in the Use and Development of GIS (PDF), Nicholas Chrisman's Exploring Geographic Information Systems (New York: Wiley 1997), Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems (New York: Guilford 1997) edited by John Pickles, the 1996 paper GIS & Society: The Social Implications of How People, Space and Environment Are Represented in GIS (PDF) by Trevor Harris & Daniel Weiner and Geographic Information Science: Mastering the Legal Issues (Milton: Wiley 2005) by George Cho.

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.






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