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  • From: bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] GPS in every simcard - "locational privacy" concerns
  • Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:18:20 -0800 (PST)

There is about to be a GPS locator in every simcard, not just in the phone.
This technology is progreesing rapidly to the point of live tracking and
recording everything, everywhere.

The second little article is about how these things can prohibit "locational
privacy". There are a couple of lawsuits right now to see if governmental
entities have been tracking and recording the movements of
citizens................


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GPS receiver in every SIM card

Published on November 19th, 2008 in gps navigation, phones

German smartcard maker Sagem Orga just announced a partnership with BlueSky
Positioning to integrate A-GPS receiver on regular SIM cards.

The proprietary new approach incorporates a highly accurate GPS receiver and
an antenna into the SIM card, enabling network providers to deploy both
legally-mandated and commercial applications for all mobile phones, with no
need for software or hardware changes. To make positioning even more accurate
and user friendly, the A-GPS SIM uses assisted GPS data.

The primary purpose of A-GPS SIM is to provide accurate positioning
information of the phone to emergency services in case of an emergency call
as required by E112 and E911 legislation in the EU and the U.S. respectively.
In addition to this, it can
support generic location-based services such as navigation, ‘find a place or
person’ services, location-aware games, and many more.

Do you think this simple SIM embedded GPS receiver will be accurate and quick
enough to provide support for dynamic navigation applications?


http://www.navigadget.com/index.php/2008/11/19/gps-receiver-in-every-sim-card

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GPS gadgets can reveal more than your location

We know GPS gadgets can tell where you are. But researchers at Microsoft are
developing ways for them to know what you are doing too - even down to which
mode of transport you use to get to work.

The researchers say such new uses of the technology could help people analyse
and improve their own lifestyles, and share useful data with others.

Phones and other gadgets with GPS capabilities built in are becoming
ubiquitous. But they are typically used for little more than revealing a
person's current whereabouts on a map.

Location data is beginning to find other applications - for example to
"geotag" photos with a location. But the Microsoft researchers think the
power of GPS technology could be put to more intelligent and subtle uses.

Now the team in Beijing, China, led by Yu Zheng, has developed a way to
automatically guess a person's mode of transport from their GPS trace alone.

Patterns of travel
They recorded traces from 45 people who carried GPS-enabled gadgets over 6
months, and also recorded the volunteers' modes of transport for the more
than 20,000 kilometres travelled in total.

Analysis showed that knowing a person's speed is not enough to predict their
mode of transport. Unpredictable factors such as traffic congestion can
confuse matters. For example, in London the average speed of a car is 9 miles
per hour, often slower than cycling.

To avoid such confusion the researchers developed statistical methods to
improve the accuracy of predictions. For example, if a person is moving
quickly at the start of a trip, it is assumed they are in a car.

When the pace slackens suddenly to a speed that could be read as walking or
cycling, the system is weighted to expect the person is on foot. The tracking
study showed people rarely changed from car to bicycle.

Similarly, transitions from driving to buses tend to be divided by a period
of walking, as the person travels from the parked vehicle to the bus stop.

Data mining
Zheng and his team built their travel-mode predicting system as part of
Microsoft's experimental Geolife web platform for GPS gadgets.

The goal of Geolife is to let users replay past trips, view photos by
location and even mine information like personal traffic congestion hotspots.

Sharing the data publicly could let people access popular travel routes and
destinations and traffic conditions, say the researchers.

Michael Peterson, Chair of the International Cartographic Association
Commission on Maps and the Internet, says the work is "a major
accomplishment".

Locational privacy

However, Peterson told New Scientist that he has concerns about the privacy
implications of a technology that reveals details of where we go and how we
travel.

"Displaying the mode of transportation on a map in a GeoLife-like application
so that users can compare their movements is innocent enough," he says. "The
problem is that there are more sinister applications of this technology."

As it becomes easier to track and share our movements, the concept of
"locational privacy" - controlling who can access our location records -
becomes more important, he says, adding that Microsoft and others should make
sure their products are designed to protect users.

A paper on the new transport-mode predicting software was presented at the
2008 World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, China.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14052-gps-gadgets-can-reveal-more-than-your-location.html?feedId=online-news_rss20








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