RE: Location services and age limit Re: Location in the news

I'm not "blaming" the API. That's a bit pointless now. That's done. We need
to find a solution, but look at what happened with Buzz, look at what is
happening with StreetView, collecting data on wifi routers in people's
homes, the twists and turns of Facebook's privacy settings.

Now tell me why I should feel confident that these guys who run these
companies and the techies they employ have any real sense of social
responsibility? We need to get past the "Hey Dude. Look what I can do. Bet
we can make a few bucks with this. Let's give it a whirl." mentality. Some
of these wizard techie things should not be launched until the ideas are
fully baked and the consequences are fully thought through.

And by the way  " It takes time, people get hurt, but it will happen." kind
of says it all. Do you feel no responsibility to try to avoid people getting
"hurt"? Or must we simply bend to the will of the new techno Masters of the
Universe? I don't think so.

-----Original Message-----
From: public-privacy-request@w3.org [mailto:public-privacy-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Karl Dubost
Sent: 02 August 2010 21:36
To: John Carr
Cc: Frederick.Hirsch@nokia.com; marcosc@opera.com; ifette@google.com;
david.rogers@wholesaleappcommunity.com; public-privacy@w3.org
Subject: Location services and age limit Re: Location in the news

(better subject for the mail)

About accessing location services for people who are under 18.

1. Blaming the API doesn't solve the issue.
2. Location services for children can be useful. "I'm lost in this street
far away from home, how can I go back home?"
3. Location racking services on children might be helpful (good angels
caring) and dangerous (hunters). 

There might be different ways of addressing these.

* There could be different set of features depending on the age of the user.
* Certification of ages online is not done and brings a ton of other issues
such as 
  * privacy (when I enter in a bakery somewhere I do not have to give my
age, my name or my address).
  * reliability (I do not know a good system which associate a digital
identity to the person behind the computer. Identification system in the
physical world do not rely *only* on the fact that you have an ID card but
that this ID card that you are showing *here* is physically associated to
you and the identification bit is often… the picture.)
* Change of social norms. It takes time, people get hurt, but it will
happen. 


For me part of the answer is that carriers should make their celltowers
location database and broadcasting completely open. So people devices could
locate themselves without having to be hooked to a carrier.

What does it give? An additional layer of opacity. A geo service could send
all the geo-tiles of a place and your location could be calculated on the
device without having to broadcast it OR You could download maps of an area
without having to rely on a live geo service.
This could also create plenty of new services, devices, applications that
people could develop (ecosystem being improved, good for the market as
large) 
BUT this would require a big shift for business people and maybe
infrastructure (weakness of this proposal).


-- 
Karl Dubost
Montréal, QC, Canada
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/

Received on Monday, 2 August 2010 21:52:21 UTC