Re: real location vs. fake location

"The Geolocation object can be used by scripts to programmatically 
determine the location information associated with the hosting device."

is what the spec currently says. this could probably be considered to 
also cover fake locations.

"Common sources of location information include Global Positioning 
System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP 
address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs."

is another quote. again, nothing disallows fake locations. and i am not 
sure whether any language exists anywhere in the draft that does 
disallow fake locations. we could be more explicit to be aware of that 
use case by saying:

"Common sources of location information include Global Positioning 
System (GPS), location inferred from network signals such as IP address, 
RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, GSM/CDMA cell IDs, and location 
information provided by users."

Richard Barnes wrote:
> I agree with Doug here.  As long as the choice of location provider is 
> invisible to the web app (as the current thinking seems to be), "lying" 
> is just providing location from another (false) location provider.
> 
> --Richard
> 
> Erik Wilde wrote:
>>
>> you could. but you could also imagine the device having a "fake 
>> location" configuration. in that case, apps don't know that they're 
>> being lied to. which probably is what you want as a user, unless 
>> you're lying in a ditch with a broken leg and wish your device would 
>> send out your real location with its emergency app and not the fake 
>> one...
>>
>> Doug Turner wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Dret,
>>>
>>> This is an implementation detail.  You could imagine a User Agent 
>>> supporting "Lying" by allowing their user to define their location 
>>> manually in some manner.
>>>
>>> Doug
>>>
>>> On Jan 27, 2009, at 10:20 AM, Erik Wilde wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> hello everybody.
>>>>
>>>> "Any good social geoapp will let you type in a fake position manually."
>>>>
>>>> http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-02/lp_guineapig
>>>>
>>>> interesting article. we recently had this discussion about "just the 
>>>> current position" vs. "any position", and i guess the underlying 
>>>> question is, given the above statement, can i lie to my app, and/or 
>>>> can i lie to my device? there's a trade-off; if i can lie to my app, 
>>>> all my apps have to support lying, and i have to be consistent at 
>>>> lying. if i can lie to my device, i only have to do it once, and 
>>>> then all my apps will be fed the same lie. this in a way does not 
>>>> affect the API design, but i think if the wording in the draft 
>>>> implies (and i don't know that) that the position has to be the real 
>>>> and true position of the device/user, then this could be changed to 
>>>> saying something like "assumed position".
>>>>
>>>> cheers,
>>>>
>>>> dret.
>>>>
>>>
>>

-- 
erik wilde   tel:+1-510-6432253 - fax:+1-510-6425814
        dret@berkeley.edu  -  http://dret.net/netdret
        UC Berkeley - School of Information (ISchool)

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:31:57 UTC