Re: geolocation privacy statement strawman

Hi Henning,

good idea.  however, i do not think in practice it will work out.   
Also, this is what the geopriv people wanted to do -- send some extra  
info with every single geolocation request which says "only retain  
this for x time".  We hashed over this topic at great length at the  
face to face meeting we had in Dec 08.  The notes of that meeting are  
publically avialable (and if they aren't they should be as we agreed).

In summary, the problem with allowing the user to specify something  
like retention (and retransmission) is:

1) in general, users do not know what they should be set.  if they set  
it too low, they could break functionality; if set to high, they give  
up too much privacy (?).

2) websites can implement this already using existing standards by  
asking the user "how long can we persist this data".

3) it is not enforceable by the user agent.  how do we ensure that the  
site really does what it says it is going to do? clearly, we can't.

4) because it isn't enforceable, it sets the wrong user's expectation.

5) different regional laws.  For example, what should the default  
actually be for a region.  Maybe the default in one area is too high  
for a more restrictive region.

I hope this helps.

Doug Turner


On Mar 5, 2009, at 8:20 PM, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:

> This seems like a good beginning, but why not allow users to state  
> how long the information can be retained? "As long as required" is  
> pretty vague. Required by what or whom?
>
> On Mar 5, 2009, at 10:56 PM, Doug Turner wrote:
>
>> I posted a strawman of the privacy statement here:  http://dougt.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/my-airmozilla-geo-talk/
>>
>> I do not think that this should be included in the draft as-is.  It  
>> is not an official position of Mozilla.  Rather, it is being used  
>> to discuss privacy and geolocation both internally, and in the  
>> community.  I thought it would also be useful here.
>>
>> Doug Turner
>> Mozilla
>>
>>
>

Received on Friday, 6 March 2009 04:36:27 UTC