Re: geolocation privacy statement strawman

On Mar 25, 2009, at 8:45 AM, Angel Machín wrote:

> Hi Andrei,
>
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Andrei Popescu <andreip@google.com>  
> wrote:
>
> User Agents must not send geolocation data to websites without
> expressed permission of the user. Browsers will acquire permission
> through a user interface which will include the document origin URI.
> All permissions should be revocable, and applications should respect
> revoked permissions.
>
>
> IMHO, I think it should be: "permissions *must* be revocable, and  
> applications *must* respect revoked permissions".
>
> If User Agents store these permissions internally they have to be  
> revocable by users at any time and the UI must allow it.

I'm going to make a counter argument. iPhone has CoreLocation. It  
already has a very successful (30 million units shipped) privacy  
policy. The user can decline using location services.

Adding more options will only serve to muddle the matter. It is  
currently very clear: the user says yes or the user says no. This has  
proven to be a great solution for the thousands of applications on the  
AppStore that are used by 30 million iPhone and iPod Touch users.

I am certain that any more options other than Yes or No will not be  
implemented on this popular platform. Privacy issues should be left to  
the UA, not the API. If this becomes a part of the standard API, the  
most popular mobile device supporting GeoLocation won't implement this  
portion of the standard. I believe this would be a shame for the  
standard, but not for iPhone.

Thanks,
-- Greg

Received on Wednesday, 25 March 2009 17:19:39 UTC