Re: Additional security and privacy considerations?

Rigo,

Thanks for your comments and historical background.  I think your  
points are general and probably could be applied to just about every  
bit of technology we build.  We do not want to build technology that  
makes anyone feel stupid.  Although your remarks can feel  
condescending, as you point out, I take them with good spirit - I  
think everyone here is trying their best to create a safe secure way  
to enable geolocation on the web.

I did have one question which seems you pointed out as the flaw in the  
draft.  You said that the w3c must "provide the necessary hooks in the  
API to enable such a UI".  Can you point out specifically where there  
isn't a hook in the API to do just this?  It seems to me that it is  
pretty obvious where a UA could hook into provide such a UI that TLR  
has designed.  Maybe that isn't as clear to someone farther away from  
the spec and/or browser implementations?

Thanks again Rigo for your input,

Doug Turner



On May 13, 2009, at 2:36 AM, Rigo Wenning wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> On Tuesday 12 May 2009, Thomas Roessler wrote:
>>> Again all of this, i believe is out of scope.
>>
>> Nothing you said there implies that the requirements I was
>> proposing   are unimplementable, so let's try to get back to the
>> part that's in scope.  These  requirements are:
>>
>> 1. Have an signal of sorts when location information is passed to a
>>  Web application.
>>
>> 2. Use that indicator as a hook for some UI that enables revocation
>> of   authorization.
>>
>> Again, I don't know what that indicator ought to look or sound or
>> feel   like, and I'm not suggesting to describe the details of that
>> kind of UI in the spec.
>
> Just to confirm and reinforce: Thomas and I are not saying that a
> certain UI must be shown (the EU Commission & Parliament will care to
> enforce it on those they can reach), but W3C under scrutiny must
> provide the necessary hooks in the API to enable such a UI. Whether
> Mozilla or others then chose not to make a UI for it is a different
> discussion.
>
> Location is extremely sensitive data (think of crime, embarrassment
> etc). Imagine for a second your preferred VIP being caught with a
> partner other than the spouse thanks to this location information.
> Imagine, this happens because the device was tracking location
> invisibly. I would not want to get that heat from that story.
>
> From the location of the directors of Union Bank of Switzerland and
> the Swiss Bank Corporation and existing rumors it became clear that
> both were accomplishing a merger to build UBS, one of the world's
> biggest banks. Predicting such event because of location information
> would have been worth a lot of money. They were tracked in 1998 by
> their cellphones, but the information did not leak.
>
> If location tracking would have been shown, people would rather blame
> a stupid VIP than a stupid technology. We believe in creativity of
> engineers and UI designers. They will need a hook where to connect to.
> At least we have to provide that hook and perhaps include some more
> insight from our discussion for guidance. Paternalism is surely not
> the intend here, but it is clear that you have to look beyond just
> your immediate technical issues and evaluate the consequences of the
> technology step you're about to create.
>
> Best,
> Rigo Wenning
> W3C Legal counsel & Privacy Activity Lead
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 13 May 2009 15:04:03 UTC