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

In conjunction with the recent DAP [1] F2F some of us attended a meeting at the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) [2].

What became clear to me from that visit is that although there may always have been problems in the area of child exploitation, the internet, and especially social networks, have become a new emerging and significant enabler of an increase in the amount of child molestation. (In this case the CEOP explicitly mentioned inappropriate behavior by a child in front of a web camera at the behest of another as molestation even without physical interaction.)

It seems that there is a real social concern emerging with new technology.

That said, it seems that we cannot expect an API definition alone to solve social issues  that include legal and enforcement aspects. As others have stated, these issues are complicated and I would expect the legal and regulatory community to be concerned.

The DAP is trying to address privacy issues in a practical manner, so concrete and pragmatic proposals are welcome in that group.

It appears some work will have to happen elsewhere, in particular at the service provider side, perhaps for authorization based on age.

regards, Frederick

Frederick Hirsch, Nokia
Co-Chair, W3C DAP Working Group

[1] http://www.w3.org/2009/dap/

[2] http://www.ceop.gov.uk/about/


On Aug 4, 2010, at 5:35 AM, ext Marcos Caceres wrote:

> 
> 
> On 8/4/10 10:58 AM, John Carr wrote:
>> I'd hate to get between you and your cows. I'll check with the Cow
>> Liberation Front to see if they have any problems with this, but I surely
>> don't.
>> 
>> Seriously, I agree. I guess my point is that the big companies that are
>> rolling out these services should behave more responsibly.
> 
> Not everyone lives in the same world you do, John. I honestly don't know 
> of any predators or pedophiles or nasty people. It's not something I 
> think about or every have had to deal with. Hence, it's good that you 
> come in and advocate this stuff to us because it's sometimes hard to 
> forget some of societies problems.
> 
> However, I still think it's a fair question to ask:
> 
> 1) how much of a real problem is it? What is actually happening (all 
> media beat-up aside). I'm not willing to give up civil liberties and 
> human rights without absolute proof of problems and actual evidence that 
> the solutions being proposed help.
> 
>> They should have
>> worked all this out.
> 
> Yeah, and the Stanley knife people should have worked out that people 
> would use those knifes to hijack planes. And that hammer people should 
> have worked out that if you hit someone over the head with it, it will 
> kill them.
> 
> John, for the last time: IT'S A DUMB TOOL! It's exactly like a hammer. 
> If people abuse a hammer, then it's a weapon. The hammer is just a 
> hammer. The geolocation API is just an API: it just tells one where 
> something is.
> 
>> That would have been the socially responsible thing to
>> do.
> 
> It was not designed to go out and hurt people. It just gets the location 
> of things.
> 
>> The API, as such, is not the primary issue, but can you guys find a way
>> out of the dilemma?
> 
> There is no dilemma. There is only you making up some bogus hysteria 
> about there being some problem which you have continuously fail to 
> present any evidence actually exists.
> 
>> We shouldn't have to do this but if we do press for laws on this, will the
>> big companies fight them? Use their lobbying power and their lawyers to try
>> to defeat us or delay things until they have anyway amassed a huge amount of
>> location data which they can analyse and use for commercial purposes?
> 
> Or should we hand all our details to some big centralized database, so 
> we can do age verification... and then that data can also be used for 
> commercial purposes (or worst) by governments?
> 
>> I'm sorry for banging on about the big companies, but to quote Superman
>> "With great power, goes great responsibility".
> 
> I thought that was spiderman?
> 
>> To their great credit, not
>> all big companies are rushing into this  market. Only some of them are.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Marcos Caceres
> Opera Software

Received on Wednesday, 4 August 2010 19:14:01 UTC