Location, Location, Location: Laws Lagging Location Technology

In 2012 the Supreme Court unanimously agreed to bar
Police from installing GPS to track subjects.  However, a
Federal appeals court has ruled that obtaining location
information from wireless carriers does not require a
warrant - and some agencies are using geo-located photo
ID's of license plates to track vehicle locations.  Email IP
addresses can also provide indirect location information.

Continued from our prior article: Lawmakers in Washington DC have picked up on the issue of location privacy though little has been done since several measures were introduced for the new congressional session.

The GPS Act (HR 1312 and S. 639) and the Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act (HR 983) would prohibit intercepting and disclosing location information without prior consent. Both of these bills are still in committee, and no action has been taken on them since March 2013.

The Location Privacy Protection Act, which was introduced in 2011 by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, would prohibit companies from collecting, obtaining or disclosing most location data without express permission. According to his staff, the senator is planning to reintroduce the bill in the coming months.

The US Senate has several proposed bills to limit the use of
location tracking data.

State lawmakers are not waiting — although they are primarily moving to mandate law enforcement officials get a warrant before accessing location data. Massachusetts is considering such a law and Maine has already passed one. Texas has passed a law requiring a warrant for emails, and a similar bill passed the California Senate. The metadata in the header of an email can include an IP address, which often indicates location.

The laws on location data are unclear, said Natasha Léger, chief executive officer of the Location Forum, and handling things poorly can put a firm’s reputation at risk. To keep the confidence of their customers, companies should adopt policies that protect their privacy even if they may go beyond current legal requirements, she said.

Many public safety agencies, including Police use
private GPS tracking systems to keep track of their
fleets of vehicles - including patrol cars, fire,
ambulance, and State patrol vehicles.

“I think for the future of location what is important is demonstrating respect for location data and privacy beyond what the current law asks for,” said Leger, “because the technology is moving much faster than the current legal and policy regime.”

Companies that step up to the challenge will not only avoid bad publicity but will be able to make a stronger case to the customers whose location data they must have to succeed.

“We at the Forum look at privacy from the perspective of it being utilized as a competitive advantage,” said Leger. “As people become more and more concerned about how their information is being collected used and shared . . . people are really looking for companies that are stepping up and stewarding that information responsibly.”

Location, Location, Location: GPS Business-Oriented Apps Growing

Creative location-aware business applications are on the rise.

Continued from our prior article: In the retail sector consumer tracking is being used to identify the best store sites and offer promotions to customers. One of the most widely touted ideas is to send coupons to the mobile phones of potential customers already in the store’s immediate area. Those customers might be identified by the fact that they just used a review site to search for a restaurant or have an app on their phone that identifies them as being a frequent buyer.

One business in Guatemala has taken targeted discounts to a new level. Called Meat Pack, the store sells cutting-edge athletic shoes – the kind of limited edition footwear that collectors, or sneakerheads, scramble to buy. The store’s fans follow it via social networking and many have downloaded Meat Pack’s app. The store developed Hijack, an app enhancement that is triggered when one of the store’s customers enters a competing shop.

When a Meat Pack customer steps into the official store of one the brands sold by Meat Pack, Nike for example, the Hijack application offers them a 99 percent discount. That discount diminishes one percentage point per second until the customer enters Meat Pack, which is located in the same mall. One buyer got there so fast he got 89 percent off. Some 600 customers have used the Meat Pack discount — sales that were made public on Facebook, generating even more buzz.

Hijack - a creative geo-fencing ad application that detects
when a customer is in a competitors store - and offers
a reducing discount that starts at 99% off, with a
reduction by 1% for every minute it takes them to get
to the Meat-Pack store.

Not all retailers have been as successful. Nordstrom began experimenting with location tracking last year but, once it began notifying shoppers, they complained and the retailer had to drop the project. The program used sensors installed by a firm called Euclid that captured the Wi-Fi signals coming off customer cell phones.

Euclid was able to monitor when someone bypassed the store, when they came in, where they went, and how long they stayed. Such data can help stores assess why they are winning/losing customers, evaluate promotions or determine whether a particular display can hold buyers’ attention.

According to Euclid’s website they also offer information on consumer loyalty, which can be inferred from tracking the unique identifier number broadcast by every cell phone. Over time it can indicate who is a regular shopper — although the firm says the data is anonymized before it is delivered.

But data-hungry firms can do more than just follow customers around. Nomi, of New York, can link a customer’s visit and behavior with their Web browsing and purchase history. The person must have provided some personal information to create the link, according to a story in the New York Times. They might have downloaded the retailer’s app or used the in-store Wi-Fi and given an e-mail address. Once the link is made the store will have access to their profile.

Some brick and mortar businesses see tracking apps as a way to level the playing field. It gives them some of the intimate insight into their customers that online-only stores like Amazon have been getting for years get by analyzing purchases.

But location information has uses far beyond getting to know who one’s best customers are.

“(Companies) have done studies which demonstrate that they can predict the behavior of people based on their mobile patterns,” said Natasha Léger, chief executive officer of the Location Forum, which just recently released voluntary guidelines for the protection of location data.

The guidelines point out that location data can be derived from more than cell phones or IP addresses. Geo-references can be found on Facebook and in the metadata of digital photos, email, and documents. Companies are already gathering data from 100 or more sources and integrating it to gain new insights, Leger said. “Data is being correlated at a scale that most people don’t understand.”

Sun's Magnetic Field to Reverse: triggering some new space weather

As reported by National Geographic:

The sun's magnetic field, which spans the solar system, is just months away from flipping, observatory measurements show.

"This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system," solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University said in a statement.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of just a few observatories around the world that monitors the sun's polar magnetic fields.

The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years during the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner dynamo reorganizes itself.

This next reversal—which will be only the fourth observed since tracking began in 1976—will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24.

During a magnetic field reversal, "the sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero and then emerge again with the opposite polarity," explained solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, in the statement.

Scientists are already seeing signs of the reversal happening, and this time there's a twist: Data from Wilcox show that the sun's two hemispheres are oddly out of sync, with the North Pole already beginning to change and the South Pole racing to catch up.

Soon both poles should be completely reversed. "It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," Hoeksema said.

What Does a Reversal Mean?

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field will have consequences throughout the solar system since the domain of the sun's magnetic influence—called the heliosphere—extends far beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, which are racing toward interstellar space.

A NASA depiction of the heliospheric current sheet.

Playing a central role in solar field reversals is the "current sheet," a sprawling surface that juts out of the sun's equator where the sun's slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electric current.

The current itself is small—only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter—but there's a lot of it, and the entire heliosphere is organized around it.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball.

As the Earth orbits the sun, our planet dips in and out of the wavy current sheet, and the transitions can stir up stormy space weather around us.

The geometry of the current sheet can also affect Earth's exposure to cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles accelerated to the speed of light by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.

Cosmic rays pose a threat to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might also affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth.

The sun's current sheet functions as a barrier to cosmic rays, preventing them from penetrating into the inner solar system. And a wavy, crinkly current sheet appears to create a better shield against these energetic particles.

Additionally, the earth's magnetic field also acts as a partial shield against the subsequent 'local' space weather generated by the sun - the combination of which provides a low radiation zone for habital life on earth.  Particles generated by the sun's electromagnetic storms that filter through the earth's magnetic shield show up as the Aurora Borealis light displays at high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions.

Location, Location, Location: Protecting or Releasing your location data

Geo-fencing can be used to determine when a vehicle or a
mobile device is in a particular area.

Continued from our prior article: Part of what makes modern tracking possible is the ability to tie together a vast array of records using location data. In years past, records would be correlated using someone’s Social Security number — until identity theft and privacy concerns curbed the practice. Now location is becoming the uniting element that makes it possible to link the bits of someone’s life together.

The act of pooling location data, however, can often break the protections that keep personal details private. Unless proper controls are in place, commercial firms may be able to determine religious and political beliefs and even map out someone’s circle of friends. Police and national security agencies may implement similar methods for different purposes.

Geofencing is a technique that can be used to determine the members of a social network.

One establishes a virtual perimeter around a particular point, then uses location data to note who enters the enclosed area. The perimeter, for example, might be around a concert venue — which enables music promoters to gain insight into ticket-buying fans. The perimeter does not, however, have to be centered on a fixed place. One can set a geofence around a person’s cell phone. Over time it would be possible to see who came into contact with that individual and discover who their acquaintances are

“With current location information,” said Leger, “you can you discern over time who somebody’s friends are.” Some companies are already doing this, she said.

Correlating position data can uncover previously
unknown social networks.

Moreover, this is not the kind of analysis that has to be done in real time. If the data has been saved, a network map can be prepared retrospectively — and some companies save such information indefinitely, said Leger. Although the commercial value of such analysis is not yet clear, such details could be used to map out the connections between criminals or terrorists confirmed Leger.

That kind of in-depth analysis, however, is still relatively unusual, said Arthur Berrill, vice president of technology at DMTI Spatial and a contributor to the Location Forum’s privacy guidelines.

The biggest potential curb on the use of location data is not regulation, which so far has been lagging, but consumer reaction — especially when they feel their privacy is at risk. Only 26 to 28 percent of app buyers say ‘Yes,’ when asked if they want to share their location information, said Khan. A 2011 survey by the White Horse Digital Futures Group found that nearly a third of those who knew about location apps, but chose not to use them, cited privacy concerns.

“They sort of freak me out. I’m not sure that it’s good to always let others know my location,” said an Atlanta, Georgia, woman in her 20s told the surveyors.

The issue with privacy, said Khan, is that people do not understand the benefits of sharing their location.

“When you get an app on an iPhone, one of the first questions you get asked when you download that app is ‘Are you willing to share your location?’” he says. “And most people say ‘No.’ And the reason . . . is because that is not the question to ask. Because you haven’t first told people what they are going to get if they share their location.

What you should be saying is, ‘Thanks for downloading this app, by sharing your location you are going to get A, B and C. Now, would you like to share your location?’ You are going to get a lot more yeses if you take that approach than the approach they have today where they ask if you want to share your location without explaining why.”

It is not clear, however, that everyone understands the implications of agreeing to share their location.

“If you have a news app that asks you ‘Can I use your location data?’ and it’s a free app, more than likely people will say ‘Yes,’” explained Leger. “But if that same pop-up said ‘Can I use your financial information?’ You’d probably hesitate because you already have a preconceived notion of the sensitivity of that financial information. People do not have a preconceived notion of the sensitivity of location data.”

Location, Location, Location: GPS and social awareness

An example of a poorly parked vehicles in Europe.

As reported by Inside GNSS:
In a part of the world where frustrated drivers will park anywhere, including squarely on a sidewalk, a local newspaper is using location data to shame car owners into shaping up.

The Village, a Russian online publication serving Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev; created a free app that notes a badly parked vehicle’s make, color, and license plate information when users snap its picture.

The information and photo are broadcast as a pop-up ad that appears on the screens of computers in the area immediately around where the car is parked — exposing the offender’s behavior to co-workers, family, and friends.

In a particularly diabolical twist, Village readers are forced to forward the screen-blocking pop-up ad via a social network like Facebook to be able to resume reading.

A free app provided by the Village, used to shame owners
that park their vehicles badly.

The app is able to target the zone around miscreant drivers, in part, because computers’ IP addresses indicate their location and many cameras and smartphones embed location data in the photos they take.

Although Russian pedestrians might be thrilled to deliver a little payback, not everyone is so sanguine. Increasing awareness of the ways location data is being used, and worries over personal privacy, have led consumers to regularly opt out of sharing location information and triggered protests when tracking is discovered.

Recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has approval from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to broadly gather and store location information likely have made matters worse, even though NSA has issued assurances that it is not actually doing so.

That public aversion to location surveillance could be bad news for the rapidly growing cadre of commercial firms that collect, sell, analyze, and use location data — 70 percent to 80 percent of which is derived from GPS technology.

Asif Khan, founder and president of the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) in Toronto, said he sees some 30 to 40 new location-based service (LBS) apps every week. The LBS market is growing exponentially, he suggested, although estimates are hard to come by because so many widely varying applications are springing up.

The largest segment of the industry is location-based advertising, Khan told Inside GNSS, where some $1.2 billion in ads will be bought this year — a figure he expects to grow to $6 billion by 2015.

Unquestionably, more and more companies are jumping into the location data game. AT&T recently changed its privacy policy to allow it to sell “anonymized” location data about its subscribers. Verizon already sells such information. Google recently spent $1 billion to buy the Israeli company Waze, a social network provider whose members provide traffic and road condition updates to other members — information that could potentially be added to Google maps.

Other uses for such data exist as well. Khan told attendees at the Future Space 2013 conference in Washington that Google has plans to provide the data for traffic control. The information could help localities ease congestion without a huge investment in infrastructure.

Waze is worth it - if only for the crowd-sourced traffic report

An example of the crowd-source traffic
information  on Waze that allowed us to
identify the need for an alternate route.

Reported by Thomas L. Grounds with iTRAK: While taking a drive up to Denver Colorado this past weekend, I was able to test out the Waze application I had downloaded for free on my iPhone.  Waze is a GPS based navigation app which provides turn-by-turn navigation, as well as user submitted travel times and route details.

Driving from Colorado Springs to Denver is typically a 30-40 minute drive each way.  On the way up to Denver, my wife and I noticed that traffic was fairly slow and heavy on I-25 headed south.  On our way home, my wife asked if I could check the traffic on I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs - so we could potentially take an alternate route at Castle Rock, just south of Denver.

Once we were beyond that point we were essentially committed to staying on I-25. I quickly explained why traditional traffic updates were a potential problem for us - that most of the updates come over special receivers on FM, Bluetooth or satellite radio systems, and generally cost a monthly fee to subscribe to.  Since we don't often travel outside of our area, this isn't really cost effective.

Additionally, not all areas are covered by the service. Heavily populated areas like LA, and New York - certainly, but probably not the small areas that we typically drive to on the weekend.  So, the question was - could a smartphone app save the day?

A screen shot of the response we
received from the new Google Maps
application on my iPhone.

I initially checked the traffic using a Google Maps app - but it indicated that it didn't have coverage for our particular area - which was surprising since the Denver metropolitan area covers a fairly large geographical area and has more than 2.6 million people in the vicinity.  I also checked my twitter account to see if the Denver Post had any updates that might have been relevant; there were several about local flooding, but none that seemed applicable to our drive down I-25.

Then I switched to Waze.  When asked for a route to my home (a setting it had created just after the app was downloaded), it quickly came up with a route down I-25 for us.  But when I checked the crowd-source traffic information it gave us the bad news - traffic was at a stop on the highway.

Lucky for us the information came back in enough time so that we were able to setup an alternate route home through Sedalia CO on highway 67; a rough and mountainous road through Deckers CO, but much more scenic - and perfect for a weekend drive.

It looks as if Waze does not quite have all of the traffic information integrated into the routing application yet.  The app continued to try and route us down I-25 to the traffic jam till we forced a route to Sedalia, and then to Deckers before heading home.  Nevertheless, the update regarding the traffic, and our ability to avoid it made it worthwhile.

Waze is being acquired by Google in a buyout estimated to be worth about $1B USD.

Wuhan uses GPS to address food waste pollution

As reported by Zdnet.com: The Chinese city of Wuhan (武汉) [referred to as the Chicago of China] is equipping waste collection trucks and trash cans with a digital weighing and GPS device to combat the problem of "gutter oil", or illegally recycled cooking oil.

The initiative will begin operations from December when legislation mandating the integrated collection and processing of kitchen waste kicks in, according to a China Daily report Monday. The new regulation defines edible oil waste as a combination of water and oil collected from kitchen ventilators, oil water separators or sewage facilities.

The integrated system will monitor all waste in the Hubei (湖北) capital [meaning 'north of the lake'], including food leftovers, scrap materials, and edible oil waste from food and beverage outlets, canteens, and factories dealing with food processing and production. It must be implemented in all restaurants bigger than 80 square meters.

Companies will be set up in each district to manage the collection and transport, Chen Jian, director of construction for the Wuhan Urban Management Bureau, said in the report. He added that anyone or organization found in violation of the regulation will be subject to fines.

The China Daily report noted that 621 vehicles, of which 195 will be used for edible oil waste, and 25,800 garbage cans--which all food facilities are required to use--will be equipped with the GPS and weighing system.

Chen explained that to ensure no food waste is collected to make gutter oil, the system which records GPS as well as weight data will be installed on the collection trucks, garbage cans, and oil cans of oil-water separators. "We can clearly know what the vehicles are doing, how much food waste is loaded or uploaded, and can track the vehicles with a click of a mouse in the office," he added.

The devices will measure the weight of the food waste and the data kept for at least two years, as required by the new regulation, by the producer, waste collector, and transporter and processor of the food waste.

"If the weight of the food waste collected from a restaurant decreases sharply, we will investigate where the food waste goes," Chen said, adding that the new initiative is forecast to handle 60 percent of the city's food waste by end-2015.

The daily kitchen waste output in Wuhan is 1,100 tons, 55 percent that of the country's capital Beijing. The Hubei capital plans to build five waste treatment facilities, with capacity to process 200 metric tonnes of food waste each day. These plants will also produce methane and compost from the food residue.

The integrated collection and processing will also reduce pollution from the food waste to the abundant water resources, said Yu Xiao, vice-president of Wuhan Environment Sanitation Science Research Institute.

Wuhan has a 3,500-year-long history, and is one of the most ancient and civilized Metropolitan cities in China; more ancient even than Beijing.  "The famous cooking culture in Wuhan results in a large amount of food waste, which puts the large number of lakes and rivers in the city under pollution risk, as food waste usually will be deserted after the oil is extracted before the integrated collection and processing," he said.