Re: Security Concerns with Emergency uses of Geo Location

> I am concerned at the strong language in the charter
> about security concerns. In general, I have no quarrel
> with normal "commercial" use of geolocation, and the
> need to have stringent controls.

Your concerns are noted. However, the language in the charter was essential to
getting this working group approved. Numerous previous attempts charter a group
in this area without this sort of language were roundly rejected. In fact even
with in place I'd say we barely squeaked by. Without it this group didn't have
a snowball's chance in hell of ever being approved.

> However, geolocation is a very vital piece of information
> in an emergency; it is REQUIRED information (legally in some
> cases). However, emergencies arise in circumstances where
> authentication is not practical.

Then by all means contribute to the standardization work and make sure these
needs are taken care of.

> ...

> In terms of requirements:
> 1. entities which have location information and place
> emergency calls where location is required to be reported must
> be able to send such location without requiring user
> identity or any other form of authentication not provisionable
> in the end device itself.

Nothing in the charter says that user identity will be required in all
cases.

> 2. PSAPs must be able to request location of any device
> placing an emergency call from any service that has such
> location. The PSAP must authenticate itself as a PSAP.

Exactly. In this case authentication still occurs, it is just the callee
being authenticated, not the caller.

> 3. End devices placing emergency calls must be able to request
> its own location from any service that has such location without
> requiring user identity of any other form of authentication
> not provisionable in the end device itself.

This is harder, but still not impossible. An end device in such a situation
has the credential provided to it by the emergency service it has contacted.
That credential could be designed in such a way that it could be used by
proxy to obtain location information from another service.

> 4. Any privacy control mechanisms specified as required in
> emergency calls must be able to be completed in an expeditious
> manner, when conditions are far from ideal (consider disaster
> situations, for example). Thus the choice of mechanisms and
> algorithms must take into account impaired networks, etc.

In general privacy control mechanisms should be as light weight as possible.
So while I agree that this is something to consider, I don't see it as
a concern unless we seem to be getting into trouble.

                                Ned
Received on Fri Jul 13 19:07:04 2001