What makes a 'position' usefull?

I have found something that (maybe) makes a difference: today I was
exploring a route that I do not knew, near my town. A couple of times, I
really wanted to know my position.

Let's suppose I had a portable device in the car, with a GPS included. I
cannot have every map loaded... so... a latitude/longitude position would
have been useless. What I needed to know was road number/name and driving
directions to the main local route.

Should there exist a standard way for a device to query a server requesting
maps and/or data and/or driving directions for an area?

Regards,

Dante Castiglione
dantec@amc.com.ar

UBICAT S.A.

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian Hauser [mailto:lobase@gmx.net]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 11:35 AM
To: geopriv@mail.apps.ietf.org
Subject: Abstraction from existing technologies

Hello,

due to recent discussions, I have some comments.

First of all, as this is an IETF-WG, we seem to focus too much on UMTS and
other mobile (and already existing) technologies. Im my opinion, we should
discuss issues regarding any imaginable platform, because future systems
will
bring much more sophisticated features regarding location support than
nowaday's. I think, considering only current technologies would restrict our
minds
too much.

For that reason, I wonder if it would help to just assume one arbitrary
party having the users' location information. Whether this is the location
database of a UMTS provider, any other third party (e.g. a new Location
Service), a
combination of those or something else is not very relevant in my opinion.
This entity maintains all the location information, arising about the users
(e.g. the location information from the mobile network operator, from the
users' GPS device, from any other locating infrastructure like Active Badges
or
whatever is imaginable).

This entity would know very accurate location information about the users.
Because that information has to be prevented from being linked to the users'
identities (as I depicted in my mail from July, 12th), this Location Service
must be usable pseudonymously.

Everyone, needing location information has to query this Location Service
(except of course the mobile device using its own GPS information).
Therefore,
the access rights (or the profiles) are needed just there. In my opinion,
this entity does not need to distinguish different applications querying
location information, because it just needs to offer a simple interface for
accessing location information (perhaps a query about an object's position
and a
query about all objects in a given area). So the profile simply needs to
contain
the permissions, querying subjects have regarding location information of a
target (like max. allowed accuracy, time, max. frequency of queries,
location
dependent restrictions, ...). Of course, in the case a third party (e.g. a
tracking service) queries in behalf of another user, the permissions of this
user have to be relevant for accessing the location information.

So, what I would propose is, that we try to find privacy issues and
mechanisms / principles to deal with these issues, regardless of any
possible (or
existing) implementation in order to find universal solutions being
applicable
for whatever future will bring.

Is this the view you share?

Best regards

Christian Hauser

Institute of Communication Networks and Computer Engineering
University of Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 47, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

--
Sent through GMX FreeMail - http://www.gmx.net