Location-Based Services

Cyberspace is no longer a separate world. Instead, more and more online applications and networked devices know exactly where you are in the real world and put that information to use. Knowing where you are can reveal details of your life that you may well wish to keep private – details about where and when you work, which clubs and groups you join, and who your friends are. You deserve the right to control this information and how it is used, stored, and shared.

How do they know where I am?

There are many different methods of geolocation, or determining a person or device's location. In its simplest form, services like Twitterallow users to manually update their location. Other devices automatically determine their own position, using systems like GPS that are designed explicitly to determine location or indirect methods to determine the device's location based on nearby cell phone towers or wireless networks.

Why does it matter?

Location-based services can make it easier to find a nearby coffee shop, know when a friend is in the neighborhood, or reach your destination without getting lost. But location information, especially if collected and stored over an extended period, can reveal far more about you than you might think. It can allow an observer to trace precisely when and where you travel, even tracking how often you arrive at work late. It can link you to religious services, political rallies, or a gun shows by tracking your location at a specific. Finally, it can connect you to other people who are (or appear to be) at the same location at the same time, perhaps because they are your friends, perhaps only due to coincidences of time and place. Entities with sufficient resources, such as the government, could link location information to other databases and build a comprehensive profile of almost every part of your life.

If someone wants to break into your home, expose your religious or social practices, or disrupt your life in any fashion, this information could be invaluable. The freedom to engage in a full life requires that you retain control over this information.

What should I do?

Geolocation is still in its infancy, with few Web sites or other services relying heavily on information about where we are for any reason. Fortunately, this gives us the opportunity to demand products and services that protect our information and our privacy while providing the benefits of location-based services. We can choose to support those services that embrace privacy and push others to provide us with the rights we deserve.

Over the next few days, we will discuss a few location-based services and tools and examine their impact on privacy and autonomy. As these services evolve and the uses of such information become apparent, we know that more concerns will appear. We hope that you will continue to work with us to protect our civil liberties in the overlap between cyberspace and the real world.

Chris Conley is the Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow with the ACLU of Northern California.