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76–010 2012

THE COLLECTION AND USE OF LOCATION 

INFORMATION FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES 

JOINT HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, TRADE, 

AND CONSUMER PROTECTION 

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, 

TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

FEBRUARY 24, 2010 

Serial No. 111–98 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

Vice Chairman 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANE HARMAN, California 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Ranking Member 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 

PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 


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SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, TRADE, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

Chairman 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

Vice Chair 

JOHN SARBANES, Maryland 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

FRANK PALLONE, New Jersey 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

Ranking Member 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

Chairman 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

VITO FOSELLA, New York 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Bobby L. Rush, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 1 

Hon. Ed Whitfield, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Kentucky, opening statement ......................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 5 

Hon. Doris O. Matsui, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 7 

Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 7 

Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 9 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 10 

Hon. Steve Scalise, a Representative in Congress from the State of Louisiana, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 11 

Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 12 

Hon. Lee Terry, a Representative in Congress from the State of Nebraska, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 13 

Hon. Rick Boucher, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Virginia, prepared statement .......................................................................... 124 

Hon. Joe Barton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 128 

WITNESSES

John B. Morris, Jr., General Counsel, Center for Democracy and Technology .. 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 17 

Lorrie Cranor, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering and 

Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University ........................................................ 32 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 34 

Jerry King, Chief Operating Officer, uLocate Communications, Inc. .................. 69 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 71 

Tony Bernard, Vice President and General Manager, Useful Networks ............ 76 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 78 

Michael Altschul, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, CTIA—The 

Wireless Association ............................................................................................ 87 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 89 

Anne Collier, ConnectSafely ................................................................................... 96 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 98 


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THE COLLECTION AND USE OF LOCATION 

INFORMATION FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2010 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON COM- MERCE, TRADE, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION, JOINT

WITH THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECH- NOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET, COMMITTEE ON ENERGY

AND COMMERCE, WASHINGTON, DC. 

The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10:05 a.m., in Room 

2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Bobby L. Rush 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection] presiding. 

Present from Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer 

Protection: Representatives Rush, Sarbanes, Barrow, Matsui, Castor, Space, Braley, Stearns, Whitfield, Terry and Scalise. 

Present from Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and 

the Internet: Representatives Boucher, Markey, Eshoo, Doyle, Matsui, Castor, Space, Stearns, Shimkus, Buyer and Terry. 

Staff present: Michelle Ash, Chief Counsel; Marc Groman, FTC 

Detailee; Greg Guice, FCC Detailee; Will Cusey, Special Assistant; 

Daniel Hekier, Intern; Sarah Fisher, Special Assistant; David 

Kohn, Press Secretary; Amy Levine, Counsel; Timothy Robinson, 

Counsel; Ross Schulman, Intern; Will Carty, Minority Professional 

Staff; Sam Costello, Minority Legislative Analyst; Neil Fried, Minority Senior Counsel; Shannon Weinberg, Minority Counsel; and 

Brian McCullough, Minority Senior Professional Staff. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOBBY L. RUSH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS 

Mr. RUSH. The subcommittee will now come to order. We are conducting a hearing this morning on the matter of the collection and 

use of location information for commercial purposes, and I want to 

welcome all the members of the committee who are present, those 

individuals who are present who are non-members, and I also want 

to welcome all the witnesses and those who are doing this from the 

perspective of interested parties who are in evidence. The chairman 

recognizes himself for 5 minutes for the purposes of an opening 

statement. 

Today we are pleased to welcome six witnesses representing the 

wireless industry, software firms, a nonprofit advocacy group and 

an academic. We have got a lot of expertise in the realm of privacy, 

and this joint hearing, which is the fifth in our series of hearings 

on the general topic of consumer privacy, will focus on the collection and use of location information about individual consumers. 


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Local base applications and services are springing up each day like 

wildfire. Yesterday there was Facebook and in the not too distant 

future we will be encountering something more akin to a placebook. 

Location-based services and the applications that ride on these 

services utilize a number of different tracking technologies which 

can make it easy to track the whereabouts of an estimated 100 million individuals around the world. By the year 2013, it is estimated 

that the precise whereabouts of over 800 million individuals will be 

readily discernible at any given moment in time. Of that amount, 

nearly 180 million of these users will be North Americans. Virtually all location-based services are currently offered to subscribers for free and are subsidized by advertisers. A majority of 

these services generate, emit or connect terrestrial and satellite 

wireless signals. They connect independently or at premapped 

points on a network. These signals can then hone in on and find 

a wireless’s wireless, handheld or low-wave device such as a cell 

phone or a GPS unit, and because these devices are typically always on our bodies or within arm’s reach, there is very little guesswork for inquiring advertisers and other curious subscribers to 

know or deduce where an individual is located or where their daily 

movements are likely to be. In fact, advertisers even know the 

identity of that individual with the growing trend of behavioral advertising and how it intersects with privacy considerations at our 

joint hearing which our two committees held in June 2009. 

To some extent, location-based services can be viewed as a subcategory of behavioral tracking in that they can quickly and cheaply, I might add, tell advertisers more than contextual advertising 

ever could about someone’s preference, their habits and their patterns. Location-based services are in actuality inherently more 

invasive and threatening to consumer welfare and perhaps even 

more challenging to consumer privacy than behavioral advertising. 

Tracking a user’s movements through a virtual world of businessto-consumer Web sites is, I am sure everyone will agree, bad 

enough. Location-based services on the other hand up the ante by 

making an individual’s real-world location data accessible to intended and unintended recipients. 

In closing, let me state clearly for the record, and especially for 

those interested consumer groups, interested entities and government regulators who have been monitoring our series of hearings 

that with the information we will obtain from today’s hearing, we 

have now learned enough to take the next major step. As one of 

two co-chairs of these joint undertakings along with my friend, 

Congressman Boucher, on privacy, it is my intent that our next 

hearing on privacy will be a legislative hearing where we will discuss ‘‘the devil in the details’’ by commenting on a discussion draft 

of a comprehensive privacy bill. There is such a thing as TMI, and 

we need to stop gathering information now and get legislation on 

a privacy bill. 

In the coming days, I and my staff will be working closely with 

Mr. Boucher, Mr. Whitfield in Mr. Radanovich’s absence, Mr. 

Stearns and the minority staff to produce a draft of a bill, and I 

would like to thank each of our witnesses for your participation 

today and I look forward to hearing your testimony and to vigorously engage in our discussion today. I might again emphasize, I 


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really appreciate you taking the time out from your busy schedule 

to be with us here today to add your voices and your values and 

your expertise to this process. 

We will now recognize now Mr. Whitfield for 5 minutes for the 

purposes of opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ED WHITFIELD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having 

this hearing on the collection and use of location information for 

commercial purposes. We certainly appreciate the panel for being 

here and giving us this expertise on this important subject. 

Through the use of technologies including GPS, triangulation of 

cell phone positioning information or user-entered data, consumers 

now have access to what I call convenient information. Whether it 

is finding the nearest local restaurant in an unfamiliar city, navigating cars to intended designations or the knowledge that a first 

responder can find us by our GPS location if we are ever in trouble, 

many consumers find they can no longer live without these apps, 

as they are called. This new technology raises legitimate concerns 

about privacy. Obviously most people know that the application 

they download specifically for its location features will communicate that information for application functionality. What isn’t as 

clear is how the data will be used, whether notice to the consumer 

is clear and whether user controls over the personal data are adequate. In addition to first-person privacy concerns, there are also 

privacy concerns for second persons, the people who may not use 

a service directly but who may be touched by a service by virtue 

of someone else’s use, just as counterparties to phone calls or emails may find their identity revealed without their consent. For 

example, if someone forwards an e-mail to another person, so too 

can one’s privacy location information be revealed if the user of the 

location-based social networking application shares that information. 

Similarly, special situations arise in the employer-employee relationship. We can agree that there are benefits to a delivery service 

improving its delivery efficiency by using location tracking and positioning. The question is, what rights do the employees have and 

what policy does the employer communicate about its use of this 

technology. In one example last August, a New York City employee 

was terminated after the GPS on his city-provided phone revealed 

that he had been at home before his shift ended on 83 occasions 

according to an article in the New York Post. While this may have 

been justified, the fear of a Big Brother surveillance environment 

has clearly arrived and merits a serious discussion. 

Another issue I might add that merits discussion concerns uniformity, in my view. Wireless carriers are generally prohibited from 

using location-based information for commercial purposes. However, application providers are not subject to this requirement. So 

I think that is an issue we also need to be focused on. 

There are many questions raised by these technologies and how 

consumers interact with them. Most of these beneficial services 

were developed in the absence of legal mandates, and our top priVerDate Mar 15 2010 09:09 Nov 08, 2012 Jkt 076010 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A010.XXX A010

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ority must be maintaining the appropriate balance between an environment that does not impede innovation but that does ensure 

consumers are fully aware of the information they trade for the use 

of these services. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Whitfield follows:] 


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Statement of the Honorable Ed Whitfield 

Joint Subcommittee Hearing on Location Based Services 

February 24, 2010 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling today's hearing. It is a logical step in our path 

towards forming a basis for addressing today's pressing privacy issues and I commend 

you for holding this timely hearing. 

For nearly a decade, location based services have held out the tantalizing promise of 

benefits to consumers ranging from instant coupons delivered to their cell phones to 

emergency services that help save their lives. A decade later, thanks in part to more cost 

efficient developments, consumers are finally realizing many of the promises of being 

"connected" whenever and wherever they want through the use of smart phones and 

wireless personal digital assistants. 

Through the use of technologies including GPS, triangulation of eell phone positioning 

information, or user-entered data, consumers now have access to real time mapping 

services and social networks based on their immediate location. Unfortunately, like many 

technologies, the potential ramifications of using these services may be preceding the 

knowledge of its users. It therefore deserves our attention, particularly with regards to 

privacy issues. 

The benefits of these technologies cannot be denied: information at our fingertips makes 

our lives easier and often safer, whether it is finding the nearest local restaurant in an 

unfamiliar city, navigating your car to its intended destination, or the knowledge that a 

first responder can find us by our GPS location if we are ever in trouble. Many 

consumers find they can no longer live without these "apps." 

But just as there are concerns about the government possessing or gaining access to 

personal data about us in other contexts, similar, legitimate concerns also exist about 

private companies possessing or gaining access to our location data. Depending on how 

location data is used, there is certainly an argument such data could be considered 

"sensitive" information. The same concerns that have been expressed regarding the use 

ofInternet behavior information to direct targeted adverting apply in this context: how 

will the information be used by the company gathering it, what does the consumer know 

about that information use, and did the consumer consent to the use or sharing of that 

information? 

Obviously most people know the application they download specifically for its location 

features will need to communicate that information for application functionality. What 

isn't as clear is how the data will be used, whether notice to the consumer is clear, and 

whether user-controls over the personal data are adequate. 

In addition to first person privacy concerns, there are also privacy concerns for secondpersons - the people that may not use a service directly but who may be touched by a 

service by virtue of someone else's use. Just as counterparties to phone calls or emails 
6 


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may find their identity revealed without their consent (for example, if someone forwards 

an email to another person), so too can one's private location information be revealed if 

the user of a location-based social networking application shares that information. For 

example, if! visit Chainnan Rush's home, I can post my location and attach his name. In 

doing so, I will share information the Chairman might rather keep private and he has no 

control over that use of his information. 

Similarly, special situation arise in the employer-employee relationship. We can agree 

there are benefits to a delivery service improving its delivery efficiency by using location 

tracking and positioning. The question is what rights do the employees have and what 

policy does the employer communicate about its use of the technology? In one example, 

last August, a New York City employee was terminated after the GPS on his cityprovided phone revealed that he'd been at home before his shift ended on 83 occasions, 

according to the New York Post. While this may have been justified, the fear of a big 

brother surveillance environment has clearly arrived and merits serious discussion. 

There are many questions raised by these technologies and how consumers interact with 

them. We need to delve further into theses issues to fully understand the implications and 

whether the market can address the issues on its own. Most of these beneficial services 

were developed in the absence of legal mandates, and our top priority must be 

maintaining the fine balance between an environment that does not impede iunovation 

but that ensures consumers arc fully aware of the information they trade for the usc of 

these services. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 
7 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California, 

Ms. Matsui, for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DORIS O. MATSUI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and 

Chairman Boucher for calling today’s joint hearing. I would also 

like to thank our panelists for being with us this morning as we 

examine the collection of use of location-based commercial information. 

Today, millions of Americans rely on different location-based 

services and applications for a variety of activities including social 

networking and navigation and mapping services, among many 

others. As both broadband expansion and the use of mobile devices 

continue to grow among consumers, the industry that provides location-based services and applications will only increase. In fact, 

according to one estimate, the use of these services and applications are expected to reach more than 80 million new users in 

North America alone over the next 3 years. As we all know, in today’s economy information is everything to everyone, and as we 

know, mobile devices are everything to millions of consumers storing in many cases very personal information or even providing 

their physical location. 

With ever-increasing technologies and applications emerging, it 

is essential that we properly protect the private and personal information of consumers. Simply put, privacy policies and disclosures 

should be clear and transparent. We should also understand the 

scope of information that is being collected, what it is used for, the 

length of time it is retained and its security. The more information 

that consumers have, the better. Ultimately, meaningful privacy 

safeguards should be in place while ensuring that we don’t stifle 

innovation. 

I thank both the chairmen for holding this important hearing 

today and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, 

Mr. Stearns, for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CLIFF STEARNS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Mr. STEARNS. Good morning, and let me welcome the witnesses 

and thank you, Mr. Rush and Mr. Boucher, the chair on the 

Telecom Committee, for having this hearing. 

As technology continues to advance, obviously new issues surrounding consumer privacy will continue to confront us. My main 

concern continues to be protecting the privacy of American consumers without of course stifling innovation that is so critical to 

growing our economy, particularly now, and keeping America globally competitive. 

Today’s hearing focuses on the use of location-based services and 

applications which collect and use location data that allows a consumer to communicate, socialize, travel, play, dine and shop at 

great convenience than ever before. Location-based service technology is relatively new and as such it is important to examine the 


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privacy concerns that go along with this new technology. Locationbased services present both an opportunity and a potential for all 

consumers. On the one hand, consumers could receive relevant information about commercial, educational and social opportunities 

just simply based upon their location, but on the other hand, consumer privacy could be undermined if multiple entities have access 

to a consumer’s location and online activities. 

So in order to maximize the consumer benefit of location-based 

services, the privacy policies of such services need to be transparent and provide a consumer with informed choice regarding 

whether to permit access to his or her location-based information. 

That is critical. In addition, we need to ensure that consumers are 

not lulled into a false sense of security regarding the privacy of 

their location-based information. Now, under section 222(f) of the 

Communications Act, wireless carriers are generally prohibited 

from using location-based information for commercial purposes 

without the express prior consent of the consumer. However, application providers are subject to no such requirement even though 

their applications are being downloaded on the devices of wireless 

carriers. This may falsely lead to consumers to the conclusion that 

application providers are subject to the same prohibitions as wireless carriers and that no action by consumers is necessary to ensure that their privacy is protected. 

I hope our witnesses can address this very important issue but 

it seems to represent a gap in my mind in consumer privacy protection. So clear and transparent policies should be standard in regard 

to location-based services and applications. Real transparency 

should include a robust disclosure and notice to the consumer outside the privacy policy. These notices and disclosures must be presented in a clear and conspicuous manner so that the consumer 

knows first that information is being collected, second, how the information is being used, and third, what it is being used for, and 

possibly fourth, how to prevent the collection of this information. 

Small businesses and consumers may greatly benefit from the 

delivery of location-based technology. I mean, for example, imagine 

that you are in a city and you have a desire to have Chinese food. 

Location-based application could give you some help right away 

and point you in the right direction to get it. It is a win-win situation. You get your Chinese food and the restaurant owner gets a 

customer that they may not otherwise have received. Conversely, 

if Congress makes it difficult for small businesses to reach or target potential consumers, small businesses could find it increasingly 

difficult to survive in the complex and constantly changing marketplace. If comprehensive privacy laws are to be developed by Congress, they must be competitively and technologically neutral and 

they must also be forward looking and adaptable. A proper regulatory framework will take into account the nature of rapidly 

changing technology. This is particularly true when it comes to a 

location-based technology that we are talking about today. Congress should not legislate in a way that is restrictive of technology 

development or that unfairly targets one industry over another. 

Although there are certain numerous privacy concerns that must 

be taken into account, we must also keep in mind the tremendous 

benefit from these technologies ultimately to all the consumers. 


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The reality is that location-based service technology is the wave of 

the future. As such, this committee has a duty, a responsibility to 

ensure that consumers are protected and free to benefit from these 

new technologies. 

Mr. Chairman, you and I have worked well in the past, Mr. Rush 

and I and Mr. Boucher, on a number of issues including privacy. 

Mr. Rush, you mentioned the idea of a privacy bill. I had met with 

Mr. Boucher, we talked, and I think Mr. Boucher has a draft bill. 

I understand that there is a possibility that we could get this draft 

bill. We have not seen it on this side. We urge you to give it to us. 

I think as a result of this hearing, we may have to look at ways 

to better inform consumers, as I mentioned earlier, on the locationbased applications and services with more transparency. As I previously stated, there seems to be a gap in consumer privacy protection between the regulation of wireless carriers and the application 

providers. I think this needs to be fixed. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Barrow, for 2 minutes. 

Mr. BARROW. I thank the Chair. I will waive an opening statement. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Florida, 

Ms. Castor, for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. KATHY CASTOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Chairman Rush and Chairman Boucher, 

for calling this hearing. 

Today’s hearing provides a unique opportunity to learn more 

about a technology that has a potential to impact our lives in profound ways. I am looking forward to the testimony of our witnesses 

very much. 

The mobile devices that we carry with us now, whether it is a 

basic cell phone or a smartphone like an iPhone or BlackBerry, are 

now practically indispensable to Americans. They are our lifelines 

in many respects. We rely on them to organize our day, keep in 

touch with our children and run our businesses, and the locationbased technologies are generating new ways of interacting, and I 

am very fond of the function when I am traveling out of town to 

be able—you know, it used to be that you would reach into the 

glove box, take out the map and try to figure out—have interesting 

discussions with your spouse about where you should have turned. 

Now you can hit the map function and it will show you, and I can 

find my way to the soccer tournament or the business meeting 

where I am going. 

So these location-based services are already very handy and they 

have the potential to help us with emergency services especially. 

They are enabling large companies and small to track their inventory, manage their workforce and do business more efficiently. A 

hundred million people already use these, but this is going to grow 

exponentially. 

Such rapid proliferation of a technology as promising as LBS is 

awe-inspiring and bewildering. On one hand, the economic and social benefits that could be generated are potentially endless, but on 


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the other hand, we need to protect consumer privacy, and the need 

to protect consumer privacy is greater than ever but the law has 

not kept pace with this increased need. We are at a crossroads with 

telecommunications legislation. The Communications Act of 1934 

requires phone companies to ask for permission before sharing consumer data including location information and companies are sharing best practices about how to protect sensitive information. Even 

so, we know that a large percentage of companies don’t yet have 

privacy policies to prevent the sharing of sensitive location data 

with marketers and other interested parties. There are no comprehensive rules to guide these companies or courts when dealing 

with location information privacy concerns. So any proposed legislation needs to strike that balance, the right balance to further 

spur and encourage innovation without encroaching upon the privacy rights of consumers. 

So thank you all, and I look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Illinois, 

Mr. Shimkus, for 2 minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You are hearing a lot 

of the same from a lot of members. Location-based services would 

be great, especially when you are in areas that you don’t know 

where things are. You can imagine traveling and being able to get 

to a place where you want to go, and I think a lot of people put 

the GPS in their baggage when they get a rental car, although a 

lot of rental cars have some of the applications now. 

As legislators, I just want to continue to allow the development 

of this technology, at the same time ensuring consumer information 

is protected, and I know that is in the best interest of the industry. 

I know it is in the best interests of our citizens. So I look forward 

to hearing the testimony and looking forward to make sure that 

that happens. Yield back. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, for 2 minutes. 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Mr. Chairman, back in 1999, I authored the privacy provisions 

that are now contained in section 222 of the Communications Act 

to safeguard the privacy of telecommunications customers and 

place new duties on telecommunications carriers to protect the confidentiality of proprietary information relating to other carriers, 

equipment makers and customers, and my law also included an 

opt-in, enabling customers to request the disclosure of their own 

personal telecommunications information to any person they may 

choose to designate but it would be their choice to opt in and so 

in that way I was trying to make sure that what you had in your 

hand was a telecommunications device and not a tracker, not something that could be used unless there was a warrant obtained by 

the police, you had given your permission for anyone to know what 

was going on with your device. And now what we have to do because of what has happened over the last 10 years is, we have to 

continue to update the laws just to make sure we fill in the gaps, 


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that we give people protection. You know, if you are leaving someplace and you are really planning on going to the New England Patriots-Jacksonville Jaguars game, no one should be able to track 

and see where you really went. If you went to the Patriots-Jaguars 

game, you know, it is none of their business. They shouldn’t be able 

to do it unless you gave them permission or there is a warrant out, 

you have been able to get legally obtained permission to get access 

to that information. That is my feeling. And if it inhibits the business plan of a few software or telecommunications companies, well, 

that is just tough luck. They have no right to know that. And so 

that is my view on it, always has been, and I just think that this 

makes it possible for people to know just where you are, what seat 

you are sitting in at the Patriots-Jaguars game, you know, right 

down the row, oh, there is he right there. ‘‘I thought you said that 

you were going to be out shopping this afternoon.’’ 

So this is a very important set of rules we have to put in place, 

and in fact, it will create all new industries that are down here. 

Mr. King and others are down here. There are whole companies 

that can crop up to give you the protection that you need as long 

as we mandate it, and innovation is out there where you get to use 

the device, have the information that you need, but it is not voluntary. We can’t make it voluntary because only some people will 

be protected because it will be dependent upon the good will of an 

individual company, individual application company as to whether 

or not you are voluntarily protected by them, and that is just not 

going to be good enough. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. RUSH. Thank you. The gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Scalise, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. STEVE SCALISE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA 

Mr. SCALISE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased that both 

subcommittees are once examining the balance between new technologies and privacy. 

We can all agree that our privacy is important and we should 

continue to balance them as technology advances and develops in 

ways that provide tremendous benefits to consumers and in ways 

that were previously never imagined. A great example of this is the 

emergence of location-based technologies. Whereas 10 years ago 

many people did not even have cell phones, we can now use our 

mobile devices to find the closest restaurant or pull up directions 

to a destination, and in many cases, a message or coupon might be 

sent to us from the restaurant close by or for the destination we 

are trying to reach. These technologies and the applications that 

employ them are tremendous advancements and provide consumers 

with great benefits, not only convenience but also during instances 

when a person’s location is needed for law enforcement personnel 

or during an emergency situation. 

The technological advancements we are seeing today are impressive but as is most often the case, we are still learning about their 

capabilities and their implications. Even with these advancements, 

location-based technologies can also expose consumers to certain 


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risks such as having your location routinely tracked, which could 

lead to identity theft or stalking. As a father of two young children, 

I am also concerned about the effects these technologies could have 

on child safety. Therefore, we must continue to examine ways to 

ensure consumers don’t have their personal information or safety 

compromised. 

I look forward to hearing from our panelists today on what steps 

they are taking and what steps they think are needed to ensure 

that consumer protection and personal safety are not compromised. 

I also hope our panelists discuss what information is being collected on consumers and what is being done with that data and 

whether consumers even know their information is being collected. 

As I have stated before, the technology industry is one of the most 

advanced and competitive industries in our country. It is also one 

of the most beneficial both for consumers and for the economy. It 

is worth pointing out that the industry has evolved and grown on 

its own with little regulation from the federal government, some 

would say. Therefore, I hope we proceed carefully when stepping in 

or when drafting legislation in this area. 

I hope today’s hearing focuses on how we can protect consumers 

and their safety and what steps the industry will take or has already taken to do so. If self-regulation is not sufficient and privacy 

regulations move forward, they should be consistent across the industry and not be greater for one technology compared to another. 

Everyone involved should have to play by the same set of rules, 

and Congress should not pick winners or losers. 

Again, I look forward to hearing the comments of our panelists 

today, particularly on self-regulation and whether parity is needed 

in the industry. It is important that we understand their positions 

and activities as well as all the implications of these popular technologies. 

Thank you, and I yield back. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms. Eshoo, for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ANNA G. ESHOO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Ms. ESHOO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to Chairman Boucher as well for convening this joint subcommittee hearing on the 

growing use of location-based technology and its implications on 

personal privacy. I support the continued effort to balance the 

needs of both promoting innovation and protecting the personal information of customers. 

I have long advocated the use of location-based technology as a 

public safety tool. In fact, I am the author of the E911 legislation, 

so I can tell you that this technology is critical to first responders 

and to law enforcement. When they locate our citizens in distress 

by using geographical information, they literally can save thousands of lives, and they have. 

So the use of this technology, however, has expanded beyond 

public safety and it is now widely used by consumers to complete 

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tion. So it is highly useful, very practical and we all use it. But it 

is also our job to look after the bests interests of the American people, so we have to ensure that the location of users is protected 

against any misuse from both corporate and government interests. 

I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and I would like to 

especially welcome Anne Collier, who is with ConnectSafely, which 

is co-headquartered in Palo Alto, California, which is the heart of 

my district. So thank you to both of our chairmen and I look forward to hearing from the witnesses. Thank you. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LEE TERRY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEBRASKA 

Mr. TERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important 

hearing. 

I agree with the necessity for balance. We should be examining 

these serious privacy concerns raised from the collection of location 

information going on today, but I believe that we must consider the 

great benefits these location-based services can provide our first responders in case of an emergency. 

A colleague of ours, a good friend of mine, Todd Tiahrt from Kansas, has recently brought to my attention an issue that not only coincides with our topic of discussion today but an issue I believe 

must be addressed in any such discussion involving location information. On June 2, 2007, 18-year-old Kelsey Smith was abducted 

from a Target parking lot in Overland Park, Kansas. Law enforcement was quickly notified and they subsequently called her wireless provider to obtain Kelsey’s ping data, or call information. They 

were denied. On June 6, 2007, 4 days after she had disappeared, 

Kelsey’s body was found. She had been raped and murdered. Authorities had used the ping information to determine where her cell 

phone had traveled after 4 days of begging and pleading, so the 

time that they were able to ping, within 45 minutes after that 

found her dead. Law enforcement found her body. 

Now, current law states that a telecommunications carrier may 

give call location information out to emergency service providers. 

However, telecom carriers are not required to give this information 

out to authorities and oftentimes telecom carriers are hesitant to 

provide the information due to potential liability. I believe it is 

time that we require telecom service providers to provide location 

or ping information when asked by law enforcement during cases 

of emergencies. I encourage my colleagues to look at Mr. Tiahrt’s 

bill, join Mr. Rogers and me, and I think we are going to have discussion about this specific case and its implications. 

Thank you for this opportunity. Yield back. 

Mr. RUSH. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Buyer, is recognized 

for 2 minutes. 

Mr. BUYER. I reserve my time for questioning. Thank you. 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair thanks the gentleman. It is now my pleasure and honor to introduce our witnesses. We have six witnesses 

before us today, and I will introduce them beginning on my left. 

Mr. John B. Morris, Jr. is the general counsel for the Center for 

Democracy and Technology. Seated next to him is Ms. Lorrie 


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Cranor. She is an associate professor of computer science and engineering and public policy at the Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. 

Jerry King is the chief operating officer for a company called 

uLocate Communications Incorporated. Seated next to Mr. King is 

Mr. Tony Bernard. He is the vice president and the general manager of a corporation called Useful Networks. And next to Mr. Bernard is the senior vice president and general counsel for the CTIA– 

The Wireless Association. And last but not least, Ms. Anne Collier, 

who is with the organization ConnectSafely. Again, I want to welcome each and every one of you for appearing before us today, and 

I must note to you that it is the practice of this subcommittee to 

swear in witnesses. So I would like if you would please stand and 

raise your right hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. RUSH. Let the record indicate and reflect that all the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. 

Now I will recognize each one of the witnesses for 5 minutes. I 

want to note that our timer is technically incapacitated this morning so we are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. We are 

going to have to guess. So each one of you are recognized for 5 minutes or thereabouts. So beginning with you, Mr. Morris, please, 

your opening statement. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN B. MORRIS, JR., GENERAL COUNSEL, 

CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY; LORRIE 

CRANOR, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND 

ENGINEERING AND PUBLIC POLICY, CARNEGIE MELLON 

UNIVERSITY; JERRY KING, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 

ULOCATE COMMUNICATIONS, INC.; TONY BERNARD, VICE 

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, USEFUL NETWORKS; 

MICHAEL ALTSCHUL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CTIA—THE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION; AND 

ANNE COLLIER, CONNECTSAFELY 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN B. MORRIS, JR. 

Mr. MORRIS. Thank you very much, and thankfully, I was able 

to download an app yesterday onto my smartphone that is a 5- 

minute countdown timer, so I at least will be able to be on time. 

Chairman Rush and members of the subcommittee, thank you 

very much for inviting us to testify on behalf of the Center for Democracy and Technology. We applaud the leadership of the subcommittee for examining the rapidly evolving area of commercial 

location-based services. We look forward to discussing the promises 

and the privacy risks of these services. 

Over the past 18 months, location services have truly arrived in 

the online environment as more and more devices can obtain increasingly accurate information. Location has come to permeate the 

online experience and we are seeing an amazing array of new and 

innovative location-based products and services. But the easy availability of location information also raises a host of privacy concerns. Location can reveal very privacy information and can even 

put users at physical risk. Mobile location can reveal, often without 

user interaction, where a person is and what they are doing. It can 

reveal visits to potentially sensitive destinations like medical clinVerDate Mar 15 2010 09:09 Nov 08, 2012 Jkt 076010 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A010.XXX A010

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ics, courts, political rallies or, as I learned today, even New England Patriot games. And sadly, we have already seen location services abused in domestic violence cases. 

Unfortunately, the legal standards for the protection of location 

information are woefully inadequate. Location technology simply 

has outpaced the existing statutory protections that Congressman 

Markey talked about, and they are inadequate both in the commercial context as well as with regard to standards for law enforcement access to location information. Congress must act to strengthen statutory protection of location, not only for the sake of protecting privacy but also to protect and to promote innovation in online services. Clear privacy rules are a prerequisite to the growth 

and success of this valuable part of our industry. 

My written testimony describes several technical methods to determine location of a mobile device, but let me just highlight one 

critical fact. In the old days, say, 3 or 4 years ago, most location 

determinations involved a cellular carrier that provides the phone 

service to the device being located. But in the past few years that 

has all changed. While carriers are continuing to offer innovative 

location services, many other service providers also offer location 

service and they can do so wholly without the cooperation or even 

the knowledge of the cellular carrier. For example, Skyhook Wireless offers a service that can locate this device in this room based 

solely on the WiFi access points that are visible in this room, and 

through wireless Internet access, my device can send my location 

to any Web site or service on the Internet. Thus, anyone from 

mom-and-pop Web sites to Starbucks can offer location-based services wholly without the involvement of a cellular carrier. All a Web 

site really needs to do is to add a small portion of JavaScript code 

onto the Web site and they can enable location services on their 

Web site, which brings me back to the legal standards to protect 

the privacy of location information. 

As Congressman Markey noted, commendably, Congress enacted 

the CPNI rules to protect customer proprietary network information and included location information. But as has been noted a 

number of times in your opening statements, those CPNI rules only 

apply to telecommunications carriers offering voice services, and 

today many of the new and innovative location services operate 

completely outside of the reach of the CPNI rules. And unfortunately, without a statutory mandate to protect location information, some location service providers have been slow to do so. Some 

in the industry are very closely attentive to privacy but others are 

not. 

CDT believes that Congress can help protect location privacy in 

at least two ways. First, as Congress contemplates enacting baseline consumer privacy legislation, as has been discussed, we believe 

that location data should definitely be included as part of the 

broader framework governing sensitive user data. And second, and 

of relevance even to the Commerce Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee, whose room we are borrowing today, we believe 

it is vital for Congress to improve the standards for location access 

by government and law enforcement agencies. By clarifying the 

standard, there is an ongoing battle right now in courts about what 

the appropriate standard is for law enforcement access, and by 


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clarifying the standard, we can address some of the concerns that 

carriers have about access. 

So all of these points were made in more detail in my written 

testimony and I hope to be able to answer any questions you might 

have about these issues. Thank you very much for the opportunity 

to testify. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Morris follows:] 


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Washington, DC :<:000(, 

Statement of John B. Morris, Jr. 

General Counsel, and Director of COT's Internet Standards, 

Technology & Policy Project 

Center for Democracy & Technology 

before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. 

Subcommittee on Commerce. Trade, and Consumer Protection and 

Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet 

THE PRIVACY IMPLICATIONS OF COMMERCIAllOCATION-BASEO SERVICES 

February 24, 2010 

Chairman Rush, Chairman Boucher, and Members of the Subcommittees: 

On behalf of the Center for DemOCrflCV for the 

opportunity to testify today, We and foresight in 

examining the area commercial location-based services. and we 

appreciate the to address the privacy implications of what is one of the 

fastest areas of online innovation, As a note of introduction, I am an attorney 

and serve as General Counsel, but I also have a technical and I 

direct CDT's Internet Standards, Technology & Policy Project. This seeks to 

address the fact that the work of technical standards bodies such as the Internet 

Engineering Task Force (IETF) often has important impact on civil liberties and other 

policy concerns, In I have been involved for the with the 

IETF's efforts to and the privacy of location In!r>rmRtirm 

author of four IETF standards addressing location privacy, I 

The Promise and Risks of location-Aware Technologies 

The widespread consumer adoption of 

spawned the Internet's next oe,nel'ation 

am)licaticms As the of 

cal'CUlaTinn and 

part of the online AXl)'''IAnCA 

market for U,S, companies, 

r1l0!h-l)m~el'ed mobile devices has 
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The availability of location information the 

from uses that 

For example. in Washington, D.C., use a customized version 

Google Earth that displays the real"time location of fire in the city, In its first 

of use, this software has reportedly saved the city $3 million, At the same time, 

of users rely on location technology to them to the closest coffee shop or to help 

them navigate through unfamiliar nAi(1r,hn,rh(,,)(j~ 

But the easy of location information also raises several different kinds of 

privacy concerns. The of 'Big Brother" the has long been 

a concern for many in this country. location 

information on a mass scale is ripe for location services can reveal private 

information and even put users at physical risk. is 

subject to neither commercial nor government misuse - is instead transmitted and 

accessed in a way - is essential to the long"term success of location" 

based applications services. 

Location dala comes in a of forms and these forms vary in Web 

programs, which a Web site's tratlic, have long the facl that 

can be roughly correlated to metropolitan areas to calculate the 

~nn"w"'nA"" locations from which Web site visitors access individual sites. But as 

tec:nrlolc)ov has developed, it has become possible to determine the near"exact location 

device users, While this has existed for some years within 

recently that the of location"based technologies and 

every new device in ways and an oc 

Annli()~ti()n~ devr,looel's inN1IC(1nrAlinn location"based features their products, 

and the other smartphones on the 

of millions of users are all now easily as are users of 

as Mozilla's Firefox the second"most popular Web browser' - has 

become location"enabled.' 

The collectlon and use of fixed device location (such as home or business addresses) 

has obvious privacy implications. However, 

from the collection of "mobile location data," 

individual or his or her device in real or near"real time. In this testimony, we focus on 

the risks raised by the increasing collection and use of mobile location data, 

See CNBC, CNBC Origrnai.i.nslde the Mind of Google (Dec. 3. 2009), 

J As of January 2010. Firefox had over 250 million users. See Erick Schonfeld, Where Did Internet 

TechCrunch.com (Feb 2010). hhJi,"""rh;iLrml;;itOrXi;LlliiLQil,O;:'!m!:?ILmj 

Y'" iIII ...... '''~ www.cdt.org 
19 


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Because individuals often carry their mobile devices with them, location data may be 

collected everywhere and at any time, often without user interaction, and it may describe 

both what a person is doing and where he or she is doing it It can reveal visits to 

potentially sensitive destinations, like medical clinics, courts, political rallies, and union 

meetings. The ubiquity of location inlormation has also increased the risks of stalking 

and domestic violence as are able to use (or abuse) loc:atlon·-b21~A(j 

services to gain access to information about their victims. And, as an 

number 01 minors carry location-capable cell phones and devices, location 

become a child salety matter as well. 

protection also creates 

risks for the very COll1o,anIA~ 

fellow witness, Professor 

on location services. As my 

in far detail. research shows 

that people value their location their location with 

strangers with 

information. At the 

want granular control over location 

location-based services stand to be more successful 

if there is a framework of privacy users confidence that their information will be 

protected, 

The sensitivity of location information 

and alike, As location inf,orn1~finn 

and law must develop in ways 

location privacy, believes that Congress can help to protect 

ways: 

www.cdt,org 

location inlormation in a commercial context must only 

informed, opt-in consent in which a user has the ability to 

to trusted As Congress contemplates 

such a requirement should be 

sensitive user data, 

The standards for government and law enlorcement access to location 

information must be amended to make clear that a probable cause warrant is 

required for the government to obtain location inlormation. 
20 


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Understanding Location-Aware Technologies 

The location of mobile devices can be determined through a 

Some of these technologies require the participation of an 

while others work without the involvement or even knowledge of a !81'oG!)mllllln"'''TIOn;s 

company, there are a number of variations, the most significant 

determination can be grouped into the following six cAi,,,nori,qs' 

Carrier-controlled or -involved location technologies; 

1, C_e,UJow§X:cQ@§_Q,g>J"iJ!lltiQllii: Among the oldest forms of mobile 

location determination are calculations based on the location of cell towers and 

the Signals received by the carrier at one or more towers, In its simplest form, if 

two or three cell towers can detect a mobile device at the same time, the carrier 

"I<HlLIU""e from the towers to determine the location of the 

needed, make calculations on the and 

signal as received at a single toweL This type location 

determination not hardware or power in the 

handset The precision is relatively low, on order of 

hundreds or thousands of meters, and is dependent upon the density of cell 

towers in the vicinity of the handset 

from the Global Positioning System (GPS) 

its own location, and can transmit it \0 the 

precision locations (on the order of meters or t~5 

of meters), In calls, mobile handsets in the U,S, ar to transmit GPS it is available) whenever 911 call is 

(and handsets can be to transmit GPS data to the carrier when 

other telephone calls are placed), this context, one of the handset (the 

cellular voice requests the location from the in the handset, 

the on to the cellular carriers, One of GPS·based 

nn~",r;n"'" is that it can take 30 seconds or more (sometimes much more) for the 

chip to make an initial location determination, 

To address the potential slowness of GPS Moitir;ninn 

jAchnr)ir)()V was developed, both 

location tRc:hnoi()ol<)S a number of methods, 

cell, tower based to significantly up the initial location 

determination while taking advantage of the precision of GPS, 

Location technologies independent of carriers; 

4, 'tiiEi<i1'lli!pase 100lslli2: The location of WiFi·capable devices (including 

all laptops and smartphones) can be determined using a database to 

WiFi access points in the vicinity of the device, Both Google 

have developed databases of access points and their 
21 


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locations. When an (such as Web browser or location-aware 

needs the of the device, it sends a query to (for example) a 

database, and Google returns the location based on nearby WiFi access 

This lookup takes place without the involvement or even 

kn'''M'''~lnA of any carrier used by the device (and indeed, using this 

devices that have no cellular capabilities can be 

5. This approach is similar to a WiFi 

database except that the is to a database of cellular tower 

locations. its WiFi access point has amassed a 

database of the locations of cell towers. When a device accessing the Internet 

over a cellular data network, it can send a query to Google containing the cell 

tower 10 that the device is connected to, and Google is able to return an 

approximate location. As with WiFi database lookups, this approach does not 

need the involvement of any carrier, even locations are determined based 

on the locations of the carrier's cell towers. 

Web browsers such as Firefox 

running on a device can receive location information 

a GPS chip in the device, without any involvement or knowledge 01 a 

carrier. The GPS information can in turn be sent to anyone on the Internet 

through the mobile data connection. And, because mobile Web browsers can 

connect to any Web site on the Internet, any Web page can include code that 

requests the user's location from the device. 

can take advantage of all six of these location determination 

and most new wireless devices including cell phones, smart enetbooks, and even the new iPad have at least one 

capabilities usually two or more). Moreover, as GPS and WiFi CaIJat)ilil!ies 

been built into an number of these devices, location has become 

www.cdt.org 
22 


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gatekeepers of locetion information -

a cell phone user's location was within a carrier's netw, 

sent the to the carrier's service antennas (as described as 

above). As discussed more fully below, laws to 

users' location information were focused on the role of the carrier 

offered a baseline of protection for how carrier could share and use that information. 

But location information is now collected by a much broader spectrum of companies. 

Consider the example of Yelp. service used to find and rate businesses located near 

the someone to find out "how 

day?"). consumer who uses the Yelp anonr,ation 

Touch provides her location information to entirely inrilpoRnr;Arltiv 

carrier the iPod Touch is not a cellular device, and only has 

Moreover, the range of companies that have access to location data is not 

limited to telecommunications carriers. providers like Skyhook Wireless, 

application developers, or Web sites. From the user the number of possible 

uses for location data is ever-growing and the of companies handling location 

information is continuously as well: handset vendors. 

vendors, advertisers, networks. and analytics may 

access to precise, sensitive information about where users are located. 

Existing legal Standards For Access to and Protection of location Information Are 

Woefully Inadequate 

i1as in the past 

information, the '?>r'hn"Ir,,,,, 

both regarding use of in the commercial context. as well as protection of location 

from unwarranted government access. Clear 

requisite to the growth and success of new services. 

Although the focus of this heering is on commercial use of location information, it is 

important to look at the inadequacy of protection in both the commercial and 

governmental contexts. Users want a level of around their location 

with respect to commercial entities but they also seek privacy vis-it-vis the 
23 


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and facilitate innovation and market acceptance of 

10c:a!lon-bE'se,d services the commercial context, it is important that Congress also act 

to protect location information in the law enforcement investigative context as welL 

Thus, before the legal standards governing commercial use of location, we 

briefly address the in the government context 

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Should be Updated to Protect location 

Information from Inappropriate Disclosure to Government 

A lack of clear rules about law enforcement access to location information held by 

has left location technology without sound legal footing, While the 

Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) indicates what the 

standard for law enforcement access to location information is no/' no statute indicates 

what the standard law enforcement access is, CALEA provides that a pen register or 

trap and trace cannot be used to obtain location information, but that statute is 

silent on what the standard should be.' i There is a federal statute on tracking devices, 

but it does not the standard that law enforcement must meet in order to place 

such a device, Finally, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), '9 while it 

scale of authority for governmental access to information relating to 

mmrnll"icetif1n< from mere subpoena to warrant), does not specify what 

information, 

This has resulted in a mish-mash of confused decisions while courts struggle to find and 

apply a legal standard, It has led to sometimes arbitrary distinctions based on whether 

location information is in real time or from the degree of precision in the 

the period(s) during information sought, 

to generate the location information, Some have 

adopted a advanced by the Department of Justice, holding that location 

information accessible to government in real time if it meets the standard for 

transactional information in Section 2703(d) of the Stored Communications Act But a 

plurality of courts have required a higher level of cause - for law 

enforcement access to this location Just this month, the 

federal court of appeals in heard oral argument on the question of what 

16 A pen and trace order permits law enforcement to obtain transactionaL non~content 

information and electronic communications in real time, numbers dialed on a cellular 

telephone and telephone numbers of calls coming into a cell phone U.S.C. §§ 3121~3127 

" 47 U.S.C, § 1002(a)(2). 

'8 18 U S.C. § 3117. 

18 U.S.C, §§ 2510 et seq. 

In of US. for an Order for Disclosure of Telecommunications Records and 

the Pen Register and Trap and Trace, 405 F. Supp. 2d 435 (SD.NY 2005) 

21 The SeA, part at the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701 et seq. 

www.cdt.org 

for Pen Register and Trap/Trace Device with Ceil Site Location Authority. 396 

2005) 
24 


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standard should to stored location data, the first but probably not the last case to 

present that issue at appellate level, 

Uncertainty about the privacy afforded to location information eQuid restrain consumer 

adoption of location-based services, Congress enacted ECPA in 1986 to foster new 

communications by users confidence that their privacy would be 

respected, ECPA growth of the Internet and monumentally 

to the U,S, Now, technology is ahead, but the law is 

unveil those 

clarity and 

information, 

COT - the Privacy Working Group 

advocates and 

to update We plan to 

in the coming weeks, one that, adopted, would bring 

to the law governing law enforcement access to location 

Statutory Protection of location Information in the Commercial Context is Also Inadequate 

Just as technology has bypassed ECPA and other statutes on government access to 

information, technology has also bypassed statutes intended to protect location privacy 

in the commercial context Foremost these statutes are the CPNI rules, 

"customer network location, Although the 

CPNI Rules 

and less relevant, 

protection for location 

Starting with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, with SI"DS'",llJern 

Congress has a telecommunications carrier from 

"information relates to the '" location, ' [of] 

carrier that is made available to the carrier by customer solely by virtue of the 

carrier-customer relationship" in emergency contexts or "as required 

with the approval of the customer, this minimal standard, 

carriers from releasing location information on a solely discretionary 

In of modern location tec:hnoloav, 

statute and resulting 

First, the CPNI rules to the most innovative and 

UUlueUlllliU types of applications, and services, The 

rules not cover any of the "location technologies independent of 

carriers" described above as technologies 4 6, because there is no 

telecommunications carrier involved in the location or locationbased service, The WiFi-only iPod Touch example described above starkly 

Data Hits Appeals Court," Center tor 
25 


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illustrates the limits of the CPNI rules, but even when location data is 

transmitted over a cellular network, the carrier is not directly 

involved in the location transaction, When an iPhone or user installs 

a location-based the location data transmitted by the 

service is to the telecommunications carrier over which 

service is The CPNI rules simply do not reach the location 

transaction, 

Second, even when a telecommunications carrier is involved in providing a 

location based service, it not be covered by the CPNI rules because the 

FCC has removed wireless service from Title 1\ of the 

Communications Act (to which the CPNI rules and deregulated it 

When the Commission issued its Wireless Order," Commissioner 

Copps explained the effect of the Order on the protection of location 

information under the CPNI rules: 

a cutting-edge device like 

allows a user to communicate Wi-Fi technology as 

well as traditional CMRS [Commercial Mobile Radio Service] service, 

Under our a consumer who uses the CMRS features of the 

device to a phone call can be secure in the knowledge that our Title 

II CPNI rules require the carrier to his or her call and location 

information, But what about when very same consumer uses that 

very same device just moments later to send an email via Wi-FL to call up 

a of his or her location via a browser, or even to place a VolP call to 

Internet user? Because those services-which the customer can 

be excused for identical to the CMRS call-are 

now classified as Title 

In light of the Wireless Broadband Order, as Commissioner Copps explained, 

it appears quite possible that even carrier-provided location based services 

that run over the wireless data network are not by the CPNI rules, 

Although Congress and then the FCC did CPNI rules to cover IPenabled "interconnected" VolP services, that still extends to 

under Title II, At best, application of rules to 

carriE>r-,lfovided loc:ation-b,ls6,d data services is a murky question: at worst, 

the rules provide no protection whatsoever. 

When first enacted almost 15 

provided important protections 

Treatment for Broadband Access to the Internet Over Wireless Networks, 

No, FCC 07-30, 2, (reI, Mar. 23, 2007), 

("Wire!ess Broadband Order") 

?' See 47 CFR. § 64.2001, ef seq 
26 


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that time voice, Now that our society is away from voice and to data, and our 

online interactions a far more robust into our personal lives, the 

protections the CPNI rules have been left behind, 

Federal Trade Commission Act and State Attorneys General 

the Federal Trade Commission is empowered to 

trade practices, Under this broad authority, the FTC has 

DfElCed"ints about what constitutes a or unfair 

to 

The FTC has a strong track record of bad actors engaged in egregiously 

deceptive or unfair practices - the in the area provide good 

examples, However, the FTC has been to use its jurisdiction to 

address practices, and it lacks several important tools - including 

authority penalty that are necessary for the agency to 

consumers from those related to location 

privacy, In absence of a baseline privacy law that the FTC the tools it 

needs and establishes it as the lead law enforcement 

consumer protections in the location privacy space will 

State Attorneys General also have consumer 

pursue service providers that do not live to 

other unfair or trade practices, 

at the state level to privacy concerns, 

ECPA 

paid 

ECPA covers entities providing "remote services, defined as "the to 

the public of computer means of an 

communications may cover of location-based 

services. who location data from a user. process it, and deliver value-added 

results to the user. In the absence of consent, remote computing services are prohibited 

the contents of communications they receive. but only if the 

cornnmHlIC:'3m1nS are maintained "solely for the purpose of storage or 

n")~f)ssinn services to such subscriber or customer, if the provider not RlJrn~,n7An 

contents of any such communications for purposes of 

Of computing " That caveat, scope 

of the definition "remote " and the ease with which subscriber 

consent can be obtained as part of terms of service, render ECPA unresponsive to user 

concerns or, at the very least, leave consumers with the kind of ambiguity that 

little foundation for user confidence, 

FTC Act, 15 u.s C. §§ 41 
27 


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www,cdtorg 

11 

The Privacy Practices of Companies Collecting location are Uneven at Best and 

Inadequate at Worst 

statutory protection lor location information, it is perhaps not 

practices of companies collecting location, and the granularity 

in terms of the level of protection that they provide. 

COlmnlerldf,bh/. issued best practices to govern the 

and CTIA has indicated that it is committed to 

tp'<,hr)ol<Yl" evolves, However, the primary adherents to 

are carriers - which, as noted above, are far 

newest location-based services, and are already bound by the 

Because of the sensitivity of location information, the users of location-based services 

deserve a robust set of protections to the associated risks. The list 

of protections is long: is 

collected, offering robust user about when location can be collected, 

access to stored data (for showing maps of where the user has 

the ability to broadcast location, sending reminders to users that 

shared, de-identification techniques," 

information in and many others, Some of loc:alion-bf,sed 

services, such as loopt 

integrated these kinds into their products, 

consent mechanisms, but failed to incorporate more comprehensive user control 

Still others have failed to incorporate even the most basic of protections privacy 

policies. 

Weak privacy protections put users at risk in two 

about users may be retained long after the moment 

after the original location service has been provided. Whether the location is 

stored location providers like Wireless and Google, by the developers of 

Rnnli""tinnIS downloaded to the by location-aware Web sites, or by advertisers 

analytics companies, this data may be shared, sold, or to unpredictable uses far 

in the future, The second of risk derives from services share consumer location 

with acquaintances Of public at large. While lhese offer exciting 

new opportunities for Internet users, products built with defaults that not protect 

privacy may place the uninformed user in dangerous situations, 

"Best Practices and Guidelines tor Location·Based Services," 

traffic 

See Alissa Cooper, The Dawn of the Location~Enabled Web, Center for Democracy & Technology (Ju!y 6 

2009), 
28 


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locatlon-based products and services have not adequately 

companies that offer applications for mobile devices collect real-time 

data from their customers but offer no assurances for how that data will 

be protected: often their fail to detail how location data will be 

used, shared, or sold, the for a locationbased social networking service in users at 

locations and share these locations with friends through 

does not describe how the location information 'vW~"U'~'~ 

will be used, in fact it does not even 

'location," and is not accessible before or during the Rnnli"Rtinn 

other location-based services lack privacy 

alone offer little in the way of privacy protection, but 

'A'''A~,,,ok an important - and toward promoting 

accountability: a privacy it is to even begin to 

evaluate a company's practices 

Services that publish user locations to friends or to the world considerably 

with respect to the controls they offer. Two different offered by 

illustrate variation well, Google latitude, in February 2009, 

1J",,'~tirm_~""Q'A 8,oolicr,ticm that allows a user's cell phone location to be 

and shared with friends, Latitude was with 

privacy in mind, user's location information is shared on an opt-in and 

with friends the user has location logs are default delete 

users who have enabled receive em ails reminc.,,,,,,j 

them that the service is turned on, In contrast, Google's Buzz for Mobile, 

released just a few weeks ago (one alter Latitude), has proven to be a 

Buzz serves as a feed to which users can post 

articles, and similar updates, If the user has location services 

on his or mobile device, then every comment the user makes via 

Buzz Mobile by default includes his or her currenllocation, If a user hasn't taken 

steps to make a Buzz private then the comment is tossed into the public 

"buzzstrearn," anyone, anywhere in the world to track where the user is 

at eny given time, could use Buzz to check out who is out at the 

corner bar, 

Web site, oIE,as,grobme,com 

'13, 2009), 

See Leslie Buzz or Bust, The Huffington Post (Feb 

http://www huffingtonpostcomfleslie-haffisJbuzz~or-bust._b"_466i33.l1tm! 

wwwA:dt,org 

12 
29 


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announcements about location. The Web site provides a live feed of 

Twitter and other have publicly announced that they are 

As COT has noted in its recent submission to the FTC on privacy, notice, choice and 

security comprise an incomplete framework for Privacy in the 21" 

century must be grounded in the full set of Fair Practice principles, including 

individual access, data and accountability. In the absence of this 

comprehensive framework, many questions remain around the uses of location data 

and whether customers are tracked against their will. whether location data is 

being protected throughout its and whether the entities that handle location 

data are sensitive location data the respect it deserves in of minimizing data 

collection uses and maximizing transparency, and user control and 

consent. 

location controls to be better than 

tp.(,hnolo,olC:al controls on the Web. Unfortunately, the market has clearly 

nr(ltF!,otic(n, users need for their location data. 

Technical Standards Could Help Protect location Privacy, but the Mobile 

Applications Industry Has Been Reluctant to Adopt Such Standards 

COT has worked since 2001 within the Internet Engineering Task Force (lETF) - the 

leading technical standards Internet - on the development of a 

location privacy standard named One goal of Geopriv was to change the 

van Amstel, and Frank Groeneveld, Please Rob Me, 
30 


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www.cdt.org 

14 

historic reliance on 

specify the rules that 

policies set by service providers, and to allow users to 

govern use and retention of location information about the 

in a 2008 effort spearheaded by the leading browser vendors 

and a different standards body rejected the IETF approach 

instead opted to to leave it up to individual service providers to issue privacy 

governing location, This other body, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 

far more influence over "applications layer" services (including most location 

services) than does the IETF, When W3C declined to follow the standards set by the 

IETF, it instead developed its own location standard that urges developers to 

privacy, but includes no technical steps that would help force developers to do so, The 

W3C process is on and COT is working to improve the W3C standard, but it is 

very unlikely that will change course to adopt the more privacy-protected 

approach created by the IETF 

Although the W3C standard does have good language developers to protect 

the in the marketplace ranges widely, researcher at the University 

Nick Doty, has sought to identify Web sites that are 

implementing the standard, Of the sites he has been able to identify, 

about one-third of them have no whatsoever, and of the rest are 

of location 44 

This standards development issue is not one that Congress should directly seek to 

address - technical is best left in the hands of industry and standards 

bodies, not governments, the failure of the W3C member companies to tr' 

action to protect location privacy highlights the kinds of privacy gaps that res~ 

the to wholly dictate how (or lack thereof) 

~nnrn""iRt" response from Congress to pass baseline privacy 

legislation that protects sensitive information such as location, If the United 

States adopts strong requirements to protect location privacy, the technology community 

will respond with standards and products that meet the legal requirements, 

The Role of Congress 

COT believes that there are at least three 

privacy of location information, the first two 

action: 

measures needed to protect the 

which would benefit from Congressional 

location in/ormation in a commercial context must 

informed, opt-in consent in which a user has the 

location only to trusted parties, As Congress 

contemplates baseline consumer privacy legislation, such a requirement 

should be part of a broader framework governing sensitive user data, 

~3 See W3C Geolocatlon Working Group Overview . 

.:14 See Nick Doty. Who's USing the W3C Geo!ocation API?, 

Feb. 21, 2010) 
31 


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Second, the standards for government access to location information must be 

amended to make clear that a probable cause warrant is required for the 

government to obtain location information. 

Third, location-based services and applications should follow technical standards 

that give users clear control over the use of their location information and that 

require the transmittal of privacy rules with the location information itself. 

Conclusion 

CDT would like to thank the Subcommittees again for holding this important and forwardlooking hearing. We believe that Congress has a critical role to play in ensuring that 

privacy of location information is protected as location-based services increasingly 

become ubiquitous. CDT looks forward to working with the Members of both 

Subcommittees as they pursue these issues further. 

For more information, contact John Morris, l't'V'.C'O,' .. y','.'."'"" or Alissa Cooper. 

or at (202) 637-9800. 
32 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair recognizes Professor Cranor for 5 minutes 

for opening statement. 

TESTIMONY OF LORRIE CRANOR 

Ms. CRANOR. Chairmen Boucher and Rush, I thank you for the 

opportunity to testify today. My name is Lorrie Cranor. I am an associate professor of computer science and of engineering and public 

policy at Carnegie Mellon University. I have been asked to testify 

about privacy issues associated with the use of location information 

for commercial purposes. 

Location-based services use a variety of technologies to acquire 

a user’s location based on the current position of cell phone, computer or other device. These technologies typically use triangulation to locate the device based on signals from GPS satellites, cell 

towers or WiFi access points, often within a few hundred feet. Cellular providers can obtain location information of mobile phones in 

that manner even when the phones are not being used to place a 

call. The Internet address of a user’s computer can also be used to 

determine an approximate geographic location, typically at a city 

level. 

In April 2009, we conducted a survey at CMU to understand consumers’ perceptions of location-sharing services. We asked participants about the degree of harm or benefit they associated with 

each of 24 scenarios. Participants rated finding people in an emergency as the scenario with the most significant benefit. Other highly beneficial scenarios included being able to track one’s children 

and relatives, finding information based on one’s location, and 

checking to see if people are OK. On the risk side, participants had 

significant privacy concerns. They saw great harm in scenarios involving stalking or revealing one’s home address. They were also 

concerned about being found by people one wants to avoid or when 

one wants to be alone, having others intrude on one’s personal 

space and being tracked by the government, and also receiving location-based ads. 

We then evaluated 89 location-sharing applications and systems 

to determine the types of privacy protections that each one offered. 

We found that most of these applications provided fairly limited 

privacy concerns, and about a third of them did not even provide 

readily accessible privacy policies on their Web site. Some locationsharing applications had generic privacy policies that don’t explicitly mention location. Others mention that they provide privacy 

controls but in order to see what controls are provided, a consumer 

has to actually use the service. Most of the applications with privacy controls required users to click multiple screens to reach the 

privacy settings. 

Some of the privacy controls that allow users to specify that their 

location information should be shared only with their friends rather than with the general public turn out to actually have exceptions. For example, many services have a simple privacy switch. It 

looks very simple. It says on and off. But in one service we examined, text positioned four paragraphs below the switch mentions 

that there are actually two exceptions in which location information will be shared even when the privacy switch is not set to share 

information. 


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33 

Our research at Carnegie Mellon has explored offering finegrained and expressive privacy controls. The Locaccino system we 

developed allows users to specify location-sharing rules based on 

time, location and the person making a location request. For example, I have set up a rule that allows students to find my location 

when I am on campus so they can determine if I am in my office 

or teaching in another building. Another rule allows my family 

members to locate me at all times and locations. And another rule 

allows people I work with to locate me between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. 

on weekdays. Locaccino is not being used for advertising, but a 

similar approach could be used to control when and where location 

information is used for location-based advertising. 

Our research suggests that Internet users are definitely concerned about their location privacy but that most currently available location-sharing services do not do a good job informing them 

about how their location information will be used or provide users 

with expressive location privacy controls and privacy protective default settings. Thus, additional privacy protections may be necessary. 

While the CTIA best practices offer a useful framework that requires notice and consent about location use, they do not specify 

form, placement, manner of delivery or content of notices nor do 

they provide enforcement. Thus, while users may opt in to a service 

by signing up for it, they may not realize what they are getting 

themselves into. As the Web site pleaserobme.com suggests, users 

may not think through the implications of broadcasting their location information to the public or even be aware that a service 

makes their location information public. Indeed, the CTIA best 

practices do not discuss what should happen when location information is disclosed publicly. 

Even when users understand and are comfortable with the commercial use of their location data, the use of this data without a 

warrant by law enforcement has troubling implications. Due to the 

way cellular technology works, the widespread use of cell phones 

enables large-scale round-the-clock surveillance of citizens. It is important that the storage of individual location data be minimized 

and that protections be put in place to limit when it can be disclosed. 

Finally, it is important to realize that techniques to deidentify 

personal information may not be effective when it comes to location 

information. Even when a person is not identified by name, her location trails may be used to identify her. Since most of us go to a 

particular location for work each weekday and a particular location 

to sleep each evening, with only a few days of location trails information combined with other publicly available information, it becomes possible to identify most people. Thus, users who try to hide 

behind made-up names may still unwittingly be identifying themselves when they make their location information public. Thus, it 

is important that privacy be considered from the beginning in the 

design of location-based services and that users of these services 

are fully informed about the privacy implications of their use. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Cranor follows:] 


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Written Testimony of 

Lorrie Faith Cranor 

Associate Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering & Public Policy, 

Carnegie Mellon University 

United States House of Representatives, Energy and Commerce Committee 

Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, and 

Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection 

Hearing on 

The Collection and Use of Location Information for Commercial Purposes 

February 24, 2010 

Chairmen Boucher and Rush, Ranking Members Stearns and Radanovich, and 

members of the committees, I thank you for the opportunity to testify about privacy 

issues associated with the use of location information for commercial purposes. 

My name is Lorrie Faith Cranor. I am an associate professor of computer 

science and of engineering & public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. I am also 

the director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie 

Mellon. I am a member of USACM, the U.S. Public Policy Council of the leading 

professional society for computer scientists. 

I have been conducting privacy research for over a decade. I have studied 

Internet users' privacy concerns, how they make decisions about privacy, and their 

use and comprehension of privacy policies.! Along with my colleagues and students, 

I have developed technologies and standard approaches for communicating about 

privacy online, including a search engine that provides information about website 

privacy policies2 and a privacy "nutrition label."3 I have also been involved in a 

Carnegie Mellon University project to develop a location-sharing service that allows 

1 http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/#privacy-decision 

2 http://privacyfinder.org/ 

3 http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/privacyLabel/ 

1 
35 


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users to control when, where, and with whom to share their location information.4 

We have used this system as a platform for our privacy research.s 

I have been asked to testify about privacy issues associated with the use of 

location information for commercial purposes. I will first provide a brief overview of 

how location-based services work. Then I will discuss consumer perceptions of risks 

and benefits of location-sharing technology. Next, I will discuss privacy controls in 

location-sharing applications. Finally, I will discuss some of the policy implications 

of my research findings in this area. Much of my testimony here is based on a paper I 

co-authored last summer with Janice Tsai, Patrick Gage Kelley, and Norman Sadeh, 

which I have included as an appendix to my written testimony.6 

Locating Technologies 

Location-based services (LBS) offer a wide range of functionality, including: 

providing maps and local information to users, allowing users to share their 

locations with their friends, allowing people to track other people such as their 

employees or children, using player location information in electronic games, and 

providing location-based advertisements. These services use a variety of 

technologies to acquire a user's location based on the current location of the user's 

cell phone, computer, or other device. Some devices, such as smart phones, may use 

more than one locating technology. The following are locating technologies in 

common use today: 

Global Positioning System (GPS) locates a user through a device that 

triangulates a location based on signals it receives from a constellation of 

satellites. GPS is often unavailable indoors. 

4 http://www.Jocaccino.org/ 

5 http://www.locaccino.org/science 

6 J. Tsai, P. Kelley, L. Cranor, and N. Sadeh. Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy 

Risks and Controls. TPRC 2009, August 2009. http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/LBSprivacy / 

2 
36 


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Wireless positioning locates a user by listening for signals of nearby 

WiFi access pOints and sending information about detected signals to a 

service that maintains a database of access point locations. 

Cellular identification locates a user by triangulating their position 

based on the cell towers within signal range of their mobile phone. 

Cellular providers can obtain location information of mobile phones in 

this manner even when the phones are not being used to place a call. 

IP location locates a user by looking up the Internet address of the user's 

device in a database that maps IP addresses to geographic locations. 

Internet addresses can be shared by multiple computers and may change 

over time. This technique typically provides only city-level location 

information. 

Consumer Perceptions of Risks and Benefits of Location-Sharing Technology 

In April 2009 we conducted an online survey to understand consumer 

perceptions of the risks and benefits associated with location-sharing services. Our 

non-random survey sample consisted of 587 respondents recruited through notices 

on websites that offered the opportunity to win a $75 gift card. 

We showed survey participants a screen-shot of an online location-sharing 

service and asked them to list some benefits and some risks of using this technology. 

Then we described 14 scenarios that focused on benefits of location sharing and 10 

scenarios that focused on risks oflocation sharing. For each scenario we asked 

participants to provide numeric ratings for the degree of harm or benefit they 

associated with each scenario. Participants rated finding people in an emergency as 

the scenario with the most significant benefit. Other highly beneficial scenarios 

included being able to track one's children, finding information based on one's 

location, checking to see if people are ok, and tracking relatives. Participants saw 

only limited benefit to using location-sharing technologies to meet new people 

3 
37 


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based on their location. On the risks side, participants saw great harm in scenarios 

involving stalking or revealing one's home address. They were also concerned about 

being found by people one wants to avoid, having others intrude on one's personal 

space, being found when one wants to be alone, being tracked by the government, 

and receiving location-based ads. 

Overall, we found that most of our participants did not expect that locationsharing technologies would be all that beneficial to them, and they have significant 

concerns about their privacy when sharing their locations online. 

Privacy Controls in Location-Sharing Applications 

In August 2009 we evaluated 89 location-sharing applications and systems to 

determine the types of privacy protections each offered. Overall, we found that most 

of these applications provided fairly limited privacy controls and about a third of 

them did not provide readily accessible privacy policies on their web sites. We 

reviewed the websites for these applications again in February 2010 and found 

similar results for the 84 services still in existence at that time. Privacy policies are 

notoriously difficult for consumers to understand, and many location-sharing 

services do not provide prospective users with a clear picture of how their location 

information will be used and shared before they sign up for the service. However, 

reading the fine print reveals that many location-sharing services store users' 

profile and location information indefinitely. 

Some location-sharing applications have generic privacy policies that don't 

explicitly mention their use and sharing oflocation information. Others mention 

that they provide privacy controls, but in order for a consumer to see what controls 

are provided they have to actually sign up for and use the service. Only 18 of the 84 

services examined in February 2010 mentioned privacy controls or security on the 

front page of their website (where they typically describe the benefits of their 

service and try to convince people to sign up for it). 

4 
38 


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We found that 76% of the applications had some form of privacy controls. 

However, most of these required users to visit or click multiple screens to reach the 

privacy settings. Most commercial systems had fairly basic privacy controls that 

allowed them to control whether their location would be made available publicly or 

would be made available only to designated friends. Some also had "invisible" 

modes where a user could prevent their location from being made available to 

anyone (other than the service provider itself). Few allowed people to choose to 

provide some locations on a less granular level such as neighborhood or city rather 

than street address or provided other fine-grained controls. 

Some of the privacy controls that allow users to specify that their location 

information should be shared only with their friends rather than with the general 

public turn out to have exceptions. For example, many services have a simple 

privacy switch that can be set to "on" or "off." But in one service we examined, text 

positioned four paragraphs below the switch mentions "two exceptions" in which 

location information will be shared publicly even when the privacy switch is set not 

to share this information. 

Our research at Carnegie Mellon University has explored the possibility of 

offering users more fine-grained and expressive privacy controls than typically 

found in commercial location-sharing systems. The Locaccino system, developed as 

part of our research, allows users to specify location-sharing rules based on time, 

location, and the person making a location request. For example, I have setup a rule 

that allows students to find my location when I am on campus so that they can 

determine whether I am in my office or teaching in another building. Another rule 

allows my family members to locate me at all times and locations. And another rule 

allows people I work with to locate me between 8 am and 6 pm on weekdays. 

Locaccino is not being used for advertising, but I could imagine a similar approach 

being used to control when and where location information is used for locationbased advertising. 

5 
39 


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Our research has demonstrated that people have nuanced privacy 

preferences, and that providing them with the ability to control location sharing 

based on time and location offers substantial benefit over simpler privacy controls.? 

Of course, these more expressive privacy controls could become confusing and 

burdensome to users if not designed carefully to be easy and quick to use, with wellchosen, privacy protective default settings. We are currently exploring approaches 

to reduce user burden when using expressive privacy controls.8 

Discussion 

Our research suggests that Internet users are concerned about their location 

privacy, but that currently available location-sharing services do not, for the most 

part, do a good job informing them about how their location information will be 

used or provide users with expressive location privacy controls and privacyprotective default settings. Thus additional protections may be necessary. 

While the CTIA Best Practices and Guidelines for LBS providers9 offer a 

useful framework that requires notice and consent about location use and 

disclosure, they do not specify "form, placement, manner of delivery or content of 

notices," nor do they provide enforcement mechanisms or assurances that all LBS 

providers will follow them. Thus, while users may explicitly "opt-in" to a service by 

7 M. Benisch, P. G. Kelley, N. Sadeh, T. Sandholm, L. F. Cranor, P. Hankes Drielsma, J. 

Tsai. The Impact of Expressiveness on the Effectiveness of Privacy Mechanisms for 

Location Sharing. CMU-ISR Tech Report 08-141. http://reportsarchive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/ anon/isr2008 /CMU-ISR-08-141. pdf 

8 P. Kelley, P. Hankes Drielsma, N. Sadeh, L. Cranor. User Controllable Learning of 

Security and Privacy Policies. AlSec 2008. 

http://patrickgagekelley.com/file_download/1/aisec14-kelley.pdf 

9 Best practices and guidelines for location-based services. Version 3.18.08. CTIA 

Wireless Association (April 2 2008). 

http://www.ctia.org/businessJesources/wic/index.cfm/ AI D /11300. 

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signing up for it, they may still not realize what they are getting themselves into. 

Users remain somewhat confused about the extent to which their location 

information may be shared and how they can control that.10 And as the website 

Pleaserobme.com suggests, users may not fully think through the implications of 

broadcasting their location information to the public, or even be aware that a 

service makes their location information public.11 Indeed, the CTIA Best Practices do 

not discuss the possibility that location information might be made public or 

recommend additional steps to be taken to notify users. 

Even when users understand and are comfortable with the commercial uses 

of their location data, the use of this data without a warrant by law enforcement has 

troubling implications. Due to the way cellular technology works, the widespread 

use of cell phones enables large-scale round-the-clock surveillance of citizens. It is 

important that the storage of individual location data be minimized and that 

protections be put in place to limit when it can be disclosed to the government. 

Finally, it is important to realize that techniques to de-identify or anonymize 

personal information may not be all that effective when it comes to location 

information. Even when a person is not identified by name or other commonly-used 

identifier, her location trails over time may be used to identify her. Since most of us 

go to a particular location for work each weekday and a particular location to sleep 

each evening, with only a few days oflocation trails information combined with 

10 L. jedrzejczyk and B. A. Price and A. K. Bandara and B. Nuseibeh. I Know What You 

Did Last Summer: risks of location data leakage in mobile and social computing. 

http://computing-reports.open.ac.uk/2009/TR2009-1Lpdf 

11 Pleaserobme.com is a website that displays publicly available location 

information from Twitter and Foursquare that indicates individuals who are not at 

home. The site creators write that their goal is to raise awareness of the risks 

associated with making personal location information available publicly. 

http://pleaserobme.com/why 

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other pUblicly available information it becomes possible to identify most people.1 2 

Thus, users who try to hide behind made-up names may still unwittingly be 

identifying themselves when they make their location information public. In 

addition, services that attempt to de-identify their users by removing their names 

before disclosing their location information may not be effectively anonymizing this 

data. Thus, it is important that privacy be considered from the beginning in the 

design oflocation-based services, and that users of these services are fully informed 

about the privacy implications of their use. 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. I look forward to answering your 

questions. 

12 P. Golle and K. Partridge. On the anonymity of home/work location pairs. 

Pervasive, 2009. http://xenon.stanford.edu/ -pgolle/papers/commute.pdf 

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Appendix 

J. Tsai, P. Kelley, L. Cranor, and N. Sadeh. Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy 

Risks and Controls. TPRC 2009. Updated February 2010. 

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/LBSprivacy / 

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Location-Sharing Technologies: Privacy Risks and Controls 

Janice Y. Tsai, Patrick Gage Kelley, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Norman Sadeh 

Carnegie Mellon University 

Pittsburgh, PA 

jytsai@andrew.cmu,edu, pkelley@cs,cmu,edu 1 

lorTie@c$. emu. edu, sadeh@cs. cm~. edu 

Updated February 2010 

Abstract. Due to the ability of cell phone providers to use cell phone towers to pinpoint users' locations, federal 

E911 requirements, the increasing popularity of GPS-capabilities in cellular phones, and the rise of cellular phones 

for Internet use, a plethora of new applications have been developed that share users' real~time location information 

online [27]. This paper evaluates users' risk and benefit perceptions related to the use of these technologies and 

the privacy controls of existing location-sharing applications. We conducted an online survey of American Internet 

users Cn = 587) to evaluate users' perceptions of the likelihood of several location-sharing use scenarios along with 

the magnitude of the benefit or harm of each scenario (e.g. being stalked or finding people in an emergency). We find 

that although the majority of our respondents had heard of locatjon~sharing technologies (72.4%), they do not yet 

understand the potential value of these applications, and they have concerns about sharing their location infonnation 

online. Most importantly, participants are extremely concerned about controlling who has access to their location. 

Generally, respondents feel the risks of using locatjon-sharing technologies outweigh the benefits. Respondents felt 

that the most likely harms would stem from revealing the location of their home to others or being stalked. People 

felt the strongest benefit were being able to find people in an emergency and being able to track theiT children. 

We then analyzed existing commercial location-sharing applications' privacy controls (n = 89). We find that while 

location-sharing applications do not offer their users a diverse set of rules to control the disclosure of their location, 

they offer a modicum of privacy. 

1 Introduction 

By 2009, at least 87% of the U.S, population owned cellular phones [3J, The proliferation of mobile 

devices and mobile Internet devices (including laptops) along with federal E91l requirements 

and the ubiquity of GPS-capabilities in mobile devices has spurred the development of locationsharing applications [27J. These technologies, also referred to as mobile location technologies, 

social mobile applications or simply location-based services (LBS), typically allow users to share 

their real-time or historical location information online. 

Despite the increased availability of these location-sharing applications, we have not yet seen 

wide adoption [11,23]. It has been suggested that the reason for this lack of adoption may be 

users' privacy concerns regarding the sharing and use of their location information [5, 14, 17,23). 

To explore these concerns regarding location-sharing technologies, we examine the use of LBS 

and research related to user's perceptions and use of location-sharing technologies in Section I. 

Next, we investigate and enumerate the privacy controls offered by existing applications in Section 

2. In Section 3, we present the results of an online survey to determine the magnitude of users' 

expected risks and benefits associated with these applications. Finally, in Section 4 we evaluate 

the ability of existing location-sharing technologies to address user's perceived risks and provide 

recommendations for controls to address users' privacy concerns. 
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Fig. I: The web interface for Google Latitude 

1.1 Locating Technologies 

The location-information shared by LBS may be text-based (e.g. "Andrew has been located at 5000 

Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA"), or it may be map-based, where the user's location is represented as 

a dot on a map as illustrated in Figure I and Figure 2. To display location information. users can 

manually enter a street address or longitude and latitude coordinates. Today. location information 

~s more frequently acquired through automated means. 

The following locating technologies arc typically used to determine users' locations: 

GPS: The Global Positioning System (GPS), locates a user through a device that is in communication with a constellation of satellites. Triangulation by multiple satellites locates the 

device. making GPS the most accurate method for linding locations [27]. However, drawbacks 

include the lack of user-accessible GPS capabilities in most personal cell phones and the scarce 

availability of built-in GPS technology in commercial laptops. Additionally. GPS can be battery 

intensive and inconsistent or unavailable indoors. 

Wireless positioning: As urban areas become blanketed with both personal and public WiFi 

access points. users can be mapped according to the location of these access points. Through the 

process of "war-driving" access points. and mapping each broadcasting point to a GPS location 

[20J. researchers and companies such as Skyhook Wireless I have created large databases with 

high location accuracy. While these locations are not always as precise as GPS, more people 

have wireless devices and location information can be pinpointed indoors. 

Cellular identification: At any given time. a mobile phone is likely in signal range of upwards 

of three cell phone towers. allowing a location to be triangulated if the locations of the cell 

towers are known. Some companies have. partnered with telecom companies to use cellular 

data. One such company. AirSage2 analyzes wireless signaling data to model traffic patterns. 

Skyhook Wireless. hnp:!/www.skyhookwireless.comJ 

2 AirSage. http://www.airsage.com 

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."I~~!.l;:~.~~4~02~M c;;;;;I 

Gmail Calendar Latitude !.1!.Q.@" 

Fig. 2: The iPhone interface for Google Latitude 

Loopt, a location-sharing service also leverages a cellular partnership with AT&T to provide 

always-on location information based on a user's iPhone [I3J. 

IP Location: Devices connected to an Internet network are provided with an IP address. IP 

addresses are limited in number; and based on the range, can be associated geographically 

[26). (See the IP-to-Country Database 3 ) IP location is mostly used as a fallback when none of 

the above methods are available. The resolution of such lookups is commonly mapped to an 

area as large as a city. 

1.2 Development Platforms for Locating-Technologies 

Locating technologies are available for mobile phones. laptops, and internet-enabled mobile devices. There are three common ways for applications to pull location information: 

Installed Software: Users download and install software onto their cell phones or computers. 

Software determines the user's approximate location by one of the methods listed above and 

stores that data in a database or sends it to a location-sharing application. This transmission of 

coordinates may be automatic (e.g. a location ping is scnt every 5 minutes) or it may require a 

"push" action to be initiated by the user (e.g. the user clicks a "Find me now" button). 

IP-to-Country Database, http://ip-[o"conntry.webhosting<info/ 

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- Web browser: In lieu of requiring the user to run a separate piece of software, several companies have developed location-finding web browser plug-ins. Applications that use this technology allow users to visit a website to be located, typically according to the users' wireless or IP 

location, based on an installed plug-in, such as Skyhook's web toolbar Loki. 4 

- Location Broker: APls, (e.g. Yahoo!'s FireEagle5 and Google Latitude6) allow developers to 

create applications that pull the user's location from a central provider. This allows application 

developers to entirely avoid any of the location lookup technologies, relying on a third party to 

provide location infor.mation. 

1.3 Industry Best Practices 

The worldwide revenues from mobile marketing are projected to reach $24 billion in 2013 [2]. 

It is understandable that the mobile or wireless industry would want to spur the adoption of 

location-sharing technologies. LBS may detect users' locations and offer them advertisements 

for businesses or services nearby. To address users' privacy concerns, CTIA, the International 

Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry,7 issued Best Practices and Guidelines 

for LBS providers. These guidelines are meant to help LBS providers protect user privacy and rely 

on two of the Fair Infor.mation Principles (FIPs), user notice and consent. 

The guidelines include the following [IJ: 

- Notice: First, LBS providers must inform users about how their location infor.mation will be 

used, disclosed and protected so that a user can make an informed decision whether or not to 

use the LBS or authorize disclosure. 

- Consent: Second, once a user has chosen to use an LBS, or authorized the disclosure of location 

information, he or she should have choices as to when or whether location infOimation will be 

disclosed to third parties and should have the ability to revoke any such authorization. 

The CTIA guidelines do not specify the "form, placement, manner of delivery or content of 

notices" [IJ. Generally, providers provide their statements regarding notice and consent in their 

posted privacy policies or terms of service. 

1.4 Location Privacy Studies 

Researchers have conducted studies 'to examine the usage of location-sharing applications and 

the privacy concerns raised by these applications. These studies have employed the experience 

sampling method (ESM) where users have carried devices to simulate location requests [4,10, 19]. 

Other small laboratory experiments have involved small groups of participants who are members 

of existing social groups where people requesting locations were provided with automatic location 

disclosures [5,9J, or users responded via SMS with location information [16,29]. Field studies 

Loki. http://JokLcomi 

l FireEagJe. http://fireeagJe.yahoo.neti 

6 Google Latitude. http://www.google.comllatitude/appslbadge 

7 The eTIA Wireless Association. http://www.ctia.org/ 

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have been conducted by the authors and their colleagues, where we deployed a location-sharing 

application in a college campus community[30]. 

Research has shown that the primary dimensions of privacy concern surrounding the disclosure 

of this information include context and use [5,6]. The willingness to share one's location and the 

level of detail shared depends highly on who is requesting this information [10,21] (or knowing 

who is requesting this information [30]), and the social context of the request [9,19]. Due to users' 

varied privacy concerns and preferences depending on the situation [21] or activity in which the 

user may be engaged [16], privacy controls need to be flexible [4,28] and include a mechanism to 

provide plausible deniability [29]. 

In addition to the context of a location request, it is users' own perceptions of the use of one's 

location information that impacts their privacy concerns [6, 10]. For example, a user may be more 

concerned with an acquaintance requesting his or her location because they are unsure of why 

that information is being requested compared to users' lack of concern when sharing location 

information with people nearby to find restaurant recommendations. 

1.5 Studies of Privacy Controls 

Another cause of privacy concerns may be the lack of adequate controls for the disclosure of realtime personal information. Other studies have examined rules and the users desired diversity in the 

expressiveness of permissions in these types of systems [4,7,24]. In some cases, it may be enough 

for some users to simply create groups of contacts to assign permissions liS, 24], but others may 

require more flexibility in their rules [4] . In other research, it was found that a greater degree of 

rule expressiveness (e.g. being able to create group, time, and location-based rules) may increase 

the efficiency of allowing users to share information without violating their own personal privacy 

preferences [7], and that relationship-based default rules and machine learning techniques may 

reduce user burden in creating expressive rules [18,25]. 

Based on this existing work. we delve into the design of commercial location-sharing systems 

and survey participants on their perceptions of the benefits and risks of specific scenarios of use 

for location-sharing systems. 

2 An Evaluation of Privacy Controls in Location-Sharing Applications 

We evaluated 89 applications. social networks, and APls to evaluate their privacy controls. See the 

Appendix for a list of the applications. OUf privacy and location-based services data is available 

online fOf download. 

2.1 Method 

We used a user-contributed online list of location-based services8 as our directory of sites. In 

general, the sites on this list are social in nature. We found its completeness to be unparalleled 

across the web. We removed from consideration any sites that were not location-based services, or 

8 A list of Location Based Social Networking sites. http://bdnooz.comllbsn-Iocation-based-social-networking-links!. Last visited 

August 10, 2009. 

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sites that were offline or defunct (n = 10). This leaves us with a final set of 89 applications.9 We 

did not consider "surveillance technologies." 

To create our dataset, we completed a number of steps. First, we first visited the website for each 

application. We read the "About" page, frequently asked questions (FAQ), "Help" pages, and any 

other documentation available to search for explanations of their privacy controls. Additionally, we 

evaluated web interfaces, Facebook applications, and screen shots and descriptions of the iPhone 

application in the iTunes App Store. We evaluated the following features of these applications: 

- Date of launch: While many of the current location-based services have been relaunched, 

rebranded, or generally attempted to "reboot" their service, we have tried to find the most 

accurate date of a first public, or widespread beta launch for each of the services. Many of 

these dates are based on news articles, press releases, and blogs that announced the opening of 

the service. 

- Privacy Policy: We checked to see whether or not the website detailed their information practices (detailed in a privacy policy or included in a legal statement or terms of service). 

- Privacy Controls: We noted any ability that allowed users to control access to their location 

information. 

- Notice: Some systems notify users when others request their location, or make an activity log 

available to allow users to see who has requested and received their locations. 

- Immediately accessible privacy settings: We noted whether or not the main interface allowed 

users to prominently see and access their privacy controls. For example, an application where 

one of the main tabs is labeled "Privacy" would fall under this category. An application that 

requires users to visit several pages or menus (e.g. Profile/AccountiSettingslPrivacy) does not. 

2.2 Data Analysis 

We constructed a datasetbased on our collection of the features listed above. In this section, we 

present the results of our analysis. 

System Characteristics The primary purpose of the majority of these applications was for tracking friends or finding new ones. Other highlights included sites geared towards location-based 

dating, travel planning and sharing, and information seeking (e.g. finding local "hot spots"). One 

site even allows users to lag speed traps. 

Of the 89 applications surveyed, 63 are available for use on mobile phones. Of those phonebased applications, the iPhone was the most popular development platform (40 applications). Application developers also created products for the Blackberry (32), phones that use the Android OS 

(21), or other phones (34). These numbers include services that developed a mobile formatted web 

version of their application and are not mutually exclusive. For example, a single service may have 

an iPhone application, a Blackberry application, and an Android application. 

The architectures of the location-sharing applications fell into two categories: 

Open: Users can be found by friends and strangers. 

Note: One of the applications mcluded on the list, Locaccino, was developed by the authors. 

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14 

12 

i 10 

g 8 

" !I 8 

2 

o 

lBS launches By Quarter 

Fig. 3: The number of location-sharing applications launched each quarter (includes 89 applications evaluated in our study and 7 defunct applications). 

Closed: Users may only be requested by "friends" on the system. In this case, users much have 

already granted the requester access (e.g. by accepting a friend request). 

Of the surveyed applications, five did not allow users to request other users' location information; but allowed users to seek information about places or landmarks; and two are location-sharing 

APIs. Of the remaining sites, 29 are closed systems, and 52 are open systems. 

Rate of Creation The development of location-sharing applications has steadily increased over 

time as shown in Figure 3. Several new technologies may have spurred the development oflocationsharing technologies. These include the launch of Yahoo's FireEagle platform (QI 2008) and the 

iPhone SDK10 with its Core-Location framework (Q3 2008). 

The rate at which location-based services were introduced to the market increased from 5 per 

quarter at the end of 2006 to 14 per quarter at the end of 2008. After the economic downturn in 

2008 the rate of introduction slowed, but new services continue to be introduced in 2009 at a rate of 

at least 8 per quarter. This overall growth leads us to believe two things. First, the development-side 

technologies are in place for location-based services and social networks to be created, and there 

are not unsolvable technical issues in the way of growth. Second, there do not seem to be strong 

market leaders who are prohibiting others from entering the market. Even with large players like 

Google, and established brands like Loopl, we have not seen anyone of these technologies spread 

to a large section of the populace (however, finding active user data for any of these services has 

proven to be difficult). 

Privacy Controls Due to the sensitive nature of real-time location information and the existence of 

guidelines recommending clear notice to users, one would expect all location-sharing applications 

to detail their policies for the collection and use of personal information. Instead, we found only 

10 !Phone Dev Center. http://developer.apple.comliphonef 

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Privacy Policy 

Privacy Controls 76.4% (68) 16.9% (1S) 1.12% (1) S.62% (S) 

Accessible Privacy Settings 16.9% (IS) 7S.3% (67) 2.2S% (2) 5.62% (5) 

Table 1: An overview of the proportion of applications that have privacy policies. privacy controls, 

and explicit privacy settings. 

66% of the applications had privacy policies at all. For those services that did have privacy policies, 

the majority collect and save all data (e.g. locations, personal information entered into one's profile, 

and identifying web information such as one's IP address) for an indefinite amount of time. Only 

one, Mologogoll explicitly stated that it deletes GPS data after one month. Another interesting 

exception is Google Latitude which stores only the most recent location update. 12 

Our review of location-sharing applications reveals that the majority do have some form of 

privacy controls (76%). However, the majority of those privacy controls are not easily accessible 

from the main page or home page of the application itself. For the applications we reviewed, over 

70% required users to visit or click multiple screens before they reached the privacy settings (see 

Table 1). This lack of immediately accessible privacy controls may be a result of the small amount 

of screen real estate available to application developers, especially in the case of mobile phones. For 

example, there was one case (RummbleI3 ), included in the "Yes" category for accessible privacy 

settings in Table 1, where the web interface for the system had a link to the privacy controls, but 

,the iPhone interface did not. 

The types of privacy controls for the location-sharing applications are the following: 

- Blacklist: Users are able to block specific individuals from viewing their location. (Found in 

IS.7% (14) of services.) 

- Friends Only: This whitelist-based control restricts access to users denoted as a "Friend." By 

default, closed systems are considered friends only. (Found in 49.4% (44) of services.) 

- Granularity: This advanced control allows users to instruct the system to provide a less detailed location to the person requesting information (e.g. "Andrew is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.") (Found in 12.4% (11) of services.) 

- Group: This restriction allows users to define access based on groupings of users. (e.g. Allow 

everyone in the "college friends" group to view my location.) (Found in 12.4% (11) of services.) 

- Invisible: This feature may also be termed the "Private," "Only me," or "No one" setting. Users 

continue to send location data, but their locations are not divulged. (Found in 34.8% (31) of 

services.) 

- Location-based rules: This restriction allows users to define locations in which their locationinformation may be revealed. For example, users may tag a location as "Work" or select an area 

on a map, and their location information is revealed to anyone who requests them when they 

are at that location. (Found in 1.12% (1) of services.) 

l! MoJogogo, hUp:!/www.mologogo.com/ 

12 Privacy (Google Latitude), https;/Isites.google.comlalpressatgoogJe.comllatitudeiprivacy 

13 Rurnmble. http://wwwsumrnble.com/ 

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- Network: This restriction allows the user to select existing communities to whom their location 

may be revealed. For example, user may join a geographical network or an interest-based 

community with whom they wish to share their location. (Found in 12.4% (11) of services.) 

- Per-request permissions: Users must specifically review each location request, and decide 

whether or allow or deny the request prior to the location being revealed. (Found in 2.25% (2) 

of services.) 

- Time-based rules: Users may define durations of time and days of the week during which their 

location may be revealed (e.g. from 10 am to 3 pm). (Found in 1.12% (1) of services.) 

- Time-expiring approval: Several systems allow users to set a specific time frame (e.g. 1 hour) 

during which a link to the map of their location is "live." During this time frame, the recipient 

of the location message may view the map. After the expiration of this time, the link will no 

longer be accessible. (Found in 2.25% (2) of services.) 

- No restrictions: Anyone is able to view the user's location. (Found in 16.9% (15) of serviccs.) 

- Not Applicable: Privacy controls do not apply. (Valid for 5.62% (5) of services.) 

Unknown: We were unable to find information about the privacy controls. (1.12% (I) service.) 

In general, we see that the "Friends Only" and "Invisible" restrictions are the most prevalent. 

Of the 89 applications we reviewed, only four provided explicit notice to the user regarding who 

had requested their location. Aka_Aki,14 Locaccino,15 and Mobiluckl6 provide request logs to the 

user so they can view "Who's Viewed Me," Sniffl7 sends out a text message notification providing 

the name of the person making the request, and HeyWay l8 requires the user to explicitly approve 

or reject each location request (providing the name of the requester making the request). The native 

Loki browser plug-in explicitly asks the user if an application is making a request can access that 

information, but does not provider the name of the person making the request. Only one specific 

application Locaccinol9 had time-based and location-based rules. 

3 Location-Sharing RiskIBenefit Analysis 

We conducted an online survey to understand the magnitude of the risks and benefits associated 

with location-sharing services. 

3.1 Method 

For an individual user to accept a technology, an acceptable balance of personal risk and benefits 

must be established [12]. To understand these risks and benefits, we investigated the perceived-risk 

attitude or the expected value of location-sharing risks and benefits towards the use of locationsharing technologies. This evaluation takes into account the willingness or likelihood of engaging 

in the activity as a function of its expected benefit or harm [8J. We conducted an online survey to 

Aka·Aki. http://www.aka-aki.coml 

lS Locaccino. Note: the authors of this paper were also involved in the development of this application. http://www.locaccino.com 

!6 Mobiluck. http://www.mobiluck.com 

17 Sniff. httpJlwww.sniffu.com/ 

18 HeyWay. http://niftybrickcomlheyway.html 

19 Locaccino. http://www.iocaccino.org 

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capture users' perceptions of how likely certain scenarios would be if they used location-sharing 

scenarios and the magnitude of benefits or risks related to each scenario. 

Recruitment In April 2009, we solicited participants to complete a survey to examine their personal perceptions about location-sharing technologies. Online announcements were posted on the 

"Volunteers" section of craigslist.com for major metropolitan areas of the United States and in 

online sweepstakes websites, recruiting individuals over the age of 18. The survey was available 

online for two weeks. We raffled a $75 Amazon.eom gift certificate as the incentive for participation. 

Demograpbics The final survey sample consisted of 587 respondents. Although 655 people completed the survey, respondents who completed the survey in under 4 minutes were eliminated from 

the final dataset. Due to the number of questions in the survey, we believed that anyone who 

answered in under 4 minutes was simply clicking through the survey, rather than reading and 

responding to the questions. Participants' ages ranged from 18 to 79 years of age (1'\11 = 35.7), and 

61 % were female. The respondents were fairly well educated, with 43.8% indicating that they had 

college degrees and 29.1 % having graduate degrees. In general, most people (72.4%) had heard of 

technologies that allow people to share their locations with others. 

3.2 Survey Data Analysis 

ifechnology Use At the beginning of the survey, an example of an online-location sharing technology was presented to the study participants. A screen shot of of a map with a thumbnail of a 

person's picture pinpointed on the map was displayed, indicating that the person had been located 

with this technology (see Figure 4). Participants were asked to list some benefits and risks or 

dangers associated with this technology. 

Some examples of benefits listed by our respondents are the following: 

- Give out directions quickly to friends and family. 

- Able to track loved ones and opportunity to surprise someone for a special event. 

- People you know can find you, parents can track their kids, facilitates a rendezvous. 

- Serendipitous encounters. 

- Remote awareness of friends and relatives. 

Some examples of dangers listed by our respondents are the following: 

- Anyone could know exactly where you are - there is no privacy - anyone could find you at any 

given time. 

- If someone intends to do you harm, they would find you easily. 

- An unwanted person will find you and stalk you. It is not safe. You have no control. 

- Location history could be harvested for stalking or marketing. 

- People could find out if no one was home. 

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Fig.4: A screen shot of the location-sharing interface presented to our survey participants 

Respondents were asked a series of 7-point Likert scale questions asking them to rate the 

usefulness of location-sharing technologies (ranging from not useful (l) to extremely useful (7», 

their privacy concerns surrounding their use of these technologies (ranging from not concerned 

(1) to extremely concerned (7», and the risk of using these applications (ranging from the riskfar 

outweighs the benefit to the benefit far outweighs the risk). These questions were asked both at the 

beginning and end of the survey to determine if participating in the survey altered users' opinions. 

The results reveal that people's first impression of location-sharing technologies is that they 

are mostly not useful. After taking the survey, which included various usage scenarios, people's 

opinions changed slightly, and they found the technology slightly more useful. They also became 

more concerned about allowing others to view their locations at the end of the survey. Participants' 

attitudes about the risk of using location-sharing technologies slightly outweighing the benefits did 

not change: they felt that the risk still outweighed the benefits. See Table 2 for mean values and 

paired t-test p values. 

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[!§ll !Before!After!t statistic!p value! 

UsetulneSSj3.72j3.94j-3.91 <0.001 

Concern 5.15 5.42 -4.66 <0.001 

Risk 3.27 3.33 -1.01 0.31 

Table 2: Participants' responses to 7-point LIkert scale questions regarding the usefulness (not 

useful (l) to extremely useful) (7), concerns associated with allowing others to view your location 

(not concerned (1) to extremely concerned (7»), and the risk of using location-sharing technologies 

(the risk far outweighs the benefit (l) to the benefit far outweighs the risk (7) at the beginning and 

end of the survey. The degrees of freedom for the paired t-tests is 586. 

You 

Family <0.001 

Friends 4.30 4.05 <0.001 

CompanylEmployer 3.63 -4.52 <0.001 

Table 3: Participants' responses to 7-point Likert scale question regarding the likelihood of the use 

of location-sharing technologies (very unlikely (l) to very likely (7)). The responses are compared 

in a t-test to the midpoint (4). The degrees of freedom for the t-test are 567. 

In the survey, we also asked participants about how concerned they were about controlling 

,access to their location on a scale of not concerned (I) to extremely concerned (7). We found that 

participants were extremely concerned about having control (M = 6.17). 

We also asked participants to rate the likelihood of the use of location-sharing technologies by 

him or herself, their family, their friends, or their company or employer. Based on a 7-point Likert 

scale ranging from very unlikely (l) to very likely (7), we find that people think it is unlikely that 

their families and employers will use location-sharing technologies. As for themselves, they are 

neither likely nor unlikely to use the technologies, but think that they friends are more likely to use 

these types of applications. The responses to this question and their comparison to the midpoint of 

the scale are summarized in Table 3. 

Gender Differences Dividing participants by gender. we see that men find location-sharing technologies slightly more useful than women do. but men still find these technologies neither useful 

nor useful. Women are also much more concerned with allowing others to view their locations. 

tend to feel that the risk of using these technologies far outweighs the benefit, and do not find it 

likely that they will use these technologies. These responses are detailed in Table 4. 

Scenarios We asked participants to rate the likelihood of the occurrence of the scenarios below on 

a 7-point Likert from very unlikely to very likely. Each scenario is also rated as a harm or a benefit. 

For each of the harms scenarios. participants were asked to rate each harm from a scale from not 

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lItem 

Usefulness 3.77 4.20 -2.78 .006 

Concem 5.60 5.14 3.73 <0.001 

Risk 3.07 3.72 -4.19 <0.001 

Likeliness of Use 3.56 4.26 -3.8 <0.001 

Table 4: Participants' responses to 7-pomt LIkert scale questIOns regardmg the usefulness (not 

usefUl (1) to extremely useful) (7), concerns associated with allowing others to view your location 

(not concerned (1) to extremely concerned (7)), the risk of using location-sharing technologies (the 

risk far outweighs the benefit (I) to the benefit far outweighs the risk (7)) at the end of the survey, 

and the likeliness of use by the respondent. The degrees of freedom for the two-sample t-tests is 

585. 

harmful at all (l) to extremely harmful (7). For each of the benefits scenarios, participants were 

asked to rate each benefit on a scale from no benefits at all (l) to great benefit (7). 

The responses to the scenarios are detailed in Table 5 and Table 6. 

There were several scenarios in which people would be extremely likely to benefit from such 

services: finding people in an emergency, finding information based on location, and finding (tracking) their children. Based on the survey results, people also seem to realize that using locationsharing technologies will likely open them to receiving advertisements based on their location, 

being intruded upon, as well as accidentally revealing the location of their homes. 

Level of Privacy Concern We sought to determine the level of privacy concerns that people 

perceive when they are sharing their information online by asking several privacy scale questions. 

These privacy scale questions are based on an instrument. developed by Malhotra et a!. to measure Internet Users' Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) [22]. The IUIPC scale defines several 

groupings of concern, including control, awareness of privacy practices, collection of information, 

errors, unauthorized secondary use, improper access, and global information privacy concern; and 

consists of 27 questions. Based on a pilot test where we correlated the use of Facebook, an online 

social network, and the use of its privacy settings, we selected a sampling of 6 questions. Based on 

these questions, we calculated a "Privacy score" for each respondent. This score is an average of 

the ratings of the following six statements presented to the users, rated on a 7-point Likert scale, 

ranging from strongly disagree (I) to strongly agree (7). The higher the privacy score, the more 

concerned the person is about their privacy. 

Participants were asked to rate the following statements: 

- It is very important to me that I am aware and knowledgeable about how my personal information will be used. (IUIPC Awareness) 

- I'm concerned that online companies are collecting too much personal information about me. 

(IUIPC Collection) 

- Online companies should have better procedures to correct errors in personal information. 

(IUIPC Errors) 

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!Scenario !Likelihood!Benefit! 

Finding people in an emergency 5.64 5.97 

Finding information based on your location 5.29 4.99 

Keeping track of the location of children in your family 5.17 5.18 

Checking people's locations to make sure they are ok 4.98 5.05 

Finding nearby friends for social activities 4.76 4.36 

Using people's locations to coordinate a meeting 4.67 4.34 

Keeping track of elderly relatives 4.66 5.11 

Keeping track of where you've been 4.65 3.84 

Coordinating family activities 4.59 4.391 

Finding a coworker who is running late for a meeting 4.42 4.03 

Coordinating ride sharing or carpooling 4.38 4.29 

Having fun with locations 4.35 3.47 

Recruiting people to participate in activities 4.01 3.83 

Finding new people with similar interests 3.49 3.46 

Table 5: Benefits-based 10catlOn-shanng scenanos and their lIkelIhood and magmtude of benefit 

ratings based on survey results, ordered by highest likelihood. 

- Online companies should never share personal infonnation with other companies unless it 

has been authorized by the individuals who provided the infonnation. (IUIPC Unauthorized 

secondary use) 

- Online companies should take more steps to make sure that unauthorized people cannot access 

personal infonnation in their databases/servers. (IUIPC Access) 

I am concerned about threats to my personal privacy today. (IUIPC Global Concern) 

To determine if this scale was internally reliable, we compute a Cronbach's (} score for this 

set of questions. This statistic allows us to determine if the items, together, measure a consistent 

viewpoint. A set of items with a Cronbach's (} score of above 0.70 is considered to be reliable. 

We found this 6-item scale for assessing users privacy concerns regarding online companies to be 

reliable, with a Chronbach's (} of 0.85. 

To detennine if the privacy score had any relation to users' use and perceptions of locationsharing technologies, we examined their correlations. We see that the higher the privacy score, the 

more likely it is that users will feel that the risks of using location-sharing technologies outweigh 

the benefits (Risk After, r(586) = -0.23, P <.0001); that they would be less likely to use such 

technologies (r(586) = -0.12, p = 0.004); and feel that this technology is not useful (Usefulness 

After, r(586) = -0.11, p = .007). Additionally, users with higher privacy scores were older (1'(586) 

= 0.23, p < .0001), more concerned about privacy (Concern After, 1'(586) = 0.41, p < .0001), and 

more concerned about controlling access to their location(1'(586) = 0.39, p < .000l). 

Expected Values of Risks and Benefits To examine the ranking of the scenarios, we computed 

an expected value for the risk variable by multiplying the likelihood perceptions by the magnitude 

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I~:::;r~:thered by ads that use your location ILikelih5~~~IH:.:~1 Having people intrude on your private space 5.15 5.51 

Revealing the location of your home 5.11 5.93 

Being found by someone you don't want to see 5.10 5.56 

Being found when you want to be alone 5.07 5.08 

Revealing activities you are participating in 4.83 4.17 

Being stalked 4.75 6.32 

Having the government track you 4.62 5.38 

Being judged based on your location 4.35 4.50 

Having your boss spy on you 4.21 5.15 

Table 6: Risk-based 10catlOn-shanng scenanos and their lIkelIhood and magmtude of harm ratings 

based on survey results, ordered by highest likelihood. 

of the risk (harms) or benefit. This value allows us to compare within the sets of scenarios that are 

considered harms and those that are considered benefits. 

Within each set of harms and benefits, the expected value for the risk (or benefit) of each 

was compared to the other harms or benefits with paired t-tests to determine which scenarios are 

significantly distinct from each other (p < 0.05). The relative rankings for the benefits and risks as 

determined by their expected value are summarized in Table 7 and Table 8. 

Evaluating each expected benefit, one sees that, by far, the most significant benefit is being able 

to find people in an emergency. The next distinct benefit is being able to track one's children. Finding information based on one's location, checking to see if people are ok, and tracking relatives are 

the third set of distinct benefits. The least valued expected benefit of location-sharing technologies 

is finding new people based on one's location. 

The greatest expected harms derived from the use of location-based technologies are revealing 

one's home and being stalked. People perceive that being found by people one wants to avoid and 

having others intrude on one's personal space are the next set of situations associated with these 

technologies. Being found when one wants to be alone, being tracked by the government, and 

receiving ads based on one's locations are the third set of distinct harms. It seems that people are 

the least bothered by the risks of being judged based on one's location and revealing activities that 

one is participating. 

Analysis of participants with children One potentially useful scenario for location-sharing technologies is keeping track of children in one's family. We asked participants to list the number of 

children they had, and divided our participants into two categories: those who have children and 

those who do not. The group with children includes those with adult children. Demographics are 

summarized in Table 9. We see that having children does have an impact of one's perceptions of 

these technologies. 

Participants with children rated location-sharing technologies significantly more useful at the 

beginning of the survey as compared to participants without children (MWithChildren '" 3.93 vs. 

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Finding people in an emergency 

2. Keeping track of the location of children in your family 

3. Finding information based on your location -

3. Checking people's locations to make sure they are ok 

3. Keeping track of elderly relatives 

4. Finding nearby friends for social activities 

4. Using people's locations to coordinate a meeting 

4. Coordinating family activities 

5. Coordinating ride sharing or carpooling 

Discovering that a friend from out of town is visiting 

Keeping track of where you've been 

ing a coworker who is running late for a meeting 

. ·ng people to participate in activities--~I 

Having fun with locations (e.g. games, pranks) I 

Finding new people with similar interests 

Table 7: The relative rankings of benefits obtained from the use;;C:f"'""lo-c-a-ti'-o-n--s""h-a-n,J·ng technologies. 

l'v1WithoutChildren = 3.59, t(585) = -2.17, p = 0.03). After taking the survey, both groups felt the 

same about location-sharing technologies being neither useful nor not useful (MW,thCI!lldren = 4.08 

vs. l\lfwithoutCh,ldren = 3.85, t(585) = -1.5, p = 0.13). 

When asked about the likelihood of use of these types of technologies, participants with children were significantly more likely to feel that they, their families, friends and employers would be 

likely to usc these technologies as compared to people without children. See Table 10 for details 

of survey results and t -tests. 

Examining the responses to the scenarios, we see that participants with children derived greater 

expected benefit, as compared to respondents without children from the following scenarios: checking people's locations to make sure they are ok, coordinating family activities, keeping track of the 

location of children in your family, keeping track of elderly relatives, and finding new people 

with similar interests. Those with children also had a greater amount of expected risk from being 

bothered by ads that use their location, being tracked by the government, and revealing activities 

they are participating in. These differences are detailed in Table 11. 

For respondents with children, being able to track their kids becomes the top benefit, tied with 

being able to find people in an emergency. Even when we control for age and gender, we find this 

to be the case. 

4 The Ability of LBS Applications to Address Users' Perceived Risks 

As location-based services proliferate in numbers but not in users [11,23 j, we examined the ability 

for these location-sharing applications to address users' privacy concerns. We see that the number 

of applications has been increasing and companies have developed platforms that make it easier for 

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Ranking [Scenario 

I. Revealing the location of your home to people you do not want to give your address to 

I. Being stalked 

2. Having people intrude on your private space 

2. Being found by someone you don't want to see 

3. Being found when you want to be alone 

3. Having the government track you 

3. Being bothered by ads that use your location 

4. Having your boss spy on you 

5. Revealing activities you are participating in 

5. Being judged based on your location 

Table 8: The relative rankings of nsks related to the use of locatlon-sharmg technologJes. 

I Without Children I With Children 

Gender Fern: 218, Male: 147 Fern: 140, Male: 82 

Avg. Age 30.9 43.7 

Table 9: Participants characterized by whether or not they have children or do not have children. 

others to create applications that leverage location information. Based on the results of our survey, 

we see that people still do not find these location-sharing technologies all that useful, and they 

are still concerned about their privacy when sharing their locations online. In general, people still 

believe that the risks of sharing their locations online outweigh the benefits. 

Based on our analysis of the risks associated with these technologies, we now examine the 

existing privacy controls of these technologies and investigate the ways in which these controls can 

address users' major concerns. We also suggest additional methods of addressing users' concerns. 

4.1 Addressing risks with privacy controls 

To detennine if privacy controls are effective in location-sharing technologies, we first examine 

users' greatest expected risks. 

As enumerated in Table 8, we see that the top ranked expected risks are the following: 

- Revealing the location of your home to people you do not want to give your address to 

- Being stalked 

- Having people intrude on your private space 

- Being found by someone you don't want to see 

- Being found when you want to be alone. 

- Having the government track you. 

- Being bothered by ads that use your location. 

Below, we examine how location-based applications' privacy controls address these concerns. 

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lItem IWithout ChildrenlWith Childrenlt statisticlp value I 

You 3.67 4.11 24.01 <0.001 

Family 3.32 4.26 28.36 <0.001 

Friends 4.27 4.36 26.52 <0.001 

CompanylEmployer 3.48 3.87 26.21 <0.001 

Table 10: PartIcIpants responses to 7-pomt LIkert scale questiOn regardmg the lIkelIhood of the use 

of location-sharing technologies (very unlikely (1) to very likely (7» for people without children 

and with children. The degrees of freedom for the (-test are 585. 

[Item IWithout Children!With Childrenlt statisticlp value I l~kayneSS Checking 25.0 29.9 -4.06 <0.001 

Coordinating Family Activities 20.5 26.1 -4.65 <0.001 

ITracking Children 26.1 34.6 -6.18 <0.001 

Tracking Relatives 24.2 29.9 -4.12 '<0.001 

Finding New People 13.0 16.0 -2.8 0.005 

Bothered by Ads 24.7 27.7 -2.35 0.02 

Tracked by the Government 25.3 28.0 -1.98 0.05 

Revealing One's Activjties 20.1 22.4 -2.08 0.04 

Table II: PartIcIpants expected benefits and nsks based on If they have chIldren or If they do not 

have children. The values were calculated by multiplying the likelihood ratings of each secenario 

with its rated risk and benefit. Degrees of freedom for the two-sample t-tests are 585. 

Blacklist: With blacklists, users are able to block specific people with whom they do not wish 

to reveal this location. This restriction allows users to protect against revealing the location 

of their homes, block known stalkers and people they do not wish to see. If users are active 

in managing and updating their blacklists, they may also reduce the ability to having people 

intrude on their space, and avoid being found when they want to be alone. Unfortunately, in 

the last two cases, users must spend the effort and time to add people to a blacklist, and must 

remember to remove people from the blacklist once they want to be found again. 

Friends Only: By solely allowing all friends to access users' locations, this protects users from 

being stalked (users may remove their stalkers from their friend lists). Unfortunately, this control does not protect from being found by friends when one wants to be alone or being found 

by someone who is a friend, but whom you may not wish to see. To deal with these concerns, 

users may manage their friend lists by adding and removing friends as they see fit. 

Granularity: Allowing the location-sharing application to only provide general information (e.g. 

neighborhood, city, or state) about one's location mitigates the risks (except for being bothered by ads and and being tracked by the government). Unfortunately, by only providing a 

wide range of possible locations, this also negates the benefits provided by location-sharing 

applications. 

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Group-based rules: Allowing people access to your location by dividing them into groups mitigates several privacy concerns. These group-based rules allow users to protect the location of 

their homes, to hide themselves from stalkers, and to avoid people they do not want to see. 

Based on how large one's group is and how active they are in assigning people to groups may 

also reduce, but not eliminate the risks of having people intrude on their private space and being 

found when they want to be alone. 

Invisible: By going invisible, the user reduces the risks listed above except for that of being 

bothered by location-based ads and government tracking. The user can significantly reduce the 

risk of being stalked or of being found by people they don't want to see, but they also reduce 

the benefits of these services. To most effectively deal with the risks, they must be very active 

in turning invisible mode on and off, which places a significant burden on the user. 

Location-based rules: Defining access by location allows the user to effectively protect the 

location of his home or spaces in which one needs private space or alone time. These rules may 

also block known stalkers at locations they do not wish to reveal. By continuously updating 

these rules, users may effectively address most of the risks, but this requires uscrs to regularly 

update their rules. 

Network: A network is typically larger than a group (e.g. the Chicago network). This may make 

it easier for users to define rules, but may not be an effective means in protecting them from 

the risks listed above. By defining network based rules, one prevents the general public from 

locating them, but may not keep stalkers within their network from finding them, or it may not 

prevent others from finding the location of their home, or preserving their personal space and 

alone time. 

Per request permission: Requiring users to approve of each location request reduces thc risks 

listed above except for that of being tracked by the government and being bothered by ads. 

Unfortunately, this method requires that users be interrupted, and this may become too burdensome on the user. 

Time-based rules: Basing restrictions on time allows users to create restrictions to protect the 

locations of their homes (assuming they are home at regular times). Time-based restrictions 

can also protect users from being intruded upon, being found, and allows them to be be alone 

at certain times of day or days of the week. 

Time-expiring approval: Allowing users to specifically permit others to locate them mitigates 

most nsks (excluding government tracking and being served with advertisements based on their 

location). Unfortunately, allowing users to be the only ones to "push" location information also 

negates most of the top benefits of location sharing (e.g. one would not be able to find someone 

in the case of an emergency when they need to wait for the user to make his location available 

for a small period of time). 

No restrictions: Having no rules allows users to be located by anyone. This opens them up to all 

the benefits as well as the risks of using location-sharing technologies. 

We see that the rules that allow users to mitigate the greatest risks are the following: 

Blacklist 

- Granularity 

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- Group-based rules 

- Location-based rules 

Time-based rules 

Each of these rules alone, including the burden on the user, does not address the largest expected risks of using location-sharing technologies. We find that location-sharing technologies 

offer limited flexibility in their privacy controls. It is rare that systems give users the ability to 

specify expressivc rules to control the sharing of their location information. Furthermore, there 

are no commercially available systems that offer anywhere near as powerful a control set as one 

could imagine: with the ability to specify rules based on specific users and groups of contacts, 

to control access based on time and location, to return locations at varying granularities, and to 

become invisible or obfuscate locations in extreme situations. There is one system, Locaccino, 

developed by the authors their university, that offers time, location, and group based rules, as well 

as invisibility. A combination of all of these rules would be the most effective in addressing users' 

privacy concerns. 

Another factor that has been mentioned briefly is user burden. In some cases, it would be 

possible for the user to toggle being invisible on and off all day, based on that day's events. 

Unfortunately, in our experience, people easily forget to do this. Once the location-sharing software 

is up and running, it is easier to leave it running; otherwise, once people go offline or invisible, they 

are likely to leave the software in that setting. Similarly, in systems that do offer a myriad of privacy 

controls, methods must be developed to help users create rules based on their daily schedules, and 

regular and irregular interactions with others. 

4.2 Discussion 

By defining the relative value of users' expected risks and benefits regarding the use of locationsharing services, we develop an understanding users' privacy concerns. We see that, in general, 

industry guidelines do not address these concerns, and the privacy controls in existing applications 

do not comprehensively address these concerns. In this paper, we have provided recommendations 

for sets of privacy control that may assist developers in addressing users' privacy concerns. 

Based on the current perceptions of benefits and harms of location-sharing technologies at 

this time (noting that perceptions of risks in this area may evolve or shift), the primary risks can 

be addressed or mitigated by the design of the location-sharing technology. Based on the current 

restrictions offered by location-sharing technologies, we find that these risks may not be addressed, 

in full, by the current palette of available privacy controls. Instead, location-sharing applications 

may want to consider making more expressive privacy controls available to their users. With more 

expressive controls, people may become more comfortable with sharing their location information 

and find more value in these services. Additionally, future work must be done to detennine how to 

reduce user burden. A balance must be found between expressiveness and usability or with offering 

users complex and detailed privacy controls and making these controls easy to use. 

Another matter to consider is that of users' evolving privacy concerns. Currently, we find that 

users' still do not find location-sharing services useful. This may be due to the lack of usage in 

general. Without a critical mass of users, current users are unable to reap the benefits of being 

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able to find their friends or to track farrlily members. As more and more people adopt these types 

of technologies, and peer opinion about these technologies becomes more favorable, the level of 

concern that people feel may diminish. Additionally, we find that it is younger people or people 

with children who arc more interested in location-sharing applications and are more likely to adopt 

these services. 

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· ! 

x ]x 

xx ; x 

x 

> ; , > > 

x x x x ;x 

xx 

jx 1, ;x; x 

x; x x j j, ,xj x j xix U 
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jx 

+.; ... , .... , ... , ...... , ...... , ... , 

x 

; ... ! .. , ... , ... , ... , ...... , .... , ... ; . .! 

j x j xj x 

• 

: T 

!··c··'··'···'···'···'··· 

Insert offset folio 71 here 76010A.050erowe on DSK2VPTVN1PROD with 

• Creation Date While many of the current location-based services 

have I 1 relaunched, rebranded, or generally attempted to "reboot" 

their St:rvlce, we have tried to find the most accurate date of a first 

public, or widespread beta launch for each of the services. Many of 

these dates are based on news articles, press releases, and blogs that 

announced the opening of the service. 

• Push/Pull Most services use one of two approaches to location 

sharing, either users post their location at times they feel comfortable 

"checking in" to a specific place (push) or have their location stored, 

ideally near real-time, so that it can be requested by friends (pull). Most 

pull systems allow users to push their location, especially if their phone 

or settings prohibit automatic updating. 

• System Most services also use one of two system models. Closed 

systems require users to be "friends" with each other, while an open 

model allows users to be requested by anyone in the system. This is 

separate, though not unrelated, to public sharing. 

• Accessible privacy settings We noted whether or not the main 

interface allowed users to prominently see and access their privacy 

controls. For example, an application where one cf the ma'ln tabs is 

labeled "Privacy" would fall under this category. An application that 

requires users to visit several pages or menus (e.g. Profile/AccounV 

Settings/Privacy) does not. 

• Privacy Policy We checked to see whether or not the website 

detailed their information practices (detailed in a privacy policy or 

included In a legal statement or terms of service). We checked this 

information both in August 2009, and February 2010. 

• Policy mentions location We checked to see jf the privacy policies 

explicitly mention location information, geographic data, etc. 

• Home page mention We also check to see if the product/application 

homepages made any mention to privacy, security, user control, or 

something that would give users a sense of control over their 

information. Privacy policy links did not count. 

· Blacklist Users are able to block specific individuals from v'lewing their 

location. 

• Per-request (explicit) permissions Users must specifically review 

each location request, and decide whether or allow or deny the 

request prior to the location being revealed. 

• Friends Only This whitelist-based control restricts acr 

denoted as a "Friend." By default, closed systems are Is

friends only. 

• Granularity This advanced control allows users to instruct 

to provide a less detailed location to the person requesting 

(e.g. "Andrew is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.") 

• Group This restriction allows users to define access based 

groupings of users. (e.g. Allow everyone in the "college frien

to view my location.) 

• Invisible This feature may also be termed the "Private," "O

"No one" setting. Users continue to send location data, but 

iocations are not divulged. 

• Network This restriction allows the user to select existing 

communities to whom their location may be revealed. For e

user may join a geographical network or an interest-based 

with whom they wish to share their location. 

• Time-expiring approval: Several systems allow users to s

specific time frame (e.g. 1 hour) during which a link to the m

location is "live." During this time frame, the recipient of the 

message may view the map. After the expiration of this time

will no longer be accessible. 

• No restrictions: Anyone is able to view the user's location. • Not Applicable Privacy controls do not apply. • Unknown We were unable to find information about the pr

controls. 

• Time-based rules (not shown) Users may define durations 

and days of the week during which their location may be re

from 10 am to 3 pm). 

• Location-based rules (not shown)This restriction allows u

define locations in which their location-information may be 

For example, users may tag a location as "Work" or select a

a map, and their location information is revealed to anyone 

requests them when they are at that location. 
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69 

Mr. RUSH. Thank you very much. 

The Chair now recognizes Mr. King for 5 minutes for the purposes of an opening statement. 

TESTIMONY OF JERRY KING 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the joint 

committee for inviting uLocate here today to discuss the use of location information in commercial software applications. What I 

hope to accomplish this morning is to provide you with an example 

of how such information can be used to benefit the consumer in the 

form of a mobile location search application within a privacy-sensitive business model. 

To start, please allow me to tell you a little bit about uLocate’s 

mobile application WHERE and how we use location. We launched 

WHERE in 2007 and have since become a top provider of mobile 

local search content that informs, entertains and helps consumers 

save time and money. WHERE’s popularity is demonstrated by millions of downloads on top phones such as the Android and iPhone 

and BlackBerry and feature phones on most North American carriers including AT&T, Sprint and T–Mobile. 

Local content available through WHERE includes everything 

from the weather, news, traffic, coffee shops with WiFi, you name 

it, plus we have integrated a variety of Yellow Pages search providers to further expand the information available at the consumer’s fingertips. WHERE also helps people reach their destinations with easy-to-use maps and directions. 

In addition to providing local content and search services, 

WHERE enables brands and advertisers to reach a local audience 

through contextually and demographically targeted ads. Interestingly, as we move from displaying non-location-based banner ads 

last year to more targeted advertising, we began to receive positive 

feedback from our users. As opposed to expressing frustration with 

generic or irrelevant banner ads, our users commented that our 

new style ads were positive additions to their experience. In other 

words, ads and offers for local businesses that make sense within 

the consumer’s experience turn out to be viewed as value-added 

content. 

We also noticed that such ads generated more revenue for 

uLocate. For example, by using location, time of day and other factors, we know that an ad for a local service station inside of a traffic widget has a higher click-through rate. Similarly, ads for local 

pizza shops at lunchtime perform very well. 

Next, I will provide you some details about how WHERE collects 

location information. WHERE employs several location technologies 

such as GPS, WiFi and network-based location to determine the 

consumer’s whereabouts. When a consumer starts WHERE for the 

first time, they are informed that WHERE will attempt to get their 

location. Consumers that are concerned about this can also choose 

not to allow WHERE to get location automatically. Consumers 

within WHERE always have the option to manually set their location either to their actual position on the planet or someplace else 

at any time for any reason. 

WHERE users can also control location accuracy. For example, if 

the user chooses to update their location within WHERE, they are 


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presented with a list of options ranging from zip code to GPS fix. 

For many search activities, zip code is more than sufficient while 

a street address may provide a more optimized experience for other 

functions. Once the location of the consumer’s handset is updated, 

we cache that new location on the consumer’s handset. When location is sent from a handset to our backend service as part of a service request as in a search, the location data is encrypted. 

Having processes and policies that address collection and storage 

of location information is important but is only part of our approach to protecting consumer privacy. I would also like to address 

the issue of sharing location information, unlike some locationbased services in market where it does not allow anyone to pull or 

monitor or track the location of anyone else. We also do not allow 

the automatic posting of locations that allow others to track a 

WHERE user’s location. Lastly, we do not share personally identifiable location information of WHERE users with any third parties. 

Having a well-defined and trusted application with respect to these 

three behaviors has been a cornerstone of our approach to protecting consumer privacy within WHERE. 

WHERE does allow users to publish or push their location to others within certain user-controlled functions such as reviews or 

check-ins. This is done to provide the consumer with the ability to 

generate location-specific content such as a restaurant review and 

post that content on a variety of social networks such as Facebook. 

I hope this statement has provided you with some insights into 

what we consider a well-behaved location-based application. In 

sum, we use location to deliver beneficial consumer experience and 

we put the consumer in control of both managing their location information and sharing it with others. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I look 

forward to your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. King follows:] 


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STATEMENT OF JERRY KING 

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, ULOCATE COMMUNICATIONS INC. 

BEFORE THE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY & THE INTERNET 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY & COMMERCE 

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

HEARING ON THE COLLECTION AND USE OF LOCATION INFORMATION FOR 

COMMERCIAL PURPOSES 

FEBRUARY 24, 2010 

Thank you Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee for inviting 

uLocate Communications Inc. here to discuss the use oflocation information in 

commercial software applications. What I hope to accomplish this morning is to 

provide you with an example of how such information can benefit the consumer in 

the form of a mobile local search application within a privacy sensitive business 

model. 

To start, please allow me to tell you about uLocate's mobile applicationWHERE® - and how we use location. We launched WHERE in 2007 and have since 

become a top provider of mobile local search content that informs, entertains, and 

helps consumers save time and money. WHERE aggregates best-of breed content 

from multiple sources to create a top-tier local search experience that includes realtime user generated recommendations and targeted advertising and offers based on 

the consumer's preferences. 
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WHERE's popularity is demonstrated by millions of downloads and top 

ratings on 'smart phones' such as iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre, and on 

feature phones from wireless carriers such as AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. 

Local content available through WHERE includes everything from the 

weather, news, restaurant reviews, directions to the closest coffee shop with WiFi, 

cheap gas, traffic updates, movie show times, and more. Plus, we have integrated a 

variety of 'yellow pages' search providers to further expand the information 

available at the consumer's fingertips. WHERE also helps people reach their 

destinations with easy to use maps and directions. 

In addition to providing local content and search services, WHERE enables 

brands and advertisers to reach a local audience. We currently serve 

advertisements on mobile devices across all of the major US wireless carriers. Once 

the consumer establishes their location within WHERE, we are able to deliver both 

contextually and demographically targeted campaigns. 

Interestingly, as we moved from displaying non-location based banner ads to 

more targeted advertising last year, we began to receive positive feedback from our 

users. As opposed to expressing frustration with generic or irrelevant ads, our users 

commented that our new style oflocation or service related ads were positive 

additions to their experience. In other words, ads and offers for local businesses 

that make sense within the consumer's experience turn out to be viewed as valueadded content. 

We also noticed that such ads generated more revenue for uLocate. For 

example, by using location, time-of-day, application context, and other factors, we 

know that an ad for a local service station inside of the Traffic widget will have a 

higher clickthrough rate, as will ads for local pizza shops at lunchtime. 

2 
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Next, I will provide you with some details about how WHERE collects 

location information. 

The first thing that I would like to point out is that the CTIA Best Practices 

and Guidelines for Location Based Services are an excellent source of information for 

how location can be used in a responsible and consumer-focused way. Given our 

close relationship with the wireless carriers, adherence to these guidelines has 

always been central to the services we offer - and, we believe, to our success in the 

market. 

In order to deliver location-based services, WHERE employs several location 

technologies such as GPS, WiFi, and network-based location to determine the 

consumer's whereabouts. When a consumer starts WHERE for the first time they 

are informed that WHERE is a location-based application and will attempt to get 

their location automatically. Consumers that are concerned about privacy can 

choose not to allow WHERE to get location in the background. Choosing this option 

requires users to explicitly approve location acquisition every time they launch 

WHERE. 

Consumers can also manually set their location - either to their actual 

position on the planet or some other place - depending on their preference and at 

any point in time. 

Furthermore, WHERE users can control location accuracy. For example, if thE 

user chooses to update their location with WHERE, they are presented with a list of 

options ranging from zip code to actual GPS fix. For many search activities, zip code 

is often sufficient (e.g., Movie theaters), while a street address may provide a more 

optimized experience for other functions (e.g., restaurant reviews). 

Once the location of the consumer's handset is updated (either automatically 

or manually), we cache the new location locally on the consumer's handset. When 

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74 


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location is sent from the handset to our back-end servers as part of a service 

request, the location data is encrypted. 

We do log service requests (e.g., a search for nearby coffee shops) in our 

database under a randomly generated lD along with the encrypted location data. 

The data in these logs is then aggregated and only the aggregate data is used for 

downstream analytical functions. These logs are purged periodically and are never 

used to track or share personally identifiable information or behaviors. 

Having processes and policies that address the collection and storage of 

location information is only part of our approach, however. I would like to also 

address the issue of sharing location information. 

Unlike some location-based services in market, WHERE does not allow 

anyone to 'pull' or monitor the location of anyone else. We also do not allow 

automatic posting oflocations that might allow others to track a WHERE user's 

location. Lastly, we do not share personally identifiable location information of 

WHERE users with any third parties. Having a well-defined and trusted application 

with respect to these three behaviors has been a cornerstone of our approach to 

protecting consumer privacy. 

WHERE does allow users to publish or 'push' their location to others within 

certain user controlled functions such as reviews and 'check ins'. This is done to 

provide the consumer with the ability to generate location-specific content (e.g. 

restaurant reviews) and post that content on a variety of social networks (e.g., 

Facebook) and forums (e.g., WHERE Reviews). 

I hope this statement has provided you with some insights into what we 

consider to be a 'well-behaved' mobile location-based application operating in 

today's market. 

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In sum, we use location to deliver a beneficial experience to the consumer 

and we put the consumer in control of both managing their location information and 

sharing it with others. 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I would be pleased 

to answer any questions you may have. 

5 
76 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Bernard for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF TONY BERNARD 

Mr. BERNARD. Thank you. On behalf of Useful Networks and the 

location industry, thank you to your respective committees for their 

time and my fellow witnesses for their time in this important topic. 

I am Tony Bernard, vice president and general manager of Useful Networks. Useful Networks is a Denver-based company that delivers innovative local location-based services to consumers, wireless carriers, application developers and mobile marketers. We 

were founded in July of 2006 and are focused on location aggregation and enablement, providing a location clearinghouse and related services with our PlaceWhere platform. Useful Networks is a 

wholly owned subsidiary of TruePosition, the global leader in location determination and intelligence solutions that help protect citizens, combat crime and save lives. 

A location aggregator provides its third-party partners with location connectivity to a variety of sources including wireless carrier 

infrastructure. Aggregators may also offer privacy management 

like Useful Networks does to complement the location connectivity 

we provide. To the gentleman’s points earlier, this platform is both 

forward looking and adaptable in that it offers a multi-tiered privacy framework to enable compliance with the current and future 

requirements for access to and use of an end-user’s location information. PlaceWhere ensures compliance with privacy best practices 

as manifested by a variety of stakeholders including industry and 

government entities, wireless carriers and most importantly, consumers. 

My focus today is to talk about location-based advertising. A few 

of the players in the location-based advertising value chain include 

publishers, which own and manage content portals via which audience is aggregated and into which mobile advertisements be published. An example of the type of application publisher would be 

uLocate and their WHERE application. We also work with ad networks who aggregate publisher inventory and sell ad campaigns. 

Examples of those would include Quatro and Millennial Media. We 

work with ad exchanges who aggregate ad networks for publishers, 

enabling them to serve the most profitable ads from the available 

networks. 

Additionally, ad agencies play a role in location-based advertising. They buy advertising from ad networks, assign creative 

campaigns and sell their brands. Examples of these would include 

traditional ones such like Saatchi and Saatchi as well as emerging 

digital agencies like Razorfish. And finally, there are location 

enablers like Useful Networks who endeavor to establish rules by 

which others can engage in location-based advertising and ensure 

they are complied with. 

So it is important to talk briefly about the state of location-based 

advertising in the United States. The CTIA published a set of best 

practices and guidelines for use of location services in 2008 fundamentally predicated on the two principles of user notice and informed consent. Specifically, the ability to use a consumer’s location to provide a location-enhanced advertisement is fundamentally 

predicated upon an explicit opt-in where such consent is provided 


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77 

by the consumer on an informed basis with respect to if, how, when 

and by whom their location information may be used. Consumers 

may subsequently opt out of their location being used for such purposes. 

Whereas wireless carriers tend to rigidly enforce these principles, 

to the earlier points raised, the emerging devices carrier category, 

examples of which would include the iPhone and Nexus One devices, do not yet fall under the auspices of these guidelines, and 

what we see now is what could be perceived as a regulatory gap 

where consumers can have very different expectations and experiences with the same application if that application is on a carrier 

device versus a non-carrier-controlled device. I look forward to talking more about that topic. 

Another significant evolution in location-based advertising is the 

emergence of the check-in model. The emerging check-in model is 

enabling the transition from passive to active location sharing. 

Where passive is typically location tracked by the network, active 

is the consumer making a choice to share that location information. 

Examples of these include applications like BrightKite, Foursquare, 

Gawala, and MyTown. It is anticipated that these check-in capabilities will become an even more ubiquitous feature across a wide 

variety of location-based applications and services in the near future and it will be important to understand implications to these. 

Another component of the state of location-based advertising is 

how location context is enabling a transition by advertisers from 

paying for impression-based campaigns to performance-based campaigns. Mobile devices in general and location-aware devices specifically add significant context for advertisers. This context is unavailable via traditional advertising channels such as print and online advertising. Combining this context with mobility creates new 

opportunities for advertisers to improve the efficiency of their advertising spend by focusing on conversion. 

A few examples of location-based advertising. Useful Networks, 

launched a trial in 2009 working with a tier one U.S. carrier and 

an advertising network which in turn worked with a major fastfood chain and a major automotive company to launch two locationbased advertising trials which were centered around a store finder 

page and were designed to test and prove the added benefits that 

location enablement brings to mobile marketing campaigns. These 

trials resulted in a yield of three times as many store finder page 

views as compared to the number of page views when the end-user 

was asked to enter their zip code. 

Another trial we are preparing to commence is with a company 

called Mobox. Mobox is a location-based mobile ad platform that 

serves ads into mobile content, reaching over 30 million unique 

U.S. mobile users. Useful Networks is providing location 

connectivity and privacy management to enable location targeting 

via Mobox’s platform. 

Again, I would like to thank their committees for their interest 

and attention to this important topic and look forward to talking 

about these issues in more earnest during the future testimony. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bernard follows:] 


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House of Representatives 

Committee on Energy and Commerce 

Joint Hearing, Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, 

and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee 

on Communications, Technology, and the Internet 

liThe Collection and Use of Location Information for 

Commercial Purposes" 

Location-Based Advertising Testimony 

Presented by: 

Tony Bernard 

Vice President and General Manager 

Useful Networks, Inc. 

February 24, 2010 
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Useful Networks, Inc. Location-Based Advertising Testimony 

Useful Networks Overview 

1.1. Company Description 

Useful Networks (www.useful-networks.com) is a Denver-based company 

that delivers innovative mobile location technology products to end-users, 

mobile operators, application developers and mobile marketers. Founded in 

July 2006, Useful Networks has consistently provided technologies that 

bring value to location. The company's three core goals are to create the 

most compelling location-aware applications for web and mobile; to offer 

brands and agencies a completely new way to connect with consumers; and 

to act as a location clearinghouse for content providers with our 

PlaceWhere'M Platform. 

Useful Networks is a wholly owned subsidiary of TruePosition 

(www.trueposition.com). TruePosition is the global leader in location 

determination and intelligence solutions that help protect citizens, combat 

crime, and save lives. TruePosition location solutions meet the missioncritical requirements of enterprises and government agencies. These 

solutions include future-proof technologies, innovative applications, and 

comprehensive networking and systems services. TruePosition has more 

patents, technical expertise, and operational experience in wireless location 

than any other company in the world. Every day more than 100 million 

people depend on location services supported by TruePosition technology. 

TruePosition is a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation 

attributed to the Liberty Capital group (Nasdaq: LCAPA), which owns a 

broad range of electronic retailing, media, communications and 

entertainment businesses. For more information, visit 

www.trueposition.com or www.libertymedia.com. 

1.2. Location Aggregator Model 

A location aggregator provides its third-party partners (e.g., application 

developers, mobile marketers) with location connectivity to a variety of 

location sources, including wireless carrier location infrastructure. Location 

sources include (but are not limited to) on-device GPS (with or without 

carrier assist data), carrier network-based location, on-device Bluetooth and 

WiFi-based positioning. 

In order to derive an end-user's location from any source, the end-user must 

be presented with notice of how, when and by whom location will be used, 

such that an informed consent by the end-user may be prOVided (and may 

subsequently be revoked) at any time. Therefore, location aggregators may 

seek to additionally provide policy & privacy management capabilities to 

ensure the aggregator's third-party partners' compliance with privacy best 

practices as manifested by a variety of stakeholders. Key stakeholders 

include (but are not limited to) industry and/or government entities (e.g., 

CTIA, FTC, FCC, MMA), wireless carriers and end-users. 

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Useful Networks, Inc. Location-Based Advertising Testimony 

1.3. PlaceWhere 

1.3.1. Location connectivity 

The PlaceWhere platform enables third-party application developers to 

access a variety of location sources via a single API - in the near term, 

primarily wireless carrier-based sources. In addition to carrier-based 

location sources, the API also supports emerging sources such as WiFi- and 

Bluetooth-based location, providing 3rd party application developers with a 

range of options with respect to which location type(s) are best suited to 

their application. 

The various location sources can provide a very different "yield," or precision 

of location fix, based on a variety of conditions. For example, on-device GPS 

can provide relatively high location granularity, whereas Cell ID tends to 

provide less-precise location. The yield of the respective sources in turn 

aligns with the performance requirements of various commercial 

applications. While less-precise Cell ID-based locations may suffice for a 

location-aware mobile marketing campaign, more-precise assisted GPS 

(where "assist" data is provided by the carrier network) is typically required 

by location-based social networking applications. 

1.3.2. Multi-tiered privacy framework 

The multi-tiered privacy framework in PlaceWhere is designed with the 

disparate yet complementary needs of the various stakeholders in mind. 

Specifically, the framework is based on the following successive stakeholder 

tiers. 

1.3.2.1. Regulatory 

The regulatory tier embodies the various laws, rules, regulations and best 

practices as they relate to access to and use of the end-user's location. 

Examples include the CTIA LBS Best Practices and Guidelines, and the 

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). 

1.3.2.2. Wireless carrier jDevice-as-carrier 

Each wireless carrier can have its own unique requirements under which 

they will allow access to and use of its customers' location information. 

These requirements are similar in many regards, but may also differ in 

material ways, such that a cross-carrier policy framework is desirable to 

third-party application developers in order to simplify the development 

process while ensuring compliance with carrier-specific requirements. 

Emerging "device-as-carrier" platforms (e.g., iPhone, Nexus One) are 

increasingly playing a role similar to that which has traditionally been the 

domain of wireless carriers, in that the device manufacturers are in some 

cases establishing and enforcing their own "rules of engagement" for 

accessing end-users' location information on their devices. For example, 

Apple recently began limiting the ability of iPhone application developers 

to access end-user location data for advertising purposes. 

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Useful Networks, Inc. Location-Based Advertising Testimony 

1.3.2.3. End-user 

The controls provided to the end-user are tailored to the specific type of 

application and its associated "risk profile" with respect to usage of 

location information. Such end-user controls consistently manifest the 

key principals of informed consent, explicit (vs. default) opt-in and 

permission revocation, regardless of the application's underlying risk 

profile. Examples of risk profiles include (but are not limited to): 

Peer-to-peer locate (Enterprise/Account holder control) 

Peer-to-peer locate (End-user control) 

Self-locate (news/info, games) 

Self-locate (search/advertising/marketing) 

1.3.3. Location-based advertising capabilities 

1.3.3.1. Content localization 

Tailor mobile web content (e.g., news & weather) based on the end-user's 

location. More relevant information improves the user experience. 

1.3.3.2. Ad geo-targeting 

Use the end-user's location to improve the relevance of an advertisement 

or offer. For example, a local business owner could purchase advertising 

inventory targeting only end-users in his geographic region, thereby 

enhancing the campaign's effectiveness by ensuring the local owner only 

pays for impressions/clicks from local, potential customers. 

1.3.3.3. Store locator 

Use the end-user's location to provide guidance to nearby store/franchise 

locations. For example, a national auto brand can use location to provide 

a list of the dealer locations closest to the end-user. 

1.3.3.4. Proximity alert 

Proximity-based marketing programs have traditionally been limited by 

the cost and utility of location technology. For example, a marketer may 

desire to continuously "poll" the locations of opted-in members of its 

loyalty program for the purpose of sending offers when an opted-in 

member is within 100 yards of a store location. This use case could be 

prohibitively expensive due to the "per-dip" nature of location expenses. 

The emerging "check-in" model is enabling the transition from passive 

(Le., the network tracks opted-in subscribers) to active (Le., the end-user 

"checks in" when arriving at a location and is provided an incentive to do 

so). Examples of check-in applications via which proximity-based 

marketing is taking place include BrightKite, Foursquare, Gowalla and 

MyTown. It is anticipated that "check-in" capabilities will emerge as a 

ubiquitous feature set across a variety of location-based applications and 

services, given the aforementioned location cost & utility constraints. 

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Useful Networks, Inc. 

2. LBA Value Chain 

2.1. Publishers 

Location-Based Advertising Testimony 

Own and manage content portals via which audience is aggregated and into 

which mobile advertisements can be published. Work with various stakeholders 

to maximize revenue & profits by optimizing fill rates. Examples: CNN, Where 

(uLocate) 

2.2. Ad Networks 

Aggregate publisher inventory (available ad space and impressions) and sells ad 

campaigns. Examples: AdMob, Quattro Wireless, Millennial Media 

2.3. Ad Servers 

Software-based platform; enable campaign management, ad selection and ad 

serving capabilities. Examples: MADS, OpenX 

2.4. Ad Exchanges 

Aggregate Ad Networks for publishers, enabling them to serve the most 

profitable ads from the available networks. Example: AdWhirl 

2.5. Ad Agencies 

Buy advertising from Ad Networks, designs creative campaigns and sells to 

brands. Example: Saatchi, Hyperfactory 

2.6. Location Enablers 

Provide location data from a variety of sources, making it available to publisher 

content targeting and ad selection processes. Example: Useful Networks 

2.7. Ecosystem Examples 

2.7.1. Publisher initiates location request 

Publishers request location from PlaceWhere prior to receiving a request for 

content from the Consumer. Publishers could also use this location to 

request and serve targeted ads. 

UN PlaceWhere 

Ill······ • 

Consumer 

Advertiser 

Ad Networks/Server 

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2.7.2. Consumer request proxied through PlaceWhere 

Consumer requests are proxied thru PlaceWhere, and the request is locationenabled before it gets to the Publisher. The Publisher may then use location 

to make an ad request. 

UN PlaceWhere 

Consumer Publisher Advertiser 

Ad Networks/Server 

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3. State of LBA 

3.1. Opting In, Opting Out 

The ability to use the end-user's location for the purpose of providing a locationenhanced advertisement is fundamentally predicated upon an explicit opt-in, 

where such consent is provided by the end-user on an informed basis with 

respect to if, how and when and by whom their location may be used. 

Correspondingly, end-users may subsequently opt-out of their location being 

used for such purposes. It is worth noting that current online-based 

advertisements leverage coarse, IP-based location to localize display ads without 

requiring an opt-in from the end-user. 

3.2. Passive vs. Active Location & Impact of Check-In Model 

The emerging "check-in" model is enabling the transition from passive (i.e., the 

network tracks opted-in subscribers) to active (i.e., the end-user "checks in" 

when arriving at a location and is provided an incentive to do so). Examples of 

check-in applications via which proximity-based marketing is taking place 

include BrightKite, Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown. It is anticipated that 

"check-in" capabilities will emerge as a ubiquitous feature set across a variety of 

location-based applications and services, given the aforementioned location cost 

& utility constraints. 

3.3. Location Context: Enabling the Transition from Impressions to Performance 

Mobile devices in general - and location-aware devices specifically - add 

significant context for advertisers. Such precise context has been largely 

unavailable via traditional advertising channels such as print and online. 

Combining context with mobility creates new opportunities for advertisers to 

improve the efficiency of their advertising spend by focusing on conversion. 

3.4. "The Last Mile": Conversion Beyond the Click 

The addition of context via location - coupled with the dynamic nature of mobile 

advertising technologies - creates an environment in which advertisers are 

increasingly willing to pay premiums for performance-based campaigns (e.g., 

cost-per-click, click-to-call, offer redemption) with proven ROls, and are less 

willing to pay for traditional impression-based campaigns (e.g., cost-perthousand impressions, or CPM) with uncertain ROI with respect to conversion. 

As consumers engage with campaigns via their mobile devices, the opportunity 

to further "prove" ROI via offer redemption (e.g., the consumer clicks on a 

banner ad, receives a coupon code and redeems the offer by entering the coupon 

code at the merchant's point-of-sale terminal) will in turn improve, thereby 

solving "the last mile" issue of proving an advertisement led to the desired action 

by the consumer. An example of a performance-based campaign is a national 

auto franchise which uses location to optimize an ad, leading to (a) a click by the 

end-user (advertiser pays based on CPC) and (b) redemption of an offer (e.g., 

$10 iTunes gift card for scheduling a test drive). 

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4. Case Studies & Examples 

4.1. Storefinder Trial - Quick Serve Burger franchise & National Auto Dealer 

4.1.1. Executive Summary 

UN worked with a major U.S. Carrier (which will be referred to as "the 

carrier") and a major advertising network (which will be referred to as "the 

ad network"), who in tum worked with a major fast food restaurant chain 

(Trial #1) and a major automotive company (Trial #2), to launch two 

location-based advertising trials in the United States. The LBA Trials were 

centered around a Store Finder page and were designed to test and prove the 

added benefits that location-enablement brings to mobile marketing 

campaigns. 

4.1.2. Trial Setup 

Both trials created very similar end user experiences. The end user 

experience involved two call-to-action banner ads displayed on the carrier's 

mobile portal enticing the customer to find the two brands' store locations. 

Although both banner ads were virtually identical (except for the opt-in 

language featured on the location-enabled banner ad), each banner ad 

resulted in a different after-the-click experience. 

Control Group: 50% of the banner ad clicks directed the user to a 

manual zip code entry page. 

• Trial Group: 50% of users saw a location-enabled banner ad that used 

the user's location to generate a Store Finder page without requiring 

the user to enter in their zip code. 

• Trial Purpose: to test whether a location-enabled marketing campaign 

will result in a higher percentage of Store Finder page views (Le., 

higher conversion rates). 

4.1.3. Trial Results 

Brand #1 - Quick Service Restaurant Vertical: -100% of those users 

who clicked on the location-enabled banner ad saw the fast food 

restaurant's Store Finder page. In contrast, only 28% of those users 

who were directed to the manual zip code entry page actually 

submitted their zip code and viewed the brand's Store Finder page. 

Stated differently, the non-location enabled banner ad resulted in a 

72% abandonment rate. 

Brand #2 - Automotive Vertical: -10% of those users who were 

directed to the manual zip code entry page actually submitted their 

zip code and viewed the automotive company's Store Finder page 

(compared to -100% of those users who clicked on the locationenabled banner ad). 

4.1.4. Trial Findings 

The quick serve restaurant trial showed that a location-enabled solution 

yields 3 times as many Store Finder page views than does one requiring a 

manual zip code entry. The automotive company trial showed that the 

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location-enabled solution yields 10 times as many Store Finder page views. 

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that a location-enabled marketing 

campaign is, at a minimum, 3 times as valuable as a non-location enabled 

marketing campaign. 

4.2. Upcoming LBA Trial - MoVoxx 

4.2.1. Trial Overview 

MoVoxx is a location-based mobile ad platform that intelligently serves ads 

into mobile content reaching over 30 million unique US mobile users. 

GeoSenseTM platform combines real-time user location data within the ad 

serving process to enable national brands and local merchants the ability to 

launch location-based mobile advertising campaigns - at scale. 

Useful Networks is providing location connectivity (to enhance Movoxx's 

existing data set) and privacy management (to ensure compliance with best 

practices). This new geo-targeting capability is expected to improve 

relevance of the mobile channel for small business and local merchant 

advertisers. To reach them, MoVoxx will aggregate local merchants' mobile 

campaigns, through partners such as Citysearch, Marchex and iPromote, as 

well as by working directly with larger brands interested in geo-targeting 

such as Sears. 

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87 

Mr. RUSH. Thank you. 

The gentleman, Mr. Altschul, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL ALTSCHUL 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. On behalf of CTIA, I want to thank Chairman 

Rush and Chairman Boucher, all the members of the two subcommittees for the opportunity to testify here. 

My name is Mike Altschul and I have served as CTIA’s general 

counsel since 1990. In that role, on behalf of CTIA, I have been involved in the development of a number of voluntary industry best 

practices including CTIA’s best practices and guidelines for location-based services that you have heard the other witnesses on the 

panel describe. I am very proud that CTIA and the wireless industry have long been at the forefront of efforts to promote location 

privacy. In the late 1990s, we supported the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act, which amended section 222 of the 

Communications Act to require the express prior authorization of 

the customer for the disclosure of the wireless customer’s location 

information for location-based services. That really has provided 

the foundation for everything that has followed since. 

In fact, in 2000, following the enactment of the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act, CTIA petitioned the FCC to adopt 

a set of fair location information practices for wireless locationbased services modeled upon the familiar fair information practice 

principles of notice and consent. More recently, as location-based 

services began to be deployed for applications other than E911, 

CTIA developed the current set of best practices to promote and 

protect the privacy of wireless customers’ location information. You 

have heard what they have done and you have also heard from the 

other witnesses that in the 2 years since we adopted and developed 

these best practices, as so often happens in the wireless industry, 

technology has overtaken our static assumption and the locationbased services now being offered turn out to be quite different from 

what had been envisioned just 2 years ago. You have heard how 

the move towards opening platforms including the iPhone and the 

Google Android platform, the introduction and overwhelming consumer adoption of smartphones, which include their own GPS capabilities, and the increased prevalence of GPS-enabled service applications that can be downloaded to a handset and enabled without any involvement or knowledge by a wireless carrier have combined to make a carrier-centric approach to location-based services 

no longer sufficient for guidelines. 

So these factors and the rapid developments of the past 2 years 

have led us to reevaluate our guidelines, and as we have completed 

work on the new guidelines, it is our goal to ensure there will always be one clearly identified location-based service provider with 

the obligation to inform the user as to how location information 

will be used and disclosed in addition to obtaining customers’ consent before initiating the service. 

While the scope of the new CTIA guidelines is different, the focus 

is not. The new guidelines will build on the foundation we laid 10 

years ago by continuing to put a premium on user notice and user 

consent. We believe the guidelines offer a meaningful framework 

for the protection of user privacy and we urge policymakers to recVerDate Mar 15 2010 09:09 Nov 08, 2012 Jkt 076010 PO 00000 Frm 00093 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A010.XXX A010

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ognize that the industry’s willingness to develop best practices and 

to revise these guidelines as circumstances warrant represents the 

best way to balance the needs to promote and protect user privacy 

while also facilitating the deployment of new and innovative products and services. 

A call for legislative restraint does not mean there is no role for 

Congress while the industry and technology evolve. Congress also 

has made clear that the express prior authorization of the customer 

is the prerequisite for the disclosure of a wireless customer’s location information. While section 222 on its terms applies only to 

telecommunications carriers, its requirements have been observed 

by all providers of wireless location-based services across all the 

different application levels. As these services continue to evolve 

and develop in both predictable and unpredictable ways, Congress 

has an important oversight role in ensuring that all providers of location-based services deliver effective notice and obtain consent regardless of the device or technology used so that wireless users can 

continue to exercise informed consent to control the use or disclosure of their location information. 

As Mr. Morris mentioned, one area in which we believe legislative guidance may be appropriate is a clarification of the terms 

under which location information may be released to law enforcement. As you know, just this month in the 3rd Circuit, there was 

oral argument on the issue of what standards should apply when 

law enforcement seeks to gain access to a wireless user’s location 

information. Most courts have allowed access to stored location 

records based on a court order and demonstrated need, but in the 

3rd Circuit, the U.S. Department of Justice and privacy advocates 

argued whether access to these historical location records should 

meet a probable-cause standard. Service providers need clarity so 

as to not be caught in the middle of these disputes. 

Finally, we urge Congress to recognize the interstate nature of 

location-based services, the mobile nature of wireless users and to 

take care in whatever framework may be adopted to preempt state 

regulation of these services. A uniform national approach presents 

the best way of protecting user privacy and educating and informing wireless customers while fostering the innovation, investment 

and introduction of new location-based services by wireless carriers, device manufacturers, operating system developers and application creators. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to share our views with the 

subcommittees. We look forward to working with you as you continue your efforts on this issue. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Altschul follows:] 


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Testimony of Michael Altschul, Senior Vice President ~nd General Counsel, 

CTIA - The Wireless Association" 

before the 

House Energy and Commerce 

Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, and 

Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer I)rotection 

February 24, 2010 

On behalf of CTIA - The Wireless Association" ("CTlA <0), I want to thank Chairman 

Boucher and Chainnan Rush, ranking members Stearns and Radanovich, and members of 

the two subcommittees for the opportunity to appear at today's hearing to share the 

wireless industry's views on the proper regulatory framework for location-based services. 

My name is Mike Altschul, and I have served as CTlA' s General Coullsel since 1990, In 

my capacity at CTIA, I have been involved in the development ofCTIA's Best Practices 

and Guidelines for Location-Based Services ("Guidelines"), I have represented eTIA 

before the Federal Trade Commission and the FTC's activities related to privacy and 

location-based services, the most recent of which was the January 28, 2010 "Exploring 

Privacy" roundtable held at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 

Additionally, I have been involved with CTIA '5 advocacy on these issues before the 

Federal Communications Commission, 

CTIA has been at the forefront of location privacy \vhite balancing the need for legitimate 

access to a customer"s location infonnation in emergencies and for law enforcement 

purposes from the inception -- beginning fifteen years ago when CTIA and Public Safety 

proposed a "Consensus Solution" to the Federal Communications Commission's wireless 

E-911 rulemaking proceeding, I am proud that CTIA has been a leader in regard to 

location privacy ever since, In the late 19905, we supported The VVireless 

Communications and Public Sate(v Act o/l999 (Public I,aw 106-81, 113 Stat 1286-

1290), which addressed some of the issues that arose from the FCC's E-911 ruiemaking, 

including a provision that specifically authorized carriers to provide call location 

information concerning a user of a commercial mobile service to: (1) emergency 

dispatchers and emergency service personnel in order to respond to the user's call; (2) the 

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Testimony of Michael Altschul 

user's legal guardian or family member in an emergency situation that involves the risk of 

death or serious physical harm; or (3) providers of information or data base management 

services solely for assisting in the delivery of emergency services. Significantly, The 

Wireless Communications and Public Safety Act also amended Section 222 of the 

Communications Act to require "the express prior authorization of the customer" for the 

disclosure of the wireless customer's location information for any other purpose. 

In 2000, CTIA petitioned the FCC to adopt a set of Fair Location Information Practices 

for wireless location-based services. CTIA's proposal was modeled on the familiar Fair 

Information Practice Principles. Although the FCC declined to adopt CTIA's proposal, 

the fundamental principles of customer "notice" and "consent" have been widely adopted 

and continue to provide the basis for the wireless industry's approach to location-based 

services. 

Two years ago, as location-based services began to be developed and deployed for 

applications other than E-911, CTIA worked with its members and other interested 

parties to develop a set of industry "Best Practices and Guidelines" to promote and 

protect the privacy of wireless customers' location information. The 2008 Guidelines 

directed the entities that provide location based services to inform users about how their 

location information will be used, disclosed, or protected so that a user can make an 

informed decision about whether or not to use a particular location-based service or 

authorize disclosure of his or her location. Additionally, once a user has opted to use a 

location-based service, or authorized disclosure of his or her location, the 2008 

Guidelines contemplate that the user should have choices as to when or whether location 

information would be disclosed to third parties, as well as providing that the user should 

have the ability to revoke such authorization at any time. 

In crafting the 2008 Guidelines, we recognized, consistent with Section 222 of the 

Communications Act, and the FCC's rules governing Customer Proprietary Network 

Information ("CPNI"), that user privacy must be balanced with legitimate law 

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enforcement and emergency or other needs. Accordingly, the guidelines did not apply to 

location information used or disclosed: 

• as authorized or required by applicable law (e.g., to respond to 

emergencies, E911, or legal process); 

• to protect the rights and property ofLBS providers, users or other 

providers of location information; 

• for testing or maintenance in the operation of any network or LBS; or 

• in the form of aggregate or anonymous data. 

Today, we are in the process of revising the 2008 Guidelines. Why are we revising the 

Guidelines so soon? Up until recently, there was a widely held assumption that locationbased services would involve a wireless carrier having access to a user's location 

information and then using or sharing that information to provide a location-based 

service. That is what Congress contemplated when it enacted amendments to Section 222 

of the Communications Act as part of the Wireless Communications and Public Safety 

Enhancement Act of 1999, and that is what we envisioned just two years ago as we 

worked with our members to craft what became the 2008 Guidelines. 

As is often the case, things turned out a bit differently than had been envisioned, as the 

last two years have brought profound change to the wireless industry. The rapid 

evolution toward open platforms, the overwhelming consumer adoption of smart-phones, 

and the increased prevalence of GPS-enabled location-based service applications that can 

be downloaded to a handset and enabled without any involvement or knowledge by a 

wireless carrierl combined in a way that suggested that a carrier-centric approach to 

location-based service guidelines is no longer sufficient or even desirable. These factors 

led us to reevaluate the 2008 Guidelines, and as we complete work on the 2010 

Guidelines, we envision that they will ensure that there is always one clearly identified 

location-based services provider with the obligation to inform the user as to how location 

information will be used and disclosed and to obtain the user's consent before initiating 

the service. Under the revised Guidelines, the user will always know who is responsible 

I An overview of non-carrier provided location based services can be found at 

http://www.ftc.gov/os!col)1ments/privacvroundtabJe/544506-0OOSS.pdf. 

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Testimony of Michael Altschul 

for the careful handling of his or her location information. We will be working with our 

members and other interested parties to push for broad acceptance of the Guidelines. 

While the scope of the new Guidelines is different, the focus is not. The new Guidelines 

will build on the foundation we laid ten years ago by continuing to put a premium on user 

notice and consent. 

With respect to notice, we envision that location-based service providers ought to ensure 

that potential users are informed about how their location information will be used, 

disclosed and protected so that they can make informed decisions whether or not to use a 

particular service, giving the user ultimate control over their location information. 

The Guidelines envision that location-based service providers will use written, electronic 

or oral notice that will ensure that users have an opportunity to be fully informed of the 

providers' information practices. Notice must be provided in plain, easily understood 

language, it must not be misleading, and if combined with other terms or conditions, the 

portion pertaining to the location-based service must be conspicuous. 

If, after having obtained consent, a provider of location-based services wants to use 

location information for a new or materially different purpose not disclosed in the 

original notice, the provider must inform the user with further notice and obtain the user's 

consent to the new or other use. 

The Guidelines also dictate that location-based service providers must inform users how 

long any location information will be retained, if at all. As a general matter, providers 

should retain user location information only as long as business needs require, after 

which such information should be destroyed or rendered unreadable. 

Additionally, the Guidelines also direct location-based service providers to periodically 

remind users when their location information may be shared with others and of the users' 

location privacy options. The specific terminology, timing and frequency of such notice 

depends on the nature of the particular service. For example, one would expect more 

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reminders when the service involves frequent sharing of location information with third 

parties and fewer reminders, if any, when the service involves a one-time, user-initiated 

concierge service call (e.g., a call requesting a nearby service). 

Another significant change from the 2008 Guidelines is the clear requirement that every 

user be informed whenever a location-based service is installed and used on their device. 

In some circumstances, account holders (as opposed to users) may control the installation 

and operation oflocation-based services (e.g., business account holder utilizing a location 

service for fleet management or a parental account holder providing phones for use by a 

child or mcmber of a "family plan"). In addition to providing notice to the account 

holder, location-based service providers must ensure that notice is provided to each user 

that location information is being used by or disclosed to the account holder or others. 

This now clearly stated requirement will reduce the risk of surreptitious or unauthorized 

tracking. While we do not believe this is required by Section 222 - which addresses the 

rights of the "customer" and not the rights of the "user," we believe it is the right 

approach to promoting and protecting user privacy. 

In addition to providing significant guidance regarding the type of notice that users 

should expect, the Guidelines will continue to speak to the issue of consent. 

CTIA's Guidelines contemplate that location-based service providers will obtain user 

consent to the use or disclosure of location information before initiating a location-based 

service. The form of consent may vary with the type of service or other circumstances, 

but location-based service providers bear the burden of establishing that consent to the 

use or disclosure of location information has been obtained before initiating service. 

The Guidelines require that consent be informed and based on a notice consistent with the 

notice requirements set forth by the Guidelines. Consent may be implicit, such as when 

users request a service that obviously relies on the location of their device. Notice may 

be contained in the terms and conditions of service for a location-based service to which 

users subscribe. Users may manifest consent to those terms and conditions electronically 

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by clicking "I accept"; verbally by authorizing the disclosure to a customer service 

representative; through an IVR system or any other system reasonably calculated to 

confirm consent. The Guidelines expressly reject pre-checked boxes that cause a user to 

be automatically opted-in to location information disclosure or choice mechanisms that 

are buried within a lengthy privacy policy or a uniform licensing agreement. Such an 

approach would be insufficient to express user consent under the CTIA Guidelines. 

Users should have confidence when obtaining a location-based service from those 

location-based service providers that have adopted the Guidelines that their location 

information will be protected and used or disclosed only as described in provider notices. 

By receiving notice and providing consent consistent with these practices, users will 

maintain control over their location information. 

The Guidelines encourage providers oflocation-based services to develop and deploy 

new technology to empower users to exercise control over their location information and 

to find ways to deliver effective notice and obtain consent regardless of the device or 

technology used or business model employed. CTIA supports the ongoing and 

continuous education of users so they may make informed choices. 

We believe the Guidelines offer a meaningful framework for the protection of user 

privacy. Further, we urge policymakers to recognize that the industry's willingness to 

develop best practices, and to revise those guidelines as circumstances warrant, 

represents the best way to balance the need to promote and protect user privacy while 

also facilitating the deployment of new and innovative products and services. 

A call for legislative restraint does not mean that there is no role for Congress while the 

industry evolves. Congress already has made clear that "the express prior authorization 

of the customer" is the prerequisite for the disclosure of a wireless customer's location 

information. While Section 222 on its terms applies only to "telecommunications 

carriers," its requirements have been observed by all providers of wireless location-based 

services. As these services continue to evolve and develop in both predictable and 

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unpredictable ways, Congress has an important oversight role in insuring that all 

providers of location-based services continue to deliver effective notice and obtain 

consent regardless of the device or technology used, and regardless of the provider's 

business model, so that wireless users can continue to exercise control over the use or 

disclosure of their location information. 

One area in which specific guidance from Congress may be appropriate is the 

clarification of the terms under which location information may be released to law 

enforcement. Just this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral 

argument on the issue of what legal standard should apply when law enforcement seeks 

to gain access to a wireless user's location information records, or seeks to track 

individuals prospectively. Many federal magistrates have determined that law 

enforcement must obtain a warrant based on probable cause to prospectively track a 

device. Other magistrates have authorized tracking on a lower standard. Most courts 

have allowed access to stored location records based on a court order and demonstrated 

need, but in the Third Circuit, the Department of Justice and privacy advocates argued 

whether access to these historical location records should meet a probable cause standard. 

Service providers need clarity so as to not be caught in the middle of these disputes 

regarding the appropriate legal standard. 

Finally, we urge Congress to recognize the interstate nature of location-based services, 

and the mobile nature of wireless users, and to take care in whatever framework may be 

adopted to preempt state regulation of these service offerings. A uniform, national 

approach to these issues presents the best way of protecting user privacy and educating 

and informing wireless customers while fostering innovation, investment, and the 

introduction of new location based services by wireless carriers, device manufacturers, 

operating systems developers, and applications creators. 

On behalf of CTIA, thank you again for the opportunity to share our views with the 

subcommittees. We look forward to working with you as you continue your efforts. 

7 
96 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Collier for 5 minutes 

for the purposes of an opening statement, and she will conclude our 

witnesses’ opening statements. Mrs. Collier, you are recognized for 

5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF ANNE COLLIER 

Ms. COLLIER. Thank you, Chairman Rush and Chairman Boucher and members for me here today. My name is Anne Collier and 

I am co-director of ConnectSafely.org and serving as co-chair of the 

Online Safety and Technology Working Group. 

We have been following location-based services for several years 

now and we don’t feel they represent a unique safety risk to young 

social-media users for several reasons that I will go into. We do, 

however, feel particular consideration needs to be given to children’s privacy as geolocation products and services increasingly 

connect to children’s other social tools and networks. 

First, some context. U.S. teens now send or receive more than 

3,100 text messages a month. For them, a text isn’t like a phone 

call, it is part of a conversation, part of the ongoing flow of their 

social life, and texting is only one of their tools for hanging out online and offline. They also use their phones to update their social 

network profiles, play games, snap and upload photos and videos 

to profiles, and even talk. There is as yet no data on teens’ LBS 

use but we know that more than 65 million, or about a third, of 

Facebook users of all ages currently access Facebook through their 

mobile devices, and who is all this communication with? Research 

shows that the vast majority of teen social networks, 91 percent, 

use all these tools to socialize with friends they see regularly, usually at school. 

We adults think and talk about standalone products and services 

in terms of use but with kids, it is more useful to view LBS in 

terms of child and adolescent development. For example, locationbased services depend a lot on users’ mobility and autonomy and 

involve a certain amount of spontaneity. The main objectives are 

spontaneous in-person get-togethers and finding good places to eat 

or drink when you are on your own in a city. A user really needs 

the independence enjoyed by an older teen or adult to enjoy LBSs. 

The mobility of a driver’s license helps too. Urban youth may have 

more physical mobility without a driver’s license but there is no 

reason to believe they have proportionately more freedom from 

adult supervision. 

Meanwhile, LBSs are, to young people, just another twist on status updates. The 75 percent of teens owning cell phones now, they 

have for some time had other ways to let each other know their 

plans and whereabouts and they are constantly in touch, text messages, updates to social network profiles, Gmail chat and instant 

messages, to name a few. They are always in touch with each 

other. And remember, the operative phrase is ‘‘each other.’’ Virtually all of this communication is with known peers. 

Still, understandably, the most visceral and concerning risk associated with location-based and all Net services is predation. So let 

us go into that a little bit. Research about LBS use is needed in 

this area too but we do already know a lot about youth risk online. 

First, not all youth are equally at risk. The young people most at 


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risk online, on phones are those most at risk already offline, and 

a child’s psychosocial makeup and home and school environments 

are better predictors of risk than any technology a child uses. 

Second, the risk of Net-related predation is extremely low relative to real-life risk, according to David Finkelhor, director of the 

Crimes Against Children Research Center. In a report just last 

spring, Dr. Finkelhor and his co-authors wrote, ‘‘There is no evidence that online predators are stalking or abducting unsuspecting 

victims based on information they posted at social networking 

sites.’’ A recent study of how teens deal with strangers in a social 

site found that 92 percent of those who had received sexual solicitations had responded appropriately, ignoring, blocking or reporting 

the sender. 

Finally, a quick snapshot of an emerging privacy challenge. Because Google Buzz is brand new and a hybrid of LBSs, Gmail, 

microblogging and social networking, we are all at the early stages 

of figuring out its implications for kids, a lot of whom use Gmail. 

Charlene Lee, a mom and well-known industry analyst in San 

Francisco, blogged just this past Sunday that she discovered her 9- 

year-old daughter was using Buzz with her friends. They had only 

had one conversation so far but they had no idea their conversation 

was public. She thought about just disabling Buzz on her daughter’s computer but the kids were enjoying it so much that Lee decided she would let her daughter keep going if all the kids kept the 

conversation private. And there is the rub. Ensuring that all the 

girls keep it private will be a project for her, probably involving 

communication with all the other parents. 

Privacy is now a collective effort on the part of users every bit 

as much as providers in this user-generated medial environment. 

It is a negotiation among users in a peer group sharing thoughts, 

tagging photos, et cetera. Privacy protection is user generated too, 

not just a matter of privacy features. This is going to take a lot of 

consumer education by us NGOs and the industry and government. 

This issue also points to the impact on children’s, everybody’s 

privacy of combining social media products within companies 

across devices and platforms and then across users’ networks like 

Facebook Connect. A lot of consumer education is needed with support from industry best practices. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Collier follows:] 


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February 22, 2010 

Rep. Bobby L. Rush 

Chairman 

Subcommittee on Commerce, 

Trade, and Consumer Protection 

Rep. Rick Boucher 

Chairman 

Subcommittee on Communications, 

Technology, and the Internet 

Congress of the United States 

House of Representatives 

Committee on Energy and Commerce 

2125 Rayburn House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515-6115 

RE: February 24, 201 0, testimony at a joint hearing entitled "The Collection and Use of 

Location Information for Commercial Purposes" before the Subcommittee on Commerce, 

Trade, and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee on Communications, 

Technology, and the Internet 

Dear Chairmen Rush and Boucher and Members: 

By way ofintroduction, I am co-director ofConnectSafely.org, founder and 

executive director of its parent organization, Net Family News, Inc., and currently 

serving as co-chair of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group, created under the 

Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act of2008. ConnectSafely.org is the leading 

interactive resource on the Web for parents, teens, educators, and everyone engaged and 

interested in young people's safe, enriching use of the fixed and mobile social Web. 

Founded in 1999, Net Family News, Inc., is a 501 c3 nonprofit organization based in Salt 

Lake City, Utah, with offices in Salt Lake and Palo Alto, Calif. 

Young people's tech-enabled social lives 

US teens now send or receive an average of3,146 text messages a month and 9-

to-12-year-olds 1,146, according to the latest figures from Nielsen (http://bit.ly/d5iiHC). 

For them, a text isn't like a phone call, it's part of a conversation as well as of the ongoing 

flow (or seemingly 2417 drama) of school life. But texting is only one of young people's 

social tools. They also use their phones to update their profiles in social network sites, 
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play games, snap and upload photos to their social network profiles, do the same with 

videos - and even talk. There is as yet no data on teens' mobile social-mapping or LBS 

use, but we know that more than 65 million, or about a third, ofFacebook users of all 

ages currently access the social site through their mobile devices ("Online as soon as it 

happens," February 2010, ED's European Network and Information Security Agency 

<http://enisa.europa.eu>). 

In today's fixed and mobile, user-driven media environment, young people's techenabled, real-world social lives are highly fluid experiences. They make little distinction 

between online and offline and fly fast among devices and services. The online and onphone part are just that - part of and blending into the full picture. Research shows that 

the vast majority of them - those who aren't already so-called at-risk youth in real life -

use technology and devices to socialize with their friends at school and in other important 

activities and places in their lives. According to the Pew/Internet Project, 91 % of teen 

users of social network sites use them to stay in touch with friends they already see 

regularly (http://bit.ly/9cWGZ7). Technology and Net use simply can't be separated out 

from their everyday lives (see p. 31, see Hanging Out, Messing Around & Geeking Out: 

Kids Living and Learning with New Media, by Mimi Ito, et ai, MIT Press, 2009). 

We adults think and talk about stand-alone products and services, such as 

location-based services (LBSs), each with its terms of use and privacy policy, but it's 

helpful to keep in mind that young people's tech use is difficult to break down in that 

way. It's more useful to view the way they use technology in terms of child and 

adolescent development. 

Take today's subject - social mapping or LBS - for example: The use of locationbased social networking and games depends on users' mobility and autonomy and has an 

element of spontaneity. Spontaneous in-person get-togethers are a key purpose of these 

services - as well as finding good places to eat or drink when you're on your own and 

new to a city (see New York Times <http://nytLms/3hlgX>). 

A user really needs the independence of an older teen or adult to enjoy 

BrightKite, Foursquare, or Loopt, for example. The mobility of a driver's license helps 
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too. What social currency or enjoyment would a 12-year-old get out of posting to his 

school friends, "I'm at Starbucks with my mom"? He might leave the "mom" part out of 

it, but his friends, aka social network, probably wouldn't freely be able to act on that 

announcement because the need for permission or a ride would intervene. Urban youth 

may have more physical mobility without a driver's license, but there's no reason to 

believe they have proportionately more freedom from adult supervision. 

Meanwhile, location-based services are, to young people, just a new twist on 

status updates. With 75% of teens owning cellphones (see Pew/Internet, February 2010 

<http://bit.lyIbXjTH3> ), they've for some time had other ways to let each other know 

their plans and whereabouts: text messages, updates to social-networking profiles, Gmail 

chat, and instant messages, to name a few. And remember what I said above about who 

they're using these social tools to send messages to: "each other." "Most teens are not 

interested in being truly public," social-media researcher Danah Boyd told the 

Washington Post this month (http://bit.ly/9MrVKj). To the extent that LBSs are designed 

to connect with strangers, most teens are unlikely to use them. 

As for youth who don't have engaged caregivers and are reaching out beyond their 

school-related social circles, there may be a greater degree of risk from LBSs, but this is 

the demographic that has long represented at-risk youth online, the minority of online 

youth who need the help of social workers, mental healthcare experts, and risk-prevention 

practitioners .... 

Youth risk on the social Web 

The most visceral and concerning risk people seem to associate with the 

collection and use of location data, where minors are concerned, is predation. Research 

specifically looking at LBSs and predation is needed - and government support of such 

research would be most welcome - but we already know a lot about youth risk on the 

Internet in general. 

From the significant body of youth-risk research reviewed and presented by the 

Internet Safety Technical Task Force of2008 at Harvard's Berkman Center 
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(http://bit.lylbyOGRZ) as well as from subsequent such research, we know that, as far as 

predation is concerned ... 

I) Not all youth are equally at risk - the youth most at risk online are those most 

at risk offline, and a child's psychosocial makeup and home and school environments are 

better predictors of that risk level than any technology he or she uses. 

2) Predation is not the most salient risk online youth face. Mean behavior and 

bullying by peers are much more common - in fact, two separate national studies have 

found that about one-third of online youth experience cyberbullying, which is closely 

associated with what's going at school. 

3) The actual risk ofInternet-related predation is extremely low, according to Dr. 

David Finklelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the 

University of New Hampshire - too low to be estimated in the CACRC's 2000 and 2005 

studies of online sexual solicitations of youth. And in a major update last spring ("Trends 

in Arrests of 'Online Predators'" <http://www.unh.edulccrc/pdf/CVI94.pdf>), he and his 

co-authors wrote: "There was no evidence that online predators were stalking or 

abducting unsuspecting victims based on information they posted at social networking 

sites." [Note that much of the geolocation information under discussion, here, as being 

posted via location-based apps, games, and services is being posted to social networking 

sites.] 

For context: We have also long known that the vast majority of sexual 

exploitation cases against children are perpetrated by people they know in everyday life 

ojJIine; a less-well-known fact is that between 1990 and 2005, when the World Wide 

Web got its start and grew exponentially, there was a 51 % decline in overall child sexual 

exploitation, and the latest FBI figures show a continuing drop in violent crimes ("2008 

Crime in the United States" <http://bit.ly/dBVIPy>). The number of rape cases is down 

9.6% since 2004, "considerably more of a decline than the overall crime drop during this 

period," Dr. Finkelhor reported last September. He explained how that spells a decline in 

child sexual abuse: "While there is no specific child victimization category, bear in mind 

that well over half of the rapes known to law enforcement are against persons under 18, 
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so this rape decline is very much a drop in child victimization" (Finkelhor in an email to a 

group of youth-risk practitioners, researchers, and NGOs). 

Apart from the unlikelihood of minors using LBSs when they don't have the 

means independently to meet up with friends in real time (as mentioned above), the 

research also shows they are psychosocially disinclined to interact with people who aren't 

friends and known peers and who aren't part of the flow of their social experience at any 

given moment. A recent study of how youth deal with strangers in a social network sitewhich, like texting, is part of their social flow - found that 92% of youth at the receiving 

end of sexual solicitations in a social site either had an appropriate reaction or ignored the 

solicitation ("The Association of Parenting Style and Child Age with Parental Limit 

Setting and Adolescent MySpace Behavior," by Dr. Larry Rosen, in Journal of Applied 

Juvenile Psychology, November-December 2008 <http://bit.ly/bfs3vP>). ["Appropriate 

reaction" was defined as telling the person to stop, blocking the person from their page, 

removing themselves from the situation by logging off, or reporting the incident to an 

adult or to the site.] 

As for LBSs themselves, it is my.understanding that most of the new socialmapping services do not involve automatic, software-produced disclosure of the 

ceIIphone owner's movements, but rather disclosure by the user himself of his 

whereabouts, in the form of a social-networking-style update. If there are concerns about 

what minors post about their location via LBSs, the concerns would necessarily also 

apply to other social-media services, including instant messaging, Skype, Facebook, 

Twitter, and texting on mobile phones. LBSs by themselves do not represent a unique 

safety threat. [PleaseRobMe.com, an awareness-raising site, points out that sharing one's 

location widely when not at home potentially lets burglars know one's house is up for 

grabs, but this is a risk to adults' property not to youth safety.] We are concerned about 

children who do download LBSs being bombarded with advertising and marketing based 

on their location and hope proliferating geolocation-enabled apps are informed about and 

operate in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. 

The question has been asked whether the way LBSs function is too complex for 

young people to grasp. My answer is that they are no more complicated to use than 
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and 4) young people keep growing and maturing (an obvious fact that often somehow 

gets left out of the equation). Change - in technology, media, households, consumer 

behavior, unfolding research, and individual kids truly is the only constant in this scene. 

Consumer education + best practices + parental-control tools 

Regulation is a blunt instrument in the face of this level of fluidity and change, 

micro and macro. Only the caring adults closest to a child can possibly know how to 

calibrate family rules and parental-control tools to fit a growing child's needs. 

The ultimate protection for all children is the filtering "software" in their heads. It 

has numerous benefits: Every child is born with this latent filter, which improves with 

use, works with all devices, and is with her wherever she goes. Its downside is that 

children need help in developing their cognitive filter, and not all "developers" - parents, 

caregivers, educators, etc., teaching them media and life literacy - understand the ever 

increasing importance of this filter and the responsibility its owner and they have in 

developing it. 

In other words, consumer education - for youth, parents, and schools - is not only 

essential but becoming increasingly more so. Its most basic and vital forms are the new 

media literacy and citizenship that help children's cognitive filter think critically about 

what's going out (behavioral and informational) as much as what's coming in as they use 

two-way social, or behavioral and collegial, media. This kind of literacy gets developed 

largely at home and school from the earliest ages, when children first use technology. But 

consumer education takes many other forms as they grow, forms that are just as 

important: from notice & consent in LBSs to tutorials for features in products and 

services to professional development for educators about teaching with new media. 

Children's education needs to be provided by parents, industry, government, and schools; 

parent and educator consumer education needs to be provided by NGOs, industry, and 

government. 

Children can't learn how to use social technology and media properly without 

having access to these new media and technologies - just as swimming can't be taught 

without pools - so government and other entities need to join industry in promoting their 
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Facebook or MySpace and much less complex than a consolevideogame or multiplayer 

online game like World of War craft. We also know from a December 2008 study by 

Computer Associates that social sites' privacy features are not too difficult for teens to 

use, and te<:ns do use them; the study showed that 79% of teen social networkers restrict 

access to their profiles in some way (http://bit.lyl7bRb). That is not to say that all users, 

including the relatively few teens likely to be using LBSs, will not need plenty of 

consumer education and sound notice-and-consent practices on the part of location-based 

providers concerning the wider dissemination of their posts through networks these 

services are connected to such as Facebook and Twitter. In other words, it's more 

important than ever that LBSs follow CTIA's guidelines for customer notice and consent 

and that all parties, from app developers to service providers, are committed to clear 

notice to and consent by consumers as to how their location information is being used. 

Protecting a moving target 

How to protect young people in a user-driven media environment in which youth 

define active use (see "Generation M2" from the Kaiser Family Foundation 

<http://bit.lyI7XukS3> ) has been a puzzle since the advent of interactive media. First we 

thought we should figure out how to protect them from technology, since technology was 

"obviously" the main problem. Then we learned from the growing bodies of both youthrisk and social-media research that the main "problem" is actually child and adolescent 

development and behavior. Adults not up to speed on the research keep thinking that 

regulation must be a solution, and as a society we have struggled to enact legislation that 

could somehow protect both children and free speech, when it increasingly seems 

impossible to define, separate out, and control inappropriate adolescent behavior while 

somehow leaving alone what is appropriate, developmentally normative, and 

constructive. 

Meanwhile, 1) social media and technologies continue to proliferate, 2) the 

Internet becomes increasingly accessible, 3) young people's social lives are increasingly a 

mashup of online and offline experiences and of new media, technologies, and devices, 
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wise use in US education and ending efforts to block them. This is becoming widely 

recognized overseas - see British education watchdog Ofsted's February 20 I 0 report 

<http://bit.ly/aPR298> showing that schools rated "outstanding" for online-safety 

conditions and instruction used "managed" rather than "locked down" filtering, thereby 

requiring pupils to learn how to "take responsibility themselves for using new 

technologies safely." 

Supporting that all-important education is a key industry best practice, which 

needs the support of government. For example, the wireless industry association is 

currently revising its best-practice guidelines, appropriately broadening the definition of 

location-based services. It is also working on a consumer-education campaign to increase 

public awareness of parental controls and other options parents have to support children's 

safe, constructive use. We recommend that the industry also mount an education program 

aimed at both parents and youth which is focused specifically on location-based services, 

games, and apps - so they understand how to use privacy features and who might see the 

location information they're disclosing. 

Another important support to parents as they protect and educate their children are 

a broad variety of parental-control tools to choose from as their children mature. The 

mobile carriers provide a robust array of such tools, from time limits on devices to caller 

blocking to restricting app downloads. That last control is an excellent protection against 

minors using LBSs not appropriate for their use. The main current provider of cellphone 

apps, Apple, rates apps by age and provides parental controls for its iPhone and iPod 

Touch (though without much transparency to consumers and NGOs) in addition to the 

Smart Limits parental controls provided by iPhone service provider AT&T. NGOs, 

industry, and government need to work together to raise consumer awareness of these 

protective tools and features. An excellent recent example of government-NGO 

partnership is the Federal Trade Commission's NetCetera booklet and campaign. We'd 

like to see more coordination within the US government and between government, 

industry, and NGOs along the lines of the UK's Council for Child Internet Safety 

(http://www.dcsf.gov.uklukccis). 

Conclusion 
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There is risk to using LBSs for youth, just as there is to their using any means to 

interact with the world but mostly in the area of peer-to-peer interaction, whcre techbased socializing is concerned. Teens use text messaging, talking, instant messaging, 

social networking, and other social tools to notify friends of their thoughts, plans, and 

whereabouts. We do not sce LBSs as representing greater risk than other social media, 

particularly to youth under 16, because independence and mobility are basic criteria for 

enjoying the services. At the same time, the research shows that teens who are not taking 

extraordinary risks in the real world are savvy about ignoring or appropriately reacting to 

overtures from strangers, and that the risk of "online predators victimizing unsuspecting 

teens because of information they're posting in social sites" is not evident to the Crimes 

Against Children Research Center. 

It's useful, especially since there is no research specific to minors' use ofLBSs, to 

view their usc in the context of young people's use of all social media and technologies, 

as well as in the context of the everyday, tech-enabled social lives oftoday's teens. 

Technology and Net use simply can't be viewed as separate from the flow of their 

online/offline social lives. With these social technologies, the research shows, the vast 

majority of youth are socializing with friends and peers at school. 

To remove the risks associated with their social lives, online and offline, is not 

only impossible but harmful to their development, as risk assessment is a primary task of 

adolescent development, pediatricians and child-development specialists tell us. 

Legislating against youth risk is not the answer. A combination of parental-control 

technologies, industry best practices, more consumer education, and better coordination 

of efforts to protect yout.h both within the federal government and in cooperation with 

industry and NGOs is the best way to go. 
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ADDENDUM A 

Right after I filed the above written testimony, a colleague "tweeted" about a new 

blog post by a parent about Google Buzz. Because Buzz is brand-new and a hybrid of 

LBSs, Gmail, micro-blogging, and social networking, we're all at the early stages of 

figuring out its implications for kids, a lot of whom are known to use Gmail (I haven't 

been able to find numbers). 

The parent is social-media industry analyst Charlene Li. She blogged on Sunday 

(http://bit.ly/aARahl) that her 9-year-old daughter quickly figured out how to use Buzz 

(from her computer), enjoyed it, and had had one conversation on it with her friends. The 

problem was that her daughter and friends didn't know that the conversation wasn't 

visible only to them. It was a public conversation. 

Li writes that "the easiest thing to do as a parent is to simply disable Buzz, 

meaning that the Google profile and all followers are deleted - permanently." But 

because her daughter enjoyed Buzz so much, she seems open to "managing groups, 

privacy settings, etc." so her child can continue using the service. "We'll give it a try," 

she writes, "but unless her friends also keep the conversation private, it will all be for 

naught." Ensuring that with the other kids in the group and their parents will be a project. 

Google last summer agreed, in response to a complaint by the Children's 

Advertising Review Unit of the Better Business Bureau, a COPPA Safe Harbor, to 

require a birth date at registration to Gmail and, if a user indicates he or she is under 13, a 

session cookie to block the user from re-registering with an earlier birthdate. 

That's a start, but what this issue points to is the impact on children's privacy of 

combining social-media products within companies and connecting them across networks 

such as Facebook Connect. Perhaps the FTC's forthcoming review of COPPA rules and 

enforcement will address this emerging issue. But we feel the brilliant software engineers 

and project managers who develop these products need to wear their parent hats more, 

companies need to be thinking through children's privacy from the earliest development 

stages, and industry best practices need special sections or clauses addressing child 

privacy and safety. -Anne Collier, ConnectSafoly 
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ADDENDUMB 

ConnnectSafely.org's Cellphone Safety Tips (http://bitly/9W4j8f) 

Gel/phones are increasingly full-blown handheld computers, and everything that can be 

done on the Web via computer - photo-sharing, Web browsing, game playing, tuneswapping, real-time text chat, and (oh yeah) talking - can be done on a phone. Here are 

some basic ideas for keeping mobile phone use safe and constructive: 

Smart socializing. Use the same good sense about what you post from your phone as 

from a computer. Once they're posted, text, photos, and video are tough to take back, 

can be copied and pasted elsewhere, and are up there pretty much forever. Think about 

the people in them (including you!). Reputations are at stake - even more so if nudity or 

sex is involved. 

Phones are personal. Letting other people use your phone when you're not around is 

like letting them have the password to your social network profile. They can impersonate 

you. Which means they can play tricks on you that could really become a problem. It's a 

good idea to lock your phone when you're not using it. It's not a good idea to let friends 

text for you while you're driving. Don't text while driving; just be safe and turn the phone 

off! 

Bullying by phone. Because people socialize on cell phones as much as online, 

cyberbullying can be mobile too. Treat people on phones and the Web the way you 

would in person, and the risk of being bullied goes down. Be aware, too, of people 

randomly taking pictures at parties - you may not want to be tagged in their socialnetwork photo albums. 

Sexting: It's the same on phones as on the Web - do not take, send, post or even store 

on your phone nude photos of anyone under 18. You could be charged with production, 

distribution, or possession of child pornography, a serious crime. You could also be 

subjected to jokes, bullying, blackmail, expulsion from school, loss of a job, etc. and the 

images can circulate forever. 

The value of "presence." If you do a lot of texting, consider the impact that being 

"elsewhere" might be having on the people around you. Your presence during meals, at 

parties, in the car, etc. is not only polite, it's a sign of respect and appreciated. 

Down time is good. Constant texting and talking can affect sleep, concentration, 

school, and other things that deserve your thought and focus. You need your sleep and 

real friends understand there are times you just need to turn off the phone - harassment 

can happen between midnight and morning too. 

Social mapping. Most cellphones now have GPS technology and there are a growing 

number of services that allow friends to pinpOint each other's physical location. If you 

use such a service, do so only with friends you know in person, and get to know the 

service's privacy features! 
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ConnectSafely.org's Social Web Safety Tips for Teens (http://bit.ly/aGQG8z) 

These tips, based on the latest research, will help teens' socializing stay fun and safe on 

both the fixed and mobile social Web. Be your own person. Don't let friends or 

strangers pressure you to be someone you aren't. And know your limits. You may be 

Net-savvy, but people and relationships change, and unexpected stuff can happen on 

the Internet. 

Be nice online. Or at least treat people the way you'd want to be treated. People who 

are nasty and aggressive online are at greater risk of being bullied or harassed 

themselves. If someone's mean to you, try to ignore them - often that makes them stop. 

Use privacy tools to block them from viewing your full profile and contacting you. 

Think about what you post. Sharing provocative photos or intimate details online, even 

in private emails, can cause you problems later on. Even people you consider friends 

can use this info against you, especially if they become ex-friends. 

Passwords are private. Don't share your password even with friends. It's hard to 

imagine, but friendships change and you don't want to be impersonated by anyone. Pick 

a password you can remember but no one else can guess. One trick: Create a sentence 

like "I graduated from King School in 05" for the password "lgfKSi05." 

Read between the "lines." It may be fun to check out new people for friendship or 

romance, but be aware that, while some people are nice, others act nice because they're 

trying to get something. Flattering or supportive messages may be more about 

manipulation than friendship or romance. 

Don't talk about sex with strangers. Be cautious when communicating with people you 

don't know in person, especially if the conversation starts to be about sex or phYSical 

details. Don't lead them on - you don't want to be the target of a predator's grooming. If 

they persist, call your local police or contact CyberTipline.com. 

Avoid in-person meetings. The only way someone can physically harm you is if you're 

both in the same location, so - to be 100% safe - don't meet them in person. If you 

really have to get together with someone you "met" online, don't go alone. Have the 

meeting in a public place, tell a parent or some other solid backup, and bring some 

friends along. 

Be smart when using a cell phone. All the same tips apply with phones as with 

computers. Except phones are with you wherever you are, often away from home and 

your usual support systems. Be careful who you give your number to and how you use 

GPS and other technologies that can pinpoint your physical location. 
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ConnectSafely.org's Social Web Safety Tips for Parents (http://bitly/4zUOR3) 

These tips for parents about safety on the social Web are based on the latest research 

from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire 

(with input from our colleagues there). 

Be reasonable and try to set reasonable expectations. PUlling the plug on your 

child's favorite social site is like pulling the plug on his or her social/ife. Instead of being 

protective, it can shut down communication and send kids "underground" where they're 

more at risk. It's too easy for them to set up free blogs and profiles from anywhere, 

including friends' houses or even a cell phone. 

Talk with your kids about how they use the services. They, not news reports or even 

experts, are the ones to consult about their social-Web experience. Help them 

understand basic safety guidelines, such as protecting their privacy (including 

passwords), not harassing peers, never talking about sex with people they don't know, 

avoiding in-person meetings with people they "meet" online, and taking care in what they 

post - because anything people put online can be grabbed, reworked, and used against 

them. 

Support critical thinking and civil behavior because no laws or parental-control 

software can protect better than a child's developing good sense about safety and 

relationships. Research shows that kids who are aggressive and mean online toward 

peers or strangers are at greater risk of becoming victims themselves. So teach them to 

be good citizens and friends online as much as offline. 

Consider requiring Internet use in a high-traffic place in your home - not in kids' 

rooms - to. help you stay aware of their online time. This way, you can encourage a 

balance between online time and their offline academic, sports, and social times. Know 

that there are also many ways kids can access the Internet away from home, including 

on many mobile phones and game players. 

Try to get your kids to share their profiles and blogs with you, but be aware that 

they can have multiple accounts on multiple services. Use search engines and the 

search tools on social-networking sites to search for your kids' full names, phone 

numbers and other identifying information. You're not invading their privacy if they're 

putting personal info in public "places" online. If their pages are private, that's a good 

thing, but it's even better if they share it with you. 
111 

Mr. RUSH. The Chair now yields to the chairman of the Telecommunications Subcommittee, my friend, Mr. Boucher. 

Mr. BOUCHER [presiding]. Well, let me thank our witnesses for 

their statements this morning and for your participating in our 

hearing and informing us on your well-studied views with regard 

to location-based services and privacy as associated with them. I 

have a series of questions I will propound to the witnesses but I 

want to say a word of welcome first to Mr. Whitfield from Kentucky, a friend of long standing, who is the new ranking Republican member of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and 

just say to him how much I look forward to working with him on 

privacy matters. 

The Communications Act requires opt-in consent before telecommunications carriers can disclose geolocation information but 

there is no federal statute or regulation that governs privacy rights 

associated with non-carriers who come into possession of that information whether they collect it themselves or whether they receive 

it from someone who does, and I am wondering what our witnesses 

would say to this question. Has the time arrived for Congress to 

adopt a statute that applies a consent requirement with respect to 

geolocation services information, not only to telecommunications 

carriers but to others who come into contact with that information? 

Let us begin with Mr. Morris. 

Mr. MORRIS. My answer to that question is a very short yes but 

with a qualification to say that we would certainly urge Congress 

to do just what you said and focus careful attention on location but 

we would hope it would be in the context of a larger privacy bill 

as opposed to a sectorially focused bill just on location itself. I 

mean, we have an anomalous situation in this country where my 

video rental records are more protected than my e-mail on Gmail 

and that to us doesn’t make sense, so we hope that the work you 

do on location privacy is in the context of a broader baseline privacy bill. 

Mr. BOUCHER. I couldn’t have provided a better answer myself. 

Thank you. I think you can expect to see this measure emerge as 

part of a larger legislative item. 

Mr. Altschul, I want to commend CTIA for the adoption of your 

series of best practices, guidelines and recommendations. I have a 

couple of questions for you. First of all, can you tell me the percentage of your carriers that are part of CTIA who are complying with 

your guidelines and recommendations at the moment? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. We believe that all of the carriers are complying 

with the guidelines, which were intended to build on the principles 

in section 222(f) and they provide guidance and examples for how 

to convert—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. So you think you have 100 percent compliance? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. We do, for the carriers that are supporting these 

services. 

Mr. BOUCHER. I want to give you an opportunity to respond to 

some of the statements that Professor Cranor in her testimony 

made. I missed her oral testimony but her written testimony, 

which I have reviewed, suggests that your voluntary guidelines 

could be sharpened a bit, and I want you to respond to this. She 

says that they do not specify the form, placement or content of noVerDate Mar 15 2010 09:09 Nov 08, 2012 Jkt 076010 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A010.XXX A010

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tices, there is no mechanism for enforcement within our guidelines, 

there are no assurances that the location-based service providers 

follow the practices—that is kind of a subset of the previous comment—and your guidelines as they specify the disclosures that the 

carriers should make are somewhat confusing and might lead to 

different kinds of disclosures being made with regard to the same 

kind of information among the various different carriers. Would 

you like to respond to those comments? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. Yes. Thank you. First, by design, our guidelines 

do not provide a one-size-fits-all set of guidance or statements because the applications that fall within both the guidelines and, 

more importantly, the category of location-based services, do not fit 

one category. Certainly there is a very different set of privacy and 

customer expectations associated with a one-time query for a concierge-type service, where is the nearest gas station, to a continuing social networking application that links users by consent to 

one another’s location. So rather than specifying one kind of notice, 

which we don’t think would be appropriate across the broad spectrum of services, our guidelines address the fact that the notices 

should be tailored to the type of location service. I view that as a 

strength rather than a weakness in the guidelines. 

As for not all of the applications that were in her survey following even rudimentary privacy practices and notices, we recently 

did a survey that didn’t purport to be scientific. We actually went 

to the Web sites of some of the application service providers, created a snapshot of what is being provided, and there is a range of 

notice and consent and privacy statements. We submitted this 

paper to the Federal Trade Commission last month for their privacy workshop. 

But through guidelines—and this will get to your question about 

the lack of enforcement—the industry and all of the participants in 

the industry, carriers and application providers alike, play a very 

important role in educating themselves and their customers as to 

what they should expect and should insist upon in using any kind 

of application location-based service, and that is the primary role 

of industry guidelines. We are not being codified in Title 18 of the 

U.S. Code. We are trying to understand the issues—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, in the interests of time, Mr. Altschul—I am 

intrigued by your answers, I would like to hear more, but my time 

is expiring. Let me just suggest this. It might be helpful if you review Professor Cranor’s comments and consider modifying your 

guidelines to the extent that you can sharpen them so that they 

provide greater clarity to the carriers, particularly on what kinds 

of disclosures the carriers should make with regard to services, to 

the information they come into contact with. I think it might be 

helpful. Would you be willing to consider doing that? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. Absolutely. 

Mr. BOUCHER. I have one further question. My time has expired. 

I intend to be generous with the other members in terms of their 

time for questions as well. 

Mr. King, Mr. Bernard, let me just pose this question to you. Do 

you think that your customers are aware of the secondary uses 

that your services are making of the geolocation information about 

them, and do they have a reasonable expectation based on informaVerDate Mar 15 2010 09:09 Nov 08, 2012 Jkt 076010 PO 00000 Frm 00118 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A010.XXX A010

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tion that is made available to them that their geolocation information is going to be used by advertisers in order to target advertising 

to them. Mr. Bernard, Mr. King. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One way to answer that 

is that the location information goes out to an advertising network 

and requests an ad so the location is just—it is not personally identifiable so that there is no information about that consumer going 

to the advertiser. We are selecting from an inventory of ads and 

then bringing them in and showing what we think are the most appropriate ad, given that context. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, that is understood, but the question is, does 

that person have a reasonable expectation that those events are 

going to happen, that the advertisers are going to be marketing to 

them based in part on their location? 

Mr. KING. Yes. We have a location-based application that is both 

free and ad driven where you can pay a subscription fee so they 

are free applications we believe that consumers expect to be ad 

driven, so the short answer would be yes to that. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Bernard. 

Mr. BERNARD. Thank you. Useful Networks does not support secondary uses to now, as I think about them, where secondary use 

is using that location subsequently beyond that for which you have 

already provided notice. So specifically in our mind, we provide primary use, and an example of that is our location-based advertising 

trial. End-users were presented with a banner ad on the mobile 

Web site enticing them to click on it to see a viewer location or a 

quick serve burger location near them. The next page they saw explicitly said please allow us to use your location to provide a list 

of stores near you, and only if they clicked were they provided—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right. That is very clear. Thank you. Mr. King 

and Mr. Bernard, I just want to pose one further question to you, 

and it is the same question I asked Mr. Morris at the outset. Is 

it time that we had a federal statute in order to provide a uniform 

set of standards across applications, not just for the telecom carriers but for those who are providing applications, selling applications, using applications as well? 

Mr. KING. I would say in general, yes. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you. That is a great answer. That is what 

I am looking for. 

Mr. Bernard? 

Mr. BERNARD. It should be a uniform set of practices, not necessarily legislation. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Well, OK. That is half a loaf. Thank you all very 

much. 

The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Whitfield, is recognized for 

his questions. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And Mr. Bernard, I didn’t hear the last part of your answer. 

Would you repeat that for me? 

Mr. BERNARD. The last part of that more specifically spoke to 

self-regulation. We believe there are certainly business incentives 

both on the part of the distribution centers, whether they are carriers or device manufacturers, as well as on consumers in that they 


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won’t use services where they feel like their privacy is not respected. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Well, everyone—— 

Mr. BERNARD. We do agree with a level playing field. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Everyone on the panel has had the opportunity 

to answer that question except a few. Professor Cranor, what is 

your position on Chairman Boucher’s question? 

Ms. CRANOR. Yes, I think that it is probably time to have some 

legislation to have some privacy rules, but like Mr. Morris, I think 

that we shouldn’t have a very narrow view on just location if we 

are going to set privacy rules, that there is a need for more general 

privacy legislation. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. And Ms. Collier, what is your position? 

Ms. COLLIER. I agree with that. I think it is time to update privacy law but, you know, it needs to coordinate with COPPA, the 

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, but it shouldn’t refer to 

just a single technology. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. And Mr. Altschul? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. Well, we certainly endorse the idea of a level 

playing field and the consumers don’t have to guess as to what 

their privacy rights are. We are always concerned that despite the 

best of intentions, when these principles are codified, either technology or unintended consequences will get in the way. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Professor Cranor, in your testimony you talked 

about a system that was developed at Carnegie Mellon, and I am 

not sure the pronunciation but is it Locaccino? Locaccino. Now, how 

widespread is that type of technology being used? 

Ms. CRANOR. So our particular system is a research system that 

is being used by a thousand people. It is similar technology to what 

is being used by commercial providers. The main difference is that 

we have gone out of our way to provide privacy controls at a very 

fine-grained level for people who use it. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. I see. And, you know, this is deviating a little 

bit from the technical aspect of this but also I found it interesting 

in your testimony, you said in your survey, we found that most of 

our participants did not expect that location-sharing technologies 

would be all that beneficial to them, and then that they did have 

significant concerns about their privacy when sharing their locations online. So what is your overall conclusion of that? It sounds 

like to me this is a service that is really not all that beneficial 

but—— 

Ms. CRANOR. Well, so what we found is that the general public 

for the most part doesn’t understand why they would want location-based services. Now, there are plenty of people who have 

adopted them who do get it and they say yes, this is useful to me 

and I want to use them. But they are right now the minority of 

the population. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. So you found most people just simply were not 

aware of the benefits of it? 

Ms. CRANOR. Right. They don’t find it beneficial, and when we 

talk about this with people, you know, the notion that there is a 

map and there is a pinpoint and that is me on it, that really scares 

people. 


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Mr. WHITFIELD. Right. I would just ask you, Mr. Morris, let us 

assume for the moment that we are going to regulate Internet privacy. Should the FCC do the regulating or should the FTC do the 

regulating or should different regulators govern different parties? 

Mr. MORRIS. Well, we would suggest that the FTC is probably 

the better place to go for two independent reasons. One, the FTC 

has a very long track record and experience in looking at consumer 

privacy issues, and they have already through a number of workshops over the years have been looking specifically at location privacy. And secondly, the FCC is frankly really not the federal Internet commission. It really doesn’t have a broad mandate to regulate 

the Internet. It doesn’t frankly have regulatory experience at the 

application layer. It is obviously critically important at the lower 

layers of the communications stack and so, you know, its regulation 

of telecommunications carriers and underlying broadband services 

is clear and appropriate but it doesn’t really have as extensive experience in the privacy area at the applications layer as the FTC 

does. 

Mr. WHITFIELD. Thank you all, and I see my time is expired. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Whitfield. 

The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Castor, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Chairman Boucher. 

Mr. Altschul, I thought it was interesting, you said that even 

though all of your members are adherent to best practices that 

technology has overtaken best practices. So I guess in effect you 

are conceding that given how valuable the location data could be 

to marketers and it is to advertisers, that industry self-regulation 

is not realistic. 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. No, what I meant to convey by saying the technology has overtaken our guidelines, our guidelines just 2 years 

ago were carrier centric. Carriers were clearly covered by section 

222 of the Communications Act. That was before the introduction 

of iPhones and introduction of smartphones that have their own 

GPS receivers and before the broad adoption of WiFi public access 

points. What surprised the experts in the industry was how quickly 

the landscape changed in using this technology so that as you 

heard from everyone on the panel and many of the opening remarks today, increasingly location-based services and applications 

do not touch a wireless carrier’s network. They have no knowledge 

of the application being used. What we have done is, we have gone 

back and in effect broadened our guidelines so that they are no 

longer going to be carrier centric but provide the same touchstones 

of consumer notice and consent regardless of whether the application runs with a carrier’s knowledge or not. 

Ms. CASTOR. So I think you stated clearly, you see your responsibility and your membership educating the consumer. Does that 

need to be something that is promoted in a specific sort of way as 

we develop new consumer consent provisions? 

Mr. ALTSCHUL. I think that is the responsibility for all of the 

stakeholders, the industry, public policymakers, educators and the 

like, yes. 

Ms. CASTOR. Ms. Collier, could you touch on what are some of 

the innovations in the arena of emergency services? Are we doing 


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enough there as the law? Do we need to focus on any specific provisions in updating that? 

Ms. COLLIER. Emergency services and helping children be found? 

Ms. CASTOR. The children’s angle is really your area of expertise. 

Ms. COLLIER. Yes. 

Ms. CASTOR. Who best on the panel can address whether or not 

we need updates when it comes to emergency services in relation 

to LBS? Mr. Morris, go ahead. 

Mr. MORRIS. I am always game to try to answer a question. You 

know, the emergency—and I have actually worked in technical 

standard-setting bodies on the transition in the emergency system 

from the old analog system to kind of a new IP-enabled Internet 

protocol-enabled, system, and the emergency community is very aggressively trying to make that transition but it is a very costly 

transition, and so I believe, my perception is that the FCC and the 

emergency community is actually proceeding at a fairly healthy 

pace to make the transition to IP-enabled emergency services and 

ultimately, you know, I think that some years from now, a couple 

of years from now, we really will have the ability to both dial 911 

on this device and then take a picture of the auto accident that 

happened so that the emergency response facility can actually see 

the situation even before they send their responders. So my perception is that we are in fact making that transition, it is going to be 

a costly transition because there are lot of public service answering 

points, PSAPs, that are not currently technically and physically set 

up to do IP-enabled services like that. But the transition is underway. 

Ms. CASTOR. Any other comments on that? 

Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Castor. 

The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns, ranking member on 

our Telecom Subcommittee, is recognized. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Morris, I was watching the television back in my office and 

I saw that the gentleman from Kentucky asked you about jurisdiction and about whether the FCC or the Federal Trade Commission 

should be involved, and I think your statement was that the jurisdiction for the Internet should be the Federal Trade Commission. 

Is that what I am to understand you said? 

Mr. MORRIS. Well, really, my position would be more that the jurisdiction of a privacy should be at the Federal Trade Commission. 

Frankly, I would urge that the Internet generally speaking doesn’t 

need to have a designated agency that has broad jurisdiction over 

it. It really is a success story of non-regulation, and Congress in 

1996 in section 230 of the Communications Code really set out its 

policy of having the Internet grow and develop without regulation. 

Mr. STEARNS. All right. Let us assume what you are saying is 

that the privacy on the Internet—as you know, the FCC now has 

taken steps to address what they perceive as a problem and they 

have called it Net neutrality. I call it Net regulation. Based upon 

what you said dealing with privacy, would you agree with me that 

perhaps the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate with its 

promulgating a Net Neutrality under the same assumptions that 

you made from the gentleman from Kentucky that privacy should 


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be under the Federal Trade Commission and the FCC has no jurisdiction over it? 

Mr. MORRIS. Well, let me—— 

Mr. STEARNS. Would that be a fair statement? 

Mr. MORRIS. No, it wouldn’t, Your Honor, if I could—Your 

Honor—— 

Mr. STEARNS. I was hoping you would say yes. 

Mr. MORRIS. If I could explain, let me answer it by saying that 

the Internet first grew up in a dial-up world where it rode on 

top—— 

Mr. STEARNS. I need you to be concise, so you say no. But let me 

ask you—— 

Mr. MORRIS. I think I can offer a one-sentence answer. 

Mr. STEARNS. So I am just trying to sort of pigeonhole you here. 

Mr. MORRIS. I appreciate that. 

Mr. STEARNS. OK. So your argument was, the Internet grew up 

without regulation, you talked about in 1996, and how the idea was 

not to have regulation and let it expand without interference. That 

is what you said. And then you indicated that privacy should be 

under the Federal Trade Commission rather than the FCC. So 

would it be fair to say that any type of regulation of the Internet 

should not come through the FCC? 

Mr. MORRIS. I think it is appropriate for the FCC to regulate the 

underlying telecommunications platform on which the Internet 

runs. 

Mr. STEARNS. Phones, cable, broadcasting but not the Internet 

itself? 

Mr. MORRIS. Not the applications and services that ride on top 

of—— 

Mr. STEARNS. OK. That is good enough for us. We appreciate 

your opinion. Let me follow up. You described a potential risk of 

location data being stored and used well into the future. Is there 

harm if the information is not tied to an individual? How often is 

the identity of the user known to the application provider and what 

information can an application provider gather about a consumer’s 

identity and his or her habits? 

Mr. MORRIS. Well, certainly if information is truly deidentified 

and anonymized, it presents less concern. But as Professor Cranor 

noted, there is a unique individual in this world who lives where 

I live and works where I work and so tracking my location over 

time could easily be tracked back to me through that. So I do think 

there are very serious concerns about retaining location over a 

longer period of time beyond the use that it is first obtained for. 

Mr. STEARNS. Professor Cranor, location-based services are still 

I think in their infancy with their development and we just don’t 

know where it is going to go from here. Would you believe that the 

federal government should address with regulation some of the new 

technology concerns that could possibly even hinder the development of future benefits? In other words, if we step in right now, 

is it a concern of yours that we could actually hinder this infancy 

type of industry and you might even say in your best mind where 

this industry will be 10 years from now, 5 years from now. 

Ms. CRANOR. So I agree that the industry is in its infancy, and 

it is somewhat hard to predict where it will be but I would imagine 


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it will be very different 10 years from now than it is today and 

probably location-based services will be in much more widespread 

use. I think there is always a risk of stifling innovation with legislation. On the other hand, I think we do have some serious concerns, and rather than waiting 10 years and discovering that we 

are all in trouble, it would be good to kind of set things straight 

from the beginning and really have systems built with privacy designed in from the beginning. So I would urge you to consider legislating on privacy from the beginning and making that part of a 

more general privacy framework. 

Mr. STEARNS. If you were me and you were doing a privacy bill, 

what would you suggest as being part of location-based privacy? 

You are writing the bill now yourself. 

Ms. CRANOR. Right. Fortunately, that is not my job but—— 

Mr. STEARNS. Well, just hypothetically. 

Ms. CRANOR. But hypothetically, so I think there probably should 

be some limits to the use of location data but also I think it is very 

important to make sure that individuals are fully aware and informed of use of their location data and that there are robust consent experiences available to them. 

Mr. STEARNS. So a person could opt out or opt in? What would 

you prefer? 

Ms. CRANOR. I think generally opt in, although I think it depends 

on what you mean by opt out and opt in in this situation. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 

The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, is recognized for 

5 minutes. 

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Collier, I am going to direct these questions to you. I guess 

you can answer them generally when it comes to privacy and so 

forth and particularly with respect to location-based services if you 

want. Would you say that there should be a higher standard of privacy at work when you are dealing with children as opposed to 

adults just generally speaking? 

Ms. COLLIER. Yes, I would, and I think there is a higher standard applied right now with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that is being administered by the FTC. 

Mr. SARBANES. One of the things that intrigues me is that children are the leading edge of the use of technology these days. 

Ms. COLLIER. Some technologies, yes. 

Mr. SARBANES. Well, they are the leading edge of use of many 

technologies that have significant privacy implications. Wouldn’t 

you agree, or not? 

Ms. COLLIER. Yes, some technologies that would have privacy implications. You know, they are not big on Twitter, they are not 

blogging as much anymore. It is a moving target. But, yes, absolutely, privacy is a tremendous consideration where children are 

concerned. 

Mr. SARBANES. I mean, it strikes me that adolescence plus technology is a privacy nightmare in some ways. 

Ms. COLLIER. Yes, and that is what I was basically saying in my 

testimony is that location-based technologies and services are not, 

you know, a unique problem in this area. Children are constantly 


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in touch with each other, constantly updating their status, their location with each other regardless of the technology. 

Mr. SARBANES. And notification and notice and consent provisions or regimes that are established are also ones that sort of become like quicksand when you are dealing with kids. I mean, for 

example, Facebook I think has a rule that you have to be 13. 

Ms. COLLIER. Right. Facebook complies with COPPA. 

Mr. SARBANES. Right. Well—— 

Ms. COLLIER. There are a lot of kids under 13 who use Facebook. 

Mr. SARBANES. Who we kidding? 

Ms. COLLIER. Right. 

Mr. SARBANES. Yes. So the kids are going on and representing— 

I guess they have to, I mean, I haven’t gone through the process— 

but representing that they are meeting the standard when everybody knows that they are not. The teachers know. I mean, twothirds of these classes of 12-year-olds and 11-year-olds, they are all 

on Facebook. So I guess what I am asking you is, how do we address that issue, which is that to me a lot of the privacy standards 

and expectations we have is either wishful thinking or it is a kind 

of wink-and-nod exercise when you lay it against just how compelling and seductive and powerful these technologies are, particularly 

for young people, and it makes me feel that it is almost futile, not 

quite perhaps, but to try to establish these things when it comes 

to protection of kids and privacy standards and other things, and 

I just ask you to reflect on that for the remainder of my time. 

Ms. COLLIER. Well, I completely agree that what we are dealing 

here largely with is adolescent and child development and behavior, not technology, and that is very, very difficult to regulate. I do 

think that COPPA is a very important sort of baseline standard 

and the FTC is currently reviewing, you know, the rules and the 

enforcement of COPPA, rightfully so, but it does effectively protect 

children’s protection under 13. But regulation is not the solution 

here. I really believe that consumer education is the solution, and 

I would love to see more thought given to consumer education and 

product development teams, that product development teams and 

the industry would be putting on their parent hats more and that 

consumer education happens right with product launch or when a 

product is in beta. There is no substitute for parental care and so 

consumer education involves both parents and children and it has 

to come through schools, it has to come—you know, we can’t keep 

these products and services out of children’s experience in school 

either. They are part of 21st century education. And therefore to 

encourage schools to block social media from school is absurd because you can’t teach swimming without a pool and we can’t hold 

back the competitiveness of American education. We have got to 

get technology into schools and stop giving teachers an excuse not 

to teach with social and interactive and new media, whatever you 

want to call it. 

Mr. SARBANES. That is a great answer. Thank you. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Sarbanes. 

The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Buyer, is recognized for 7 minutes. 

Mr. BUYER. Ms. Collier, I want to pick up where you just left off. 

The level of cyber bullying and sexting that is going on right now, 


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so for you to make a blanket statement that says that, you know, 

don’t take these devices away from kids, I am almost to the point 

as a parent—my children went through public school. It has gotten 

so bad, I would probably find a private school that says my children are going to wear a uniform and they are not going to have 

access to technology like cell phones during school hours, and that 

is almost to the point where it has gotten. 

Ms. COLLIER. That would be the easy way. I have kids in public 

school too, 12 and 18, and it would be easy just to ban all technology from their lives. But what would that do to them? What 

would that do their social lives? 

Mr. BUYER. I don’t believe it is banning it from their lives but 

it is definitely—— 

Ms. COLLIER. Within reason? 

Mr. BUYER. The cyber bullying is really extraordinary that is 

going on right now, or how—I won’t get into the sexting part of it. 

Let us just do the cyber bullying for a moment, how they can 

marginalize, isolate and then destroy someone that is 13 whereby 

that reputation is everything to them. Also, reputation is everything to us. I mean, if you want to talk about cyber bullying, be 

a member of Congress and deal with the yahoos that we get to deal 

with, and I don’t mean the Web site either. I mean, we experience 

cyber bullying all the time. 

I am going to pick up on something else Mr. Sarbanes had just 

said. He is absolutely correct, I believe, about the nightmares that 

this creates when you put technology in the hands of our children. 

At the same time, when it comes to privacy, as a parent, my children had limited privacy, and guess what? I have the right as a 

parent to spy on my children. 

Ms. COLLIER. Yes. 

Mr. BUYER. I have that right in my oversight to ensure that they 

are where they said they are going to be. 

Ms. COLLIER. Absolutely. 

Mr. BUYER. And I will tell you what, I would love to have as a 

parent the actual location ability on a GPS to know where my children are. 

Ms. COLLIER. You can have that. 

Mr. BUYER. I know. That is why I am saying. So with regard to 

this ‘‘privacy’’ so how we have to balance this, Mr. Sarbanes, with 

regard to how we protect our children from the outside in. At the 

same time, as a parent, how do we gain access to know what they 

are doing at all times. And there is a balance. And so when you 

made this comment about how do we get parents to take an active 

role and interest in the lives of their children, government isn’t 

going to be able to do that. But you are right when you say about 

education. You are right, I also believe in corporate responsibility 

when the products come out. I also believe that our schools, since 

they are also the guardian of our children while they are gone, also 

have a social responsibility. 

Ms. COLLIER. We have also got to stop scaring the bejeebers out 

of parents. We have done a very bad job of that. We have had a 

predator panic in this country for several years, and what that fear 

does is cause parents to overreact and shut things down rather 

than communicate with their kids. 


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Mr. BUYER. But how do we—we can do all the things I just said. 

This issue on cyber bullying, how do we—— 

Ms. COLLIER. Cyber bullying is just an electronic extension of 

bullying so what you are asking me is what do we do about bullying, and that is probably beyond the purview of this hearing but 

we should all be thinking about that. Bullying is—— 

Mr. BUYER. But bullying used to be a little more isolated. If they 

find themselves out at recess, if they find themselves at the gym, 

if they find themselves at the cafeteria, but now you can be in the 

classroom, you can be anywhere and you can be cyber bullied at 

any moment at any time because they make some statement or 

they make up a scenario and this kid then is tortured, you know, 

constantly. So it is more aggravated. 

Ms. COLLIER. We need to get the schools up to speed on this, so 

we are working hard at that. 

Mr. BUYER. As a parent, my children are now grown but I can 

tell you, I think the cyber bullying is really getting out of hand. I 

mean, you can turn on the news and you find that someone has 

now committed suicide and you discover that they were cyber 

bullied or some 16-year-old thought it would be cute to send a 

naked picture to her boyfriend, he then sent that to someone else 

and she commits suicide. I mean, this technology is also being used 

in a manner which we never anticipated by individuals who don’t 

completely understand the realm of responsibility. Anyway, I appreciate you having this conversation with me. I yield back. 

And thank you, Mr. Sarbanes. You brought up a really good 

issue. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Buyer. 

We have recorded votes pending on the floor, and I think we 

probably have time for one more member to propound questions. 

Mr. Space is next. And then following that, we will need to have 

a recess. Mr. Doyle, I am sorry—— 

Mr. SPACE. Well, actually, Mr. Chairman, I am going to pass. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Oh, you are going to pass? Well, thank you, Mr. 

Space. That does help us. 

Mr. Doyle, the gentleman from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and my apologies for 

being late. We had several hearings at the same time. 

Professor Cranor, welcome to this panel. It is always good to see 

someone from CMU here and not just because they are in my district, Mr. Chairman, but it is one of the great universities in America, and your work has been very helpful to this committee. 

Professor Cranor, tell me, in your testimony you mentioned that 

Internet users legitimately care about their location privacy but 

that the current system isn’t set up in such a way to give users 

a good sense of how location-based service providers will use that 

information nor do most location-based service providers supply 

users with comprehensive privacy controls and protective default 

settings, and you add that further additional protections might be 

necessary. I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on what 

additional protections may be necessary to ensure that we have 

proper control over location information, and do you think it requires Congress to take any action? 


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Ms. CRANOR. So I think that we need to start with at least having some guidelines which give more specific guidance about what 

is acceptable notice to users. You know, the fact that providing notice, you know, buried in the legalese of a privacy policy is not providing adequate notice, and guidance that, you know, saying well, 

you have privacy but there are exceptions and you have to go read 

the fine print, those sorts of things are not providing people with 

adequate notice. You know, as Ms. Collier raised, you know, with 

Google Buzz, you know, people started using it and had no idea 

that everything was public and that is a very common thing that 

we have seen in our research is that people use these services, they 

think only their friends are seeing their information, only their 

friends are seeing their location and yet it is being made public. So 

I think we need at the very least guidelines for the service providers and perhaps actually regulation along those lines as well. 

Mr. DOYLE. I mean, what options do consumers really have today 

for choosing or negotiating their own privacy preferences? I mean, 

are there technologies available that would let consumers express 

their own privacy preferences up front where they could say up 

front this is how I want my information to be used and this is who 

I want to be able to see it? 

Ms. CRANOR. Well, I think in the commercial services today, you 

can do that to a limited extent so there are some that you can certainly turn off the location sharing. There are some that let you 

choose between sharing with the public or sharing with a group of 

designated friends. So there are some controls but they tend to be 

fairly course grained, and you can’t really have your cake and eat 

it too with most of them. With some of the more experimental systems like our research on Locaccino at CMU, you can actually have 

much finer-grained controls and so I think it would certainly be 

possible to give consumers a lot more options and a lot more control but we are not actually seeing that being deployed in commercial services. 

Mr. DOYLE. Now, Mr. Morris, I saw you either laughing or smiling so I want to give you a chance to grab the microphone and 

chime in if you would like. 

Mr. MORRIS. I started working in 2001 with the Internet engineering task force on a protocol called GeoPriv, geographic privacy, 

that attempts to do exactly what you are proposing, attempts to 

allow users to set the rules to say you can keep my information 

only for 24 hours and you can’t pass it on to anybody else, and 

there’s been some uptake with that technology but unfortunately at 

the applications layer, the Worldwide Web layer, that technology 

has not been accepted. We have been working to try to get it implemented at the applications there. So certainly the technology is out 

there. I frankly think it will take an act of Congress to really get 

the industry to really try to give users the level of control that you 

are talking about. 

Mr. DOYLE. Mr. Chairman, I know we have votes pending. Thank 

you for your patience. And to all the panelists, thank you for being 

here today. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Doyle, and I want to 

express appreciation also to each of you. Your testimony has been 

informative and helpful to us. 


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The record for this hearing will remain open for a period of time, 

and there may be questions that members want to submit to you. 

If you receive those, please reply to them promptly. And we do appreciate your help. This has been very beneficial for us. 

This hearing stands adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:04 p.m., the Subcommittees were adjourned.] 

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] 


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STATEMENT 

OF 

RICK BOUCHER 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, 

AND THE INTERNET 

"THE COLLECTION AND USE OF LOCATION INFORMATION 

FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSES" 

FEBRUARY 24, 2010 

Today the Subcommittees on Communications, 

Technology, and the Internet and Commerce, Trade, and 

Consumer Protection convene an additional hearing to 

examine matters of consumer privacy. This hearing will 

examine the important matter of the privacy of locationbased information in an increasingly mobile world. I 

appreciate the excellent cooperation among Chairman 

Rush and me, Chairman Waxman, Mr. Barton, Mr. 

Stearns, Mr. Radanovich and our staffs as the plans for 

today's hearing progressed. 

With the development of cheaper and more efficient 

location-based technologies, increased use of smart 

phones, the launch of geolocation-enabled Web browsers, 
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and the proliferation of location-based applications, 

consumers everywhere are using thousands of different 

location-based services and applications that collect and 

use location data to communicate, socialize, travel, play 

and shop. 

Location-based services may be used to locate family 

and friends in real time, for navigation and mapping, and 

to enhance social networking and gaming. Each locationbased service or application requires some disclosure of 

an individual's location information to the service provider, 

but the degree of that disclosure, as well as the uses, 

retention, and sharing of an individual's location 

information, varies. 

With no existing comprehensive laws or regulations 

that address the collection, use, disclosure or retention of 

location-based information, concerns have been raised 

about the privacy of location-based information and 

whether consumers understand what they are sharing, 

who will use it, and how the information will be used. 
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Location-based information may be collected and 

used in different ways. Sometimes wireless carriers 

provide location-based services, while in other instances 

they are offered by third-party application providers. These 

third parties can use a device's GPS capabilities to obtain 

location information directly, obviating the need to obtain 

location data from the wireless carrier. 

One thing is clear, and that is that the number of 

devices and services that collect and use real-time 

location information about individuals will continue to 

proliferate. I therefore look forward to hearing from our 

witnesses about how we can best balance the deployment 

of location-based services with adequate protection of 

consumers' privacy. For example: 

• Should the use of location-based information 

always require opt-in consent, or is opt-out 

consent sometimes appropriate? 
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• Are there services that consumers consider 

essential to the functioning of wireless devices or 

applications that require the collection and use of 

location-based information? 

• What, if any, safeguards are in place to ensure 

that consumers give meaningful consent to the 

tracking of their location in real time? 

I also look forward to hearing about the implications, if 

any, of current privacy statutes on the collection, use and 

disclosure of location-based information. 

I am also interested to hear what the future of 

location-based technologies may hold - what new 

services they may enable and how to accommodate 

privacy concerns. I look forward to hearing from our 

distinguished panel about these and other matters. Thank 

you again to our witnesses for being here today, and I 

yield back the balance of my time. 
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Statement of the Honorable Joe Barton 

Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Commerce 

"The Collection and Use of Location Information 

for Commercial Purposes" 

February 24, 2010 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding this 

hearing. 

I want to commend Chairman Boucher and Chairman Rush, 

on their efforts on privacy issues, and as co-chair of the Privacy 

Caucus, I have a particular interest in this topic. Our committee 

has a long history in this area, and I'm glad we're continuing that. 

Many companies are now competing by distinguishing themselves 

on the privacy issue. I think our work on these things have forced 

the industry to take a good hard look at itself, and they have made 

some positive changes. 

I'm hopeful that we can continue that bipartisanship work. 

Privacy and data security are important to us all, and there is no 
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reason we all shouldn't sit down at the same table to draft 

legislation if we decide that is what is needed. I'm hopeful that 

when some of us go down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White 

House tomorrow, that the President, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader 

Reid have a similar approach to healthcare reform, but I'm not 

holding my breath. 

But today we're focusing on privacy, and specifically the 

collection of use of information related to where someone is or has 

been. Many in Silicon Valley and in the technology community 

see this type of marketing and advertising as the "next big thing." 

No one is quite sure what business models will develop around this 

type of data, and how people might make money on it. That is 

both an exciting and a frightening fact for some. 

Almost everyone in this room has a mobile device-if not 

two-in his or her pocket, purse, or briefcase. And those devices 

relay information that can pinpoint your exact location. Some 

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people aren't even aware that it's happening. Others actively 

participate in it by updating their Facebook page or using Twitter 

many times a day. In fact, I send out "tweets" about where I'm 

headed and who I'm meeting with in order to keep my constituents 

informed. 

But what are the "rules of the road" about this information 

that is being collected, compiled, and used? What best practices is 

the industry developing? Do these companies have robust privacy 

policies? Are they giving consumers adequate notice about the use 

of location information? Are they selling this data? 

Additionally, we need to closely examine what current laws 

there are, and perhaps more importantly, how the current 

framework may treat 2 companies differently despite the fact that 

they gather the exact same information in the exact same way. 

Section 222 of the Communications Act restricts how wireless 

carriers treat at least some location data, but what if an application 

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on your cell phone gathers that same data? We shouldn't be 

creating competitive advantages or disadvantages in the law based 

simply on different technologies. 

Ifthere is a lack of robust consumer education, or a lack of 

meaningful consumer choice, and if the industry doesn't solve 

those problems, we may need to step in. Our responsibility is to 

find the consumer harm here, and through this series of hearing 

and analysis of the marketplace, we may decide that regulation is 

needed. But I'll note that this analysis needs to be done. The FCC 

is talking about regulating the Internet in the form of net neutrality 

rules, and as far as I can tell they've not shown any evidence of a 

problem. Ifthe case can be made about regulating the Internet, it 

is in the area of privacy long before net neutrality. 

That said, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the ongoing 

debate and discussion, and ideally, it will continue to drive the 

industry to regulate itself before we have to get involved. 

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I thank the great panel of witnesses for travelling to be here 

and for their help in this discussion. I look forward to their 

testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

o 

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