It could be used to prevent corporate secrets from being downloaded into employee homes or motel rooms. The use of geodetic location can supplement or complement other methods of authentication, which are still useful when users at the same site have separate accounts and privileges. Its value added is a high level of assurance against intrusion from any unapproved location regardless of whether the other methods have been compromised. In critical environments, for example, military command and control, telephone switching, air traffic control, and banking, this extra assurance could be extremely important in order to avoid a potential catastrophe with reverberations far beyond the individual system cracked. In work environments where the principle threat is outsiders, the use of geodetic location combined with simple, fixed passwords might be sufficient.
Geodetic location can be useful for locating the perpetrators of cybercrimes.
One of the biggest obstacles to investigating computer intrusions is tracing an intruder back to a physical location so that an arrest can be made. If the intruder has looped through several hosts, it is necessary to get the cooperation of the system administrators operating each host in addition to the cooperation of the telecommunications carriers. With knowledge of the precise geodetic location of anyone logged in, the problem is readily solved. In many cases, an intruder could be located and apprehended during a first attack, making it unnecessary to allow an intruder back into the system several times in order to conduct a trace. Knowledge of geodetic location can be used in other types of cases as well, for example, to find the originator of a fraudulent transaction, a libelous or harassing message, or a death threat.