Welcome to the Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv) web

Description of Working Group

As more and more resources become available on the Internet, some applications need to acquire geographic location information about certain resources or entities. These applications include navigation, emergency services, management of equipment in the field, and other location-based services.

But while the formatting and transfer of such information is in some sense a straightforward process, the implications of doing it, especially in regards to privacy and security, are anything but.

The primary task of this working group will be to assess the the authorization, integrity and privacy requirements that must be met in order to transfer such information, or authorize the release or representation of such information through an agent.

In addition, the working group will select an already standardized format to recommend for use in representing location per se. A key task will be to enhance this format and protocol approaches using the enhanced format, to ensure that the security and privacy methods are available to diverse location-aware applications. Approaches to be considered will include (among others) data formats incorporating fields directing the privacy handling of the location information and possible methods of specifying variable precision of location.

Also to be considered will be: authorization of requestors and responders; authorization of proxies (for instance, the ability to authorize a carrier to reveal what timezone one is in, but not what city. An approach to the taxonomy of requestors, as well as to the resolution or precision of information given them, will be part of this deliverable.

The combination of these elements should provide a service capable of transferring geographic location information in a private and secure fashion (including the option of denying transfer).

For reasons of both future interoperability and assurance of the security and privacy goals, it is a goal of the working group to deliver a specification that has broad applicablity and will become mandatory to implement for IETF protocols that are location-aware.

Available Information

• Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv) Charter Web Page -- http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/geopriv-charter.html
• Roadmap for the IETF GEOPRIV working group -- IetfGeoprivRoadMap

Geopriv Web Utilities