Subject: WG Review: Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv)

From: Steve Coya <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 15:47:53 -0400

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the XXXX Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. 

The following Description was submitted, and is provided for
informational purposes only.

Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv)
-------------------------------------
 
 Current Status: Proposed Working Group

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.
The term security in the rest of this charter refers
to authorization and integrity, though the requirements analysis
may add other aspects.

In addition, the working group will define the actual format used to
represent the geographic location of an identifiable entity, and
protocol approaches to ensure that the security and privacy methods
are available in diverse applications using the information.

The combination of these two elements should provide a service capable
of transferring geographic location information in a private and secure
fashion.

For interoperability reasons, a single absolute/default format will be
specified that must be supported by all location-aware entities. This
format will have (at least) a location specified in earth-based 
coordinates (Longitude, Latitude, and Altitude) and a Timestamp when 
these values were last known, as well as mandatory-to-implement privacy 
and security-related information.

Two further deliverables of the WG will be:

   An example API for application-level access to/management
   of link-based location information.  That is, for instance,
   the WG may describe an API for secure, privacy-enabling user/
   application handling of location information specific to
   a 3G wireless link technology.

   Development of i-ds that make security and privacy integral to
   location information in HTTP and HTML, based on the work in
   draft-daviel-html-geo-tag-05.txt 
   and draft-daviel-http-geo-header-03.txt.

Out of Scope:

    This WG won't develop location-determining technology.  It
    will work from existing technologies and where the
    technology is undeveloped, will state that applicability
    is not possible.

    This WG won't develop technology to support any particular
    regulatory requirement [e.g. E.911] but will provide a
    framework that might be used for private/secure definition
    of such technologies by other bodies.

Coordination:

    The WG will coordinate with other WGs developing general privacy
    functions, e.g. the SIP WG, so that the WG deliverables can be
    used by them.  Other coordination should include the NymIP
    research community and possibly others.