ASM
Privacy Dominates Location Asia
Concerns about privacy have the ability to derail the development of location-based technologies aimed at the consumer. At least, that's according to the first three keynote sessions of the Location Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur today (11 June).
SiRF Technologies' Ashutosh Pande told the audience that the development of LBS consumer applications required practitioners to understand differing perceptions of location. 'A consumer does not express position in terms of x and y co-ordinates or latitude and longditude' as a surveyor might,' he said. 'A consumer sees his own position as something integral to him. For a consumer, location is personal and thus private.'
Shoummo Archarya, the chief executive of VI eTrans, a transport and logistics company in India, said this notion is so strong that if individuals believe they will be tracked without their concent, they will probably refuse all LBS services rather than submit.
This is not an idle threat. Tuan Haji Mohammad Haron, the general manager of Telekom Malaysia, revealed that Telekom had stopped offering some LBS services on its 3G networks because of a fear that some customers would cancel their account rather than submit to tracking technology.
He said Telekom now offers LBS services only through its partners, which makes it easier to build service offerings that can be customised for the client.
Archarya urged the creation of an international forum, after the fashion of the International Air Transport Association, a non-government body that is used to develop international standards for air transport.
'Its not a regulatory body, but members have to abide by mutually acceptable rules. It has done much good for the aviation industry,' he said.
Archarya argues that such a body would be able to create a mutually satisfactory set of standards for preserving the privacy of users, with the aim of growing the size of the industry.
Location Asia is one in a series of conferences developed by GIS Development in Delhi.
