[Geowanking] MS local.live.com & privacy (lack of)

[Drew from Zhrodague]

> Obviously agregated dossiers on all of us are traded across the net. I don't 
> like it much, but ordinarily I haven't been too touchy about it; but 
> Microsoft's clearly duplicitous claim here that  "privacy is important" is 
> just too much, particularly with a technology that was expressly and 
> admirably developed by Intel to be "privacy observant." 
> A lot of us had hoped that, because of the inherent privacy model,  Wifi 
> geolocation could could be widely applied to kickstart location services for 
> devices that don't have integrated GPS. Now given Microsoft's bungled 
> rollout, I'm not so  eager or sure this will happen.

 	Is Microsoft really using Intel's package? Isn't that Placelab?

 	Y'know, there's still time to produce a competing project, and 
there are those of us who are still interested in that sort of thing.

 	I'll state again that we could use some help in fleshing out 
WiFiMaps.com to provide Wi-Fi data for a similar type of location service. 
I am apparently not that great of a programmer, or DBA, and haven't been 
able to put together some of the missing pieces ('triangulation', schema, 
etc). Eric and I have agreed to publish our collected data into GPL, which 
I think might help us stay around longer, and aid those working on Wi-Fi 
location projects.

 	What is the line between privacy and functionality in 
location-based systems? How does one provide location information, without 
collecting/mining information about the user? Obviously, Microsoft's 
tactics raise flags with lots of us. At least with our app, we've tried to 
not publish TOO much information, and do not display MAC addresses -- even 
though you can search for them. What other things are to be avoided?


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Drew from Zhrodague		http://www.WiFiMaps.com
drew at zhrodague.net		http://www.zhrodague.net