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Carnegie Mellon's Lorrie Cranor to Address Congressional Subcommittees About Privacy Issues and Location-Based Services
PITTSBURGH, Feb 23, 2010 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) --
Carnegie Mellon
University's Lorrie F. Cranor will discuss the risk and
benefits of online services that collect and use location
information to joint meetings of the U.S. Congressional
Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection and
the Subcommittee on Communication and Technology at 10 a.m.,
Wednesday, Feb. 24 in room 2141 of the Rayburn Office
building in Washington, D.C.
Increasingly popular location-based services allow
Internet users to share their location with friends, track
employees or children, or receive information based on
current geographic location. GPS and other technology built
into cell phones and laptop computers allows people to be
located automatically, often to within a few hundred
feet. However, there is growing concern about the invasive
nature of this technology, according to Cranor, an associate
professor of computer science and engineering and public
policy at Carnegie Mellon.
"Due to the way cellular technology works, for example,
the widespread use of cell phones enables round-the-clock
surveillance of citizens. It is important that the storage
of individual location data be minimized and protections be
put in place to limit when it can be disclosed to the
government," said Cranor, who has conducted several studies
about privacy issues and location-sharing technologies.
Another cause for concern is the lack of accessibility to
privacy controls on a variety of location-sharing
applications. During a recent evaluation of 84
location-sharing applications, Cranor's team found that "the
majority of those privacy controls are not easily accessible
from the main page or home page of the application itself."
"Only 18 of the 84 services we reviewed this month
mentioned privacy controls or security on the front page of
their Web site," Cranor said. "In most cases, it is almost
impossible to find out what a service is going to do with
your location information without signing up for the service
and trying it out."
In addition, Cranor's team found many location-based
services had no privacy policies posted on their Web sites,
and those that did post policies often made no mention of
location information.
A report on the Carnegie Mellon location sharing study is
available online at http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/LBSprivacy/ .
ABOUT CARNEGIE MELLON: Carnegie Mellon (http://www.cmu.edu)
is a private, internationally ranked research university
with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and
business, to public policy, the humanities and the fine
arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven
schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty
ratio and an education characterized by its focus on
creating and implementing solutions for real problems,
interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global
university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United
States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's
Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia
and Europe. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion
fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The
Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to
build its endowment, support faculty, students and
innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with
equipment and facility improvements.
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