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Mobile technologies and their use in education - new privacy implications. Paul Anderson JISC Technology and Standards Watch
[email protected] Abstract "Privacy is perhaps the most significant long-term challenge facing the successful roll-out of location-based experiences." (Future location-based experiences, Benford, 2005, p. 12) Location-based experiences are digital media services that take into account the geographical location of the user. As the mobile technology they are based on matures, these services are being increasingly used in educational settings. Such services have implications for individual privacy, raising a number of questions about the collection, retention, use and disclosure of personal information concerning physical location. This paper presents a short summary of the key technologies involved and a brief discussion of some of the privacy issues raised. Introduction A recent JISC Technology and Standards Watch report "Future Location-based Experiences" (Benford, 2005), discussed the implications of the rapidly growing field of location-based mobile technologies. Location-based experiences (LBE) extend digital media out into the physical world – be it across a campus, the city streets or a remote wilderness. Users of such services move through the physical world equipped with mobile devices such as phones and handheld computers. Sensors capture information about their current context, including their location, and this is used to deliver experiences that change according to where they are and what they are doing. At the moment such activities are experimental and involve the use of handheld equipment, but these developments are a part of a wider movement towards ubiquitous computing, or ubicom, in which computing devices become increasingly part of our everyday physical fabric – buildings, vehicles, clothing – to the point where the concept of the computer as a separate box disappears. The JISC report introduced the technologies and educational potential for LBE and discussed some of the implications for education. One of the areas highlighted by Professor Benford was the implication for individual privacy: "Privacy is perhaps the most significant long-term challenge facing the successful roll-out of location-based experiences" (2005, p. 12). The report recommended that JISC and individual educational institutions raise awareness of the privacy implications of LBE through debate and dialogue and hence this short paper will attempt to summarise the technologies involved and develop some of the discussion concerning the issues of privacy.
Some location-based examples Location-based experiences or services make use of a user's physical location in order to add value to a digital media service or educational situation. The JISC report outlined a series of differing examples clustered around three key areas: information services and guides, field visits and field science, and games. In order to give a flavour we briefly discuss here the area of location-based games. Often these combine real world players, travelling through a physical space, who interact with virtual, online players. A well known example of this type of game is "Can You See Me Now" which has toured widely and in which real players, equipped with PDA and GPS satellite equipment, track online players through a virtual city by running through a real city. Further details can be found at: www.canyouseemenow.co.uk. Although these games are developed for research purposes, one can quite rapidly develop variants that offer genuine educational value, for example, the Savannah game in which children learn about the ecology of the African savannah through role-playing the behaviour of a pride of lions (Benford, 2005). The Technologies A discussion of the privacy implications of LBE is becoming increasingly relevant as the three key technologies that underpin such services are rapidly maturing. The three technologies are: mobile devices (handheld computers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones etc.), wireless Internet access, and location-sensing equipment. The JISC report covers all three in depth, but for reasons of space for this discussion we shall concentrate on the latter: location sensing. Global Positoning Systems (GPS) There is a wide variety of location-sensing technologies available, providing a range of user scenarios to which different levels of accuracy apply. The most well known is the Global Positioning System (GPS) which uses a receiver inside a mobile device to triangulate information on the time of transmission of signals from three or more of 24 orbiting satellites maintained by the U.S. government. With reception from at least three satellites, position may be calculated in two dimensions; with four satellites in three dimensions; and with more, accuracy can be to within a few metres or even less. A similar system, GALILEO, will be operated by the European Union and the European Space Agency from 2008 (Galileo, 2004). Note that with these GPS systems the location information is uni-directional or one-way, in that the satellite is not provided with information about location from the device. Cellular or wireless triangulation The second major technique for location-sensing is the use of mobile phone or wireless networking technologies which involve a base station or antenna. Mobile phones and other wireless and wifi devices connect to the main network through the nearest local base station or antenna (for example, the mobile phone masts one sees dotted around the city and countryside). The area of coverage for such an antenna is known as a cell and the
location of a mobile device can be crudely calculated (to an accuracy of the cell size) by reporting the antenna it is currently connected to. Additionally, accuracy can be enhanced by triangulation of the position of the mobile device in relation to multiple antennae (Rheingold, 2002). In the UK, information about the location of these base stations for the public mobile phone networks is available and can be found at the website http://www.sitefinder.radio.gov.uk. These techniques are bi-directional or two-way, in that there is communication from the mobile device back to the base station and, in the case of the mobile telephony, the monitoring of the location of a device is not only used for billing purposes, but is a legal requirement for use by the emergency services under Recommendation 2003/558/EC on emergency calls of EU Directive 2002/21/EC (Commission of the European Communities, 2003). These two techniques can be further enhanced by incorporating accelerometer, digital compass and gyroscopic technologies into mobile devices in order to determine their acceleration, velocity, orientation and rotation. RFID A second strand of location-determining equipment is based on Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) tags. The applications of such tags are legion, and within education, libraries, for example, have begun to use them in automated book loan systems. Brief discussion on the implications for privacy Location privacy The technologies discussed above and the location-based services that can be developed using them have implications for individual privacy, raising a number of questions about the collection, retention, use and disclosure of personal information. These services involve monitoring a user's physical location, storing it centrally, and transmitting this to other users; this has the potential to comprise an individual's location privacy which is defined as the "ability to prevent other parties from learning one's current or past location" (Beresford, 2003). For most people, location information is perceived to be highly sensitive and the introduction of services based around a person's location may be perceived by individuals as a "double edged sword" (Junglas, 2005). Despite this, the subject of location privacy has not, to date, received a great deal of attention (Minch, 2004). A relatively small number of authors – computer scientists, sociologists, and psychologists – have sought in recent years to map out the privacy implications arising from location systems and Junglas and Spitzmuller (2005) map out some of these recent papers and discuss their findings. The technologies and applications are, in large part, being developed in university research labs and are being trialled and tested in F&HE settings and thus it can be argued that the education community has some responsibility to help the process of engagement with and discussion of the implications. The educational uses of such technologies and the subsequent privacy issues raised in an education setting are therefore part of a wider debate within society.
Scenario and key questions A key scenario to assist in exploring the privacy implications is outlined in Jiang et al. (2002). A tourist, Alice, visits a foreign city and rents a handheld computing device that acts as a digital tour guide. The digital tour guide incorporates GPS for location tracking and her location is sent wirelessly to a centralised server. The location data is used to display Alice's position on her handheld screen, to put her in contact with nearby friends and for performance profiling (for monitoring the operation of the system). What Alice is not told is that the central data is also used by a third party – Carol – an advertising agent. This simple scenario can be used to explore some of the key privacy questions thrown up by location privacy as discussed by Robert Minch (2004): Issue 1: Should users of location-enabled devices be informed when location tracking is in use? Should they be permitted to turn it off? Should an opt-in or opt-out approach be used? Issue 2: Should users of location-aware devices be permitted to control the storage of location information? Issue 3: Should location information as stored be personally identifiable, or should the user have options to preserve degrees of anonymity? A key issue is the potential for asymmetry of information between the parties (Jiang et al., 2002). In the example with Alice, the central data collector and Carol know much more than Alice does about how any collected data will be used, and Alice has little control over how her location data will be used and by whom. Not having this knowledge, or alternatively, finding out and then the subsequent process of making an informed decision on how her data might be used or whether to use the technology at all, impose on Alice a cost in time and cognition. "This problem will only be exacerbated in ubiquitous computing environments due to the proliferation of data collection, thereby increasing the number of decisions one has to make regarding data exchanges." (Jiang et al., 2002, p. 6). Such a discussion leads Jiang to propose a principle of minimum asymmetry in which systems should seek to minimise the asymmetry between data owners, collectors and users. In more general contexts, such a system is likely to involve some level of fluidity with dynamic information flows between negotiating parties (Palen et al., 2003) rather than a fixed level of privacy protection. Conclusion In this paper we have introduced the emerging field of location-based experiences, discussed the technology used and outlined briefly some of the issues relating to individual privacy. As the technology matures, costs fall and applications are developed, such experiences will become widespread in education. At the same time privacy issues
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