Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Scientific American

The Scientific American has a couple of great articles on privacy and spatial data. Esther Dyson does an excellent job in describing the difference between a privacy loss and a security loss in her article. She always explains why defining a reasonable expectation of privacy can be so difficult.
An article on RFID technology describes a number of ways in which spatial data can be collected on individuals and why certain RFID technology may be particularly vulnerable to improper collections.

The author in the second article discusses how and why government authorities should regulate the collection of spatial data from RFID's. However, spatial data can be collected from a number of different sources and used for a variety of different purposes. I am concerned that if legislation is not properly drafted, efforts to regulate the collection and use of certain types of spatial data will negatively impact the collection and use of other types of spatial data.

2 comments:

Justin Bronn said...

Looks like the second article link is the same as the first. I think you meant this article: How RFID Tags Could Be Used to Track Unsuspecting People.

L. A. Shanley said...

Is the second link meant to go to the same spot as the first link? Thanks!