GEOTECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY
Personal Location Data:
Balancing Government, Business, and Individual Needs
Rick Miller

The geotechnologies industry is poised for explosive growth. Technical innovation, expanding markets, and creative applications continue to accelerate. Complementing this growth are numerous public and private sector motivators that increasingly rely on location, especially personal location.

For decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has tracked housing units to help determine total population, yet it goes to great lengths to mask the identity of the housing unit occupants. Ironically, today's multiple government initiatives addressing homeland security, wireless E-911, sales tax-assessment, and voter registration entail geocoding of an address or location of a cell phone signal that is individually identifiable. In the private sector, cell phones and other personal electronic devices are becoming location-enabled. Location-based services are poised to explode. Personal location data is now an information asset and commodity.

Are we considering the ramifications and unintended consequences of this trend?

Technical innovation is opportunistic yet government and private investment in technology generally requires a business case to justify the expenditure. The business cases for emergency response, sales tax assessment, and other fundamental government functions are not hard to make. Yet these initiatives merely represent the front end of the personal location bonanza. Transaction records, video monitoring, security passes, automated toll roads, and cell signals all contribute to the terrabytes of data collected and stored by government and the private sector. Substantially, we live in a technical environment where location tracking and activity monitoring are viable applications.

When considering information access to government data and information, freedom of information and open records legislation abounds at federal and state levels. Yet many states have struggled to update and modernize open records legislation to effectively address the information age. How prepared are governments to manage the security, privacy, and access issues related to personal location data? Is the video record of traffic-flow on a metropolitan interstate highway a potential public record to be used in future litigation? Can the data stream captured at an automated tollbooth be exploited to locate delinquent taxpayers?

Once all our personal electronic devices become location-enabled, we'll be plugged-in wherever we go, leaving a data stream in our wake. Our cars will be location aware and we will access the Internet wirelessly as we move about. When the business case justifies, we'll see real-time video monitoring and imaging from drones rather than periodic aerial photography surveys. Communities will investigate real-time video surveillance for public safety applications. Today, London is the most fully monitored city in the world.

There is little doubt that geotechnologies have and will continue to make significant contributions to our society. The growth potential of this sector is enormous.

So, too, are the public policy issues associated with the privacy, security, and access of personal location information.

About the Author
Rick Miller, the former Chief Information Technology Architect and GIS Director for the State of Kansas, has 20 years' experience in the geotechnologies field. He is an active participant in national forums on geospatial issues, including recently serving as President of the National States Geographic Information Council and Chairman of the Mid-America Geographic Information Consortium.

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