Comments on: my airmozilla geo talk

By: Arun Ranganathan

Arun Ranganathan — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:56:26 +0000

Or, mention the “pre-arranged trust” edge cases explicitly — e.g., mention E911 explicitly as a potential “emergency-based trust relationship.”

By: dougt

dougt — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:55:28 +0000

@jmdesp this recommendation is for ANY user agent including browsers. clearly Firefox will never send anything like geolocation without expressed permission. However, we considered the use cases of non-browser UAs which may want to use this specification and want a recommendation on what to do regarding privacy. Such non-browser use cases sometimes place the end user as not the right person to approve use of geolocation. For example, a kiosk at a mall that uses geolocation to place its center point. Does the user of this kiosk really need to see a geolocation confirmation dialog? In this case, it is the operator of the kiosk that has that responsibility.

However, maybe you are right. Maybe we should just not include anything regarding “prearranged trust”.

By: jmdesp

jmdesp — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:00:54 +0000

> a voip telephone may not present any user interface when using a
> geolocation to perform an E911 function.

I’m wary even of that. Flagging some sites, even for the best reasons, as allowed for silent geolocatisation opens a can of worms.

For 911, I’d prefer a short warning bar with a count down Â« by accessing this site, you agree to transmit your current localisation. Click here within 5 seconds to cancel access. Â»

If the short delai is already too much, then I’d do a short information bar instead (“Warning : This site is privileged to full access to you location information !”).