[Clips] NSA granted Net location-tracking patent

R.A. Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Thu Sep 22 11:49:29 EDT 2005


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 Subject: [Clips] NSA granted Net location-tracking patent
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 CNET News


  NSA granted Net location-tracking patent

  By Declan McCullagh

  Story last modified Wed Sep 21 13:49:00 PDT 2005


 The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a method of figuring
 out an Internet user's geographic location.

 Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone's
 physical location by comparing it to a "map" of Internet addresses with
 known locations.

 The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request, and the patent
 description talks only generally about the technology's potential uses. It
 says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to "measure
 the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions" or flag a
 password that "could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the
 appropriate location."

 Other applications of the geo-location patent, invented by Stephen Huffman
 and Michael Reifer of Maryland, could relate to the NSA's signals
 intelligence mission--which is, bluntly put, spying on the communications
 of non-U.S. citizens.

 "If someone's engaged in a dialogue or frequenting a 'bad' Web site, the
 NSA might want to know where they are," said Mike Liebhold, a senior
 researcher at the Institute for the Future who has studied geo-location
 technology. "It wouldn't give them precision, but it would give them a clue
 that they could use to narrow down the location with other intelligence
 methods."

 The NSA's patent relies on measuring the latency, meaning the time lag
 between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" locations on the Internet
 and building a "network latency topology map." Then, at least in theory,
 the Internet address to be identified can be looked up on the map by
 measuring how long it takes known computers to connect to the unknown one.



 The technique isn't foolproof. People using a dial-up connection can't be
 traced beyond their Internet service provider--which could be in an
 different area of the country--and it doesn't account for proxy services
 like Anonymizer.

 Geo-location, sometimes called "geo-targeting" when used to deliver
 advertising, is an increasingly attractive area for Internet businesses.
 DoubleClick has licensed geo-location technology to deliver
 location-dependent advertising, and Visa has signed a deal to use the
 concept to identify possible credit card fraud in online orders.

 Digital Envoy holds a patent on geo-location, and Quova, a privately held
 firm in Mountain View, Calif., holds three more, one shared with Microsoft.

 "It's honestly not clear that there's anything special or technically
 advanced about what they're describing," Quova Vice President Gary Jackson
 said, referring to the NSA's patent. "I'd have to have our technical guys
 read it, but I don't think it impacts us in any way."

 --
 -----------------
 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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