2C/ Privacy – Preserving Geo Location & Other “mystuff” Services

Privacy Preserving Geo Location& other “mystuff” services

Thursday 2C

Convener: Arman Maghbouleh

Notes-taker(s): Alan Gous

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Two use cases for looking after your things:

1. Improving privacy for geo-location tags

• Current setup involves BLE tags (Tile, Trackr), communicating to gateways (cell phones) that add geolocation info and forward to a proprietary server. Users can access the server.
• Sketched a more open, privacy-centric version:
  • Ephemeral IDs (EIDs) on BLEs
  • Gateways add geo-info cryptographically
  • Distributed Hash Table (DHT) bulletin board so gateways post EIDs and user apps query for these.
  • DHT has no ability to link users to the locations or data from things.

2. Attesting Ownership of Things

• Discussed a DHT solution for registering, transferring ownership, verifying ownership of goods (eg camera with serial number), for lost+found and deterring theft.
• Suggested interest from police services, insurance companies, pawn shops, etc