Where in the world is ... ?

In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to get lost, thanks to the use of the global positioning system (GPS).

Covering the entire planet, GPS is based on signals from a network of 24 United States military satellites launched about a decade ago. These signals are available for civilian use, which has become widespread in navigation and many other areas.

The only catch is that the satellites actually generate two signals. The first, which the military can decode, is 10 times more accurate than the second one for civilian use. You might know your position to within 100 metres, but the military can have it figured to within 10.

In May, the US government announced that the more accurate value would now be available for civilian use. The US military is reserving the right to cut that off where it is fighting a war, but for most of the world, GPS just got a lot more precise.

The main reason for this is that the US government sees a significant commercial opportunity for vehicle navigation systems and is doing its best to help out. This is consistent with its tradition of publicly funding the development of technology which is then handed over to US corporations to profit from.

Location is fast becoming an obsession with US corporations and this is now invading the internet.

To date, there is no way to determine where an individual internet user is located, although there are some hints. The user's internet service provider (ISP) could have a particular location, with a country code at the end of its name. The time of day and language settings on a user's PC might give an idea. To get technical, the “autonomous system” number of the network that a user connects from could provide part of this information.

But all of these have flaws. Millions of people connect to the internet from America On-Line, which doesn't follow any of the normal rules. Or, because of odd ISP habits, users could appear to come from thousands of kilometres away from where they were actually based.

Some services can't be provided over the internet until this is resolved. For example, in the US there is a requirement that the location of someone calling a 911 emergency service number needs to be known. Internet telephony (Voice Over IP) can't do that at the moment.

There are two main commercial reasons for identifying where a user comes from on the internet. The first is so that if they want large amounts of data (such as a video of a rock concert), it can be sent to them from a nearby site. This requirement doesn't care where a user is, it just wants to know where they are close to. The second and latest requirement relates to advertising: it wants to know which country, city and suburb someone lives in so that it can advertise the closest pizza outlet on their screens.

Companies such as Mirror Image and Digital Island have major investments in this technology. They want to be able to pinpoint every user while they are logged on.

Of course, this is a significant change to the original promised anonymity of the internet. Within technical circles there is debate about the validity of making it easy for the internet's technology to do this.

The surveillance implications are also significant. In contrast to television and radio broadcast reception, once in place it would be very easy for centralised monitoring to track the location of visitors to particular sites. This issue will assume increasing importance over time.

BY GREG HARRIS