Publications

European IP Bulletin, Issue 26, October - Patents

Patents

6. NSA “Geo-Locating Patent” Raises Privacy Concerns

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Patent no. 6,947,978, to National Security Agency (NSA) for a technology that can locate the physical where-about of any web surfer. The patent describes a process based on latency, or time lag between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" known locations on the Internet to build a "network latency topology map" for all users. The final identification of an individual web surfer is accomplished by measuring the time that is taken to connect to an unidentified computer from that of the known machines, and using the latency response to display the exact location on a map.
The accurate physical identification of a web surfer has great potential uses for commercial organisations. The technology can be used for identifying geographic effectiveness of net advertising, and for making online transactions more secured as the password or other security information can only be accepted by a website if coming from a particular physical location. Apart from these commercial uses, it can be a potent tool in the hands of intelligence agencies for carrying out searches on the net and to identify physical location of individuals for counter-terrorism or other security-related operations.

However, the accuracy of the present patented technology to locate an individual web-surfer, and the fact that the patent is held by a top security organisation of US whose past track record is not so clean regarding surveillance operations, has raised unprecedented fears that the technology can adversely affect the privacy of web users unless its use for security purposes is properly regulated.

Click here to return to the Summary page, or on any of the headings below to see the full case notes for that topic:

COPYRIGHT  | TRADE MARKS