[OSM-talk] Getting postal workers to do the leg (wheel) work

[Andrew Findlay]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2006 at 12:00:19PM +0200, Joerg Ostertag (OSM Munich/Germany) wrote:

> Lets assume the postman is willing to accept publishing the tracks under 
> CC-SA-BY licence. 
> But:
>  - do we have to ask his employer if he accepts to have all 
>    the routes published his employee are taking.
>  - And one more question about privacy concerns of his clients.
>    Do we have to ask all clients if they want to have published when 
>    and where they received a parcle?

I think the privacy thing could be addressed by a bit of data
processing. Given that it is much easier to hide in a crowd than in
an empty space, something like this:

1)	Merge data from several sources before uploading to the
	database. The more sources the better. They should either be
	uploaded together under one ID, or randomly spread across a
	lot of ordinary-looking IDs known only to the anonymiser.

2)	Apply a time offset to each collected track so that it is
	harder to work out when it was made. This should be randomly
	chosen from a range of a year or so, with a bias towards
	daylight hours.
	Also apply some 'fuzz' to the timing of individual points -
	not enough to make them appear out of sequence, but enough to
	make it harder to work out where the vehicle stopped and
	where it exceeded the speed limit :-)

None of this protects against a determined analyst of course, but it
might be enough to make people a little happier.

Andrew
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|                 From Andrew Findlay, Skills 1st Ltd                 |
| Consultant in large-scale systems, networks, and directory services |
|     http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/                +44 1628 782565     |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------