[OSM-talk] JOSM update

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> | I believe that they are sorted by timestamp. What they aren't sorted
> | by is the track they came from so you might get points jumbled up from
> | different tracks.
> |
> | The API deliberately tries to expose limited information about the
> | points for privacy reasons as some points may have come from traces
> | that are not public.
> 
> Why expose the timestamps of private tracks. Expose the order, but
> please don't expose the timing

That's exactly what happens. They are sorted by timestamp, but what's 
returned is only the latitude and longitude.

(If I were really bent on finding out the exact timestamp of a certain 
GPS point, I could do a "binary search attack" by uploading a trace that 
contains a point in the area I'm interested in, with a timestamp of, 
say, 2 years ago. Then download the GPS trace and see if my point is 
before or after the point I am interested in. Then upload another trace 
with a test point one year later or earlier, and so on. I would probably 
have to upload about 10 points to know exactly which day the GPS point 
was recorded on, and 5 more to know the hour of the day. But that would 
really be vandalism...)

Bye
Frederik