Wigan, M.R. Location Based Services 1 Location based services - a bridge too far for data linkage privacy concerns? Marcus Wigan Oxford Systematics 1 Heidelberg, Victoria 3084, Australia Telephone: +61 3 9459 9671 Emails: oxsys@optusnet.com.au ; mwigan@unimelb.edu.au ; MarcusW@demis.nl ABSTRACT Location-based services (LBS) are dependent on a knowledge of a real time location, knowledge of the environment, and integrated with communications. An ideal specification for travel data collection. LBS has become pervasive very swiftly, but the implications are not yet widely recognised. The addition of realtime information, response and service providers to the now familiar combination of GPS, and data recording is the focus of the present paper. The business development path to LBS is outlined, and the implications for data gathering, matching and response considered. The privacy and surveillance aspects are of varying sensitivity in different cultures, even within a single country, but the addition of intelligence methods of data gathering add a further layer to existing concerns. The effectiveness of even limited geospatial tagging to make de-identified data identifiable goes well beyond the methods already emergent for reducing multiple identities in health and other fields to full idenification. The substantial potential of LBS to enable improved understanding, monitoring and management of transport provision and movements are clear, but barriers to its wide adoption are outlined in terms of the cultures of authorities collecting data and those of the subjects of that collection. Introduction The concept of location based services has been developing rapidly, especially since internet enabled cell phones with GPS facilities (such as the Apple iPhone, the Nokia N95 and now many others) have become widely available. Initially transport data acquisition with GPS (or cell tower triangulation for traffic flows) was done by recording the tracks of individuals or vehicles and doing a post analysis. Later additions were made to customised devices including GPS chips. These were constructed to record user information as specialised equipment for transport data gathering. These activities were in general of restricted application, and constrained to individual data collection studies. 1 Partner: Volvo Centre of Excellence: the Centre for Governance and Management of Urban Transport, Faculty of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, and Senior Consultant, Demis BV, Delft, the Netherlands.