I-Corps: Commercialization Feasibility Research and Demonstration Preparation for Privacy-Preserving Location Based Services

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The successful completion of this project will lead to a clear go/no-go decision regarding the viability of commercializing the privacy-preserving location based services (LBS) techniques the PI developed in two NSF-sponsored research projects. Should a favorable decision be made, this project will also produce a transition plan for commercialization and a mobile application for demonstrating the privacy-preserving Location-Based-Services (LBS) technology to potential partners. LBS, are widely prevalent on the web but also raise privacy concerns, as evidenced by the negative publicity surrounding jigh-profile inadvertent collection of location data in mobile devices. The PI's privacy-preserving techniques enable LBS without violating a user?s privacy. Specifically, the techniques protect two types of privacy: (1) location privacy - i.e., the team prevents an LBS server from learning a user's real location; (2) query privacy - i.e., the team prevents the LBS server from learning what the user is searching for (e.g., bar, museum). At the same time, the echniques maintain the quality of LBS by providing the user with extremely accurate, if not precise, LBS query answers. This project will has the potential to have broader impacts on the nation?s high-tech industries. The ability to control when (and whether) an employee's location can or cannot be disclosed to an LBS server is needed by a wide variety of security-sensitive corporations, governments, and security agencies. Similarly, empirically validated means to protect the location privacy of ordinary users of mobile devices will benefit the wireless user community at large, in addition to LBS providers and wireless carriers. This project will also have broader impacts on the market of mobile LBS. In particular, the team's offering of a privacy-preserving LBS application is expected to raise wireless users' awareness of privacy issues surrounding LBS, and to eventually convince most LBS providers to add privacy-preserving features to their systems (e.g., by integrating and/or licensing the proposed techniques). The broader impact of this project also extends to the research community and academia. In particular, the market studies conducted in the project will enhance scientific and technological understanding of the location privacy problem.