locating via GSM, revisited (legal sidenote)

[Harald Welte]

Just as a general note added to the discussion:

As far as I remember, there has been a highest federal court ruling in
Austria some time ago, stating that the location information though
present for anyone to read in the intrinsics of the GSM signal, cannot
be used without explicit permission by the network operator.

The point they made was that the subscription contract between the
operator and the customer covers things like voice calls, data calls,
GPRS data, etc - but it does not permit the use of GSM signals for
locating the handset on the customer side.

I don't say I like this, and I also don't say OM should not investigate
thsi further.  I'm just stating that there are legal issues and somebody
inside FIC legal should probably do an extensive survey of the legal
situation all over the target market to make sure OM doesn't get into
trouble here.

Cheers,
-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at openmoko.org>          	        http://openmoko.org/
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