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NSA gets patent to track Internet users
The National Security Agency has obtained a patent on a way of finding an Internet user's geographic location.Patent 6,947,978, granted Tuesday, describes a way to discover someone's physical location by comparing it to a "map" of Internet addresses with known locations, CNET News.com reported Wednesday. The NSA did not respond Wednesday to an interview request from CNET News.com, and the patent description talks only generally about the technology's potential uses. It says the geographic location of Internet users could be used to "measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions" or flag a password that "could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location, CNET News.com said." The NSA's patent relies on measuring the latency, or time lag, between computers exchanging data, of "numerous" locations on the Internet and building a "network latency topology map." Then the Internet address to be identified could be looked up on the map by measuring how long it takes known computers to connect to the unknown one, CNET News.com said. DoubleClick has licensed geo-location technology to deliver location-dependent advertising, and Visa has signed a deal to use the concept to identify possible credit card fraud in online orders. Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-09-24 |
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