Privacy for Location Data in Mobile Networks

The new EU Directive 2002/58/EC has introduced with its Art. 9 special protection for location data other than traffic data. In this paper, we argue that also location data within traffic data can contain sensitive information about the ”relative positioning” and ”co-located displacements” of mobile nodes and thus also requires special protection. After a brief introduction to how mobility is supported in IP networks, to the level of privacy protection for location data introduced in the new European Union data protection directive, and to means of protecting privacy by technology, we introduce the concept of co-located displacements in MobileIP and show how the home agent will be able to determine whether or not a set of mobile nodes move in a co-located fashion. Finally, we present how privacy-enhancing technologies can be used to provide the level of privacy protection as required by Art. 9 of the EU Directive 2002/58/EC for location data other than traffic data, also for location information within traffic data.