Title: LEGAL ASPECTS: THE EUROPEAN DATA PROTECTION LEGAL FRAMEWORK REGARDING LOCATION BASED SERVICES

Legal Aspects: The European data protection legal framework regarding Location Based Services

The term Location Based Services appeared in the end of the ’90s and is used for applications that leverage the user’s physical location to provide an enhanced service or experience, such as route guidance, location of stolen or missing property, tourist and weather information etc. Primary role in Location Based Services play the location data that enable the identification of a wireless device. In D11.1: “Collection of Topics and Clusters of Mobility and Identity – Towards a Taxonomy of Mobility and Identity” we have already made an introduction to the data protection terminology, where the terms traffic and location data have been extensively presented.

Location data are “any data processed in an electronic communications network, indicating the geographic position of the terminal equipment of a user of a publicly available electronic communications service”. According to recital 14 of the European Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (hereafter ePrivacy directive) they are data that may refer to the latitude, longitude and altitude of the user’s terminal equipment, to the direction of travel, to the level of accuracy of the location information, to the identification of the network cell in which the terminal equipment is located at a certain point in time and to the time the location information was recorded.

Although the ePrivacy directive does not make use of the term ‘Location Based Services’, article 2(g) of the Directive defines the term ‘value added service’ as ‘any service which requires the processing of traffic data or location data other than traffic data beyond what is necessary for the transmission of a communication or the billing thereof’. Therefore a Location Based Service could be defined as a value added service which processes location data other than traffic data for purposes other than what is necessary for the transmission of a communication or the billing thereof. The use of the term ‘location data other than traffic data’ has created some confusion among the legal scholars. In simple word this term refers to all location data that are not used for the transmission of a communication or for setting up a connection (these data are treated as traffic data). A more detailed analysis is contained in FIDIS deliverable D11.5.