New blog on spatial law

I heard from Kevin Pomfret that he has started a new blog on spatial law. I met Kevin at an event I spoke at in Washington DC a little while back, and he and I have had a number of interesting follow up conversations on various topics, so I think his blog should be worth checking out. Those of us who are techies at heart might wish we didn't have to be concerned about these things, but increasingly we do need to be aware of legal issues - the recent flurry of privacy concerns over Google Street View are just one example (which Kevin talks about).

As location tracking becomes increasingly pervasive, in particular through location aware phones, defining appropriate policies and law in the area of privacy will be very important. For example, if you are in a car accident, should the police and/or your insurance company be able to access information from your phone (or the GPS system in your car) which could show them whether you were speeding or not? There are a lot of complex issues in this area, with no easy answers.