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Scenario: Controlling Two-Way Sharing of Location Information (Pending)

Submitted by: Eve Maler

Actors

  • Authorizing user Alice, who chooses to set and share her current location through various applications
  • An application that serves as an Authorization Manager (AM) on Alice's behalf, orchestrating which location applications can write to and read from other applications
  • A web-based location application called HotLocale (H) that is a Host of a location resource on Alice's behalf
  • Web-based location applications called RovingAround (R1) and RoadWarrior (R2) that are Requesters of location information on Alice's behalf

Short Description

Today's location services such as FireEagle, BrightKite, and Dopplr let Alice set her location within any one of several applications, and then use OAuth-enabled connections to propagate that information through other such services. Since Alice can end up "chaining" services this way quite easily, with a thicket of pairwise connections, it's valuable for her to know and control where this information is flowing to. In this scenario, a user of HotLocale and RovingRound wants to arrange to connect them up so that her location can be propagated among them, and she wants to get a global view through her AM about who's allowed to do what, so she can change and stop permissions in a coordinated way.

Note: This scenario is not exploring anything other than person-to-self sharing. How Alice exposes her location to other people and companies should be the subject of a different scenario, as warranted.

Dimensions

Nature of protected resource

API endpoint. For example, see the FireEagle developer documentation. The resource being protected is a single endpoint URL, with different options and parameters possible for using it. The possible scopes in today's location services tend to include (a) whether the requesting app (client) can write the user's location, and (b) to what degree the client can read the user's location. For example, see the FireEagle scope permissions documentation; the location-reading options include: no read access, as precise as possible, postal code level, neighborhood level, town level, regional level, state level, and country level.

Sharing models

Current OAuth-protected usage of location services such as FireEagle and BrightKite assumes a person-to-self sharing model, where Alice has login accounts at the various host and requester apps, and wants to instruct them to share her location among themselves on her own behalf; an UMA-enabled version of this would allow her to control such sharing centrally at her AM.

Nature of policies and claims

For person-to-self sharing, a typical policy might require the requesting party to be able to authenticate as Alice directly at the AM (that is, dictating a particular Step 2 web-server flow that uses normal OAuth user authentication), or might require a claim that it is an authenticated Alice asking for forge the connection. Further, a policy might set (unilateral) boundaries on which scopes can be accessed.

Cardinality

This scenario is 1:1. There is no need to aggregate multiple resources from multiple hosts, for example.

Colocation

The same requester app might both read and write location data (by using different methods with the same API endpoint), which allows it to write data to a host while still remaining a requester (think "requester of API access"). With today's OAuth-enabled location services, the services act relatively "peer"-ish, in that they have each done the necessary integration to support any one of them serving as an initial host with the others being requesters. So it could be said that the same app might be a host for some users and a requester for others, and/or might be set up as both a host and a requester for the same user's location; however, the latter may be very confusing given current OAuth realities.

Host-AM relationship

Today's OAuth-enabled apps require static introduction and configuration, but the light weight and low security of these Web 2.0 services suggest that dynamic introduction is a possibility as long as the location API is well-known/standardized.

Protected resource discovery

Today's OAuth-enabled apps advertise this location in the process of static introduction and configuration, but with a well-known/standardized location API, it seems possible that a location service host could advertise its endpoint through dynamic means such hostmeta/XRD.

Scope Detail

Below is a screenshot showing that FireEagle and Dopplr have the capability today to have two-way location information flow. Our user wants to be able to see this "combinatorily", for all location services and indeed for all such services on the web that she chooses to use for hosting any data or content.

Overview of Use Case Flow

This scenario assumes that Alice has an account at each of AM, H, R1, and R2. These accounts might be driven off of federated login, for example, Alice might log in to HotLocale through Google and RoadWarrior through Facebook; this is immaterial to the scenario.

Use Case: Alice Sets Up Access Authorization Between Two Location Services

Alice currently uses the Dopplr service to record her upcoming trips, and likes using FireEagle to set her current location as she moves around throughout her day. She wants to get Dopplr to talk to FireEagle to tell it automatically when her location changes as a result of the start or end of a trip.

Preconditions:

  • Alice has an account at the CopMonkey AM.
  • Alice has an account at Dopplr.
  • Alice has an account at FireEagle.
  • Dopplr and FireEagle are UMA-enabled and use/advertise a standard location API but have not met before.

Steps:

  1. Alice introduces FireEagle to CopMonkey to protect access to FireEagle.
  2. Alice sets a default policy at CopMonkey that says requesting parties can set locations and can read locations at the city level.
  3. @@TBS

Use Case: Alice Adds a Third Location Service

@@TBS

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