Electrical and Computer Engineering

Location Tracking Platform

Nathan Franz

Emily Nelson

Thomas Petr

Shanka Wijesundara

Advisor: Professor Burleson

Preliminary Design Review

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Concept

•Secure and robust platform for locating people and/or landmarks.

•Analytics for tracking interactions / relationships between objects.

•Fine-grained privacy and access controls.

•Utilize latest research in field.

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Concept

Our Server

Etc…SMS EmailiPhone Push AIM

SMS Web Client

Buddyfinderapp

Militaryapp

Location Recsapp

Scavenger Hunt app

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Concept

Our Server

DB

Buddy Tracker app

LocationProcessor

For all friends of {user},send notification:

“Your friend {user.name}is near {user.location}”

Inputs

Outputs

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Basic Operations

•X is at (lat, lng).• Tom is in Amherst Center, Amherst, MA• Sgt. Bob is in Baghdad, Iraq

•X is near Y at T• Tom was near Amherst Brewing Company 2 hours ago• Sgt. Bob is near Suspected Terrorist Hideout #2 right now

•What is near (lat, lng)?• What/who is near Amherst, MA?

•What is near X?• What/who is near Tom? What other restaurants are near

Brunos?

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Academic Research

Privacy:•Cloaking Algorithms For Location Privacy. (Chow 2008)•Anonymous Usage of Location-Based Services Through Spatial and Temporal Cloaking. (Gruteser, Grunwald, 2003)•On the Optimal Placement of Mix Zones. (Freudiger, Shokri, Hubaux, 2009)

SMC:•Protocols for Secure Computations. (Yao, 1982)•Solution to the Millionaire's Problem (http://www.proproco.co.uk/million.html

)

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Current Products

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Features / Motivation

Client NotificationsPrivacy

ResolutionPublic Friends Private

Foursquare Native SMS/Email/Push All Yes Exact

Google Latitude Web None All Yes Configurable

Loopt Both SMS, Email Pick Yes Exact

Brightkite Both SMS, Email Yes All Yes Configurable

Twitter Both SMS, Push Yes All Exact

Ours Web All + more! Finer-grained Automatic

• Leverage HTML5 -- best combination of device support and features

• Platform, not Application -- developers can invent new uses, push development of new features

• Utilize new technologies (SMC)

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How Ours Will Work

Non-smart phone

Computer

Smart PhoneOur Server

Antonios Pizza

Library2 of your friends are here

Click here for more info

User Interface Data Processing ResultsRecommended Places:Friend Locations:

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How Ours Will WorkAndrew’s Profile

Friends List (Facebook)(automatically shows the town/city

you are in)

Friend 1Friend 2Friend 6

Friend 3Friend 4

Exact location

“Andrew is in Amherst”

Friend 1

Friend 3

“Andrew is in JQA”

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General Dynamics Applicability

• General Dynamics interests:• Aerospace designs.

• Combat Systems.

• Marine Systems designs.

• Information Systems and Technology

• Social Application → Military Application

• Locations of troops rather than locations of friends

• Certain military ranks have privileges to see who is where

• Secure location data from Enemy

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Threat Analysis

• Military application threats: Enemies, Spies

• Social application threats: Stalkers, Criminals

• Snooping, Impersonation, DDOS, Falsifying Data

Non-smart phone

Computer

Smart Phone

Our Server

Third Party Server

Encryption+

Identity Check

Encryption+

Multiparty Computation

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Cryptography

• Field is new to us – actively researching it• Encryption• Identity Verification• Use SMC (Secure Multi-party Computation) for distributed processing

– Perform computations without disclosing each party’s data– Classic example: Two Millionaires want to find who which one is richer but

don’t want to disclose how much money they actually have

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HTML5

• Major revision of HTML standard (started in June 2004)

• Provides geolocation support (GPS, cell tower, IP)

• Supported on current browsers (Firefox 3.5, Chrome, Opera, Safari)

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Smart Phone vs. Non-Smart Phone

• Sign in using mobile web browser.• GPS coordinates obtained from phone’s GPS module.

• To make the project more accessible to a wider range of users, we intend to provide access to non-smart phone users.

• Non-smart phones also have GPS, but most carriers restrict access.

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Smart Phone vs. Non-Smart Phone

• User sends a text indicating their location.• A search will be performed around the last available GPS location for the user.• If no matches found, user will be given options through text.• If this fails, a search will be performed around users default location.• Friend updates will be sent using text.

• Low-priority goal in this project

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Requirements

• Provide mobile website for smart-phones (HTML5) • Accept text messages for non smart-phones • Provide standard website (HTML5) • Associate objects with latitude and longitude (UMass is at (x, y)).• Temporally associate objects with an object and/or latitude and longitude

(Tom was at UMass 2 hours ago, Nate is at (x,y) right now).• Only associate with objects with a certain radius, specified by a

combination of application-specific settings and the density of objects around the interested location.

• Provide privacy/access control settings. • Updates within 30 seconds.

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Challenges

• Computational feasibility / scalability

• Privacy / security

• Distributed system?

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Proposed MDR Prototype

Basic functionality by MDR:

• Smart phone web client prototype functional

• Receive GPS coordinates from smart phone

• Simple platform app functional:

• Send an email if a user checks in near you

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Milestones

Oct 26 PDR Specifications complete

Nov 9 Smart phone web client functional prototype

Nov 30 MDR Demo simple platform app / basic security enabled

Dec 14 Platform accepts and send text messages

Dec 21 Platform complete / server security

Jan 4 Web clients complete / security for hijacked devices (timing)

Jan 11 Platform input / output plugins complete

Jan 25 Bugfixes, Performance Testing

Feb 8 CDR Demo platform with buddy tracker app / show weakness in other systems

Apr 5 FDR Project Complete

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Division of Labor

Emily Threat Analysis, Testing, Apps

Tom (Project

Manager)

MPC, Platform, Apps, Security

Nate Cryptography, Rich Web Client, Apps

Shanka Documentation, Texting, Smart Phone Web Client, Apps

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Thank You

Questions?