The Sensible Safeguards Needed Now for Pokemon GO
http://lauren.vortex.com/2016/07/the-sensible-safeguards-needed-now-for-pokemon-go
Unless Pokemon GO turns out to be a relatively short-lived popular
phenomenon (and actually even if it is, since PoGo will be but the
progenitor of many future augmented reality games and other
applications) it appears likely that the full real world impacts of
the game were seemingly not completely considered before launch,
leading to a growing collection of alarming situations.
There were signs of some sloppiness from the outset, when it was noted
that the PoGo iOS app was asking for far more account permissions than
was appropriate. The actual privacy risk in this case was minimal, but
the mere fact that the app got out the door this way -- given the
intense concerns about app permissions generally -- suggested a
possible lack of due diligence in key respects.
While various of the problematic reports we've seen about PoGo can be
chalked up to user inattention (plowing a car into a tree, driving off
a cliff, etc.), many others cannot be blamed on the users alone,
per se.
To note but a sampling, these include PoGo being used to attract
players to be robbed, a registered sex offender who was supposed to
stay away from children using the game to partner with a young child,
and very recently, two players who were shot at by a homeowner when
they were prowling a residential neighborhood at 1 AM. An array of
other trespass-related occurrences have been noted, including players
entering restricted areas at a nuclear power plant.
Of broader impact is the swarming of neighborhoods, parks, and other
public places by far larger numbers of people than they were designed
for -- or that local authorities are prepared for -- at all hours of
the day and night. There are serious public safety concerns involved.
Such gaming activities become especially inappropriate when they occur
at locations that are utterly unsuitable for gaming, like ordinarily
quiet and respectful cemeteries and Holocaust museums.
Fans of PoGo enthusiastically declare that it's a great way to meet
new people and get exercise. Perhaps. In some locales at least, it
seems that players are mostly driving around in their cars to reach
designated targets, but we'll let that pass for the moment.
One suspicion that's difficult to shake is that seemingly there wasn't
much (if any?) attention given to purging inappropriate locations from
PoGo's ancestor game -- Ingress -- before deploying them in PoGo. The
need for such a purge should have been obvious, given that PoGo would
have been reasonably expected to attract far more users than Ingress
(as it indeed dramatically has) and would also be far more attractive
to children.
Historical side note: Ingress was originally developed at Google (in
fact, I was one of its earliest players, I believe while it was still
in beta), then spun off to a separate company -- Niantic -- in which
Google holds a major stake.
As I noted above, PoGo is but the beginning of what will certainly be
a long line of innovative and important augmented reality mobile apps.
And that makes getting the real world implications of this tech in
line with real world requirements and impacts as quickly as
possible -- without stifling innovation.
The most important requirement is to give more control to
municipalities and persons who are impacted by these applications and
their users.
For example, it doesn't exactly take rocket science to figure out that
sending users wandering around quiet residential areas in the middle
of the night is a recipe for potentially dangerous (even lethal)
confusion and confrontations, or that flooding a small park with
thousands of people at once -- without prior warning to local
authorities -- can easily lead to serious problems.
Niantic needs to immediately work toward providing much better
mechanisms for involved homeowners, business owners, municipalities,
and other associated entities, to request removal of specific
locations from the PoGo location database (much as you can request
removal of locations from Google Street View currently). And there
should be ways to specify "curfews" for specific locales as well --
especially in residential neighborhoods, or areas with special
concerns about the safety of late night visitors.
It is also crucial that accessing this kind of request/control system
not require use of the PoGo app itself, nor ideally use of the
Internet in any way -- given that many affected persons may not even
have Internet access.
Obviously, different areas, regions, and countries will have their own
individual attitudes and concerns about participation in the PoGo
ecosystem, and we can reasonably expect the sorts of removal and/or
curfew requests received to vary widely around the globe.
But it is not appropriate for these decisions to be made wholly by
Niantic alone. And unless they and we get a handle on the real world
impacts of augmented reality apps in short order, you can be sure that
politicians -- already expressing concerns about this area -- will be
moving in with their own "control ideas" -- that will likely not be of
the form that many of us would want, nor that would protect innovation
going forward.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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