US agency to locate surfers by IP address
We know where you live
The US National Security Agency has been granted a patent for technology that can provide the rough physical location of internet users based on their IP address.
Granted last month, the patent application outlines how the geographic location of internet users could be used to “measure the effectiveness of advertising across geographic regions” or flag a password that “could be noted or disabled if not used from or near the appropriate location”.
The technology appears to be based on measuring the ‘latency’ (the time lag between computers exchanging data) of “numerous” locations on the internet and building a “network latency topology map”.
The location is then estimated based on how long it takes a known computer to connect to the unknown one.
Full article: vnunet.com
