[OSGeo-Discuss] Question about Geospatial data integrity

[Frank Warmerdam]

Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Is anybody on OSGEO aware of any Open Source initiative to
> implement Public Key Infrastructure for Geospatial
> data.
> 
> I heard some talks recently on PKI related issues
> (Privacy, Authentication, Integrity, Non-Repudiation;
> PAIN) for spatial data. I think Authentication mechanisms
> have be incorporated in some OSGEO web-gis clients such as Mapbender
> etc.

Venka,

I am somewhat aware of DACS which is an open source
component for fine grained management of access to web
services.
   http://sourceforge.net/projects/dacs

I'm not sure if that would address part of what you want.

> How about initiatives to check data integrity and
> traceability of spatial data. Although my knowledge on these matter
> is rudimentary, I think it would not be very difficult
> to develop some kind of mechanism to check the
> integrity of spatial data (shape file or geotiff)
> using MD5 hash function. Such integrity check are
> often used sofware packages (RPM) where the installer
> automatically does an mdsum check. Perhaps similar
> checks for spatial data can also be introduced in
> Web GIS and Desktop GIS Clients.

The only area I have noticed this being applied is
"SENC" data.  This is digital navigational chart data
that is encrypted and checksumed.  The proponents claim
this is to ensure the end user is getting unaltered data,
but it seems mostly to be to ensure that the data vendors
can charge for it's use in very fine grained ways.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org