Paper Link
The role of expanding spectrum as a contributor to economic growth was highlighted in the National Broadband Plan and in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report entitled “Realizing the Full Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth.” Recommendations in the PCAST report include sharing underutilized Federal spectrum and identifying 1,000 MHz of Federal spectrum to create “the first shared-use spectrum superhighways.” To realize this vision, fundamentally new spectrum access technologies will be developed; therefore, it is important to understand security and privacy implications for these possible new designs. Security and privacy become especially critical concerns in light of the increasing prospects of spectrum sharing between federal government systems and non-government systems. The likelihood of such a spectrum-sharing scenario was heightened by the Federal Communications Commission’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for the 3.5 GHz band. The NPRM outlines a geo-location database-driven spectrum sharing scenario where Incumbent Users — namely, federal government, including military, users and fixed satellite service licensees — share spectrum with Secondary Users operating small-cell technologies on an unlicensed basis. Although privacy issues are critical in such a spectrum-sharing scenario, there is little research on those problems.
This paper identifies privacy issues and related laws related to geo-location database driven spectrum sharing. It considers the different issues that will arise depending on the basic design choices for the spectrum sharing system; for example, either a government or private entity might maintain a spectrum-sharing database. It analyzes spectrum sharing from the viewpoint of geo location and the evolving expectation of privacy in location information. The paper identifies questions to be addressed in future spectrum sharing design, and suggests areas for increased legal attention.
