This article endeavours to highlight the technological developments for Location Based Services by governments in relation to the data protection rules and to the concept of privacy. The main question is whether the ‘reasonable expectations of privacy’ is a suitable concept for privacy protection in the context of geo-information about citizens. The use of modern positioning techniques makes it easy to collect and record geographical location information about people. As a result, time and place are now becoming important elements again whereas in the Internet era they were beginning to diminish. By using location information, governments are able to develop Location Based Services for their citizens. These services are especially interesting from a data protection and privacy perspective because when the services are not in compliance with the data protection and privacy rules, providing these services might be annulled by the courts. Data protection issues relating to location information follow from three European Directives regulating respectively data protection, privacy and electronic communications, and data retention. Where it seems rather easy to conclude whether data protection rules are applicable to location information, this does not appear to be so easy for the recognition of privacy. We shall discuss the ‘reasonable expectations of privacy’ and the privacy concept of Article 8 ECHR in that context. The question is, which one will provide enough guidance for the protection of geo-privacy?
