| Privacy homePrivacy remains one of the main activities of the Consortium in the area of social responsibility. Privacy has many different aspects in W3C:
At least since Alan Westin wrote his famous books Privacy and Freedom
(1967)
and Databanks in a Free Society (1972)
, Privacy has been a
sustained challenge for computer science. Computing provides powerful tools
that can be used for the good and for the bad of humankind. W3C has started
work on Privacy with P3P and has continued
to explore the Privacy challenges since then. There is no obvious end to the
Privacy challenge on the Web. Nearly 10 Years after the completion of the work
on P3P, much of the research in the area of privacy, accountability and data
handling is still heavily influenced by the P3P 1.0 Recommendation and the P3P 1.1 Working Group Note.
For the past three years, research was in the center of interest for W3C. The PrimeLife project allowed to explore new technologies like anonymous credentials, new policy languages and how to integrate the value of privacy into Specifications. The very successful PrimeLife project allowed W3C to address the Privacy challenge from a more general perspective. Subsequently, with the Project's support, we were able to organize many interesting workshops:
It can be concluded that people need a venue for general privacy discussions related to the Web. All attempts to limit the discussion to a specific policy language or a very narrowly focused interest were rather detrimental to the overall quality of discussion and the success of the venue. This will be addressed in the near future by a Privacy Interest Group and is supported by the public-privacy mailing-list.
Political movements in the United States towards greater attention for
privacy have resulted in significant public discussion of Web tracking
techniques and possible countermeasures. Fortunately and as a result of its
strategic planning exercise for 2011, W3C had already decided to strengthen its
focus on privacy. Feedback was given to inquiries of the US government. High
attention was given to the Do Not Track
header initially promoted by CDT
and implemented for the first time by Mozilla. Meanwhile, Microsoft made a Web
Tracking Protection Member Submission. W3C Staff prepared a Workshop on Web Tracking and User
Privacy at Princeton University on 28-29 April 2011 to assess the degree of
support for W3C to take up Recommendation-track work in this area. W3C Team
also participated in events in Brussels discussing Do Not Track
to
strive for a global solution. All this resulted in the chartering
of the Tracking
Protection Working Group. The chartering of an additional Privacy Interest
Group is iminent.
The P3P Specification Working Group delivered multiple important milestones for the Web. The most important documents are listed here:
Work on Do Not Track
has already started with a very ambitious and
aggressive schedule. This will fully occupy W3C until June 2012. In parallel,
W3C Team is looking into research topics for the next 3 Years. With further
work on Identity and big challenges in the area of mobile communications, the
Privacy Activity has also a horizontal dimension. This consulting task will be
challenging due to the limited resources.
| Group | Chair | Team Contact | Charter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policy Languages Interest Group | Marco Cassasa-Mont, Renato Iannella | Thomas Roessler, Rigo Wenning | Chartered until 28 February 2011 |
| Tracking Protection Group (participants) | Aleecia M. McDonald, Matthias Schunter | Nick Doty | Chartered until 31 July 2012 |
This Activity Statement was prepared for TPAC 2011 per section 5 of the W3C Process Document. Generated from group data.
Rigo Wenning, Privacy Activity Lead$Id: Activity.html,v 1.175 2011/09/29 22:45:44 ijacobs Exp $