Re: Evolving Notice and Consensus for W3 to consider OECD Input

Ah, yes.. The be careful what you wish for adage.  Unfortunately  
companies and governments have increased their ability to monitor and  
communicate with people digitally yet people still dont have the  
ability to give notice to companies or governement digitally about  
their own preferences.   This is still a written process that is  
difficult to automate. (e.g. a SAR API) Not a very balanced  
situation.  But I do agree there is risk to any involvement at this  
level.  Thanks for the wise words.  :-)

Although this is an extension of W3C stated position in this respect  
so far (inserted below).  Perhaps there is a better way to recommend  
something a bit stronger than encouraging privacy friendly behaviour?

(food for thought)

- Mark
Rigo Wenning and Thomas Roessler, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

As a universal, distributed application platform, the Web links  
personal data across individuals, organizations, and countries. New  
sensor APIs also give Web applications access to users’ location and  
to  their physical environment.
Everyday events – from the morning run to the credit card payment –  
are automatically brought online and shared online among friends and  
strangers.
Technology helps users defend against some intrusions, and it helps  
users understand who learns what about them. But when the data about  
preferences and habits that fuels the business models behind today’s  
ecosystem of free services is gleaned from users’ online interactions,  
the policy framework needs to encourage privacy friendly behavior.


On 19 Oct 2010, at 22:28, David Singer wrote:

> I think your thoughts are good, but I also think that the W3C's mind  
> is a long way from being clear enough to make recommendations to  
> governmental or other powerful bodies.  And I think 'advocating  
> regulation' to these is dangerous.  One never knows what will, in  
> fact, emerge from a political process.
>
> On Oct 19, 2010, at 14:19 , Mark Lizar wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Re-reading my last email to the list I see that I left the email  
>> hanging a bit. It was an email that I thought important to send but  
>> became more difficult to write as I drafted it.   My intention was  
>> to bring up  the lack of consistent online notices technically, and  
>> legally.  Raise the issue that notice is a fundamental component of  
>> service delivery and ask for thoughts on how to develop notice in a  
>> way that makes an online notice a tool of access, control for the  
>> individual to manage information.
>>
>> The strategy with the last email was to raise this issue to this WG  
>> in light of data protection and regulation.  As notice in society  
>> is consistently still that of the industrial age, the need or  
>> utility of evolving notice can be compared to almost any  
>> interoperability issue. Like consent legally, recall of faulty  
>> goods socially, or the transfer of metatags from flicker to  
>> facebook technically.   I understand that notice alone is not  
>> enough, although I believe that Notice represents common legal and  
>> technical ground that addressees both legal and technical gaps in  
>> information sharing online.   With this in mind, I wonder if this  
>> WG would support a recommendation that digital notice (as oppose to  
>> written notice) should be legally regulated by the OECD?
>>
>> Regardless of support I hope to inspire some discussion around  
>> evolving the quality of notice and its application technically to  
>> create public privacy.   I noticed (pun intended) that my last  
>> email was difficult to respond too, something I hope to counter  
>> that with this email.  This is important because I clearly see that  
>> all of the discussions on this list are extremely valuable and I  
>> hope to add to this group, not subtract from it.
>>
>> That being said, is there any one who disagree's that  notice is a  
>> fundamental issue in public privacy?
>>
>> Is there anyone on this list that would oppose a recommendation to  
>> the OECD next week advocating regulators upgrading data protection  
>> law to include online notice?
>>
>> Is there anyone in favour of making this recommendation?
>>
>> Please respond to the list and I will forward (or ask Thomas to  
>> forward) this to ITAC.
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
>
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
>
>