Re: Additional security and privacy considerations?

On Wed, 13 May 2009, Thomas Roessler proposed adding:
> 
> [...] Therefore, user agents must take steps to limit the risk of 
> inadvertent location disclosure, even after permission to share location 
> has been granted by the user:
> 
> 1. User agents must inform the user when Web applications acquire 
> location information based on a consent granted previously. [...]
> 
> 2. When location information is passed to a web application, a user 
> interface for revoking the relevant permissions must be easily and 
> obviously available. [...]

These should all be "should"s at the most, and should probably actually be 
non-normative suggestions.

There's no point requiring particular UI. It's not needed for 
interoperability. If a browser vendor finds a better way of protecting the 
user than the suggestions in the spec, then the browser vendor should be 
allowed to do it. Similarly, if the browser vendor wants to target users 
who don't care about their privacy, then they should be allowed to do so.

Let the legal system protect the user. Our specs have no weight, they are 
but recommendations. Requirements that constrain the UI are eventually 
going to be ignored, and once a vendor has ignored one set of 
requirements, it's only a small step to ignoring the ones that actually 
matter for interoperability, and then the spec becomes a waste of time.

Let's not make that mistake.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Wednesday, 13 May 2009 19:59:25 UTC