questionnaire feedback (was Re: Save the date - PING at IETF - Thursday 23 July)

Regrets, friends, but 2:30am is just a little bit too late for me to be coherent on the phone, so I won't be able to join you from California. I've been enjoying the email discussion on the privacy/security questionnaire and it seemed like the group was making good progress without my involvement.

A couple of thoughts on reading over the wiki page:

The security section mentions identifiers, but I suspect we could be quite more detailed about the questions/limits we put on identifiers. In particular, the Media Capture document highlighted that it wasn't entirely clear the *scope* of an identifier. Across what contexts is it unique? How is it persisted? If it's persisted, is it marked to be cleared with other storage? And I think a key consideration here that we haven't described in as much detail is the privacy risk if an identifier or local storage mechanism is shared across origins. One of the dangers of tracking identifiers introduced through header enrichment is that the introduced identifier might be the same for different origins, which allows for cross-origin tracking that would be entirely opaque to the user. (See, for example, the TAG finding on Unsanctioned tracking.)

While I prefer it to "PII", I think "personally-derived information" might still be a little misleading. I think we would want to highlight any information from the device, for example, like files on the file system, microphone/camera, location, contacts/calendar, even accelerometer and the like. Maybe a broader phrase such as "information about the user or device" would be appropriate?

Regarding security and privacy considerations section, I think it's great to ask about them and to note why they might be useful. We can say, though, that security/privacy-related text doesn't need to be limited to that section. In fact, I think it's a good practice (as we saw with Media Capture recently, and in some other documents) for documents to include privacy and security text/requirements throughout. In that case, a section might not be an absolute requirement, or it might serve more as a summary than as introducing normative language for the first time.

Hope this helps,
Nick

> On Jul 15, 2015, at 12:57 AM, Christine Runnegar <runnegar@isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> PING and friends,
> 
> We will be meeting in the Rokoska room between 11:30 and 13:00 on Thursday 23 July 2015.
> 
> Anyone with an interest in privacy is welcome. Bring your friends!
> 
> Please let us know (off list) if you plan to attend.
> 
> The main topic will be the draft TAG privacy and security questionnaire:
> 
> https://w3ctag.github.io/security-questionnaire/
> 
> Link to the PING working document:
> 
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/Privacy_and_security_questionnaire
> 
> Useful background reading:
> 
> DRAFT - Fingerprinting guidance - https://w3c.github.io/fingerprinting-guidance/
> DRAFT - Privacy considerations - https://w3c.github.io/privacy-considerations/
> DRAFT - Specification Privacy Assessment - http://yrlesru.github.io/SPA/
> 
> Please note that this will be a “bring your own lunch” meeting