Re: Input on threat model from browser privacy summit slides

> On Feb 18, 2020, at 14:52 , Jeffrey Yasskin <jyasskin@google.com> wrote:
> 
> I think retargeted ads also may fall into this bucket, but mainly if excessive.
> 
> With some worries about how to let browser APIs act on "excessive", I agree.
> 

It’s probably an aside to this conversation, but I think that at some point we’re going to have to get our heads around the ‘how much?’ problem — what’s excessive? I think it makes a *qualitative* difference, not just quantitative.

Let me try to explain by example. If I am visiting a major landmark, I am well aware that I will appear in the photos people are taking of that landmark. I am probably identifiable in may of them, even. That’s not a problem. Not a privacy violation.

That doesn’t mean you can follow me around all day taking photos that include me. The occasional photo, the odd tidbit of data, is not a privacy problem. The accumulation of a database is.

The same goes for noticing one thing I buy in one store; no problem. But keeping a notebook of everything you see me buy, problem.

There are a whole load of aspects of privacy — recording/remembering things you are validly exposed to, the treatment of data, the quantity of it, what constitutes respectful and appropriate gathering and use, how aware we are of the gathering and use, and so on, which are very much part of our mental framework of what we mean by privacy, that are different from the current “high nail” — sharply reducing the amount of data we leak and who we leak it to.


David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Wednesday, 19 February 2020 00:26:49 UTC