Re: action-317, discussion of the service-provider flag and the same-party resource

On Jan 23, 2013, at 22:13 , "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:

> continuing a thread on ISSUE-137 ...
> 
> On Jan 23, 2013, at 3:42 AM, Aleecia M. McDonald wrote:
>> On Jan 22, 2013, at 3:22 AM, Roy T. Fielding <fielding@gbiv.com> wrote:
>> 
>> [...]
>>> The only possible reason to use a flag to indicate that a service provider
>>> is involved in the provision of services is to perform some form of
>>> automated discrimination against service providers. 
>> [...]
>> 
>> We continue to have this discussion. There is utterly nothing new here. I just want to note that I continue to disagree. 
>> 
>> Another very valuable use is to provide transparency to users. Service providers ARE NOT the same thing as first parties. Taking away the users' ready ability to have transparency into where data flows is a poor decision (given the somewhat twisted world we are in where DNT does not actually allow users to stop data collection in the first place.) At the very least, DNT should allow users to see what the heck is going on and visualize data flows. 
> 
> First, what does a user learn from a single character "s"?
> How is that accomplishing data transparency?

It wasn't suggested as a standalone; it was suggested as part of a solution.  The 's' flag would disambiguate the cases where two parties happened to share a policy link (because, for example, they are using a boilerplate policy from an organization like creative commons) from the case where a service provider is indicating the party to whom they are providing service.

As I understand it, you are suggesting we not overload the policy link in this way, but provide an explicit link solely for the use of indicating this.  That's fine.  Don't forget that there are cases where we might need to indicate service-provision to a third-party having consent, as well as service-provision to first-parties, so I suggest we use the well-known-resource link "data-controller" or somesuch (which has the advantage of being a well-defined term :-)). This matches what you propose:


> What matters for privacy is that the user can know which party
> (the first party) is responsible for maintaining control over the
> data such that it isn't disclosed beyond the purpose for which the
> data was provided. If the first party fails in that responsibility,
> they can't avoid responsibility by blaming a service provider.

cheers, sorry for the thrash

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.