fyi: Notes from call with EFF on using TPE

Dear TPWG,

 

 

Last week, Aleecia and I had a very productive call with the EFF team
(Peter Eckersley, Cooper Quntin, Alan Toner).

The goal was whether we could collaborate to create a standards-based
Tracking Protection Ecosystem. Enclosed are my notes from the call FYI.

 

EFF Background:

-          EFF has published its own compliance document

-          EFF has a user agent/browser plugin "privacy badger" that
aims at tracking protection for privacy aware users

-          EFF has created an ecosystem to support its policy and
approach to tracking protection

 

The main feedback we got was:

1. EFF sees potential in using TPE as a standardized interface for
tracking protections between sites and user agents

2. EFF believes that our proposed TCS does not satisfy the requirements
of sites that focus on privacy and would also not

be acceptable to privacy-aware users.

 

EFF will now explore whether migrating their tools from their own
protocols to TPE is a potential way forward.


However, for EFF it is important to give sites a true choice what
compliance standards to implement.

As a consequence, they would require that W3C does not express a policy
preference (e.g. by elevating only TCS to W3C standard) but leaves the
policy choice to the users/sites.

 

I invited them to present their perspective to the group after further
discussions with their ecosystem. This may take another 1-2 weeks (my
guess).

 

 

Regards,

Matthias