Re: [w3ctag/spec-reviews] Review Web Bluetooth (#139)

Thanks for the privacy article, @lknik. Web Bluetooth is a powerful API, and vendors and sites should reason carefully about how to design for it.

I'd like to note that many of these privacy points are delegated by the API to user agents. From an API design point of view, an asynchronous request is made which possibly returns access to a single device. This accommodates differing user agents policies, presentation, and evolution over time. This is well suited to chooser dialog models, similar to file selection. Chrome privacy and security teams have participated in and signed off on the initial [design in 2014](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MBOLc1J09xhmEy9As17Rii4asM7u60LluRIv-OPPARM/edit), and origin trial launch in 2016.

It's also worth noting that privacy and security topics have appeared in public discussions, including @beaufortfrancois’s [introduction to Bluetooth](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/07/interact-with-ble-devices-on-the-web), @jyasskin’s post about the [security model](https://medium.com/@jyasskin/the-web-bluetooth-security-model-666b4e7eed2), [use-cases](https://webbluetoothcg.github.io/web-bluetooth/use-cases.html#security_privacy) and the [specification](https://webbluetoothcg.github.io/web-bluetooth/index.html). [Issues](https://github.com/WebBluetoothCG/web-bluetooth/issues) are the prefered mechanism to discuss specific topics.

Parts of the article wording & context confused me when reading, and I'm concerned that individuals reading briefly or only looking at parts will be misinformed.

Devices are not paired with remote servers.

Device information is only available when a user agent permits access to that device. Chrome's model is to use a chooser model, requiring a user to interact with the page, find and select a device in a list, and then initiate pairing.

Information is not available at all times to web apps.


Some of those points are mentioned in some sections, but elsewhere are omitted and presumed access is similar to native applications, which can pair to all devices, at any time, and communicate without any security with any external server. Web Bluetooth is more restrictive.




-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3ctag/spec-reviews/issues/139#issuecomment-256768595

Received on Thursday, 27 October 2016 21:04:28 UTC