June 15, 2012 – Commerce Department Tackles Mobile Privacy, MediaPost News
The Commerce Department will convene a broad array of online companies and advocates next month to attempt to reach a consensus on privacy guidelines for mobile apps.
The Commerce Department will convene a broad array of online companies and advocates next month to attempt to reach a consensus on privacy guidelines for mobile apps.
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) is seeking submissions of papers focused on privacy issues for their upcoming third edition of “Privacy Papers for Policy Makers.”
Wider adoption of encryption for data in motion will drive law enforcement to increasingly target data at rest, particularly in cloud environments, says an Ohio State University academic.
As more people use encrypted methods to browse the Web, it will become trickier for law enforcement agencies to intercept private communications in real-time, causing them to focus instead on tapping data that is stored in the cloud, according to the draft of an academic paper by a former privacy advisor to the Clinton Administration.
The European Union’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (WP 29) released its Opinion 04/2012 on Cookie Consent Exemption today. The opinion is released amidst the implementation of Directive 2009/136/EC (“Cookie Directive”) in most member states and aims to clarify the circumstances in which cookies are exempted from the informed consent requirement.
In its opinion, WP 29 focuses on the two “exemption criteria” established under article 5.3 of the Cookie Directive: if the cookie is, (a) used “for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network” or (b) “strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service”. The opinion describes a variety of circumstances in which these exemption criteria do not apply; forcing controllers, processors, and third party actors to obtain informed consent before using a cookie.
Three general guidelines are drawn from the WP 29 analysis: (1) exemption under Criterion B must be evaluated “form the point of view of the user, not the service provider”, (2) “if a cookie is used for several purposes, it can only benefit from the exemption to informed consent if each distinct purpose individually benefits from such an exemption”; and (3) “The purpose of the cookie should always be the basis for evaluating if the exemption can be successfully applied rather than a technical feature of the cookie.”
Interestingly, social plug-in content sharing cookies can be considered exempt from the informed consent requirement in limited circumstances. On the other hand, third party advertising cookies, including cookies used for fraud detection purposes, are not considered to be exempt from consent requirements because “neither of these purposes can be considered to be related to a service or functionality of an information society service explicitly requested by the user.”
–Julian Flamant
PRIVACY PAPERS FOR POLICY MAKERS 2012
The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) invites privacy scholars and authors with an interest in privacy issues to submit papers to be considered for FPF’s third edition of “Privacy Papers for Policy Makers.”
PURPOSE
• To highlight important research and analytical work on a variety of privacy topics for policy makers
• Specifically, to showcase papers that analyze current and emerging privacy issues and either propose achievable short-term solutions, or propose new means of analysis that could lead to solutions.
REVIEW PROCESS
• Academics, privacy advocates and Chief Privacy Officers on FPF’s Advisory Board will review the submitted papers to determine which papers are best suited and most useful for policy makers in Congress, at federal agencies and for distribution to data protection authorities internationally.
• Two papers selected by the chairs of the Privacy Law Scholars Conference will be included in the publication and will receive a cash award from the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
• The Future of Privacy Forum will announce the selected papers at an event with privacy leaders in September and will provide a printed digest to policy makers in the United States and abroad.
SUBMISSION
Paper Submission Deadline: July 20, 2012
Please include: author’s full name, phone number, current postal address and e-mail address.
Send via e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line “Privacy Papers for Policy Makers 2012,” or send by mail to:
Future of Privacy Forum
919 18th Street, NW, Suite 901
Washington, D.C. 20006
The entry can provide a link to a published paper or a draft paper that has a publication date. FPF will work with the authors of the selected papers to develop a summary.
Visit fpf.org/the-privacy-papers to view the 2010 and 2011 editions of Privacy Papers for Policy Makers.
This compilation is not intended to be a publication of original work. Rather we seek to make policymakers aware of papers presented at workshops or published in journals and we provide this compilation of descriptions of these papers in order to call attention to those deemed most significant. Special thanks to our 2012 Policy Papers for Policy Makers Sponsors: AT&T | Microsoft | GMAT
Opower released a whitepaper detailing how it is implementing Privacy by Design into its platform. Click here to view the whitepaper.
Microsoft and Yahoo are selling political campaigns the ability to target voters online with tailored ads using names, Zip codes and other registration information that users provide when they sign up for free email and other services.
Facebook is inviting its 900 million users to vote on the company’s new privacy policy in an unusual online ballot process that began Friday and runs until June 8.
The Federal Communications Commission is out with a report on location-based services that outlines government and industry efforts to address the privacy issues surrounding those very services.