- From: Nicholas Doty <npdoty@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 20:34:28 -0700
- To: "public-privacy (W3C mailing list)" <public-privacy@w3.org>
- Cc: Hannes Tschofenig <hannes.tschofenig@gmx.net>
Robin W. and others raised the point that it might be useful to consolidate the questions that different reviewers asked during privacy reviews of the Ambient Light API. I've tried to extract that list from those threads and included my results below (and marked the people that mentioned a question in [brackets]). I do not yet believe that all of these questions must be asked/answered regarding every Web spec or API, that this list is exhaustive or usefully framed. But I think it might be a nice starting point. As Frank D. has noted, checklists are often a good first step towards systematic reviews. * can the information be used (alone or in combination with other APIs / sources of information) to fingerprint a device or user? [tlr, erin, npdoty, others] * may I access to the information I created? [karl] * may I record it myself (locally)? [karl] * am I able to have actions on this personal record? [karl] * may I block partly or totally the record of the information? [karl, tonyr] * may I fake it? (think about fuzzy geolocation or voluntary fake location) [karl] * Is the data personally-derived, i.e. derived from the interaction of a single person, or their device or address? (If so, even if anonymous, it might be re-correlated) [dsinger] * Does the data record contain elements that would enable such re-correlation? (examples include an IP address, and so on) [dsinger] * What other data could this record be correlated with? (e.g. the ISP) [dsinger] * If you had large amounts of this data about one person, what conclusions would it enable you to draw? (e.g. maybe you could estimate location from many ambient light events by estimating latitude and longitude from the times of sunrise and sunset) [dsinger, tonyr] * Am I likely to know if information is being collected? [wseltzer] * How visible is its collection and or use? [wseltzer, tonyr] * Do I get feedback on the patterns that the information could reveal (at any instant, over time) so I can adjust behaviors? [wseltzer] * if a background event about the device is fired in all browsing contexts, does it allow correlation of a user across contexts? [npdoty] * can code on a page send signals that can be received by device sensors on nearby devices? [npdoty, tonyr] And while we're gathering checklists of questions, we might look at the old Morris/Davidson doc for Internet specification authors that had some questions related to privacy: http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-morris-policy-considerations-00.txt (In particular: "4. Questions about Technical Characteristics or Functionality" and then privacy discussion in Section 5.) And the IAB Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols contains lists of questions in the "Guidelines" section: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-iab-privacy-considerations-08 This satisfies my ACTION-2. Thanks, Nick
Received on Saturday, 20 April 2013 03:34:27 UTC