W3C Workshop on Privacy for Advanced Web APIs 12/13 July 2010, London

Call For Participation

Background

As the Web advances toward becoming an application development platform that addresses needs previously met by native applications, work proceeds on APIs to access information that was previously not available to Web developers. The broad availability of possibly sensitive data collected through location sensors and other facilities in a Web browser is just one example of the broad new privacy challenges that the Web faces today.

Read the Workshop Report.

Security considerations and design choices for sensitive APIs were the topic of the December 2008 W3C Workshop on Security for Access to Device APIs for the Web (report). Following up to that workshop, the Device API and Policy Working Group was chartered.

Earlier approaches to address privacy issues for the Web, especially through policy languages, have not seen broad implementation in current-generation Web browsers.

This workshop serves to investigate strategies toward better privacy protection on the Web that are effective and lead to benefits in the near term.

Goals and Scope

This workshop serves to review experiences from recent design and deployment work on device APIs, and to investigate novel strategies toward better privacy protection on the Web that are effective and lead to benefits in the near term. The results from this workshop will provide direction and give input into ongoing and future technical work at W3C, including:

Topics for position papers may include, but are not limited to:

The workshop is expected to attract a broad set of stakeholders, including implementers from the mobile and desktop space, policy and privacy experts, and developers and operators of Web applications that make use of advanced APIs.

Participation Requirements

All participants are required to submit a position paper by 1 June 20107 June 2010 (extended on June 1st). W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop.

The total number of participants will be limited. To ensure diversity, a limit might be imposed on the maximum number of participants per organization.

Instructions for how to register will be sent to submitters of accepted position papers. These instructions will also indicate a possible limit on the maximum number of participants per organization.

Workshop sessions and documents will be in English. Position papers, presentations, minutes and the workshop report will be public.

There is no fee to participate.

Expression of Interest

To help the organizers plan the workshop: If you wish to participate, please as soon as possible send a message to team-privacyws-submit@w3.org with a short (one paragraph) "expression of interest" stating:

Note: Sending that expression of interest does not mean that you registered for the workshop. It is still necessary to send a position paper (see below), which then must be considered for acceptance by the Program Committee.

Position Papers

You paper must meet the following criteria:

Based on a review of all submitted position papers, the Program Committee will select the most relevant and invite the submitters of those papers to the Workshop. From among all accepted papers, the program committee will choose a small number of papers judged most appropriate for fostering discussion, and ask the authors of those papers to give short presentations about them at the Workshop. After the workshop, those presentations will then be published on the workshop home page.

Important dates

Date Event
27 April 2010 Call for Participation issued
1 7 June 2010 Deadline for position papers
15 June 2010 Acceptance notification sent
22 June 2010 Program released
12/13 July 2010 Workshop

Workshop Organization

Workshop sessions and documents will be in English.

Chairs

Program Committee

Venue

The Workshop will be hosted in London by Vodafone. More detailed venue information will be made available in due course.

Deliverables

Position papers, agenda, accepted presentations, and report will also be published online.