Subject: Privacy Terminology

From: "Hannes Tschofenig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:03:36 +0200

Hi all, 

I mentioned the position paper for the "W3C Workshop on Privacy for Advanced Web APIs" already in my last mail. Within the IAB we had planned a series of activities related to privacy and here is another one: Terminology

When you look through various IETF documents you will notice that the term "privacy" is used here and there but often the meaning varies a lot. If you only look at the privacy related articles in newspapers and magazines you will notice the breadth of the topic. 

Having terminology to work with is quite crucial to avoid talking past each other. 

Here is an initial submission for privacy terminology: 
https://wiki.tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hansen-privacy-terminology-00.html

Marit and Andreas had worked on this document for about 10 years outside the IETF and it is frequently cited by those working in the privacy area. We thought it would make sense to bring this work to the IETF, to discuss it in a wider audience, and to produce a stable reference. 

Again, feedback is appreciated. 

Ciao
Hannes

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From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 10:21:50 -0400

A lot of people have difficulty connecting the human level privacy
requirement with the technology level.

While the linkable/unlikable identifiers technology is important,
there is more to privacy than merely concealing identities. For
example, consider the firestorm that followed Marty Rimm's infamous
CMU CyberPorn study. The study concealed the identity of the
participants, but there was still a major privacy problem as the
participants had expected that the network operator would not reveal
details of their lawful activities to Time Magazine.

At the information level, privacy creates restrictions that apply to
the redistribution of data.

In Alice and Bob land we generally consider a binary choice, either
Alice will give the information to Bob or she won't. We do not usually
consider the question of what Bob might do afterwards because those
problems are not solved easily using cryptography. In the privacy case
we are considering the explicit agreements and implicit assumptions
that Alice has concerning redistribution of the data to Carol, Doug
and through to Zachary. And we are not just talking about the
information that is passed explicitly, we are also talking about the
data that Alice might infer from her interaction with Bob.

And because those implicit assumptions are in part culturally
determined, it is very hard to find consensus on what they should be.
The community view in Cambridge MA is going to be very different from
that in San Francisco CA. And those are places that are very close
together (no really). The views in Huston TX or London UK are going to
be very different again. And we haven't yet left the Anglosphere.

When the cookies mechanism was thrown into the HTTP spec by a
commercial entity after an exhaustive fifteen minutes of
contemplation, the privacy implications of the HTTP protocol were
changed immediately and irrevocably and without any notice to the
affected users.

I don't think it is acceptable for network protocol designers to throw
up their hands and say 'this is hard, we will ignore it'.

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 8:03 AM, Hannes Tschofenig
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
>

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/

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From: todd glassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:57:05 -0700

> requirement with the technology level.

PH-B,
Look, the IETF is a public entity and yet there are formal disclosure
requirements for privacy controls. That is a dichotomy which creates
both protection responsibilities and use controls.

That said here are some thoughts on the specific areas a privacy policy
would impact.

Some participants cannot...
---------------------------------------------
This is important since there are also privacy constraints that some
global IETF members cannot contractually ameliorate or sign-away and as
such it means that those privacy controls must be implemented or those
parties cannot participate in the IETF.

Disclosure is required for any IP protection
---------------------------------------------
Also the scope of privacy means here in a public forum is another one of
the key issues, but since it has been noticed the 'concept of
transparency' is one of the attributes the IETF is supposed to embrace,
and transparency removes privacy...the issue of how much information is
private becomes a problem.

If transparency != [privacy] and the IETF[transparency] is real
transparency and not some term of art whipped up as icing on the cake,
this becomes moot.

Creating a privacy policy has broad sweeping impact
---------------------------------------------
As to the effect of creating a privacy policy, the physical creation of
the privacy policy has far sweeping implications. For instance the
IETF's use licenses need to specifically be restricted to conform to
this new policy as well so its not just creating a Policy Statement and
walking away, many other documents will need to be revised or they will
cease to have legal effect in being set aside or modified in their scope
and terms based on the newly formed privacy policy.

The goals of the privacy policy are simple. To enforce a set of controls
which protect individuals personal Intellectual Property (information
about us as individuals) while allowing for the collective vetting of
the group Intellectual Properties (i.e. work product and technical info
or IETF structure/ops info).

Email and personal contact data
---------------------------------------------
So that means all identities and points of contact need to be properly
disclosed and there is no license to use that data specifically for any
other purpose. I brought this up when I suggested formal changes to the
unheavelnly twins (BCP78 & 79) to specifically state that IETF email
contact information may not be used for any purpose outside of the
operations of the IETF working group some time ago.

Maybe now under the banner of eliminating the need for a formal privacy
policy, this can be reviewed.

Todd Glassey