Phil Wolff is strategy director of PDEC, the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium, a Small Data NGO. Wolff is a director of the DataPortability Project and co-author of the project's model Portability Policy. He's had management, technology, and marketing roles at Adecco SA, LSI Logic, Bechtel National, Wang Laboratories, Compaq Computer, the City of Long Beach, the State of California, and the U.S. Navy Supply Systems Command. On LinkedIn, ORCID 0000-0002-7815-4750, Quora top 250 of 2012. He holds the PDQ Bach Inauthentic Identity Fellowship at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Phil lives in Adams Point, Oakland, California.

PDEC at IIW: An NSTIC Project Risk Analysis

At last week’s Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, California, I led a brainstorming session to identify risks to the success of the new National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC, pronounced “EN-stick”). The strategy is to encourage many non-government organizations to provide digital identity and personal data services in a way that meets […]

World Economic Forum starts work on Data Portability

When titans of industry and state meet, worlds can change. The World Economic Forum launched a three year “Rethinking Personal Data” project, including data portability. Their first report, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class, shows t…

EFF: Skype scores 0/4 on protecting users from US governments

EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn says “companies that stand up for users will do better in the long run if people are informed and can include this information in their decision-making about what services to use.”
With no stars, Skype fares poorly i…

My Skype Manifesto

Last week I published my second interview with Skype CEO Tony Bates. He shared a few of his ideas about values that will guide Skype through coming challenges and growth, the way Cisco’s guided them. Tony’s list was, roughly:Engineering will lead p…