Notes and Photos from PrivacyAppCamp

Here’s notes from our PrivacyCamp in Mt. View! Check out the CDT flickr account for pictures.

Learnings

Morning Sessions

• User expectation / responsibility
  • Privacy responsibility lies with the platform because that’s what the user expects
  • User privacy expectations change with context
  • Should have control over privacy on the fly instead of a single setting that applies to everything
• Identity
  • Data minimization vs. identifiers = co-mingling of authentication, authorization, tracking, id
    • Authentication proves the truth of a claim of identity, authorization is a permission for an action
    • ID is not always necessary to prove permission, but is used as such constantly
    • If ID is always tied to permission, then all actions permitted can be tied to identity (i.e., behavioral tracking)
    • Is there a way to mitigate this tracking? Can ID be separated from permission and still allow the ease of use users want?
• Location
  • Location notice and use or storage challenges
    • Communicating to the user about their location privacy is difficult to do when it matters (when it’s being used)
    • You might auth your app for location and then forget about it
  • Children
    • How do you handle parents that want to track location of their child?
    • This might accidentally allow tracking of spouse, others
    • Age identification is hard
  • Apps to trace or log data path
  • Ad-networks make collecting location data easy
    • Ad apps (iApp, etc) make it easy to get location data even if it isn’t needed for the user’s experience
  • Many SDKs default to sharing
  • Location retention isn’t generally addressed
    • There might be location correlation made over time without the user knowing it’s used more than spuriously

Afternoon Sessions

• Responsibility
  • Platforms manage relationship w/consumers
    • So they bear a lot of the responsibility for managing privacy on behalf of the user
  • Need for government clarification
    • By law or precedent that identifies free speech / intermediary vs. negligence
  • Transparency in Data profit
    • Would be good to show user how the company is using user data for profit
• Privacy by design / Privacy Apps
  • If you had a formal list of criteria for an app, what would it be?
    • Feedback and control – a stronger voice for users as a part of the development process
    • Data Access
      • Users should have constant access to their information no matter how much the product evolves
      • Right to deletion
    • Privacy fixing SDKs / library
      • One could create an SDK / library for app developers that would generate a privacy subset (location settings, data settings, etc).  Like a privacy framework to jump-start your app with good initial privacy settings.
• User Experience
  • User as admin
    • The user shouldn’t always have to be administering their user experience
  • Iconography challenge
    • No great standards to represent privacy ideas
  • No negotiations
    • It’s really hard for users to negotiate with corporations
    • How to pool negotiation for good consumer <-> vendor conversation