Concluded Program IAB Privacy Program (iabprivacyprogram)

NOTE: Work in the Privacy Program was folded into the Privacy and Security Program in May 2014.

Purpose

The IAB Privacy Program provides a forum to develop and synthesize privacy thinking within the technical standards community. While over the years privacy has been implicitly and explicitly considered during the design of various Internet protocols, the privacy program seeks to consolidate, generalize, and expand privacy design considerations; to raise broad awareness of the privacy impact and properties of Internet protocols; and to understand the most effective role for the IETF among the broader community of SDOs, researchers, developers, and regulators working on Internet privacy.

Privacy is a complicated concept with a rich history that spans many disciplines, some of which are decidedly non-technical. A full understanding of how new technologies create or mitigate privacy threats is very much a work in progress, and attempts to fully comprehend and document the privacy consequences of Internet protocols are in an even more nascent stage. The privacy program serves as a means to distill the aspects of privacy that are relevant to protocol design and stimulate understanding of the appropriate scope of privacy work in the IETF.

Areas of Focus

Engagement with broader privacy community

Completed actions:

• Host Internet Privacy Workshop with W3C, ISOC and MIT
• Report on Internet Privacy Workshop (RFC 6462)
• IETF 81 Technical Plenary: Web Privacy Tussle

Development of privacy guidance for protocol designers

Pending actions:

• Document privacy guidance for protocol designers (Related draft: draft-iab-privacy-considerations)
• Document terminology/glossary for understanding privacy in the IETF (Related draft: draft-iab-privacy-terminology)