I contributed to, and still contribute to, the W3C's P3P activity. It is an attempt to create a mechanism to communicate policy concerning data collection by http servers. Previously I contributed to a related effort, one that attempted to create a mechanism to associate policy concerning data collection to customer profiles. The first can be found at http://w3c.org/p3p/, the second at http://www.cpexchange.org. From time to time I think about revisiting the customer profile problem, or more generally, metadata and data associations in temporally associated transaction graphs, covert channels and security. Our original work used DTDs, as XML Schema wasn't yet published. Maybe I should write the .xsd(s) ... then I remember that no one has made a living wage working in the on-line privacy area in the US since ... 2001, and the temptation passes.
MB told me to try, try, try, to make this comprehensible. I'm not sure I can. Asking the peon who grinds pigments to wax prosadic on Turner's atmospherics probably isn't the best choice available.
So I'll try.
The Chief Privacy Officer of the Homeland Security Department is a gormless flake from DoubleClick, who had absolutely nothing to do with developing either P3P (Jules Polonetsky, followed by Brooks Dobbs, both from DoubleClick, did contribute clue) or CPEX (DoubleClick did not participate in CPEX).
If that isn't bad enough, and it should be, she announced the 20 appointees to the "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee" today. There were 129 applications. Somehow, Reed Freeman gatored his way onto the DP&IAC, so Gator, the nice people who fucked over 8 million PC users, and who inhabit the same part of the internet food chain as the morons who commit pervasive comment spam , is providing (garbage) input to the DHS on privavy policy, which the DHS will (garbage) output to a huge expanse of the Federal government.
This is unbelievably bad. Oh. Gator sues anyone who says they make spyware.
Gator makes spyware.
Google makes spyware too. You'll want to read Ben Edelman's How Google's Blogspot Helps Spread Unwanted Software
Then you'll want to think about using blogspot. Or iWebTunes.
Posted by EBW at February 24, 2005 03:39 PM | TrackBackUnfreakingbelievable.
Just watch - the federal government is going to end up being one of the biggest clients for the Gator/Claria new product. This is too predictable.
Posted by: PSoTD at February 24, 2005 04:45 PM