Press Statement: WPF supports NTIA Short Form Notice Code of Conduct to Promote Transparency in Mobile App Practices

Statement of the World Privacy Forum

Regarding

U.S. Department of Commerce NTIA Short Form Notice Code of Conduct to Promote Transparency in Mobile Apps

July 25, 2013 — Washington, D.C. The World Priavcy Forum, after a year of hard work as a leading part of the core drafting group in the U.S. Deparment of Commerce NTIA Multistakeholder process, is pleased to support the NTIA voluntary code of conduct for mobile app short form notices. This code, the first drafted with meaningful consumer input, represents innovation in privacy short form notices and an incremental and positive step forward for consumer privacy.

We are supporting this code because the incremental but significant privacy improvements for consumers include persistent privacy notice in mobile apps, definitional improvements over current self regulatory regimes, and robust consumer education potential.

“We must have an affirmative vision of the privacy future that we want and take persistent steps towards making that real. Stepping forward to work on this project was part of our efforts to accomplish this goal,” said Pam Dixon, executive Director of the World Privacy Forum.

We thank Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling, John Verdi, John Morris and the NTIA for their thoughtful and consistent support in facilitating our participation in this process. We also want to thank and acknowledge in particular the work of the early core drafting group, which in addition to the World Privacy Forum includes Tim Sparapani of Application Developers Alliance, Chris Calabrese of ACLU, Michelle DeMooy of Consumer Action, Jules Polonetsky of FPF, Amanda Pedigo of Intuit, Jim Halpert of DLA Piper, and Saira Nayak of Trustee.

www.worldprivacyforum.org

Twitter: @privacyforum

Facebook: /worldprivacyforum

#####

Posted July 25, 2013 in Mobile Apps, Mobile Privacy, News, Press, and Media, NTIA Multistakeholder Process

New Report: Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new WPF report, “Risky Analysis: Assessing and Improving AI Governance Tools.” This report sets out a definition of AI governance tools, documents why and how these tools are critically important for trustworthy AI, and where these tools are around the world. The report also documents problems in some AI governance tools themselves, and suggests pathways to improve AI governance tools and create an evaluative environment to measure their effectiveness. AI systems should not be deployed without simultaneously evaluating the potential adverse impacts of such systems and mitigating their risks, and most of the world agrees about the need to take precautions against the threats posed. The specific tools and techniques that exist to evaluate and measure AI systems for their inclusiveness, fairness, explainability, privacy, safety and other trustworthiness issues — called in the report collectively AI governance tools – can improve such issues. While some AI governance tools provide reassurance to the public and to regulators, the tools too often lack meaningful oversight and quality assessments. Incomplete or ineffective AI governance tools can create a false sense of confidence, cause unintended problems, and generally undermine the promise of AI systems. The report contains rich background details, use cases, potential solutions to the problems discussed in the report, and a global index of AI Governance Tools.
National IDs Around the World — Interactive map

About this Data Visualization: This interactive map displays the presence...
Report: From the Filing Cabinet to the Cloud: Updating the Privacy Act of 1974

This comprehensive report and proposed bill text is focused on the Privacy Act of 1974, an important and early Federal privacy law that applies to the government sector and some contractors. The Privacy Act was written for the 1970s information era -- an era that was characterized by the use of mainframe computers and filing cabinets. Today's digital information era looks much different than the '70s: smart phones are smarter than the old mainframes, and documents are now routinely digitized and stored and perhaps even analyzed in the cloud, among many other changes. The report focuses on why the Privacy Act needs an update that will bring it into this century, and how that could look and work. This work was written by Robert Gellman, and informed by a two-year multi-stakeholder process.