Uncategorized

Nov 02 2007

The National Advertising Initiative: What the NAI Does

The essential activity of the NAI is to define terms, discuss a handful of abbreviated consumer rights, which the NAI calls its “principles,” and to set up a structure of “opt-out cookies.”

Nov 02 2007

The National Advertising Initiative: The NAI is Broken and Does Not Protect Consumers

Although it is possible to identify many aspects of the NAI that are broken, this report focuses on four areas in particular:
1) the effectiveness of the NAI opt-out cookie as the primary tool for stopping tracking;
2) the applicability of the NAI to types of tracking that extend beyond the traditional cookie and to business models not expressly covered by the NAI;
3) the constantly shifting membership of the NAI; and
4) auditing and enforcement of the NAI.

Nov 02 2007

The National Advertising Initiative: Beyond Cookies – Tracking Technologies are not Always Exposed or Visible to Consumers

A traditional cookie as defined by the NAI is not the only persistent identifier and tracker available to network advertisers and marketers anymore. New technologies and techniques have become routine business practice since the original NAI was written, particularly in the area of persistent identifiers and tracking technologies. A rich array of browser cache cookies, Flash cookies, and other non-NAI-covered tracking techniques not only exist, but are in use today.

Nov 02 2007

The National Advertising Initiative: Membership Problems of the NAI

For a formal self-regulatory group, the NAI membership includes only a fraction of the industry engaging in behavioral ad targeting. The low numbers have plagued the NAI for its entire existence. One aspect of the problem has been the establishment of a non-full compliance membership category.

Nov 02 2007

The National Advertising Initiative: Notice – Still Not Clear or Conspicuous

One of the issues raised in the FTC reports to Congress about online behavioral profiling was notice. The FTC and the NAI promised “robust” enforcement of notice. Unfortunately, because the foundational understandings of the NAI are out of date, the NAI ideas of notice that flow from those understandings are also out of date.

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.