There's been a lot of action on consumer privacy in DC over the past year, and while some of that action seems to have stalled (more on that in another post), there's still movement in the private sector—mainly around "Do Not Track (DNT) and Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs).
W3C is an open process that invites participation from many different stakeholders. Even if you can't make it to Boston, you can follow along by visiting:
In April, DNT and TPL were subjects of a W3C workshop on Web Tracking and User Privacy in Princeton, New Jersey. The workshop report and presentations are available here. Since then, Mozilla—the first major browser to support DNT—has released its "field guide" to DNT for developers.
These issues are now being tackled in the W3C's Tracking Protection Working Group (TPWG), co-chaired by Aleecia McDonald of Mozilla and Matthias Schunter of IBM Research-Zurich, which aims to develop consensus standards around DNT and TPLs.
EFF is participating in the W3C process to advocate for user privacy. EFF Technology Projects Director Peter Eckersley is attending the first face-to-face workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts this week, as is Stanford's Jonathan Mayer, whose work on DNT is available at DoNotTrack.Us. A second face-to-face workshop is planned for the beginning of November in Santa Clara, California.
The W3C process is quite open. There is a public mailing list with archives available, an overall summary page, and an online review of the discussion.
