Privacy Principles for the Web

Hello W3C Friends and Web Community! Today I'm proud to announce that the TAG Privacy Principles Task Force, initiated last year, has released a first public working draft of the Privacy Principles.

The TAG consensus is that privacy is one of the ethical values that underpin the web. The Privacy Principles document sets out a framework for thinking about privacy in the context of the web and incorporating it into API, browser, and site design. Its primary audience is intended to be those developing specifications for the web.

Currently the document does not yet reflect full consensus of the task force, as there are many open issues and questions. However, we feel this document is a good starting place to begin to bring in the wider community to help resolve these issues and move towards greater consensus. We see this as the starting point for community engagement. We welcome your input on our issues. This document is intended for the newly-created W3C Statement track. The goal is to publish in concentric circles of consensus starting with the consensus of the task force itself (as a draft Note/Finding and draft Statement), then moving on to the consensus of the full TAG (as a Note/Finding and draft Statement) and finally the consensus of the W3C community (as a W3C Statement).

As described in the task force's charter, the purpose of this task force has been to bring together a small group of people from across the w3c community to draft a set of privacy principles for the web. This task force has been working in weekly meetings since last Summer. Members of the task force have been: 

• Daniel Appelquist (Samsung, TAG)
• Robin Berjon (The New York Times, TAG alum)
• Nick Doty (Center for Democracy & Technology, PING)
• Amy Guy (Digital Bazaar, TAG)
• Don Marti (CafeMedia, PING)
• Jonathan Kingston (DuckDuckGo)
• Theresa O'Connor (Apple, TAG, PrivacyCG)
• Christine Runnegar (W3C Invited Expert, PING)
• Wendy Seltzer (W3C)
• Pete Snyder (Brave, PING)
• Sam Weiler (W3C)
• Jeffrey Yasskin (Google, PING)

I want to personally thank all of them for their ongoing work on this effort.