Mobile app stakeholders, public interest groups and government
officials will get together Aug. 22 for the second in a series of meetings on
how to implement a code of conduct on mobile app privacy.
The
agenda for the meeting, hosted by the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, will be focused on identifying potential elements
in that code of conduct and which should be addressed first.
NTIA is not wasting any time following up that Aug. 22
meeting, with an Aug. 29 meeting scheduled to identify concrete steps to
implement those goals.
The effort is part of a larger Obama Administration proposal
to adopt a voluntary privacy bill of rights, but one that could be enforced by
the Federal Trade Commission.
The first in what will be a series of meeting through the
fall was held July 12 and revealed
early disagreement over process issues.
Among the mobile app issues identified at the meeting as were
that privacy policies be technology-neutral; that there needs to be a common,
functional definition of data use; that data being collected by mobile apps be
tracked across other platforms (such as a mobile app that led to the cloud that
led to a home computer) and that it needed to be made clear why data was being
collected; and that privacy policies be in clear understandable language.
