ThePrivacyPlace.org is pleased to announce that Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, and Annie Antón, a computer science professor at North Carolina State University, have co-authored comments to the Federal Trade Commission regarding Online Behavioral Advertising. The FTC has requested comments for its Proposed Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising. Professor Swire and Professor Antón’s comments examine the technical steps necessary to achieve consumer control. Their comments are available on the Center for American Progress website.

ThePrivacyPlace.org is pleased to announce that our latest privacy policy has gone live. You can see the new privacy policy here. You may also be interested in seeing a summary of changes from our previous version or perhaps older versions of the privacy policy.

Researchers at ThePrivacyPlace.Org are still conducting an online survey about individuals’ experience with and perceptions of authentication technologies. The survey was released last August and is supported by an NSF ITR grant (National Science Foundation Information Technology Research). Your participation will help us with our investigations regarding digital identities. It will take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete the survey.

As a way of saying thank you for taking the time to complete our survey, we are also offering the chance to enter a drawing for one of two $50 Amazon gift certificates.

The URL is: http://www.theprivacyplace.org/current-survey/

The results will be posted on ThePrivacyPlace.org later in 2008.

Coinciding with the Duke Law School Data Privacy Conference, this Monday, January 28th, is officially Data Privacy Day by proclamation of the Governor of North Carolina. Please take the day to raise awareness and educate your colleagues about the importance of data privacy in all areas of information technology. Alternatively, as Governor Easley, suggests you can “observe the day with appropriate ceremonies and activities that promote awareness of data privacy.”

On Monday January 28, 2008, the Duke University School of Law will be sponsoring Data Privacy in Transatlantic Perspective: Conflict or Cooperation? The event will focus on the privacy differences between the United States and Europe. The all-day conference will include internationally recognized privacy experts from government and industry discussing the history of privacy, consumer privacy concerns, national security as it affects privacy and how global data flows interact with national privacy standards. Dr. Annie Antón, director of ThePrivacyPlace.org, will be a panelist on panel 2: Consumer Privacy through Notice and Consent.

Dr. Julie Earp, associate professor of information systems at NC State’s College of Management and member of ThePrivacyPlace.org, recently discussed privacy and information security concerns with the National Association of Secretaries of State. Topics included redaction of Social Security Numbers and other identifiers as well as the security implications of electronic public records. For more information, see the news article from the North Carolina State College of Management.

ThePrivacyPlace.Org 2007 Authentication Technologies Survey is underway!

Researchers at ThePrivacyPlace.Org are conducting an online survey about individuals’ experience with and perceptions of authentication technologies. The survey is supported by an NSF ITR grant (National Science Foundation Information Technology Research) and will help us with our investigations regarding digital identities. It will take about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

As a way of saying thank you for taking the time to complete our survey, we are also offering the chance to enter a drawing for one of two $50 Amazon gift certificates.

The URL is: http://www.theprivacyplace.org/current-survey/

The results will be posted on ThePrivacyPlace.org in 2008.

Dr. Antón and Dr. Spafford have been awarded $500,000 by the NSF to fund their research project entitled “Transparency and Legal Compliance in Software Systems.” The project is a two year collaborative research project that runs from August 1, 2007 to August 1, 2009. Dr. David Baumer and Dr. Ignacio Valdes are listed as senior personnel on the grant.

The proceedings from the Intel Privacy Place Workshop are now available online. The following presentations are available for download in pdf format:

David Baumer - Commercially Reasonable Security: The Emerging Technical, Legal, and Accounting Standards
Travis Breaux - Models of Regulatory Requirements: Domain Analysis to Assure Product Compliance
Julie Earp - The First Step in Protecting Privacy: Understanding What People Think
David Hoffman and Claire Vishik - Intel Privacy/Security Policy
Keith Irwin - When What We Must Do Meets What We Can Do: Obligations and Security Policies
Laurie Jones - OpenSeminar and the Study of Privacy
Paul Otto - Legal Compliance and Software Systems
Ting Yu - Privacy Policy Specification and Enforcement
Qing Zhang - Aggregate Query Answering on Anonymized Tables

The Privacy Place is undergoing some maintenance and new construction. We’ve moved to another server and updated some of our software, but some of these changes are still in progress. We will announce the changes made when they are finalized. Please bear with us during this transition time.