Future of Privacy Forum Launches
Nov 19, 2008
There's a new privacy group in the tech policy community.
The Future of Privacy Forum, or FPF, celebrated its launch today with a lunch event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The group, founded by former AOL chief privacy officer Jules Polonetsky and Proskauer Rose privacy lawyer Christopher Wolf, describes its mission as providing "thought leadership on the Internet privacy discussion, to educate consumers and to bring transparency to online data practices."
According to media reports, AT&T is an early supporter and FPF's advisory board includes privacy experts from companies and organizations such as Walmart, Intel, IBM, Facebook, GE, Harvard Business School, TRUSTe and UC Berkeley.
Some of the goals outlined in the initial agenda on FPF's site include:
- Seeking solutions that get beyond the limitations of cookies to improve the state management of privacy
- Highlighting the privacy risks and the data protection opportunities presented by new data from technologies such as geo-location, mobile and RFID
- Exploring opportunities to clarify the definitions of personal data and establish baseline practices about what is accepted as anonymous.
FPF joins a number of organizations focused specifically on privacy concerns and dozens of other groups and associations that advocate on behalf of various privacy-related issues, making it a somewhat crowded but very important area of tech policy.
Polonetsky spoke about online privacy and personalization at the most recent Tech Policy Summit conference last March, while he was still at AOL. Kara Swisher hosted the roundtable, which also included Center for Democracy and Technology CEO Leslie Harris and Joanne McNabb, Chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection; visit the Media Vault to listen to a free podcast of their discussion.
[Disclosure: While we are not involved in any way in FPF, coincidentally, we share an advisory board member in common: Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly is also a member of our 2009 Tech Policy Summit advisory board.]
Tags:
behavioral targeting, Chris Kelly, Christopher Wolf, cookies, Future of Privacy Forum, Jules Polonetsky, privacy, Tech Policy Summit
