The social contract core

ABSTRACT

The information age has brought with it the promise of unprecedented economic growth based on the efficiencies made possible by new technology. This same greater efficiency has left society with less and less time to adapt to technological progress. Perhaps the greatest cost of this progress is the threat to privacy we all face from unconstrained exchange of our personal information. In response to this threat, the World Wide Web Consortium has introduced the "Platform for Privacy Preferences" (P3P) to allow sites to express policies in machine-readable form and to expose these policies to site visitors [1]. However, today P3P does not protect the privacy of individuals, nor does its implementation empower communities or groups to negotiate and establish standards of behavior. We propose a privacy architecture we call the Social Contract Core (SCC), designed to speed the establishment of new "Social Contracts" needed to protect private data. The goal of SCC is to empower communities, speed the "socialization" of new technology, and encourage the rapid access to, and exchange of, information. Addressing these issues is essential, we feel, to both liberty and economic prosperity in the information age[2].

REFERENCES

• 1: Cranor, L., Langheinrich, M., Marchiori, M., Presler-Marshall, M., Reagle, J., The Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification, http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-P3P-20010928/
• 2: James Kaufman , Joann Ruvolo , Daniel Ford, Tempus fight and the need for an e-social contract, Proceedings of the fifth international conference on Autonomous agents, p.174-175, May 2001, Montreal, Quebec, Canada [doi>10.1145/375735.376089]
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• 8: Rousseau, J.-J. Du contrat social (The Social Contract) 1762, Translated by G. D. H. Cole, public domain http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
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• 12: Cranor, L., and Reagle, J., "Designing a Social Protocol: Lessons Learned from the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project" Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, Alexandria, VA., Sept. 27, 1997.
• 13: Cranor, L., and Reagle, J., "Protocols for Automated Negotiations with Buyer Anonymity and Seller Reputations", Proceedings of the 1997 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference.
• 14: Krishna, A., What Should You Be Asking About the Privacy Rights of Your Customers?, S.C. Magazine, October 2001. http://www.scmagazine.com/scmagazine/sc-online/2001/article/045/article.html
• 15: Coyle, K. Protecting Privacy, NetConnect Library Journal, Winter, 2001, and P3P: Pretty Poor Privacy? A Social Analysis of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) http://www.kcoyle.net/p3p.html
• 16: Mulligan, D., Schwartz, A., Caoukian, A., Gurski, M., "P3P and Privacy: An Update for the Privacy Community", Center for Democracy and Technology, March, 2000. http://www.cdt.org/privacy/pet/p3pprivacy.shtml
• 17: Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (1999). http://www.senate.gov/~banking/conf/
• 18: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, (1996), http://www.hcfa.gov/hipaa/hipaahm.htm
• 19: Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (1998), http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1999/9910/childfinal.htm
• 20: See e.g., Information Commissioner, Responsible for the Data Protection & Freedom of Information Acts. http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/
• 21: See: Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) http://www.oecd.org/ Guidelines for Information Security and Privacy. http://www1.oecd.org/dsti/sti/it/secur/prod/PRIV-EN.HTM
• 22: W3C Platform for Privacy Preferences, Public Archive of Public Comments, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-p3p-public-comments/
• 23: WBI Development Kit for Java, IBM alphaWorks site, http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/wbidk
• 24: Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar), http://www.imc.org/rfc2445
• 25: Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification. http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/
• 26: RDF Model schema for P3P http://www.w3.org/2000/07/p3pmodel/
• 27: A P3P Preference Exchange Language 1.0 (APPEL 1.0) http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P-preferences.html

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.11 Software Architectures
            Subjects: Domain-specific architectures

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Standardization

Keywords:
P3P, privacy, social contract