Cybersecurity Policy Report, Company Privacy Officers See Privacy Challenges Lingering, (Feb 4, 2013)

By Ted Gotsch

The ever-evolving mobile ecosystem will continue to face privacy challenges as new technologies hit the marketplace and raise novel questions and concerns about consumer data security, government officials, industry representatives, and advocates said this week.

During a Jan. 28 panel discussion hosted by the National Cyber Security Alliance as part of its Data Privacy Day event, stakeholders said they were encouraged by recent efforts led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to tackle privacy issues but said there were still challenges to overcome.

"Today, there is a very important distinction of providing a privacy notice that is four inches big than between providing one on a tablet that is nine inches big and on a laptop or a big, honking desktop," said John Verdi, NTIA's director of privacy initiatives.

But some said those differences would soon evaporate. "Technologists are stopping talking about mobile as mobile," said Jules Polonetsky, director and co-chairman of The Future of Privacy Forum. "It is just another screen." He acknowledged that different devices were not always used in the same way, he said, "My argument is that we've got to … get the experience right."

Jeff Brueggeman, AT&T, Inc.'s vice president-global public policy and deputy chief privacy officer, said privacy could be tricky because consumers "don't care until they do." When it comes to data security, "we are not spending enough time perhaps thinking about that in the mobile community," he said. "It is a much more complicated chain of custody for your data."

In the midst of this changing landscape, the Obama administration released a privacy blueprint last February that set forth high-level principles to be followed. Among other things, it charges NTIA with bringing in stakeholders to see how those principles could be implemented for the telecom and technology sectors.

The results have been encouraging, Mr. Polonetsky said. "We spent a few months yelling at each other and not getting much done, and that had to happen. But the last few months have been very helpful," he said. "I'm incredibly optimistic. If we get something out of this process, it will prove there can be collaboration."

Mr. Brueggeman agreed. "It has been a good learning process to learn the concerns," he said. "The NTIA way of managing the system by not managing it has been very helpful."

A group of corporate chief privacy officers, meanwhile, said their companies were working to institute "privacy by design" so that issues are thought through and solutions baked into the process before products or services are made available to the public.

Several said they had established privacy teams to review products before they are released in the marketplace to address any potential shortcomings, and they suggested that such efforts were an important part of building trust between companies and consumers.

"As part of privacy design, we look at the feature … and think about what our users will understand and how do we get it to work," said Erin Egan, Facebook, Inc.'s chief privacy officer. "We have to make sure we are all in the room looking at these products and analyzing them before we launch."

Given that many companies are making efforts to secure data on their own, policy-makers should make sure not to overreach, panelists said. "We live in a converged data world, and when you look at all the different players in the mobile and tablet world … there is a whole ecosystem of data that I'm not sure regulation or data has really caught up with," said JoAnn Stonier, chief privacy officer at MasterCard.

News: Cybersecurity