Mobile App Stakeholders Will Meet to Flesh Out Code of Conduct

Second in series of meetings on Privacy Bill of Rights scheduled for Aug. 22

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/20/2012 11:20:09 AM

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.