DAA Proposes Sept. 18 Tech Briefing on Mobile Apps

Would provide NTIA stakeholders with industry input on mobile app data

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/29/2012 12:50:02 PM

Stu Ingis of the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) said Wednesday his group is prepared to host an open stakeholder briefing Sept. 18 on industry data practices, to be followed up by one on industry self-regulations.

That would be the day before the scheduled Sept. 19 fourth meeting of a National Telecommunications and Information Administration meeting. Ingis' announcement came at the third meeting, held Wednesday in Washington.

That Sept. 18 date is likely not set in stone since, also at the meeting, another stakeholder pointed out that date is during Rosh Hashanah. The consensus seemed to be for multiple tech briefings. Some consumer group reps said those should come before the group breaks up into working groups on various topics.

At Wednesday's meeting, stakeholders talked about process, including a vote on better times and dates for meeting. The trend of voting appeared to be toward Tuesday, half-day meetings starting at 1 p.m. NTIA signaled it was willing to change the dates and times of meetings, which it had already slated through the end of the year.  That would accommodate West Coasters who complained about the 9:30 a.m. ET starts and stakeholders who pointed out that the Wednesday meetings (all three so far have been on Wednesday) conflicted with a separate meeting on do-not-track issues.

As they have before, consumer group representatives at the meeting emphasized that the first order of business was understanding the data flows, i.e. what industry the industry is doing today and may be doing tomorrow to collect data and target users. That, they said, must come before the group tries to figure out what transparency policies should apply to those practices.

NTIA is hosting the series of stakeholder meetings to come up with a consensus strategy for implementing the Obama administration's proposed online privacy bill of rights. The first issue NTIA is tackling in those meetings is mobile app privacy. Ironically for the administration's top telecom adviser, NTIA told attendees that they would still be unable to get Wi-Fi in the meeting room due to technical limitations.

Meanwhile, stakeholders continue to meet behind the scenes and between the meetings, where the real work is likely to get done.