Public Comments

The World Privacy Forum filed technical comments on the IDPV National Standard Project today, offering key privacy recommendations on the proposed standard, Requirements and Implementation Guidelines for Assertion, Resolution, Evidence, and Verification of Personal Identity, version 5.3.1. WPF analyzed the proposed standard carefully, and sees the need for several changes to the standard to improve consumer privacy. In our comments, the intent is to help create a standard that increases security, trustworthiness of identities, and identity credentials while protecting individual privacy.

The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the U.S. Department of Commerce in response to its Request for Comments about big data, privacy, and the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. The White House Big Data report recognized that Big Data “raises considerable questions about how our framework for privacy protection applies in a big data ecosystem” and has the potential to “eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education, and the marketplace.” This is among our concerns as well, and our comments focused on understanding big data’s benefits while drawing attention to where there are significant privacy risks that need to be addressed.

The World Privacy Forum’s recent public comments to the White House regarding Big Data focus on using a foundation of Fair Information Principles to address issues connected to bias, error, and privacy regarding big data as applied to vulnerable populations. The comments also discuss large medical research data sets, and stress the importance of applying

The World Privacy Forum submitted comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission today requesting that the SEC do more to protect the privacy of consumers’ asset information. Asset information — the financial information attached to mortgages, car loans, and other consumer borrowing activities– is very attractive to the consumer data industry. We would be happier with the current SEC proposal if it were practical to keep all sensitive asset-level data under the direct control of the Commission or, perhaps, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Direct involvement by a federal agency, while no guarantee of a better outcome for data subjects, would provide better and clearer accountability for maintenance of the data as well as the possibility of meaningful enforcement.

WPF Comments on Genomic Data Sharing Policy for sharing, for research purposes, of large-scale human and nonhuman genomic data (NIH) Background: The National Institutes of Health published a draft Data Sharing Policy for human and non-human genomic data. The sharing is for research purposes. The World Privacy Forum comments focus on human genomic privacy. Our