The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued the first working draft of its Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) 1.0 technology, which is meant to provide a uniform way for web sites to declare their privacy policies. Browsers that support the P3P – and both Internet Explorer and Communicator/Navigator will – users’ privacy will be protected to the extent of the P3P specification. P3P is based on HTTP, XML and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and includes a descriptive language that defines various privacy practices. It defines personal data; different categories of that data; and the purposes for which it will be used. The W3C document notes that much of the work of the W3C P3P syntax, harmonization and protocol working group that drew up the draft was done under a significant time pressure and many members want the work revisited soon either within the W3C or through other entities. The government has given the industry a July 1 deadline to come up with a voluntary code of conduct over privacy issues or face the imposition of one. W3C’s working drafts generally lead to proposed recommendations, and then recommendations, which are technologies that it considers stable and ready to go out into the real world.
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