DNT Stakeholders Question Legitimacy of W3C Process as ‘Very Important’ Stakeholder Resigns

Stanford University’s Jonathan Mayer -- described to us as a critical member of the group by privacy advocates -- said in an email Tuesday night (http://bit.ly/13yD21j) he is resigning from the working group due to frustration with “the absence of process” currently seen in the group. Stakeholders had been told they would be able to vote on whether they saw value in continuing after the end of the month, he said, citing emails and documents sent by the co-chairs. “The chairs unilaterally swept aside the deadline,” Mayer said. “Even the most firm and clearcut commitments, then, exist solely at the chairs’ discretion.” In addition to the postponement of the group’s deadline, there’s no consensus around which draft to use moving forward and what amendments will be considered to that draft, said Mayer. The Stanford graduate student and fellow is working with Mozilla through the Cookie Clearinghouse.

Aside from process concerns, the group is “further apart than ever before” in substantive discussions about DNT, Mayer’s email said. “Longstanding key disagreements” remain unsolved, he said, including: “What information can websites collect, retain, and use? What sorts of user interfaces and defaults are compliant, and can websites ignore noncompliant browsers?” The plan forward, outlined by the group’s co-chairs, centers around the so-called Editor’s Draft or June Draft, which “has drawn firm objections from myriad and diverse stakeholders,” Mayer said. The online ad industry’s proposal that had been considered by stakeholders represented “a radical perspective on Do Not Track that does little to protect consumer privacy,” he said.

Mayer has been “a very important player” in the DNT discussions, John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s privacy project, told us. As someone who can understand both the technical issues and the policy issues being discussed in the working group, Mayer was “one of the driving forces in trying to come up with a workable standard that protects privacy,” Simpson said.

Privacy advocates applauded Mayer’s involvement and echoed his frustration, urging the W3C to poll stakeholders on whether they see value in continuing. Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien said in a Tuesday email to stakeholders (http://bit.ly/16EQT9h) that his group “is extremely disturbed that neither the chairs nor the W3C staff is forthrightly confronting” the agreed-upon July 31 deadline. “Requiring an affirmative decision by the group to extend the last call deadline is a radically different decision setting than, in essence, the chairs and W3C staff deciding to extend the deadline and putting the burden on individual members to decide whether they wish to stay,” Tien wrote. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said in an email (http://bit.ly/17iV7CH) that his group isn’t confident that the June Draft is the correct path forward and is “disappointed and believe[s] we were misled that there would be” a chance to discuss whether the group should push forward. The W3C “needs to open up a formal inquiry into how the process was addressed,” he said.

Mayer’s resignation announcement “clearly outlines the quagmire the group is in,” Simpson said in emails to the group. “Consumer Watchdog believes last week’s call revealed a process that has become completely dysfunctional,” he said. “We believe the only viable step now is for a formal discussion and consideration of” whether the group thinks it should continue working, he said. Mayer is hardly alone in his frustration with the W3C process, Simpson told us. “A great many people are upset” that stakeholders didn’t get the vote they expected during the last teleconference, he said. The absence of that vote “calls into question the legitimacy of the whole process,” said Simpson.

There’s a reason for privacy advocates to remain involved in DNT discussions, said Justin Brookman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy, in an email (http://bit.ly/13AbHf7). The co-chairs’ decision to move forward with the Editors Draft and reject the industry proposal is “the most fundamental step toward resolution of the key issues that we have seen in two years of work,” he said. “Given the recent (and yes, belated) resolution of several important issues, I believe this is not the time to leave the working group,” he said. “W3C needs to put in place a streamlined structure to finalize a Last Call specification once the group resumes work in September.”

"Being impatient is a privilege of the young,” said W3C attorney Rigo Wenning in response to Mayer’s resignation (http://bit.ly/17iZA8q). “Your appeal to get faster to agreement is a nice reminder for all of us that we have clear issues in front of us and that we will work towards the resolution of those issues.” Group’s co-Chairman Matthias Schunter thanked stakeholders in a separate email for expressing their concerns and said the staff is “currently taking some time to revisit our options and plans.” Mayer told us the W3C staff response to his resignation was unsurprising. The W3C wants everyone to buckle down and keep working toward a solution, “but the world doesn’t work like a Mighty Ducks movie” where people can reach their goals through cooperation and sheer willpower, he said: At this point, there is a “pretty pervasive distrust of the group leadership.”