The mission of the Privacy Community Group, motivated by the W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles, is to incubate privacy-focused web features and APIs to improve user privacy on the web through enhanced browser behavior.
The group welcomes participation from browser vendors, privacy advocates, web application developers, and other interested parties.
The Community Group will discuss ideas for new privacy-focused web platform features intended to be implemented in browsers or similar user agents. The group will also discuss potential modifications of existing web platform features aimed at improving user privacy on the web.
Features or ideas that don’t pertain to privacy and have applicability in a browser (or similar user agent) should be proposed elsewhere.
This group does not perform horizontal review for privacy at W3C; that is the responsibility of the Privacy Interest Group (PING).
The Chairs of the Privacy Community Group are:
The Chairs are responsible for the day-to-day running of the group, including:
The Chairs have a number of other powers and responsibilities which are defined throughout this document.
No two Chairs can be from the same organization.
Except where otherwise specified, all decisions made by the Chairs are expected to be made by consensus. If consensus cannot be found among the Chairs, and unanimity is not otherwise required, the Chairs may make decisions by supermajority (at least 2/3rds support).
When the Chairs are required to notify the group of
something, they will raise an issue in the
privacycg/admin
repository labeled
announcement,
and will ensure the topic is covered at the
next meeting.
Within the above constraints, additional Chairs may be appointed by unanimous consent of the then-current Chairs.
If the number of Chairs becomes zero, or if five Community Group Participants—no two from the same organization—call for an election, the group must use the following process to elect a new Chair, consulting the Community Development Lead on election operations (e.g., voting infrastructure and using RFC 2777):
Participants dissatisfied with the outcome of an election may ask the Community Development Lead to intervene. The Community Development Lead, after evaluating the election, may take any action including no action.
The Community Development Lead is a member of W3C staff chosen by W3C leadership to manage the Community Groups program. As of the drafting of this charter, the Community Development Lead was Dominique Hazaël-Massieux.
A Proposal is an idea brought to the Community Group for consideration and potential adoption as a Work Item.
Any Community Group Participant may make a Proposal by filing
an issue in
the
privacycg/proposals
repository on GitHub, stating the problem they would like to address and
how they propose to address it.
The Community Group may discuss the Proposal on GitHub and during teleconferences or face-to-face meetings.
The Chairs may create a dedicated repository for a Proposal. They may do this for any reason, such as but not limited to:
Proposals begin as or evolve into explainers which describe the proposed changes to the web platform, and which may serve as the basis for a Work Item (should the Proposal be adopted as one).
While explainers are Community Group Reports as defined in the Community and Business Group Process, they are not Specifications as defined in that document.
Proposals may be withdrawn by their originators, or may be closed by the Chairs (if, for example, the Chairs deem the Proposal to be out of scope or the Proposal fails to gain sufficient implementer support to be adopted as a Work Item). If such a Proposal has a dedicated repository, the Chairs should take steps to ensure the data is not lost, perhaps by transferring the repository to a different organization or user, or by archiving it.
The Community Group may produce Work Items—Specifications as defined in the Community and Business Group Process—a special kind of Community Group Report whose purpose is to enable interoperability between independent implementations of the features it defines. Each Work Item has one or more Editors, who are appointed by the Chairs.
The current set of Work Items of the Community Group are:
| Name | Editors | Expected Destination |
|---|---|---|
| Storage Access API | John Wilander | HTML |
This list will be kept updated by the Chairs to reflect the current set of Work Items of the Community Group.
The Chairs may add Work Items, but must not add Work Items which lack the support of at least two implementers.
Each Work Item should be accompanied by an explainer describing its proposed changes to the web platform. Editors should keep the Work Item's explainer up-to-date with the Work Item as it evolves.
Since Work Items typically begin life as a Proposal before being formally adopted, they usually start out with an explainer.
When a Work Item's Editors deem the Work Item ready for migration, they will notify the Chairs. The CG may produce a Final Community Group Report at this time. The Editors and Chairs will identify the best destination standards body or bodies, and will then work with those bodies to successfully migrate the Work Item.
When migrated to the standards track, Work Items might become standalone specifications, they might be integrated into one or more existing specifications, or they might result in a combination of these options.
The Chairs may remove Work Items. The Chairs must notify the group of the removal of Work Items, and this notice must include rationale. Some possible reasons for removing a Work Item are:
The Chairs should take steps to ensure the repositories of removed Work Items are not lost, perhaps by transferring the repository to a different organization or user, or by archiving it.
This group will collaborate with appropriate groups at W3C, WHATWG, Ecma, IETF, and elsewhere, and will migrate Work Items to them when they’re ready for the standards track. Groups most likely to be close partners are listed below, but this group is expected to coordinate with other groups as relevant.
Only privacy-related WICG proposals which have the support of at least two implementers are eligible for this group to take up as Work Items.
The group operates under the Community and Business Group Process. This Charter is the sole operational agreement of the Community Group. Terms in this Charter that conflict with those of the Community and Business Group Process, the Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA), or the Final Specification Agreement are void.
All work and communication within this group is covered by the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.
Contributions to Proposals and Work Items can only be made by Community Group Participants who have agreed to the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA).
This group’s process, asynchronous work mode, and efficient decision policy are based on those of the WHATWG. These policies have been adapted to fit both the requirements of the Community and Business Group Process and the particular needs of a group focused on privacy.
Editors are responsible for the technical content of their Work Item and have sole authority to modify the Work Item (though their decisions may be overridden by the Chairs; see below).
Editors are responsible for
Changes of an editorial nature can be made, accepted, or rejected by editors without discussion.
Editors may solicit input from Community Group Participants, and may consider and respond to comments, suggestions, and objections from Participants and the public.
Editors may commit changes to their Work Items without further review, provided they adhere to the requirements in this document.
The group generally conducts its technical work in public.
Community Group participants agree to make all contributions in the GitHub repository the group is using for the particular document. This might be in the form of a pull request, by raising an issue, or by adding a comment to an existing issue or pull request.
This group practices responsible disclosure of security and privacy vulnerabilities in our work. The Chairs will ensure that instructions for reporting security or privacy issues are posted on GitHub and kept up-to-date.
Any change to a Work Item that represents a feature addition must have the support of at least two implementers.
For any change that removes a feature from a Work Item, the feature being removed must either be not widely implemented, or must be in the process of being removed from implementations.
The Community Group may hold teleconferences and face-to-face meetings. The Chairs will determine the schedule, logistics, and agenda of each, in consultation with Editors and Community Group Participants. Minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review.
Conclusions reached in meetings are tentative; see the Decision Policy.
Editors must respond to substantive issues raised on their Work Item by Community Group Participants. Editors have discretion to resolve issues based on available information.
To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any conclusions reached in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference are tentative, and will be recorded in the relevant issues, pull requests, or repositories for consideration by Community Group Participants. Any Community Group Participant may object to a decision reached at a face-to-face meeting or teleconference within 14 days of publication of the decision provided that they include clear technical reasons for their objection. The Chairs and Editors will facilitate discussion to try to resolve the objection.
In case of a conflict among Community Group Participants, Editors are expected to go to significant lengths to resolve disagreements. In the end, they make a judgment call to pick the best option they believe will have multi-implementer support.
If a Community Group Participant is not satisfied with the resolution of an issue, they may request that the Editors revisit the issue. If not satisfied with the Editors’ final response, Community Group Participants may appeal to the Chairs.
If a Community Group Participant believes the Editors’ choice will not have multi-implementer support, and they cannot convince the Editors, then they may appeal to the Chairs. The Chairs may correct or uphold the decision based on their own understanding of support from implementers.
It is the Chairs’ responsibility to ensure that the decision process is fair and does not unreasonably favor or discriminate against any Community Group Participant or organization.
The Chairs may override Editors’ decisions, or remove Editors.
Implementations can always override the editors by implementing something else. Whenever that happens a breakdown in communication has taken place that the Community Group should seek to overcome and find ways to prevent it from happening again.
When implementations disagree, the Editors will try to find a solution that is privacy-preserving and mutually acceptable to implementers. If no such solution is identified, the Editors will research expectations of existing web content and specify the most privacy-preserving, web-compatible approach. If there isn’t enough existing web content affected by the change to make compatibility a concern, the Editors will, to the extent possible, be consistent with our goal to increase user privacy and align with implementer majority.
Work Items should not make references to or rely on specific browser engine implementation details.
Community Group Participants may raise substantive issues for resolution by the Chairs.
To raise an issue on a Work Item for review by the Editors and other Community Group Participants, a Community Group Participant must:
If the Community Group Participant finds those efforts unsatisfactory, they may:
The Chairs then make their determination at their sole discretion.
As with other Community Groups, W3C seeks organizational licensing commitments under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA). When people request to participate without representing their organization’s legal interests, W3C will in general approve those requests for this group with the following understanding: W3C will seek and expect an organizational commitment under the CLA starting with the individual’s first request to make a contribution to a group Work Item.
Work Items of this Community Group will use the W3C Software and Document License, unless the Editors expect the Work Item to transition to a standards body which uses a different license. In such cases, the Editors may use the license of the target standards body.
A Work Item expected to end up as a pull request on the HTML Living Standard could be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This Charter may be amended at any time by unanimous consent of the Chairs. The Chairs will periodically update this Charter to reflect the addition and removal of Work Items, Editors, and Chairs.
Per the Community and Business Group Process, the Chairs must notify the group of any material changes to the Charter.
This Community Group uses the WHATWG definition of consensus: “the parties concur. Consensus may be established tacitly. By way of example, so long as (1) proposed actions are clear and visible, (2) participants have opportunities to voice concerns, and (3) there is no sustained, substantive opposition, then Consensus may be established simply by moving forward on the proposal or a course of action; this is anticipated to be the norm for most matters.”
The WHATWG defines implementer as "an entity that develops one of the core end-to-end integrated web browser platform engines and distributes its integrated implementations widely." This definition is useful for determining multi-implementer support of core web platform features, features which are typically and reasonably implemented within the core end-to-end integrated web browser platform engines, and this Community Group relies on this definition for such features.
Some privacy-related features ship in browsers but are not implemented within browser engines. In cases where multiple entities share a browser engine in common, they only count as multiple implementers of a feature if that feature’s implementations are separate and are not believed to be specific to the internals of the engine.
The Peach Foundation ships Walkabout, a web browser built on the MeshTools browser engine. Nanoware also ships a web browser, Vertex, built on the Shrug browser engine. If a feature has the support in both MeshTools and Shrug, as shipping (or as is expected to ship) in Walkabout and Vertex, it can be said to have multi-implementer support.
Valiant Inc. ships Valiant, a web browser built on the Shrug browser engine. The Avogadro Corporation ships a web browser, Veneer, also built on the Shrug browser engine. A feature implemented in Shrug counts as having one implementer supporting it, even if that feature ships in both Valiant and Veneer.
Valiant and Vertex both ship a feature, but it is not a feature with a shared, underlying implementation in the Shrug engine. Such a feature counts as having two implementers supporting it, even though Valiant and Vertex are both built on Shrug, because this particular feature has seperate, non-shared implementations.
Valiant and Vertex (who, again, share an engine) both express implementer interest in a feature that does not yet have any implementations. If both implementers indicate that they do not expect to share an implementation (they do not expect to land their implementations in Shrug), the feature counts as having two implementers supporting it. If both implementers expect they’d share an implementation in Shrug, it counts as having one implementer supporting it.