Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

On September 15-16, 2014, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) will sponsor a workshop to further its Privacy Engineering initiative. The workshop will focus on developing draft privacy engineering definitions and concepts that will be explored in a forthcoming NIST report.

Draft workshop materials available on the NIST website highlight some of the issues to be considered, and include a Model Discussion Draft that details NIST’s privacy engineering objectives. In addition, a draft Privacy Engineering discussion deck provides proposed definitions for key terms, lists “Problematic Data Actions” (such as appropriation or distortion of personal information, induced disclosure, surveillance and unanticipated revelation), and identifies certain harms to individuals that may arise from those problematic actions. The deck concludes with a list of discussion questions to be addressed during the workshop. NIST also will be accepting comments on the discussion questions via email to privacyeng@nist.gov through September 30, 2014.

Interested parties can register online for the workshop through the IAPP website.  There is no charge to attend the workshop.