Shibboleth Developers

["Josh Howlett" <>]

> Just to throw in that at the most recent EuroCAMP in 
> stockholm 
> http://www.terena.org/activities/eurocamp/may08/slides/2008050
> 8-simonsen-CONSENT.pdf
> several people (from several NRENs) talked about "consent"
> functionality as being the "next big thing" they expect to 
> "need" in their federations (or inter-federations or 
> confederations, eduGAIN, etc.). But this hardly has anything 
> to do with user experience (and everything with lawers) I suppose.

There is an argument that the consent-based approach is neither
desirable nor necessary within an educational context.

Apparently (for IANAL), within the context of EU privacy legislation
user consent is not required *if* 'necessity' can be demonstrated (ie.
the necessity for an Institution to release information in order to to
fulfill their responsibility to educate you).

If you don't need consent, you don't need a UI to collect it.

josh.

<off-topic>

A further issue with 'consent' is that a user can withdraw it at any
time, and so 'necessity' is likely to be easier to operate.

I can't speak for other NRENs, but I understand that we (the UK
federation) are currently emphasising to our members that they should
focus on 'necessity', rather than 'consent', for these reasons (we also
emphasise only releasing ePTID and ePSA, which are not affected by this
legislation, and so there should be very few instances where an
Institution actually needs to think about this).

In the unlikely event that anyone is still reading this messsage and
interested, this document has some more information:

http://www.ja.net/documents/development/middleware/schools-meeting-notes
.pdf

</off-topic>

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