The first meeting for the Privacy Bill of Rights takes aim at mobile device security for apps

Applications will be the main focus on July 12 when enforcement begins.

July 12, 2012 has now been named the first day for a series of meetings that will be held to decide on the terms to be solidly enforced regarding online and mobile device security in President Obama’s virtual “Privacy Bill of Rights”.

The initial meeting will concentrate on smartphone and tablet apps.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Communications and Telecommunication Administration (NTIA) has made the decision that it is now time to put the president’s Privacy Bill of Rights into effect.

In order to get started, they have sent an invitation to all of the “privacy stakeholders” in order to “generate robust input” in the creation of the very first transparency code of conduct for consumer data collection and use.

NTIA has chosen transparency for mobile device security in apps as the first privacy process for the stakeholders.

These various stakeholders include advertisers, Internet companies, and consumer groups. The NTIA released an announcement that stated that “Although other possible topics were suggested and may be pursued in future multi-stakeholder convenings, the mobile app transparency topic presents a strong opportunity for stakeholders to reach consensus on a code of conduct in a reasonable time frame.”

Smartphone and tablet apps were chosen as the first topic due to the outcry of concern in March.

That was the month when the NTIA opened up the first opportunity to comment. The reason that applications generated such worry was that the rapidly developing business models and technologies are moving more quickly than the practices regarding the consumer data privacy practices disclosures.

It addresses the types of issues that have been brought forward in the greatly hyped lawsuit (which is currently in progress) that was initially filed in April against eighteen different companies for alleged violations of privacy in their apps, including: Facebook, Google, Apple, Yelp, Path, Instagram, LinkedIn, Foursquare Labs, Electronic Arts, Hipster, Foodspotting, Kik Interactive, Burbn, Beluga, Rovio Mobile, Chillingo, ZeptoLab, and the now defunct Gowalla.

The lawsuit has drawn attention to just the type of mobile device security behavior that the NTIA intends to address, such as scraping smartphones and tablets for email addresses and/or telephone numbers.