Today four groups announced the 2011 Develop for Privacy Challenge (www.develop4privacy.org), a new competition for mobile application developers to address privacy concerns surrounding mobile phones and other portable devices. Sponsoring the challenge are the ACLU of Northern California, the ACLU of Washington, and the Tor Project, with the assistance of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Office.
The winner will be announced in August 2011 at an event in Las Vegas, coinciding with the DEFCON and Black Hat security conferences.
The 2011 Develop for Privacy Challenge is designed to encourage amateur and professional software developers to create tools that help mobile device users understand and address the privacy threats that all users face.
“We created the Develop for Privacy Challenge to call upon application developers to show that privacy doesn’t need to be an afterthought in new technologies,” said Brian Alseth, Technology and Liberty Director for the ACLU of Washington. “Rather, privacy can and should be a fundamental building block.”
Applications submitted for the 2011 Develop for Privacy Challenge will be judged by a panel of leading privacy and technology experts, including Jacob Appelbaum of the Tor Project, Caspar Bowden of Microsoft, Chris Hoofnagle of the University of California-Berkeley, Yoshi Kohno of the University of Washington, Jules Polonetsky of the Future of Privacy Forum, and Kai Rannenberg of Goethe-Universität. Applications will be judged based on several criteria including the seriousness of the privacy issue the app addresses; effectiveness, quality of user documentation, quality of source code, originality, portability, and performance.
Submissions will be received at develop4privacy.org until May 31, 2011.
More information, complete rules, and entry requirements are online at www.develop4privacy.org/.