Satellite Event

(This is a satellite event of the main hackathon at Mozilla.)

People rarely read privacy policies, but they're important. So let's make it easier for users to understand the most meaningful things a website does with their data. To accomplish this Disconnect is hosting a project to crowd-source — think Wikipedia — turning websites' privacy policies into a set of Creative Commons licensed privacy icons. The project also will publicly launch with an API so that any developer can build tools using the icons and crowd-sourced data. Here's a link to the current iteration of the project and a rudimentary Firefox add-on we created for the hackathon: https://icons.disconnect.me/

Participants
Our goal for the hackathon is for participants to iconify 1,000 (or more) privacy policies, so we ask each participant to read the privacy policies of 10 websites and apply the privacy icons to those sites. This critical mass of policies will be the foundation for further development of privacy-icon tools — and the theme for a follow up coder hackathon.

Everyone is welcome to participate, no coding skills are required. We are excited to connect with and include people and organizations interested in privacy, data transparency and the Open Internet. Current participants include student groups from Stanford, Hastings, and Harvard (to name a few); individuals from organizations including Mozilla, FTC, ACLU, CDT, Lawyerist, and Law Gives; privacy experts and lawyers. So this event is sure to be a great opportunity to dialog with thought leaders while contributing to a great project.

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