Liberty Alliance Addresses EU Privacy Concerns

The Liberty Alliance Project, a global consortium for open federated identity standards and identity-based Web services, released "Circles of Trust: The Implications of EU Data Protection and Privacy Law for Establishing a Legal Framework for Identity Federation".


The document is a guide for a federation of organisations implementing the Liberty specifications under the rigorous requirements of European privacy law.


The Circle of Trust is a concept central to the Liberty Alliance Project. A Circle of Trust is a federation of service providers and identity providers that have business relationships based on Liberty architecture and operational agreements, and with whom users can transact business in a secure and apparently seamless environment. As federated communities create interdependencies and, consequently, the need for trust between participants, the Circle of Trust is viewed by the Liberty Alliance as an essential component of establishing a system of federated identity based on Liberty specifications.


The paper discusses such issues as: how EU privacy law treats identity and the use of identifiers; how the law applies to different entities in the federated identity ecosystem; and what rules apply to the transfer of personal data beyond the boundaries of the EU.
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