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Background

At many universities and colleges today, a user doesn't have say in the release of their personal information (e.g. email address) to a vendor site that is in a relationship with the institution.

Vendors often try to get as much information as they can about the user. While some of the information may be necessary for the vendor to provide the contracted service to the user, often not all of it is.

Transfer of the user's information to the vendor can happen while the user is interacting with the vendor's website, or can happen while the user is "off line" (away from their computer entirely).

The CAR system:

  • enables user choice (“consent”) about release of their personal information on a per site basis. 

  • balances institutional policies with a user's policies. More about this in XXX <doc>
  • works across all browsers and devices.

This site offers information about CAR.  Most of the information is intended for people who already are familiar with "identity management," but we give a bit more background for normal people immediately below.

 

  • The user's policy choices are permit, deny, "ask me" and "use my institution's advice." For example:
    • "permit release of my email address to LibrarySite" 
    • "ask me about release of my surname to LearningManagementVendor"
    • "use my institution's advice about release of my faculty role to SomeOtherSite"
    •  etc
  • The institution's policy choices are permit and deny.  
    • if the user's choice "wins," the institutional decision of permit or deny becomes "advice" the user can see and choose to use or not.
    • institutional policy allows for groupings of vendors and groupings of users for ease of administration. For example:
      • "permit release of email for students to all Research & Scholarship vendors"
      • "deny release of given name and surname for staff and faculty to all other sites"

CAR's policy language document describes the policy statements in glorious, geeky detail.  You can find it in the In-depth Technical Materials section below.

  • initially designed to be a policy service about the release of personal information typically stored by higher education institutions in their campus directories.
    • Each directory item (e.g. email) about a given user is called an "attribute" – hence CAR's name "Consent-informed Attribute Release."
  • extended early on to work as an authorization service for many types of user resources and operations  (e.g. "view family photos,").
  • provides policy decisions of "permit" or "deny" to the actual holder of the user's resource, be it a directory, a photo service, etc.
  • the holding service – the "Resource Holder" in CAR terminology – makes the final decision as to whether to enforce the decision.

 

  • protocol agnostic: works with SAML-based Identity Providers and OAUTH/OIDC Resource Servers
  • currently under development at Duke University through the auspices of TIER, an Internet2 initiative.
  • initially funded by a grant from NSTIC

 



 

 

 

Overview Materials

Overview Materials

In-depth Technical Materials

In-depth Technical Materiala

Outside Consent Resources

Outside Consent Resources

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