Regulations and consumer backlash force many organizations to re-evaluate the way they manage private data. As a first step, they publish privacy promises as text or P3P. These promises are not backed up by privacy technology that enforces the promises throughout the enterprise. Privacy tools cover fractions of the problem while leaving the main challenge unanswered.This article describes a new approach towards enterprise-wide enforcement of the privacy promises. Its core is a new framework for managing collected personal data in a sensitive, trustworthy way. The framework enables enterprises to publish clear privacy promises, to collect and manage user preferences and consent, and to enforce the privacy promises throughout the enterprise.One of the foundations of this framework is the "sticky policy paradigm" that defines a customer centric model for managing policies, preferences, and consent.

The information age has brought with it the promise of unprecedented economic growth based on the efficiencies made possible by new technology. This same greater efficiency has left society with less and less time to adapt to technological progress. Perhaps the greatest cost of this progress is the threat to privacy we all face from unconstrained exchange of our personal information. In response to this threat, the World Wide Web Consortium has introduced the "Platform for Privacy Preferences" (P3P) to allow sites to express policies in machine-readable form and to expose these policies to site visitors [1]. However, today P3P does not protect the privacy of individuals, nor does its implementation empower communities or groups to negotiate and establish standards of behavior. We propose a privacy architecture we call the Social Contract Core (SCC), designed to speed the establishment of new "Social Contracts" needed to protect private data. The goal of SCC is to empower communities, speed the "socialization" of new technology, and encourage the rapid access to, and exchange of, information. Addressing these issues is essential, we feel, to both liberty and economic prosperity in the information age[2].