But, P3P will lead to greater openness, more informed Web users and therefore greater accountability. Even the best possible P3P1.0 implementation will not bring instant privacy protection to the Web. But it will bring clear progress. It will also inform the privacy debate by providing focus on Web sites and their privacy policies Suffice it to say that establishing the technical terms for a social protocol is a complicated matter. P3P, in attempting to provide an automatic, common Web language to describe the collection and use of personal information, has been grappling to find a way to do just that.
Much work remains to be done.
Many members of the computer industry believe that P3P will increase consumer trust. We intend to ensure that privacy remains the top priority in the drafting of the P3P specification and the deployment of products built upon it. However, we will do so with the knowledge that P3P's failure was not from our lack of effort. Even with P3P, countries with lesser protections must strengthen their Laws. Yet standardized machine-readable privacy policies will still be an important tool for Internet users.