On Wednesday, February 22, 2012, California’s Attorney General, along with the six leading mobile application platform developers, released a “Joint Statement of Principles” pertaining to privacy in the mobile space. The Joint Statement, adopted by Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and RIM, espoused four core principles of mobile privacy. While the Joint Statement does not take the form of a binding agreement and purports to impose no obligations on the platform developers beyond those already imposed by law, it is anticipated that these privacy principles will soon be adopted in full, amongst the six major platforms and beyond:

1) Where required by applicable law, mobile applications that collect personal data from their users must conspicuously post a privacy policy or some statement describing the privacy practices of the application. The policy or statement must provide clear and complete information regarding how the application and the application developer handle the personal data collected.

2) Mobile platform developers will implement an optional data field that will allow application developers, in submitting their applications, to provide a privacy policy or statement regarding the privacy practices of the application. Where developers provide such information in the submission process, the platform developers will then provide consumers with access to each policy or statement through the platform’s online application store or marketplace...