Privacy & Security review of SHACL 1.2 Core & SPARQL

[nicholascar]

• Write a "Privacy Considerations" section for your document
  • link in comments below
  • taking into account the Self-Review Questionnaire: Security and Privacy
    • answers in comments below
  • Mitigating Browser Fingerprinting in Web Specifications
    • N/A - this is bot a browser spec
  • RFC6973
    • N/A - this spec does not involve communication over the Internet
• request a review via GitHub from the Privacy Working Group.
  • SHACL 1.2 Core 2025-12-01 > 2026-01-01 w3cping/privacy-request#186

[nicholascar]

"Privacy Considerations" section is present at https://w3c.github.io/data-shapes/shacl12-core/#security

[nicholascar]

Our Self-Review Questionnaire: Security and Privacy answers are as follows:

ID	Question	Answer
2.1	What information does this feature expose, and for what purposes?	It doesn't "expose" anything. SHACL Core would be used inside validating systems and does not put any information "out", i.e. on the web
2.2	Do features in your specification expose the minimum amount of information necessary to implement the intended functionality?	N/A, as above
2.3	Do the features in your specification expose personal information, personally-identifiable information (PII), or information derived from either?	N/A, as above
2.4	How do the features in your specification deal with sensitive information?	Validation, by definition, will only deal with a subset of information presented to it and doesn't do anything with it other than value checking. It does not pass it on
2.5	Does data exposed by your specification carry related but distinct information that may not be obvious to users?	N/A, as above
2.6	Do the features in your specification introduce state that persists across browsing sessions?	NA - this is not a browser technology
2.7	Do the features in your specification expose information about the underlying platform to origins?	No
2.8	Does this specification allow an origin to send data to the underlying platform?	No
2.9	Do features in this specification enable access to device sensors?	No
2.10	Do features in this specification enable new script execution/loading mechanisms?	No. Execution is defined in this specification but only implementations execute anything
2.11	Do features in this specification allow an origin to access other devices?	No
2.12	Do features in this specification allow an origin some measure of control over a user agent’s native UI?	Yes. This specification defines how validation results are structured as data. The specific data - messages in different languages etc - are defined by users, as is ultimate visual presentation of results
2.13	What temporary identifiers do the features in this specification create or expose to the web?	N/A - no new information is created by implementers of this specification, other than validation reports, which are not long-lived
2.14	How does this specification distinguish between behavior in first-party and third-party contexts?	N/A
2.15	How do the features in this specification work in the context of a browser’s Private Browsing or Incognito mode?	N/A - not a browser spec
2.16	Does this specification have both "Security Considerations" and "Privacy Considerations" sections?	yes, here
2.17	Do features in your specification enable origins to downgrade default security protections?	N/A
2.18	What happens when a document that uses your feature is kept alive in BFCache (instead of getting destroyed) after navigation, and potentially gets reused on future navigations back to the document?	N/A
2.19	What happens when a document that uses your feature gets disconnected?	N/A - this is not a client/server spec
2.20	Does your spec define when and how new kinds of errors should be raised?	No, it provides validation rules only. Errors in implemeting them are not addressed
2.21	Does your feature allow sites to learn about the user’s use of assistive technology?	N/A - not a browser, client/server spec
2.22	What should this questionnaire have asked?	Some questions about triangulation of Semantic Web data perhaps (not that this Spec would fail anything but others in the RDFspace might...)