The Article 29 Working Party, the European collaboration of the Data Protection Authorities, has published a (brief!) 'Working Document on Trusted Computing Platforms and in particular on the work done by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG group).' It is a balanced description of 'work in progress', since there are not many end-user applications yet, besides some widely published tests with Digital Rights Management.

The document offers general observations derived from privacy principles, like the need to distinguish between usage in a corporate and in a private environment and the need to provide clear information to users, while always protecting the security of data.

"Both those who design technical specifications and those who actually build or implement applications or operating systems bear responsibility for the data protection aspects, although at different levels. Those who build, commercialise and use the applications bear responsibilities as well, especially organisations that process user data, as they will normally be the last one in the chain and the ones who interact with the user."

Working Document (23.01.2004)
http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/privacy/docs/wpdocs/2004/wp8...