Tech Policy From The Hill

Date: Friday, October 13

Speakers: 

• Damien Levie, Head of Trade Section, Delegation of the European Union to the United States (Bio)
• Mary Ellen Callahan, Partner, Jenner & Block, Moderator (Bio)
• Adam Schlosser, Director, Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation International, U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Bio)
• Abigail Slater, VP, Legal and Regulatory Policy at the Internet Association (Bio)
• Amie Stepanovich, U.S. Policy Manager, Access (Bio)

Details:

On Tuesday the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared the US EU Safe Harbor digital privacy agreement invalid as part of a suit against Facebook. The implications of this decision are massive for U.S. Internet companies. The ECJ decision torpedoed the 15 year-old Safe Harbor agreement between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Union. Since the U.S. does not have a digital privacy law that the EU recognizes as “adequate” the Safe Harbor agreement served as a stop gap to assure that personal information of EU citizens could flow to U.S. Internet companies. Close to 5,000 U.S. companies rely on the Safe Harbor to operate internationally, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The European court justified the scuttling of the Safe Harbor in large part by noting that NSA surveillance was unstoppable and renders the Safe Harbor an inadequate protection for Europeans’ personal information.

Our panel will explore the EU court’s decision and whether Congress will have to pass a digital privacy law immediately before international data flows dry up. Our panel will also look at other options for U.S. companies in lieu of congressional legislation.

Date: Tuesday, September 25

Speaker: Julia Hartz

Details:

Join the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus and the Women’s High Tech Coalition for a fireside chat about re-imagining the workplace with Julia Hartz, Co-Founder & President of Eventbrite.

As co-founder and President of Eventbrite, Julia Hartz has evolved the company from an innovative ticketing platform to the world’s largest marketplace for live experiences. Since the company founding in 2006, Eventbrite has generated over $3 billion in gross ticket sales, with more than 200 million tickets processed to events and experiences around the globe. Eventbrite has secured $200M in funding, and through Julia’s leadership, has cemented its place in the “Unicorn Startup Club,” reserved exclusively for companies with an over $1B valuation.

Under Julia’s guidance, company culture and optimizing workplace performance has remained an integral part of Eventbrite, which now boasts over 500 employees in eight offices around the world. Eventbrite secured a spot on Fortune’s 100 Best Workplaces for Millennials, and has been voted one of the “Best Places to Work in the San Francisco Bay Area” six years running. In the years since founding Eventbrite, Julia has been honored as one of Fortune’s 2015 40 Under 40 business leaders, Inc.’s 35 under 35 in 2014, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs in 2013, and has been profiled in Forbes in both 2013 and 2015.

Julia landed in Silicon Valley via Hollywood where she began her career as a development executive at MTV and FX Networks. In today’s digital age, Julia believes that real-life, human experiences lead to individual happiness and strong global communities. This belief continues to fuel her passion while running Eventbrite today.

This address by Ms. Hartz is a continuation of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee Speakers Series, which brings Internet leaders and luminaries to the Capitol Complex to share their expertise with Internet policy leaders in Congress. Past “Speakers” have included Internet founding fathers such as Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee and Marty Cooper as well as industry leaders like Bill Gates, Michael Eisner, Meg Whitman, and Kazuo Hirai. Renowned Internet researcher danah boyd kicked off the 2014 Speakers Series back in February.

This widely attended educational briefing is hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (ICAC), part of a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization. Congressional staff and members of the press welcome.

Date: Friday, September 25

Details:

Join us for a discussion on the history of WiFi and the role it plays in everyone’s mobile data usage. Our panel will explain how clever engineers developed WiFi in a backwater band of spectrum that the FCC set aside in the 80’s for “junk” common household appliances like cordless phones, microwave ovens, garage door openers and baby monitors. This junk band was unique in that the FCC did not require an application to use the spectrum nor did it require a license (i.e. unlicensed). This “permissionless” use of the spectrum was completely different from the government’s traditional top-down spectrum allocation and assigned use method. When bandwidth-hungry smartphones were introduced WiFi provided a critical spigot to offload data from the traditional mobile networks. That trend continues today. The viral success of WiFi on the unlicensed junk band showed the FCC a new way to approach spectrum allocation which it has been implementing for several years. Our panel will finish with a discussion of upcoming FCC spectrum initiatives including a short conversation of the opportunities and challenges facing FCC unlicensed spectrum including uncertainties surrounding proposed deployment of LTE-U.

Speakers: 

• Paula Boyd, Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Microsoft (bio)
• Fred Campbell, Executive Director, Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology, moderator(bio)
• Larra Clark, Office for Information Technology Policy, American Library Association (bio)
• John Hunter, Director, Spectrum Policy, T-Mobile (bio)
• David Young, Vice President, Public Policy, Verizon (bio)

Date:Friday, July 24, 2015

Details:

Do warrants allow law enforcement to reach into data centers across borders? Can 19th-century international legal processes keep up with 21st-century speed? Join us for a briefing on the law and policy that determines the reach of law enforcement into data stored outside of the United States and the important questions and issues the debate has raised:

• the need to modernize and make more efficient Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs)
• why starting an international dialogue to establish global norms is critical
• legal challenges to a U.S. government attempt to force technology companies to turn over customer data stored abroad with extraterritorial warrants

Issues related to digital privacy are triggering increased scrutiny of the U.S. government from both the American people and foreign governments, and digital privacy laws have emerged as a key issue in the 114th Congress.

The Microsoft v. United States of America case exposes the gray areas of law governing extraterritorial warrants online, the complexities of MLATs, and how digital privacy intersects with foreign policy. Experts from across the digital privacy and corporate sectors will gather to discuss the policy implications of the case and the current state of digital privacy in a globalized world.

Speakers:

• Bryan Cunningham, Senior Advisor, The Chertoff Group (Bio)
• Jennifer Daskal, Assistant Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law (Bio)
• Victoria Espinel, President & CEO, BSA | The Software Alliance (Bio) Moderator
• John Frank, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft
• Nuala O’Connor, President & CEO, Center for Democracy & Technology (Bio)

Date:Friday, July 17, 2015

Details:

Did you know Congress is a major player in the music streaming business? Really, Taylor Swift and Apple have nothing on the House and Senate. Congress has been at the policy turntables a long time making key decisions on how music is distributed through every new medium from radio to cable, satellite, and the Internet.

In the mid-1990s, Congress crafted a law that determined how licensing and royalty rates would be set for digital music streaming. As a result, the same song played in Pandora, Spotify, and on FM radio is governed three different ways.

The current system is a complicated patchwork of laws and court rulings cobbled-together to govern most of the music played on your computer, phone, and tablet. This complex legal framework means almost no one has a clear understanding of how the rules work or what powers Congress has in the digital music marketplace.

With more and more people streaming their music, “Everything Has Changed” in the music marketplace. The one thing most people can agree on is that this complicated patchwork of rules needs an update.

Our expert panelists will provide an educational background on the law and policy shaping digital music streaming. This panel is intended to give you a basic understanding of how the Internet music marketplace works, how we got here, who gets to set the price on what to pay for a play, and what it all means for Congress and their constituents — like Taylor Swift.

Speakers:

• Kevin Erickson, Communications and Outreach Manager, Future of Music Coalition (Bio)
• Alec French, Founder and Principal, Thorsen French Advocacy LLC (Bio)
• Tim Lordan, Executive Director, Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (moderator)
• Julia Massimino, Vice President, Global Public Policy, SoundExchange (Bio)
• Jon Potter, President and Co-Founder, Application Developers Alliance (Bio)

Date: Friday, June 5, 2015

Our expert panel debates the latest developments in the international drama that is Internet governance. There is much fodder for discussion: the federal government’s decision to cede control of key Internet functions to ICANN, ICANN’s efforts to become an accountable steward of these functions, attempts by international organizations such as the U.N. to exert greater control over Internet decisions in fora like WSIS+10, and the .sucks domain name controversy.

Speakers:

• Jamie Hedlund, Vice President, Strategic Programs, Global Domain Division, ICANN
• Michelle Sara King, President & CEO, King Consults
• Cheryl Miller, Director, International Public Policy and Regulatory Affairs, Verizon
• Milton Mueller, Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
• Jon Nevett, Co-Founder & EVP, Donuts Inc.
• Peter Dengate Thrush, former Chairman of the Board of Directors, ICANN
• Sally Shipman Wentworth, Vice President of Global Policy Development, Internet Society moderator