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CEO Offers Bush Privacy Counsel
by Bara Vaida
Though President Bush has not said much about privacy policy, a technology company executive affiliated with his 2000 presidential campaign is sure the president is a strong advocate of privacy regulations that would require businesses to get consumer consent before sharing information.
"The president has been four-square behind an 'opt in' regulation, which I fully support," Gregory Slayton, CEO of e-mail marketing company ClickAction and co-chairman of Silicon Valley for Bush, said on TechTV's "Silicon Spin" last week. He added that "America ... has to take a leading role in making sure that opt-in policy is not just a national law but actually becomes an international regulation as well."
A White House spokesman said the administration is "attune with" the privacy issue and is working on a policy, as it has been since the campaign. Industry sources doubt that Bush would endorse a strict opt-in policy for online marketing because it likely would "lead to a lot of litigation" rather than enhance consumer confidence in e-commerce.
Still, Bush may support the opt-in approach to protecting health, financial and children's personal information. An administration official said the administration certainly supports a clear, government-wide policy that "leads by example."
In other administration news, the White House said the nomination of Rockwell Schnabel to be the U.S. ambassador to the European Union was formally sent to the Senate for confirmation this week.
Bush Adds Another Science Adviser
Helga Rippen has joined RAND as director of its Science and Technology Policy Institute. Before joining RAND, Rippen was the director of medical informatics at Pfizer Health Solutions, where she helped develop an Internet-based disease-management program.
RAND's institute is a federally funded research and development center that supports the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the science adviser to the president. The National Science Foundation sponsors it.
European Official Returns To Old World
At the end of September, Bertus van Barlingen, the trade counselor at the European Commission's delegation to the United States, is leaving Washington. He will move to Brussels to become the coordinator of trade policy with the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico.
Petros Sourmelis, currently a senior official in the commission's trade section, will replace Barlingen in Washington. Sourmelis is a specialist on dispute settlement.
Staff Changes In The Tech Industry
Caitlin Durkovich has joined the Internet Security Alliance (ISA) as the director of business development and marketing. Previously, Durkovich was the director of business development at the cyber-security firm iDefense.
The ISA is a collaborative effort between Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute and its CERT Coordination Center, and the Electronic Industries Alliance. The group aims to enhance the information security of member companies and, ultimately, the greater Internet community worldwide.
Elsewhere in the tech industry, four months after joining the Information Technology Industry Council as its director of communications, Roberta Heine has left to pursue other interests. No replacement has been named.
The Privacy Council, a technology consulting company, has named Larry Ponemon as CEO and a member of its board. Ponemon previously was the founder and global senior partner of the privacy auditing practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also was a member of the FTC's advisory committee for online privacy.
Ponemon will replace Gary Clayton, who resigned as CEO to become chairman of the council's board. The role will allow Clayton to act as the chief corporate strategist.
Finding His Place
John Place, Yahoo's former general counsel, has joined the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Place joined Yahoo in 1997 and left at the end of March. He was the company's first in-house attorney.
EFF also hired Fred von Lohmann as its senior intellectual property attorney and Seth Schoen as its staff technologist. Von Lohmann researched the implications of peer-to-peer technologies on the future of copyright law, serving as a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at the University of California at Berkeley's law school. Previously, von Lohmann practiced law with Morrison & Foerster. Schoen comes to EFF from Linuxcare, where he worked for two years as a senior consultant.
Talking About The 'Digital Divide'
A host of administration officials, lawmakers and technology officials will attend a Benton Foundation roundtable and conference on the role of technology in helping underserved youth. Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., are scheduled to speak.
Other speakers will include: Eugene Hickok, the undersecretary of education; Roma Arellano of the Intel Computer Clubhouse; Tina Hone of PowerUp; Carole Wacey of the Markle Foundation; Joan Fenwich of AT&T Learning; and Richard Akeroyd of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The conference will include European and American academics who research technology learning programs and what is working.
On the Political Front
Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, the former chairman of the Senate Y2K committee and the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, has said he will seek a third, six-year term in 2004, formally breaking a campaign promise he made in 1992 to only serve two terms. Bennett turns 68 on Sept. 18, according to the Deseret News.
Both candidates in Virginia's gubernatorial race, meanwhile, are feverishly raising money. On Tuesday evening, young professionals will hold a fundraiser for Democrat Mark Warner. Oracle is one of the event's corporate sponsors is Oracle. Tickets are $25 per person.
On Sept. 13, Vice President Richard Cheney will be stumping for Republican Mark Earley in Richmond, Va. Ticket prices range from $100 to $15,000. And according to news reports, President Bush is expected to stump for Earley in northern Virginia on Sept. 19.
Computer Visionary Dies
Michael Dertouzos, a computer visionary and the longtime director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) computer science lab, died of a heart attack in Boston last week. He was 64.
Under Dertouzos' leadership, the MIT lab developed many of the technologies that underlie today's computers, including one of the best-known methods for scrambling data, the RSA encryption system, and innovations that helped bring the Web into popular use. Time magazine reported that Dertouzos predicted in 1976 that one out of three homes would have a personal computer by the mid 1990s.
In 1993, he spearheaded the expansion of the Web beyond government and business uses. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee praised Dertouzos as "a spring of enthusiasm, capability, insight and experience that drove a half-formed idea ... into an international reality."
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