cable television companies, and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> the app economy and trends in mobile technology was the focus of a recent senate commerce subcommittee hearing. witnesses including a diverse group of industry representatives and stakeholders. senators used the 80-minute hearing to dissshe potential impact of net neutrality legislation on the field. >> gooternoo and welcome. today's subcommittee meets to examine the state of the app economy and trends in mobile technologies. i'm glad to convene this hearing with my good friend and colleague ranki member schatz. over the past several weeks,

consumer interactions with mobile apps and the information these apps collect about americans have dominated news reports. this the hearing is an opportunity to take the broader look at the app industry and to understand its contributions to our economyn creating jobs, driving investment and fostering innovation. it is also an opportunity to discuss emerging trends within apps such as virtual reality and ai apps. in addition, i hope we'll examine policy issues related to broadband infrastructure, data privacy, workforce development and other considerations important to the continued growth of the app economy. proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices has created an exciting market of mobile applications. mobile apps allow consumers to access virtually anything at their fingertips. consumers can watch tv, deposit

checks at the bank, control the lighting and security within their homes, start their cars or connect with a loved one -- connect a loved one face-to-face all through the touch of an app. in a s perof time, a econo developed around the app industry. it has become a robust platform for job creation and investment, innovation, competition and new opportunities for ameca enterprise. increasingly consumers and businesses are turning to apps not just for entertainment but also for efficiency, convenience, productivity and cost savings. mississippi farmers, for example, are using apps for precision agriculture technologies. apps allow them to monitor the health of their props and the welfare of their livestock remotely. this helps farmers accurately predict agricultural yields, cutting down costs and

increasing productivity. mississippians are also using apps to access telemedicine apps crovide patients with immediate access to medical professionals or other health-related services that are not readily ale inir neighborhoods or communities. this technology helps improve patient outcomes and saves lives. it's the foundation of the app industry success is a reliable broadband network. significant investments in broadband networks have enabled many of the innovative apps consumers enjoy today. next generation communication networks such at 5g promise even greater app capil we need to ensure that reliable broadband networks are available to all americans. whether that is through private investment or dedicated government programs. like phase 2 of the mobility fund. broadband offers immediate access to economic opportunities

and other resources that have been shifting to the online marketplace. in addition to prioritizin t deployment of broadband infrastructure, force development is critical to critical to g thengpp economy. maintaining a trained and ilworkforce will help meet industry needs and ensure that the united states remains a ader in the globa digital economy. i'm grateful to have mr.forster here today representing innovate isi and the mississippi coding academies. i look forward to hearingore about his work to train the next generation of workers in mississippi and across the country. in the last decade, the app economy has clearly brought value to consumers and businesses. it promises to continue delivering this value as apps increase in personalization and

utility for users while adequately safeguarding consumer data. to that end i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how to preserve the many economic and societal benefits of mobile applications now and in the years to come. before introducing the members of our panel,l recognize my dear friend senator schatz to make whatever opening remarks he would like to make. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. thank you for holding this hearing on this important topic. i'm looking forward to the conversation. before i get into my comments, i think i'd be remiss if i didn't address the issue that is hitting the senate for tomorrow which is net neutrality, and that's about the internet itself. it's hard for me to be in a hearing around apps or anything else about the internet and not mention that this week we will have an opportunity in the senate to take a stand on behalf of a free and open internet. this vote will require every senator to go on the record, and i hope that my colleagues will

join me and vote to reject the fcc's decision and restore net neutrality. now, back to apps. this hearing takes place during mp debate about whether technology is in fact bringing the positive changes that we hoped for. apps in particular have created a lot of value. they entertain us. they make it easier for us to buy things, and they help us to communicate better. they have also created an industry that employs millions of well-paid software engineers, designers and marketers. but we haven't yet fully realized the potential of these technologies, and i personally worry that too many companies are focused on the wrong approximate and the wrong questions. we already live at a time of unprecedented convenience. but silicon valley continues to spend money and brain power building apps to make things available and on demand and to make transactions frictionless. for example, an analysis said that at least $9 billion was poured into 125 on-demand

delivery startups between 2006 and 2016. as one technologist tweeted, san francisco tech culture is focused on solving one problem. what is my mother no longer doing for me? but behind this sort of sassy comment is a more solemn truth which is that we have the best tech available in the history of the world, and it should rise to solve the serious problems that we face as a society, and a lack of convenience is just not one of those problems. if anything, the overwhelming options at our fingertips are sometimes becoming an inconvenience in and of themselves. instead, we need tech to focus on the most important and impactful problems facing society. it's true that the disruptive business models we've seen from the app economy have provide tremendous benefits to consumers, but they also have costs. it costs us jobs in certain industries, created possible new forms of addiction and left behind an uneven distribution of

wealth. sometimes that balances out to new fortunes for a few but doesn't turn out well for society as a whole, and i understand the concept of creative destruction, but surely this once in a century technological transformation should have an impact beyond improved efficiency and improved convenience. i don't believe tech will solve all of our problems, but in the united states we pride ourselves on the idea that innovation is the real driver of progress. and so i hope that we're at the cusp of some big, profound and positive changes from the mobile revolution that will translate into meaningful progress for the whole country. i know that our witnesses in the organizations they represent share this hope and are working to make it a reality, and i look forward to hearing from the witnesses. >> thank you, very much, senator schatz. of course, senator schatz and i will be cancelling each other's vote out later this week on the issue of so-called net

neutrality the. for over two decades the internet has prospered and become this great engine of job creation and economic development because of the light touch regulatory framework that we've had. only in the last few years did the fcc under the obama administration proceed to a heavier regulatory title 2 utility style regulatory scheme which i'm pleased the current fcc has moved away from, towards the more traditional type ofch light touch regationch given us this great economy. we'll be debating that on the floor later on, but since my friend chose to bring it up, i thought i would put in my two cents worth. i'm also told that the ranking member of the full committee,

senator nelson, who has joined us would like to make an opening statement also, so senator nelson, you are recognized at this point. >> thank you, mr.aian, and there are those of us o the stil ultimately trying to get ae bipartisan solution and legislation to it so that we can stop this up one day and down the other kind of thing that we've been experiencing over time. but let's talk about apps, and i -- i want to say my concern for the senator from hawaii and his state of what's happening out there is this thing really almost ready to blow? >> thank you to the ranking member of the xhul committto th. people on the island are resilient. there's 36 structures totally destroyed, and the truth is that

even volcano scientists don't know what's going to happen next. it could subside completely tomorrow, or this could go on for years, by certainly appreciate the concern of you and all the rest of our colleagues as we monitor and try to keep everybody safe, so thank you for that. >> well, while as we've been discussing the apps, they contribute billions to the economy. it's important to recognize that developers are also tackling significant social issues in the country. several companies are working on ways to address the issues surrounding climate change, sea level rise which is afflicting especially southern florida right now. and others have developed apps to help keep our children safe. this is especially important given the recent tragic spate of

school shootings and the never-ending question of personally identifiable information including the geo location and specifically geo location of o cn. joining us today is roger koch, the ceo of the shield group technologies. shield group is headquartered in west palm and has focused on the development of apps to improve communication between citizens and law enforcement. in particular, the company has developed student protect to allow students and faculty to contact law enforcement about threats, including providing precise infon aormatiut the location of the threat. given the parkland tragedy, i'd like to learn more about student protect and how it can help law

enforcement receive information about school threats. more broadly, we need to focus on making sure american workers have the right skills to participat in this part of the economy and push it forward. in colleges and universities throughout florida have stepped up. from florida atlanticith its tech runway to florida polytechnic and the university of south florida, our institutions of higher education are training the coders and entrepreneurs that will be designing the new wave of apps. tomorrow the senate will vote on this resolution to restore strong net neutrality. i'll have more to say about this on the floor, but it is going to

be a continuing discussion and debate as we adjust to the ever-changing technology that w are using in ourly lives. than mr. chairman. >> and thank you, senator nelson. we're delighted to have our panelists with us today. they include mr. mike forster, chairman of innovate mississippi and founder of the mississippi coding academies in jackson, dr. sarah oh, research fellow, technology policy institute here in washington, d.c., mr. morgan reed, president of act, the app association here in washington, and mr. roger koch who senator nelson already referred, to ceo of shield group technologies of west palm beat. so we're delighted to have each and every one of you, and we'll begin to my left with your

opening statement of no more than five minutes. mr. forster. >> thank you. chairman wicker, ranking many schatz and members of the bcommittee on behalf innovate missy and the mississippi coding academies, i want to thank you for this opportunity to testify today on how we just might be helping bridge this enormous gap which exists between high-tech employer needs and for entry level programmers and developers and the available resources that they have from our community colleges and four-year colleges. before i delve into that, and i'll be brief in my comments i first want to say something about innovate mississippi. our mission is to connection our startups to mentors, investment capitals, to service providers. we've helped transform over

1,200 ideas into real companiescompanies, and those companies have raised over $170 million in capital and have produced about 6,000 jobs. all of that is very important, and we're proud of the fact that we do that with a very small staff of six professionals. we've got a budget of $1 million a year and half of it comes from private company sponsorships. our board is made up of private company executives, entrepreneurs, representatives from our research universities, the institute of higher learning and the mississippi community college board. i'mer a two-year term as the chairman. but we not only focus on connecting these brewers with capital and providing mentors. we focus on building an economy system that those startups that allows those startups to thrive. it was part of that charter that led us to form the mississippi

coding academies. a bit of background. in our state alone, there are 1,200 open jobs for coding professionals. our colleges and universities produce 250 comter science graduates a year. about half of them least state. so an enormous gap just in our state. at the national level, it's even more compelling. code.org would tell you there's half a million open jobs in programming and development today, and it's going to grow to 1 million by the year 2020, and there's 43,000 computer science graduates to meet the 500,000 today. so the demands of the digital economy are just going to continue to grow, and things like the app economy that we're discussing here today are going to worsen that gap over time unless we do some things differently. well, here's what's interesting. at the other end of the spectrum there are a lot of highly

motivated young people who for various reasons, mostly socioio economic, who are not able to attend a two or four-year college, yet many of them have the basic analytical and the creative skills to become coders, andho jobs will ensure them wages that are equivalent to what many college graduates are going to get, and they are career type positions, not just dead-end jobs. now i know you'll find this hard to believe, but i've had five decades in this information technology business, and i'll tell you this. i have seen it time and time again. you cannot predict based on background, based on education who is going to be a good developer, who is going to be a good programmer or coder. some of the best i've ever known in my companies were music and arts majors. certainly a good number of them have math and science

backgrounds, but you cannot predict who is going to be good at this, because there's definitely a creative as well as analyst call component. so what are we doing? in the spring of last year, four of us, and i'm o of the founders, sat wicker, four nt up to the little town of ppi water valley, mississippi, where a very innovative program had been started by a couple of "c" level executives who is had been with a successful technology services company, and they wanted to give something back. they established the base camp coding academy up there. they wanted to prove that a high school graduate could go through an intensive 11-month program and emerge as what we would cl a full stack developer. that's a programmer who has the opportunity see the big picture, the database, the front end, the back end, the -- the user interface, all the various components, not necessarily that they california do everything perfectly, but theft ability to see the big picture and they

have the ability to be productive. well, all of the graduates of that first class were hired, hired by companies like c spire, a regional telecom from ridgeland, mississippi and also fedex, and -- and those kids are all now got new and exciting careers in information technology. well, the founders didn't want to expand beyond the areas that they were in, so with their permission we took their ideas and approached the mississippi development authority, and with the wholehearted support of our governor phil bryant with gnn mccullough who is our executive director of the mda, dr. andrea mayfield who is the president of the community colleges, and she has just been wonderful to work with. show was not territorial at all. she recognize that had we were bringing a different spin to this problem, and she's worked jointly with us to make it happen. today there are 25 students enrolled in two academies, two

different locations in our state. we expect in those locations to add three more classes in june of this year, and we're actively discussing three other locations in the state for 2019. down on the gulf coast in blokes and over in the mississippi delta, and impoverished area, as you all know and a second location that's in the delta as we call it in vicksburg. i'll talk a minute more about that in a few minutes. we already have 130-plus candidates for the 60 positions in the three classes that are starting in june, so we're feeling good about that. >> perhaps expound more on that during the question and answer. >> dr. oh, you are recognized. >> chairman wicker, ranking member schatz and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today on the app economy and mobile

technology trends. my name is sarah oh, and i'm a research fellow at the technology policy institute, a nonprofit, non-partisan think tank that studies the economics of innovation and technological change. the app economy is an important source of economic growth. as an economist, my primary concern is growth and new business formation, jobs, research and development and economic opportunity. apps create new markets and make existing markets for efficient, thereby promoting growth. however, some app innovation has raised questions related to privacy, connectivity and artificial intelligence. the right policy responses require clearly identifying the problems we wish to solve and thinking carefully about the costs and benefits of any proposals. in short, we need to be careful about how to reduce or remedy bad effects of this new economy without discouraging the

innovation that drives economic growth and makes us all better off. as easy as it is for us to click our app buttons, we should remember that apps call on a massive and deeply complex infrastructure to deliver goods and services, server farms, cell towers, coders, math students and labs dedicated to research and development all work behind the scenes to deliver the apps that are simple and easy to use. apps deliver realtime data to billions of users, not just here in our country but around the world. american companies reach a global market withpps. appse life easier and faster with ai and cloud services. at tpi, we use cloud services for big data analysis. i'm amazed by how much computing power we can access today. our team of researchers can access world class servers and only pay for the minutes that we use. our big data projects would have been impossible just a few years

ago without these advances. but these advances come with new policy challenges. regarding privacy, the economist's question is whether firms underinvest in data otecon relateoe socially optimal level. if data breaches harm customers and firms aren't preventing those harms, then there may be room for intervention, but even if harms exist, regulators must be careful toll do no harm themselves. regulations have real costs and benefits to the economy. it's important to remember that with any new regulation firms will still behave strategically around at rules. firms will use regation to benefit themselves and hurt competitors. regulation can have unintended consequences, disadvantaged new entrants over incumbent firms or vice versa. the european gdpr which starts on may 25th will provide an

important data point for scholars and regulators to measure the effects of privacy legislation on innovation and economic growth. regarding connectivity, the app econom rres coned investment in broadband. this subcommittee knows about deploymentnd adoption challenges, the universal service fund and the economics of last mile connections. for 5g, 8,000 municipalities can hold up or speed up the expansion of wireless networks also. policy-makers need to stay focused on supporting investment to get everyone connected. regarding radio sp government has a lot of spectrum, and federal agencies still use old inefficient equipment f.economic growth is a priority, then the federal government can help the app economy by clearing spectrum for connected devisds. regarding ai, we at tpi recently

hosted a conference on the policy implications of ai. scholars discussed aye's limitations and potential in field like medicine, central bank and traffic routing. we discussed whether a aye is a general purpose technology. homuchan jumgment still mertz. our answer, it does a lot n.clue, the app economy drives economic growth, but we need to know what computers can and cannot do, how to measure harm and whether rules are truly able to remedy these harms. we have more questions than we have answers, and it will take careful thought in conversations like the one we're having today before we have good policy solutions. thank you for inviting me to testify today, and i look forward to answering your questions. >> thank you very much, dr. oh. mr. reed, you're now recognized. >> thank you. chairman wicker, ranking many schatz and distinguished members of the subcommittee. my name is morgan reed and i'm the president of app association

which represents more than 5,000 app-makers, connected companies and b2 b soft wear developers. we have members in all states and all congressional districts. we put the value of the app economy at roughly claar 950 milion employing 4.7 people througho the u.s. the average salary for an app economy job is nearly double the median income at $will 6,000. our biggest single roadblock for growth is talent. with more than 500,000 open unfilled jobs in america today. how did we get here? well, smartphones have become the most -- single most rapidly adopted technology in human history outpacing innovations like the printing press, the wheel, fire or even the microwave. in less than a decade we have put 10,000 years of collected human knowledge into the hands of 3.4 billion people. from agent scrolls to crop reports and diagrams of distant

galaxies and cat video, the smartphone brings the entire world to our fingertips and apps enable us to engage with t.gone are the days when developers created a piece of software, signed their work over to a publisher who place it had on a cd and shipped it in a box to a retail store and hoped the consumerou nic it on the shelf of a comp usa. today software developers can reach a global market instantaneously through trusted platt forms, from a swipe, a click or even a spoken command. the modern app economy is based on four major tenets, connectivity to the network. we need continued 5g rollout and tv white spaces technology to help grow all aspects of our industry. customer trust, consumer trust in mobile software products and services is inextricably lind to security and encryption is a fundamental part of that. offloading overhead, because my members can offload overhead on to platforms like apple and cloud providers like microsoft, getting an application to market

has moved from $10 million to $100,000 and for months or years to a matter of weeks. finally, access to the global marketplace. the global digitalconomy makes my smaller member an equal player in the eyes of consumers. while some think of apps as colorful icons on their smartphone, apps are also revolutionizing business operations and efficiency in america. in fact, two out of three businesses use mobile enterprise apps for communication, company training and other activities. our companies develop the apps that connect the cash register to the sales department, integrate product inventories in the shipping department and link all the way to the line supervisor at the manufacturing plant. for american businesses,obile is no longer a luxury or a value add. it's a necessity to have a reliable platform and constant mobile connectivity. it's no surprise that the app economy is one of our nation's leading employers, creating well-playing jobs now and in the future. for example, by 2024, computing jobs are expected to grow by

12.4%-ins mississippi and 6.4% in hawaii. these are the jobs of today harnessing analytics, artificial intelligence and iot to create better products and services for all industries in the future. healthcare is a particularly telling emp. mobile software has revolutionized the way providers reach patients across the country. the university of mississippi medical center is a steering committee member of our connected health initiative and residents in 53 of mississippi's 82 counties live more than 40-minute drives from specialty care, but ummc's telehealth services bring remote monitoring to patients in their homes without sacrificing quality of care, and if we can see passage of senator schat's bill, knew opportunities would arrive for ummc as well as erich honecker-based tech apps, an app helping war fighters deal with cognitive brainnjuries. senator cantwell, seattled about trucking services app convoy provides access to more than 10,000 trucking companies and matches freights with effective routes to reduce the carbon

footprint. senator mastow, we have re-s xwrid which provides management and logistics support forirst respon senatohassan, we have btw software which does construction sites and helps main tine machinery fleets and captures project data to ensure projects run safely, officially and cost effectively. at the end of the day, i have stories for every single member of your commit, and i want you to know that right now there's a product going online today that will change the lives of your constituents and the way that they do business and theay that they interact with their families. i'm happy to spending all day talking about those stories and look forward to your questions and a way to continue the growth. thank you. >> thank you pletch, mvery much mr. reed. mr. koch. >> thank you, members, for the opportunity to appear bore y

today and it a talk briefly with you about how shield group technologies views the future of mobile technology. while it may not command the headlines and attention that other issues do at the moment, your work could have a very real, vylonger im on the lives and the futures of the american people. we are in the midst of a period in our technological history when there are profound questions about the impact that certain technologies have on our lives. intrusions on our privacy, technology's effect on our children owes growth and development, and its ability to be used by hostile powers and individuals are a few among numerous concerns that americans rightly have. but equal to these legitimate concerns is the extent to which mobile technology, apgs for short, are not being utilized to anywhere near their potential to positively impact our daily lives. while there are excellent apps for banking, shopping, booking

reservations and media, the utilization of mobile technology has barely scratched the surface in i overall ability to positively impact us all. the simple truth is the that for many americans apps are used mostly for persona entertainment. if you have any question about this take a look when you're flying home at what the person next to you is doing with their mobile device. chances are, they are furiously trying to set players or check results on their fantasy team or swapping colored cannedies in some type of game. that's okay, i use apps for entertainment also, but there's so much potential in mobile technology. what we've done at shield group technologies is develop ways for law enforcement and government to better use mobile and connected technologies to keep us safer and communicate better. our student protect app is the most technology available for parents, teachers, students and staff to provide threat and security tips and information to school administrators and law

enforcement for its realtime use by law enforcement. it's not just a simple tip that simply sends an e-mail somewhere. it's a powerful technology that provides law enforcement and school administrators with information and intelligence llows them toset quickly and efficiently to prevent violence in our schools. information and intelligence before a threat becomes a reality is critically important in the prevention of school shootings and other acts of violence. with student protect, students and other users can provide intelligence and information that is routed and assessed by multiple law enforcement agencies and schoo officials simultaneously. it has powerful gps functionality that tags where the intelligence originates from, and it allows school administrators and law enforcement to send out security information based on a wide variety of parameters including by a specific geo graphic area. this has led to the apprehension of multiple perpetrators of

threats as well as the ability for school traitors and law enforcement to intervene with behavioral and mental health assistance. there's much more about student protect that i don't have time to go over right now, but obviously any graphic you want we can obviousass on to you all. we also have connect protect which unite residents directly with law enforcement for to you-way geo targeted communication, information and crime reporting, and our state of the art secure share mobile technology which provides law enforcement with a secure and encrypted means of distributing sensitive intelligence to law enforcement officers in the field without the use of e-mail which when i turn on the news every day now i hear something about how it is not a secure means of communicating sensitive information. mr. chairman, america's ability to use mobile technology is accelerating at an amazing pace. the public sector which is the

area we operate in is the -- is its fastest growing sphere. it's more than just entertainment. the adoption of mobile technologies by law enforcement and federal, state and local government will allow them to share infmationnd save taxpayers money by vastly increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the services delivered. i wanted to end by thanking you, mr. charges and the members of the committee for this opportunity as well as the local government and law enforcement professionals that serve americans eve day. we were proud to work with these men and women around the country and in particular, particularly in our and senator nelson's home state of florida. think especially want to acknowledge the sheriff of palm beach county. his constant challenges for innovative solutions for better law enforcement has been a constant source of ideas and challenges that have helped us meet demands of law enforcement agencies everywhere. thank you again.

>> well, thanks to all four of you for some very, very intriguing testimony. let's see. mr. reed mentioned annual average salary of $86,000, nearly double the national average in this field of app technology, and apparently there's such a great demand that we're -- we're nowhere near filling those slots, so perhaps we need talk about apprenticeships, and while you're thinking about that, mr. reed, let me ask mr. forster along those lines what is it about your academies that freeze you from government red tape and

allows you to respond more quickly to the needs of industry? and what do you think about the statistics of $86,000 salaries and 440,000 additional jobs? seems like he's in the ballpark there? >> oh, yes, sir. i have every confidence that those numbers are real. in our state our average starting salaries are the $50,000 to $60,000 range but they quickly move up to the mid-80s and 100,000 range for more experienced developers. what is the key though? and the thing that eliminates this bureaucratic issue, if you will. we must start with private industry or industry because we do have a gre partner that's a public entity as well, but we must start with the employer. they must be engaged with us.

they must set the curriculum. we don't want to be teaching what the technologies were ten years ago or even five or even two years ago. this industry reinvents itself in terms of programming technologies, development technologies, continuously. so only through a very tight relationship with industry are we able to quickly respond to those needs. so they helped us set the curriculum, they provide guest instructors, we go out and visit them on site. our students get to see what it's like to be in the workplace. those are the kind of things that make us different. those are our distinguishing characteristics. it starts with that. >> mr. reed, what do you have to add to that? >> well, i want to echo everything he pretty much said, but i think there's an important thing for the state of mississippi that's worthwhile noting. you have 27.8% of the population without broadband. but more importantly, 50.2% of the population in rural areas. >> where do you get those

statistics? >> based off a study with the fcc and others within the state. here's why that concerns me. right now he's training great mississippians to be great coders. i did a poll of the room, how many of you employed people who don't work at your home location or even in your state? i had 100% of my 50 ceos said they're willing to work with people and do right now, hire people, who aren't in their state. the problem we have with a state like mississippi, when he trains a great coder, if they go home and they don't have broadband, then how are my people going to hire him? that's why we look at solutions like tv wide spaces and 5 g rollout. they've gotta have broadband. >> where is tv white space wo working, sir? >> there are several pilot projects in place around the country. primary use is in rural. as this committee knows better

than anyone, the difficulty with last mile, if you have a rural population nine miles from the nearest trunk, it's incredibly expensive to pull a line down for five or six families. but if we can use tv wide spaces, the gaps in between, to try to get broadband connectivity to rural populations, then we can change their future in terms of their ability to live where they're from and still compete in the job market in a global environment. >> which companies are actually delivering -- don't name the names of the companies, but what type of entities takes this tv white space and actually makes an agreement with the h and gs it there? >> that's exactly right. the tv wide spaces is pioneered b by a company out of senator cantwell's home state. they've been on the front edge of this, partnering with local isps and others -- >> so the local isp is a part of

this? >> exactely right. it's essentially like your wi-fi, but how do we get it to go a lot further than on the current gig hertz. we need better spectrum. >> back to the statistic you gave about mississippi, i assume you have this similar statistics about all of the other states represented -- >> why, yes, senator, for every member of your committee. >> is that in a form that you could esnter into the record? >> absolutely, senator. >> without objection, that will be entered into the record at this point. you know we're having a debate, mr. reed, with the fcc about the reliability of their maps on this very topics. are you telling me you'vee a study -r h done a study that is different and uses different information? >> we've done some combinations of studies, but you point out one of the major problems.

at the root of almost all the trees is still the fcc's data. we would love to have more accurate data. we had meetings with all the commissioners on the floor, from both parties to talk about getting us better data so we can make a better analysis of exactly the question you're raising. rightnow, we find almost everyone's source of data, if you dig deep enough, it goes back to the fcc. >> pardon me, my fellow subcommittee members. how do we get better data, mr. reed? do you have suggestions for us? dr. oh? >> yeah, so we use fcc data as well. wh we find is it's often delayed by two or three years, 2014, 2016 data. i'm not part of that conversation about getting better data, but i'd be interested to know how expensive it is to update those data sets

faster. and whether money allocated for other things can be put towards maps. there are a lot of other things that the fcc is spending on and that could just prioritizing maps could be one way -- >> i'll simply add, going back to mr. reed, and then i'm way over on time. butnobody's really happy with these maps. >> that's correct. >> and you seem to suggest that there is a better set of data. >> there are. but given our time constraints right now, i'm happy to sit down with your committee staff and talk about the ways that some of our data scientists, as well as folks that you know, dr. oh, on ways that we can pull the dat from existing sources as well as, the fact that most americans are carrying a smartphone in their pocket. how do we access information on the wireless side right from the

phones themselves? >> thank you. just to follow-up, this is something there's bipartisan concern about on the fcc maps. seems to me the bic problem is that they're switching the onus the responsibility onto states and individual communities to disprove that their maps are incorrect. when everyone knows that their maps are not accurate. we're figure to hagoing to have that conversation. i know the charm sairman said, u have data points, we'll be happy to assimilate it. but we want the most accurate map. and if an individual state is unable to marshall the data to disprove their maps, that shouldn't penalize them. this is literally the fcc's job to get this right. and they're getting it wrong. even though this charmt airman are disagrees on net neutrality,

we cooped not agruld not agree y on this issue. you have broadband, wi-fi, potential solution sets, tv white space, 5 gnge and everyth else. it's always aren't to get the technical pieces right. the question i want to ask is the bigger-picturestion. we have the best tech in history. all we're talking aut telehealth and other exciting technology that can transform society in a positive way, i would like to be reassurom you and i'll start on my right and go down, that we are not simply providing infrastructure to allow people to purchase what they want, a good or a service, just a little faster. because it seems to me that a lot of the tech money is in that space. and i think it's not a coincidence that 80 to 85% of

vcs are white males. and the problems they have are a different problem set than the rest of society. so when they think about, what is the killer app, they often think about something that is related to their own personal convenience. can you reassure me that we're solving big pemsit this big tech? >> i agree with you, there is bigger problems with this. we do have a connectivity problem, though. when you can go to places and people cannot use their smartphones, we have huge problems. you see it every day. my far ner just yesterday had to buy a new phone because he was in a place in virginia that he could not use his phone. he had to buy a different phone from a different service. >> listen, we have these conversations about connectivity every time we have a subcommittee hearing. my question s what big problem are we going to solve, not just

that i'd like a slurpee now and how quickly and cheaply can i have one in my possession. so tell me since you're the app association person, what big problem are we going to solve? we're short on time, so i'd like to move along. >> well, it's funny that you bring that up, because you talked about telehealth and you have the bill that would make one of the largest changes possible. last year, they spent 1 trill$1 trillion reimbursing for health care. for telemedicine, 14 million. that's an embarrassment. so when you talk about the way we make changes, i'll give you the biggest one you can have. if you see a doctor at the top of his game, her game, she's likely to have seen about 29,000 patients by the time she sees you. but a patient with your history, your geno type, you're lucky if she's seen 500 people. she's going to make a determination about how to treat you based on what she learned in school, what she took in some

continuing education classes and 500 data points. what we're looking to do, through mobile applications and access to data is the ability to arm that physician with augmented intelligence, so when they walkn to treat you, they know you respond better to this medication, she responds better to treatment along these lines. that's about the most important problem i think we can solve. and that'aving lives that are there to be saved. so i'd say we are able to make that difference. >> dr. oh, with a final comment. >> one of the hopes of ai is that we can have robots to do complex tasks. something i didn't put in my comment, if we have robots that can fold laundry, that's labor done mostly by women that can be used for something else. and fding laundry for a robot is a complex task. it's not easy. and that's what ai scientists are doing.

robotics are going to be able to do those manual tasks that people don't have to do anymore. so is ai jetsons or terminator? there are many, many things that if we could get a robot to do it, it would save a lot of time. >> my final comnt before going on to the next member is that, it is not obvious to me that every time you can have something done by a computer or by a robot, that it is an unaloied good. i think there are some instances, as regards safety, it's a cle moral choice. but it's not obvious to me that the purpose of the app economy is to eviscerate employment along the way and create some frictionless future where very few people are paid to do anything. thank you. >> may i add a quick comment, please. >> with the permission of the chairman. and i'm sure he will say so because he's from your state.

[ laughter ] >> if you visit our classes, you'll see they're 50% women, 80% minority, three of the four structors are minority. several of those -- so we don't exactly have white male dominated academies. and several of those students have already expressed that they've got a stated interest in building their own apps and being entrepreneurial in that standpoint. so it's just another aspect of bringing that portion of our citizenry and our young people into really, really productive jobs. and those demographics, i think, are compelling. >> thank you. >> i might note that senator schatz connect for health act has four original co-sponsors, including wicker, carden, thune, and warner.

and he's to be congratulated for now having 23 co-sponsors. senator can't wel. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for mentioning coderg and for yr work in your home state. i've always said we need to be more aggressive about our coding education. unfortunately, the federal role is so much more minimal than the states' role in that aspect, but i always referred to my own experience of having to take typing and latin and that having a mandatory language requirement that today our mandatory language requirement should be one year of coding in our schools. that would give everybody access to your point about the diversity of never being able to predict what student is going to be really good at coding. so it's something everybody should be exposed to. i invite you to comto seattle and visit code.org or any of our institutions on this subject. we're working very hard at it. mr. reed, i wanted to talk to

you about the app economy, since you represent the association, and your comments about efficiency and constant mobile connectivity. i thought you hit it right on the head about this issue, which needs and the businesses conomy who rely on the app economy need. so whether that's -- i can't tell you the list of farming applications i have seen that are everything from managing live stock toredictability about weather to all sorts of things, it's a very science-based sector. and needs that kind of connectivity. i see that you are for net neutrality, you're for open internet and codifying that information so that we can have that. what does it mean if we don't have that kind of rule of the road for efficiency and connectivity of those devices? and, you don't have to talk just about the farm economy. but writ large, what are people

looking for? >> i think that's why i started the comment about the fact that it's worth remembering that we've connected 3.4 billion people withhe world's collected information. i think what you're getting to is that people seek knowledge about what they want to do. if it's farming, if it's anything else. i think to senator schatz' point, it shouldn't all be fun and games, but what we see is people saying, i want to do more, i want to do something different, i want to reach a different group of people that i can in my hometown. so the door that's opened is amazing. it's knowledge, it's access, it's interactivity. and the thing you point out, without the internet access, without certainty about the rules of the road and how do we get to the rural communities -- your state is fascinated. one state, everybody's connected and the other side has blank spots in it. we've got to make sure all

people in the state have access to activity and the rules of road are established and there are codified rules for how we get there. figuring how out the senate codifies that is an important next step. >> well, i think having just visited spokane and seen how start-up incubator is saying, we usehese apps every dayo manage our business on behalf of our customers. if somebody starts artificially slowing that down today, i'm going to be less efficient in delivering services. and so that, i think, is the concern for us. the fact that in vancouver, washington a cable company is saying well, i'll give you higher speed broadband today, but only if you take our expensive bundle. and so, they'll give you less expensive higher speed but only if you take the expensive bundle. so i think what consumers are worried about, the app economy is going to get hijacked and that they're going to be so

dependent as small businesses on these applications, that if somehow they're artificially slowed down or throttled that's going to be a problem for them. so, i guess i'm with our colleague from hawaii, i'm very much in support of clarifying this now, that we're protected. but i just think to your point, whether you're in seattle, as you said, one of the most connected places in the country, or on the other side of the state, you still want the same thing. you want the efficiency that comes from all these applications. and if that is information in the cloud, you don't want to be slowed down from getting access to it. because otherwise you're not gog to be rning an efficient business. isn't that what so many of the apps are based on? >> well, we are certainly based on greater efficiency, but as senator schatz said, we're not only about efficiency, we're about solving problems.

but i take your points to heart and it's something that our community is very aware of and engaged on. >> thank you. well, i hope our colleagues will take time to really dy understand how much this access is about small businesses, starting something new and being competitive and that's why we need to haveet neutrality. thank you. >> thank you, senator cantwell. senator cortez masto is next. >> thank you, mr. chair. good afternoon, welcome. so i want to touch on an area that i'm really interested in coming from nevada. and it kind of toues on what senator schatz is saying, we should be developing the apps for more than just ordering a slurpee. what is happening in nevada right now is very exciting. i call it the innovation state, because we are actual utilizing the smart technology and transportation apps to

seamlessly really integrate the user's experience in the community. and i think that addresses safety, right, efficiency, and accessibility. what we've seen in northern nevada is the app token transit, which our regional transportation commission put together in washo county. the ride rtc app, and so much more and so much potential. so my question , i'm going to open it up to the panel. i know, mr. reed, you've talked a little about this. can you talk about how you envision these apps particularly with the intersection of smart nologynd smart communities, how you envision or how these will be transforming the future in our communities? >> well, i think it's a great point you raised because you used a key word there, community. if you think about a community, it's about the bonds you have with people, common interest or

locality, and functionally, the way we go about our lives, where we go to church, where we go to eat. and you're looking at the way people use mobile apps connect, it's exactly it's about how they build their coitth web of interaction they e with other people. with states and localities now, how do we have those people who have been outside the community, who don't have access to transportation, who have a hard time with emergency care -- one of the members that we have as built an ai-based chat bot to deal with language barriers for emergency personnel. you don't use the community th center, you don't use the community emergency room if you're worried they won't understand you at the front door. so what we're loobing at, how do you take the brilliance of applications and the back-end power of an application and turn it into something small in t right way? and that is small, meaning that it makes it part of your community. so if we can help with language, with access to facilities, with

transportation, then you've gained what you want, which is an improved community. >> and that's it, right, it's about the individuals living in the community and the impact on them? >> that's correct. >> and it's the internet of things, and it's bringing that connectivity and utilizing it in these-rt wll call them smart communities, whatever you want to call it, it's that interaction. >> yeah. so we've had the pleasure of working with national league of cities on smart city issues, and i recently did a panel with them on this exact topic. and the real lesson to learn that i found from the mayors and others as part of the national league of cities was that idea of community building blocks. and it was very simple. what i heard was transportation, how do you get to and from your house and work and place of worship or other activities. how do you engage with the services the city needs to provide. and frankly, how do you eoy yourself. i thought one of the most profund things i heard, a smart city is also a fun city. it's not boring.

it's not just gray buildings. it's gotta be a city that gives you something vibrant to interact with. so i think that you're right on point. and the question is, how do we use iot and connected cities and how doie become enablers of a better community? >> that's right. and so part of what i also s ppening as i work with our regional transportation commission in nevada and across the country, this new technology and the internet ofthings, as we build this infrastructure, we better be building the guard rails for privacy and security, cyber security. it's the easiest time for us to incorporate those into the new infrastructure. we've talked about coding and the need to ensure that we are teaching the next generation, younger generation in the schools coding. but how do we get the talent on the security side? how do we ensure we're incorporating the security piece of that? that has been my biggest challenge. particularly with somebody who is a former attorney general of nevada and focused on that cyber

security piece. and let me just open up the panel. this has been part of our discussion as well. >> well, you put your finger on what is clearly going to be an increasingly important part of, let's just s the development community's responsibilities. and we are working right now with mayfield who i mentioned in the community colleges, to perhaps co-partner -- to partner with them to put in a cyber curriculum, if you will, that might be a next level of coursework for our people, or to provide it more generally to our existing i.t. professionals to get us all more aware, more capable, what have you. like all the other techniques and technologies that we need to use, it's going to have to be developed. it's going to have to be given a lot of emphasis and investment because it's ultimately an

achilles heel. >> and i would agree with that also. are older technologies that just don't talk to each other. people are still using things that were written 15, 20 years ago, that they now say, okay, we want to share this information between, we're talking about law enforcement and l ocal government, they're trying to talk to each other and share information. they can't right now, because their systems don't talk to each other. so we're having to write code to have those systems be able to be integrated and get one database so you can actually have deconfliction and be able to share information and cross-referenc things. >> we're short 270,000 jobs in the cyber security area. so anything that you can do to help make more nevadans potential people that i can hire, i'm looking forward to that. >> thank you. >> senator blumenthal? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to talk about privacy.

mr. reed, your organization stated after the ftc's enforcement action four years ago, quote, when the punishment rarely changes and never seems to fit the offense, the likeliest outcome is that emerging tech companies will approach ftc enforcement as nothing more than the cost of doing business. you were commenting on the penalties against snapchat over security abuses as nothing more than the cost of doing business. apparently, the same was true of facebook, as we now learn from the recent revelations about cambridge analytica. aren't there models of privacy rules or enforcement that congress should impose at this point? haven't we learned our lesson, and shouldn't we begin, in fact, with the new european rules? the general data protection

regulation that everybody in europe is now going to have to follow. why should americans be guaranteed less privacy than europeans? >> well, a couple of quick things. i think that that comment from four years ago, boy, it made me sound smart. because it's still true today. i think one of the things that congress can do, this committee in particular, the ful committee in general, the think more pressure needs to be put on ftc to do a better job. we're about to have a full slate of ftc commissioners. the group over there needs to look at enforcement from two lenses, one, which is how do you fix a problem, and two, how do you use the bully pulpit to make a difference. and on the gdpr question, the problem with that, we don't know which gdpr it is. less than four weeks ago, we had a series of letters out of the article 29 working party that

radically changed most interpretations of gdpr. so on gdpr writ large, i think there's still a loto seen. what does it mean, how do we implement it. my members are, fac taking it seriously. we have a whole series of blogs on how do small businesses comply with gdpr, because you may have missed my earlier testimony. what's worth noting, every single one of my members, the one-man shops to the largest, they're part of the global economy and they have eu citizens. so we're taking gdpr seriously. unfortunately, with 27 nations, we're not sure what it means in all places yet. >> well, we may not be sure what it means in all places, but we know about the general principle. minimizing data, providing for consent. enabling transparency, that is, consumers should know what data has been collected. there are basic principles here

that the ftc is nowhere near adopting, correct? >> so it's great that it's coming from you, with your legal background. one of the problems we have are the basic principles and how we want to communicate them to our customers and users. and then the legal requirements that avoid liability, whyou brought up earlier. so how do we, for example, on machine learning, data minimization is great in concept and something we helped build and we're really proud of. the know what's inside program with 500-plus developers, thousands of apps for kids, all of which comply with copa. but one of the problems with machine learning, how do i do data minimization but also provide tools for health care? on the point about transparency, that's great, but i spent a year working with ntia and others to try to develop the short-form privacy notice. when we field-tested that with users, they wanted something very different. so it's a work in progress. the best results i've seen so far were what we saw out of

apple, microsoft, and eventually google and just in time notification. meet the customer where they are. tell tm how the data is being used, when it'eing grabbed or n, then tell them how you're going to use it later, and then finally, provide another interface if they want to say, hey, i want that back. but all the points you raise and the key principles you're outlining are important. how we get there and deal with the liability that you raised on the beginning is the part that we're still working on. >> i know that it's a complex area. but my feeling is that the absence of some line in the sand, some bright line, even though in practice there may have to be complexity in all the sub headings of those principles, as it applied to different apps and so forth. that that absence will mean

nothing is done. and five years from now, we'll be having this same conversation. and i just fear that your prediction that the punishment really changing and never fitting the offense, meaning that it's just the cost of doing business, will mean that these app developers will just keep pushing the envelope against privacy interests. so my time has expired. i'm sorry to end on a pessimistic note. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator blumenthal. i need to apologize to senator hassan. she should have been recognized before senator blumenthal -- >> you can blame it on me, mr. chairman. >> okay. and so senator hassan is now recognized. >> thank you, chairman wicker, and ranking member schatz. i'm having an afternoon where i'd like to have roller skates. so sitting still for a couple minutes is a good thing.

to all of the panelists, thanks so much for being here. it's excellent to hear from all of you about what the future holds for the mobile economy. from jobs to nffieies to medical uses, our mobile capabilities really do hold greatpromise. and that's why i work with senator gardner and we're working with others. we introduced the air waves act, legislation to creates a pipeline for the valuable, limited resource the mobile economy depends on, spectrum. dr. oh, you mentioned it before i left to go to my other hearing. the air waves act will promote innovation and incentivize ongoing investment in this space. it will also help ensure that the united states is prepared to engage in the global race to 5 g. do you agree additional spem is necessary to promote the mobile economy of the future? and if you do, do you agree that the steps like those outlined in

the airwaves act are necessary for the mobile economy to thrive and for us to remain a leader in global 5 g? >> yes, absolutely. i think congress is o of the only bodies that can actually push federal spectrum out to the private sector. and i think every legislative act that does so is really good for the economy. and 20 years from now, the app economy is going to be devices and internet of things. so any way that you can release spectrum now with a ten-year time frame, is a good thing. >> thank you. anyone else want to comment? i'm getting thumbs up. thank you for that answer. another reason i am glad to be working with senator gardner on the air waves act, we developed a mechanism within the act to really focus on rural economies and communits. new hampshire has significant rural areas that lack the kind of connectivity that we take for granted in urban markets. and i expect that that's true in

some of the other states represented at this table as well. the air waves act would set aside 10% of proceeds from the auction to deploy wireless in underserved areas. this won't be immediate, but it's a real down payment on the mobile future for america's rural consumers. it could mean billions of dollars for rural deployment, which iious money, even in washington, d.c. do you have thoughts on what other steps we might take to bring the mobile economy to rural areas in new hampshire and throughout the country? and again, anybody who wants to answer. >> i'll pass this to mr. forster quickly, but i'm from an even larger state of alaska, so we know about the distance. and i'll tell you from your state, one of the areas earlier i discussed was the need to look at how to expand tv wide spaces to make it possible to do broadband for rural communities. and i think that the area that's really important to hit on that

is, empowering rural communities with broadband isn't merely about giving them something to look at or play with. it empowers them to stay there and get a job, and in mr. forster's case, they're training people in rural areas that my members can then hire. and they don't have to leave mississippi or my great state to work for my companies. so that's exactly right. empowering rural broadband is not something to make people happy, it's to make people employed. >> thank you. mr. forster, do you have anything to add? >> in the near term, we're highly focused on employment opportunities that exist with traditional employers. but i can tell you that we must provide this capability broadly across states like yours and mine because so many of these people will be in areas that are not serviced well otherwise. and they can't realize the potential of what they might wish to do. i could see a time when if we

are doi a good enough job, we not only meet mississippi's requirements, but perhaps we are providing resources to other states. well, as soon as we're in that position, guess what, we're limited unless we can provide the very, very high broadband access that they're gonna need, living in mississippi.n, but >> well, thank you. i know others have mentioned this issue, but i just wanted to touch on the whole issue of our mapping. the fcc, as you know is working to implement a program called mobility fun phase 2, providing qualifying communities to build our mobile networks. unfortunately, the fcc's map of eligible areas is inaccurate and leaves rural communities in my state, in kansas, and mississippi without much resource. we're working on get the maps updated, however, in the

meantime, what additional advice do you have for rural communities that hope to keep pace with innovation? and what more can we do here at theederalgovernment, states' localities and private sectors tot our rural communities? >> i'd like to note the universal services fund and the other is $4 billion a year. what this group can do is take a mogoing, are we getting the best bang for our buck. and it really is a constant stream of money. so -- and there's an additional $500 million for rural broadband recently where's the m going? so i think mor studies and just more inquiries to the fcc -- status updates and studies. >> thank you, i see i'm over time. thank you, mr. chair. >> thank you, senator hassan.

senator marquee. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i love hearings on mobile technologies. back in -- unbelievably back in the early 1980s, the chairman of at&t was asked, how many people will have a wireless device that they can carry around by the year 2000, and the chairman of at&t testifying before congress said, one million people in america will have that. and we had given them the spectrum for free. that was their vision, at&t. so that wasn't good. we had given another company the spectrum for free. so i got a little discouraged in that vision of at&t. so in 1993, i was able to move over 200 mega hertz of spectrum for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh licenses.

they were charging 50 cents a minute and the phone of the size of a brick. you saw it in gordonekko in wall street. by 1995, '96, everyone had one of these phones in their pocket, flip phone. under ten cents a minute. it was digital, not analog, which is all at&t could figure out up until 1993. but then ten years later, along comes steve jobs and we're moving this way. so we just keep moving, moving, you know, in the right direction. but, you know, one of the key ingredients is going to be having net neutrality on the books for wireless devices as well. because everything is moving over to wireless. and we know the history -- and the history is not good. it's a rich, long history that informs everything that we're doing here, and net neutrality is something that by necessity has to be on the books.

in 2005, a north carolina-based provider blocked the online voice service of vonnage to favor their own service. in 2007, a.p. found that comcast was blog or severely slowing down bittorrent, a website that offered users to share files, but comcast wasn't happy with that. in 2007 and 2009, at&t forced apple to block skype and other similar services so that they would just use their power of netwontrol to push people towards their own services. so the long, rich history is that the innovation comes from the competitors, but when you're in control of the network, your innovation is really in how do you block, how do you stop, how do you push around those who are

seeking to innovate in the space. and it just went on and on, year after year, i can just go through all of the different examples of why net neutrality is needed. so as we move deeper and deeper into this wireless world, can we just go down the line and just ask each of you, did you support the obama era net neutrality rules when they were put on the books? did you support that, mr. forster? >> i'm probably not a really good source for comment there. i -- >> if you don't have a view, you don't have ea view on it? >> i have a personal view. >> what's your psonal view? >> that the net should be free and open as it can be. and it's gonna drive continued growth of our economy as a result of that. >> thank you. dr. oh? >> my view is that title 1 was the regime for the last ten, 12 years, and so i would say title

1. >> mr. reed? >> we support the four principles of net neutrality and are looking forward to having a solution that holds up over the length of time. >> so you would not put the existing rules back on the books, is that what you're saying? >> we don't have a position on which versions of the rules of the books that go on with more than 5,000 members -- >> no, i appreciate that. i just wondered if you wanted the strongest version, that's the version we're going to vote on tomorrow, the strongest version. and you? >> mr. koch. us being a small company, we of course want equal rresentation and we want to have the same speed and access that everybody else, including the large and the small companies. >> yeah, thank you. and as you know, dr. oh, the court struck down the rules when they were in title 1. and the courts instructed the fcc to use title 2. so i know what your preference is, but the courts struck them

down when they moved in that direction. so this is a big historic vote that we're going to have to tomorrow. and again, in the wireless world it's going to be imperativeha you can't beiscriminated against, you can't be blocked, you can't be told what you can do and can't do, because this is like oxygen. you know, to young people. and to people who aren't so young as well. it's now an indispensable part of living in the 21st century. i think if we want to preach openness around the rest of the world, that we shouldn't be trying to teach temperance, we should stand up for it ourselves, and that's why this vote tomorrow is historic, the most important vote we're going to have to keeping the internet as open and free as it could be. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator marquee. i'm not sure you got the answers you were hoping for. but thank you for the questions. senator udall? >> thank you, chairman wicker.

all of you have pointed out that the app economy is an innovative part of the economy and has revolutionized how we navigate our lives. we heard senate marquee talk about that history and overview. wever, innovations raise questions about children growing up in a digital world. as a result, parents are being forced to make difficult choices between their children's privacy, and allowing their kids to engag in an increasingly online world. i, along with my colleague, senator hassan and cortez masto, have written to youtube, about youtube kids app, directing children to conspiracy theory videos and about the need to respect the privacy of children. and i also plan on contacting other major app developers and platforms as part of the effort to ensure that children's privacy is protected. mr. reed, last month, "the washington post" reported on a

study by the international computer science institute at the university of california berkeley, finding that thousands of children's apps on google, playstore, may be violating the children's online privacy protection act. the article identified popular apps such as disney's wrz my water, and the game loft minion rush. what does your association believe the federal trade commission should and can do to help prevent violations of copa? >> well, first of all, it has been one of my most interesting exercises over the more than ten years -- 15 years i've been working on this, to try to figure out the breadth and scope of copa. i testified before senator marquee when he was congressman marquee on copa. one of the things that's been fascinating about the problem is that we have to figure out how to meet parents where they are. when it comes to developers abiding by copa, that's the law.

ask they need to do it. we built a network called the know what's inside program with more than 500 -- it started out called moms with apps, dads became involved as well. 500 developers putting apps out that were fully copa compliant. the interesting part we ran into, the parents found the friction difficult, and the parents were the ones that we had to figure out, how do you engage better. that's when you saw platforms and others starting to take a just in te notification. how do i get the parents' attention when it matters? not at the front end when i load them up with a bunch of consent mechanisms and then the have move forward. so we're looking at a world under copa where, how do we comply with copa's rigors? there are 150 items on the faq at this point and yet also meet parents with the way they behave. that's been one of the most difficult challenges on making copa work. both from a financial perspective, from our members who abide by copa, and also from a parental perspective, which

is, they want to make sure the kid sees what the kid wants to see. so enforcement is really critical, to get to your main thing. the ftc needs to do more and frankly, i think they need to do more publicly. i personally and our association brought examples of copa violations to them. they were solved, but they were solved quietly. the company fixed their terms of service or made the correction and there was no visible flurry in the water. and we think ultimately that hurts the eco system and the ftc needs to use its bully pulpit to make the most obvious offenders and make something out of it so people understand this is what's allowed, this is what's not. but keeping in mind, it's really the parents that we have to make sure that we educate. >> yeah, focusing a little bit and drilling down on the ftc enforcement, in the past two years, how often has the ftc enforced copa violations with app developers? >> so this is the ftc, the

reality of the situation. which is, the ftc has been active behind the scenes in meeting with hundreds and maybe thousands of developers. but in terms of big, public enforcements, i think we're at a pretty small number at this point i time. >> just a handful, you would say? >> yes. but that's not to say that they haven't been doing meetings and bringing people in, and haven't been making corrections. my point to you, which i think supports what where you're headed is, we need to do some of these publicly, so that there can be some understanding by both my community and the parental community what's expected of them, what's expected of us and how do we meet in the middle. >> and many of the app developers identified in the study are based in lithuania and china. do you think most app developers, including ones located overseas are fully aware of the requirements of copa? and that what you're saying would help is the ftc being aggressive, do you think they're

aware? >> it's fascinating because the worlds are converging. everybody is global. and now with gdpr, it's creating a whole new series of regimes. esrb has done a great job on verifiable criminal consent in the united states, but they can't do it in europe. you talked about lithuania and some of the european to'm having those people come to me and say how do i meet with gdpr and copa at the same time? so i think weirdly enough, where we are with gdpr is going to help and i would like the ftc to use its powers to go after specific companies to make that -- make people me aware of their requirements. >> thank you very much. i know i'm over time, mr. chairman. and i'll submit a couple of additional questions for the record. thank you for the courtesies, chairman wicker. >> well, many of us went over time today. because it's such a good topic. i wan to thank the members of

the subcommittee and the members of the panel for a very, very fine hearing today. my staff has told me i have to close with a statement that the hearing record will remain open for two weeks. during this time, senators are asked to submit any questions for the record. upon receipt the witnesses are requested to submit their written answers to the committee as soon as possible. and that's about as flexible as i've ever heard. so thank you very much, ranking member schatz and other members of the subcommittee. and thank you to our panelists. this hearing is adjourned.

[ background chatter ]. be with us tonight for an event from harvard's radcliffe institute. it recently hosted a panel with former state and defense department officials from the george w. bush and obama administrations, as well as "washington post" columnist dadg naseus. among the topics discussed, american foreign policy since the cold war. you can watch it tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. also coming up tonight, author and gun rights attorney steven halbrook talks about the second amendment. mr. halbrook has successfully argued three gun law cases before the u.s. supreme court. you can watch it 8:30 p.m.

eastern, online at c-span.org. coming up tomorrow, education secretary betsy devos will testify about president trump's 2019 budget request for her department. we'll have live coverage tuesday morning starting at 10:15 eastern here on c-span3. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. and today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. now a forum on the global economic and national security implications results from a forced migration of refuges due

to armed conflict, natural disasters other factors. speakers include tom ridge, who served under president george w. bush, dallas mayike rawlings, and former obama administration u. ad reprentative michael froman. >> let's get started. i'm dan rundy. i hold the chair at csis. we're rolling out a report confronting the global forced migration crisis. we had a bipartisan task force, a very diverse group, folks from all over the world and from all sorts of perspectives in the united states on this issue. we're really pleased with the result. i'm particularly grateful to erol yayboke, and aaron