mr. barrow. the gentleman waives his opening statement.all time for opening statements has been completed and we now turn to our very distinguished panel and our first witness, the chairman of the federal energy regulatory commission which overseas wholesale, electric transactions and transportation in the united states. he is also co-chair of the demand response collaborative launched jointly by ferc and the national association of regulatory utility commissioners. we thank you so much for being here and your first appearance before our committee. we welcome you sir. whenever you're ready, please begin. >> good morning. >> could you just push the microphone a little bit closer and turn it on. >> good morning. thank you, mr. chairman. ranking member upton, members of the subcommittee. first, i have two preliminary issues and first i'd like to recognize and thank my colleague commissioner muller here today and i would request that my full testimony be placed in the record. >> without objection, so ordered. >> the fall into summary of the te

mr. barrow, for two minutes for the purposes of opening statements. >> i thank the chairman. i'm going to waive my opening but i want to thank the ranking member for his congratulations of the democrats. in solidity of mr. pitts i want to say those of us who sit in the stands and cheer also serve. thank you very much. [laughter] >> the chair now recognizes the gentleman from kentucky, mr. whitfield, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. we certainly appreciate all these witnesses being here today as we explore this very important subject. as online companies use an array of sophisticated and ever evolving data collection and profiling applications, it is important that we focus on protecting privacy. today i think we'll be hearing about privacy policies of various companies, the data retention that they do. and as we proceed and think about legislation, it's imperative that we use a balanced approach and proceed with caution. and i think if we do have any legislation, it certainly should apply equally to all entities throughout the internet eco-system. and i'll yield