let me introduce danny weitzner. prior to this, danny worked at mit and taught at mit and before that at the worldwide web consortium, the governing body for web standards across the internet. before that he was with the electronic frontier foundation. with that let me introduce danny weitzner. [ applause ] >> thank you, tim. thanks to everyone. let me add my appreciation to the co-chairs of the internet caucus. it's great to see many of you here. our colleagues from the hill, colleagues from the ftc, from different departments, from the press. it's certainly been a very broad policy discussion we've had over the last couple of years since we came in as an administration. it was clear to us from the beginning we needed to take on these questions of consumer privacy protection. not on because of how important privacy is as an american value but also because many of our key initiatives, many of the priorities that we came in with as an administration, whether it's health care reform or environmental conservation or educ

his name is danny weitzner and we are thrilled to have him. this is part of a three-part privacy series we are doing on government proposals for privacy and in this really important digital area. several weeks ago we have the director general justice of the european commission here to brief the congressional staff on their data directive, which has been in effect for the past 50 years but they have an update that they will brief the congressional staff on. we have the audio on our web site, the european commission opposing this update to their private regime and frankly many many many u.s. companies applied basically by the framework established by the european commission just because of the data across "the atlantic." the second one is today's briefing and in a few weeks we hope to have the federal trade commission, commissioner julie brill brief staff on their privacy, what privacy framework report that they released a couple of weeks ago so hopefully these three together are enter meshed and part of the same construct a privacy and frankly

i would like to introduce danny weitzner. >> thank you, chair. and you too everyone. you have my appreciation to be the cochair of the internet caucus. it is great to see many of you here -- colleagues from the hill, collects from the ftc, colleagues from different departments and the press. it is -- it has certainly been a very broad privacy discussion that we have had over the last couple of years since we came in as an administration. he was very clear to us from the beginning that we really needed to take on these questions of consumer privacy protection, not only because of how important privacy is as an american value, but also because many of our key initiatives -- many of the priorities we came in with as an administration, whether it is health care reform or environmental conservation or education reform, all depend in important ways on innovative and sometimes unexpected or unfamiliar uses of personal information. so we really wanted to make sure that we had a strong privacy framework across the wide range of sectors. i want to start with the grand bureau on