Safe Internet Alliance

Posted by: Safe Internet Alliance

General scope mission statement for the conferences

Set a new online safety and privacy standard for companies to aspire to, and create an environment that enables companies to collaborate on standards and achieve that bar.

• We believe there is strong interest among industry players and regulatory bodies to support these conferences and drive the initiatives forward.

• We believe that if the industry fails to step up, that regulatory bodies will step in - and introduce legislation that will not be in the best interest of the consumers or the industry. This should provide the impetus for companies to participate.

• We believe these initiatives represent a unique opportunity for the industry to create its own destiny. We believe companies will contribute part of their employee's time as well as funds to help accomplish these initiatives.

High level description of steps to achieve our goals

Create two conferences focused on:

1) Safer by Design Policies and Principles, and

2) Safer by Design Tools and Technologies

These conferences will create of a shared platform for safety solutions. Each conference will study the risks and roadblocks to adoption of best solutions, and drive awareness of these solutions within consumer, industry and policy discussions.

Conference #1 - Safer by Design Policies and Principles

The goal of this conference is to establish a simple, straightforward, easy-to-measure consumer safety and privacy standard for which companies can be measured against and aspire.

Executive Summary

In spite of years of discussion, and pressure from advocacy groups, consumer groups, legislators and Attorneys General, the industry still does not have any documentation or agreement as to what defines a respectful relationship with consumers regarding their safety and privacy. Instead of complicated legal documents and wrangling, the Safe Internet Alliance is introducing a clear, easily measurable, consumer friendly standard for user safety and privacy.

By doing so, we intend to refocus the safety and privacy efforts within the industry from a theoretical debate to an action oriented focus. We propose the following draft elements to an industry wide safety standard:

Consumer Internet Safety and Privacy Expectations - a Standard for Respectful Companies

ALL Internet users have the expectation of a safe Internet experience, and respectful companies strive to provide quality safety and privacy options that are easily discovered and used by consumers. Consumer safety and privacy, as well as the safety and privacy of their family on the Internet should be core elements of online product and service design.

In a nutshell, online consumers should have these expectations:

1) Establishing safety and privacy settings should be an element in the registration or activation process. This includes informing you in easily understood language about the potential consequences of your choices. This allows, and requires, you to make your own choices, rather than being pushed into hidden, default settings.

2) During the registration or activation process, articles of the terms and conditions, and privacy policy, that might affect your privacy or safety, or that of a minor in your care, should be presented to you in easy to understand language, not in a long, complicated legal document in small font.

3) You should expect complete, easily understood information and age appropriate recommendations about every safety and privacy feature in a product or service.

4) You should expect to easily report abuse of the products or abuse through the products of you or someone in your care.

5) You should expect a notice or alert if a significant safety or privacy risk is discovered in an online product or service you or someone in your care is using.

6) The provider needs to publish on a regular basis statistics demonstrating how well the company enforces its policies. Such statistics should include: the number and types of abuse reports, number of investigations conducted, and number and type of corrective actions taken by the provider.

7) When services or products are upgraded, you have the right to be informed of new features or changes to existing features and their impact on your - or your child's - safety or privacy in advance of the rollout.

8) When the terms of use or privacy policy of any provider are about to change, you have the right to be informed in advance of the changes and their impact on your - or your child's - safety and privacy.

9) When a provider informs you of changes to their features, privacy policy, or terms and con

10) When terminating an account, your provider should enable you to remove permanently and completely all of your personal information, posts, photos, and any other personal content you may have provided or uploaded, or that has been collected by the provider about you.

Agenda - Safer By Design: Policies and Principles

Join our workshop as Safe Internet releases its’ “Standard Respectful Companies” and brings together leading companies, online safety experts, lawmakers, academics and third party organizations to discuss tangible ways to increase consumer online safety.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

8:30 am – 12:30 pm

Reserve Officers Association, Symposium Center, One Constitution Avenue NE on Capitol Hill

8:30-8:45 Coffee

8:45-9:00 Welcome and Introduction by Safe Internet Alliance President Linda Criddle

9:00-9:15 Keynote by Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA), House Energy and Commerce Committee

9:30-9:45 Remarks by Anna Gomez of NTIA

9:45-10:00 Remarks by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) House Energy and Commerce Committee

10:00-11:30 Facilitated discussion between key discussants

11:30-12:30 Networking lunch

Key discussion areas:

Consumer notification

Standards 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 relate to providing clear information to consumers enabling them to make informed choices about the services they, or minors in their care, use, the safety settings that will best facilitate their experience.

Facilitating consumers safety and privacy settings process

Standards 1, 9, 10 outline when and how consumers can control their own privacy and safety destiny.

Improving consumer protections

Standards 4, 5, 6 describe functionality that helps consumers stay protected through implemented safety functionality, alerts to identified risks, and encourages companies to adhere to their stated safety enforcement policies.

Key Discussants:

Government

Jessica Rosenworcel, Staff Member, Senate Commerce Committee

Amy Levine, Staff, Rep. Rick Boucher, House Energy and Commerce Committee

Neil Fried, Staff, House Energy and Commerce Committee

Joel Gurin, FCC Consumer Affairs Bureau Chief

Katie Ratte, FTC Privacy Division

Jennifer Leach, FTC Consumer Division

Private Industry

Verizon

NCTA

Microsoft

AOL

Cisco

Yahoo

Third Party Groups

Rob Atkinson, President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Braden Cox, Counsel, NetChoice Coalition

Jules Polonetsky, Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum

Conference Success Measures

The outcome of this initiative will be a codified standard that consumers can easily understand and use as yardstick by which to measure companies, and for companies it will be a yardstick by which they can determine level of compliance against the standard. All participating parties commit to work within their companies, bodies or organizations to adopt this standard.

After-Conference follow-up

• Collect final comments to the draft from all stakeholders

• Collect adoption timeline and milestones from participating companies

• Publish final version of the Standard, and publish commitments made by companies per above

• Embark on formal Safe Internet Alliance Seal of Approval Program based on this work

Conference #2 - Safer by Design Tools and Technologies

In parallel with placing consumer safety and privacy demands on the industry, we must help the industry create a shared resource that will provide the necessary tools that will allow the industry players to meet these demands. This is the purpose of the second conference Safer By Design Tools and technologies.

Engaging directly with software designers, online services and hardware manufacturers to strengthen the protection of consumers in a “Safer by Design” approach that creates a repository of best practices that will be maintained and enhanced by major industry players and accessible to all industry players to help raise the bar of safety in software design.

Executive Summary

In the early days of Bluetooth technology, consumers were outraged about the lack of compatibility and complexity of setup of Bluetooth devices. To resolve this, major industry players created the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) which over the course of a few years has standardized the interfaces, compatibility and set up of Bluetooth devices to such an extent that they removed the problem from public awareness entirely.

While dealing with online safety and privacy is more complicated than standardizing Bluetooth devices, we believe that the industry needs to step up and create such an inter-industry resource. This resource will enable industry players to develop services that are safer and respectful of consumer privacy by providing best practices, guidelines and resources (open source, software, sample code, software design and development processes, etc.

This event is a roll-up-the-sleeves, working conference for applicable industry players, technologists, planners, business owners, government and regulatory bodies, legal and policy leaders, and safety advocates.

The focus of the conference is to eliminate the stumbling blocks to consumer safety within services by evaluating the feasibility and mechanics of creating a standards body or special interest group (SIG) that will drive standards, review existing solutions and approaches, and to generate common sense methods for the development and sharing of online safety solutions.

The outcome of this conference will be recommendations and next steps for creating an inter-industry resource to set and maintain the bar for safer software and services.

Agenda Safer By Design: Tools & Technologies

8:30 am - 5:30 pm Friday, October 8, 2010

Microsoft Executive Briefing Center, Redmond Washington

8:30-9:00 Breakfast

9:00-9:15 Welcome and Introduction by Safe Internet Alliance President Linda Criddle

9:15-10:00 Keynote by Michael W. Foley, Executive Director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group

10:00-12:30 Working Groups

Working group 1: Focused on the overarching structure: Identifying the feasibility and mechanics of such a body: what kinds of services would it offer, how funding would work, what membership requirements would be in place for contribution of content and tools, and for consumption of content and tools. Is it a certification body? Just a best practices repository? Will it provide training services? Provide a seal? How will the day-to-day operations be managed? What would sustainability look like?

Working group 2: Focused on technical aspects: What would the technical side of this inter-industry body look like? Would it develop automated and manual certification test suites to validate appropriate safety levels? Would it include online services? For example, this could include: text and image filtering service, reputation repository, user information storage/identity card, etc. How would this body drive innovation and enhancements?

Working group 3: End user interface: What kind of relationship and presence will this body create with end users and government? What kind of embodiment take towards consumers, - transparent (users don't know about it)? Seal that users seek out or a subscription? With government, consulting.

12:30-2:00 Luncheon and Speakers - Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, Brian David, FCC Adoption and Use Director (invited), David Horn, Assistant Regional Director for the FTC (invited) Microsoft representative TBD

2:00-4:00 Working groups continued

4:00-4:30 Networking break as working group leads to solidify recommendations

4:30-5:00 Plenary session: Working group reports on recommendations discussed

5:00-5:30 Closing remarks and networking

Breakout session/ working group leaders:

o Group 1: overarching structure - TBD

o Group 2: technical aspects - Manish Sinha VP, Yahoo! Global Customer Care and Peter Maude, CTO Crisp Thinking

o Group 3 - End user interface - Christopher Burgess, Cisco, and TBD

Key attendees: Participants from AOL, Yahoo, MSFT, Cisco, Crisp, Verizon, others still confirming

Conference Success Measures

Conference produces a blueprint for an inter-industry safety and privacy SIG (special interest group). The blueprint should include description of how the SIG will be funded, how it will operate, and how (if) it would enforce its work. Participating companies commit human resources to help drive the creation of the SIG.

After-Conference follow-up

• Publish SIG blueprints

• Collect companies commitments to SIG staffing and funding and establish the first SIG working group

• Plan and Kick off SIG working group meetings and milestones

Conference Sponsorship Opportunities

Platinum Sponsorship--- $25,000

• Large company logos/name on web site announcements

• Large company logos/name on programs

• Company logo/name included on all news releases

• Large ad in programs for both conferences

• Sponsor logo on 3-5 email invitations, program and signage at the event.

• Premier seating in the front of the room so that during the event, if a question or comment comes up, we may call upon the sponsor to weigh in.

• Sponsor may distribute reports, corporate brochures or similar print collateral.

• Sponsor's booth in prime location (West Coast event only)

• Sponsor will receive the pre-event registration list with names and titles.

• Sponsor will be displayed in our half page, four color ad in the edition of Roll Call the week of the forum - DC event only

• Sponsor’s name and logo will be included in communication with attendees and speakers.

Gold Sponsorship – $10,000

• Sponsor logo prominently displayed on all printed materials and collateral

• Name and logo inclusion on all news releases

• Name and logo inclusion on all web site announcements and emails

• Medium ad in programs for both conferences

• Sponsor may distribute reports, corporate brochures or similar print collateral at the event.

• Booth space (West Coast event only)

• Sponsor will receive the pre-event registration list with names and titles.

Silver Sponsorship - $5,000

• Ad in event program

• Logo inclusion on all news releases

• Logo inclusion on all web site announcements and emails

• Sponsor may distribute reports, corporate brochures or similar print collateral at the event.

Other sponsorship arrangements can be considered, contact the Safe Internet Alliance to learn more.