Good afternoon everyone and thank you very much for attending our event on kids and on line privacy. My name is a token in the policy director put it like to start by thanking the staff for securing the room for us to have this important discussion today. Briefly by way of background for those who arent familiar with the family suggested an International Nonprofit organization making the on line votes ever forget to their families. We will discuss one of the most important issues facing families kids privacy on the internet. In the United States the collection and processing of childrens data has primarily been regulated by the childrens on line Privacy Protection act and its corresponding rules for over 20 years. This law long preceded Facebook Snapchat youtube. In the last six months we have seen numerous posts including change in the way childrens information is regulated. At the beginning this summer the federal trade Commission Published a request for Public Comment on implementation. With all of this activity in mind they released a white paper which you should have received underwent today and you can download on our web site. We believe limiting the Data Collected from children and preventing on line marketing to those under 13 however there understanding we create engaging educational content for children we Want Companies to be incentivized to protect childrens information rather than to ignore their data. With that in mind i will hand it over to Stephen Balkam who will moderate the panel this afternoon. Sara thank you very much am i. Thank you to the team lead by emma morris put all this together a fantastic in such a sure period of time in the middle of the summer so they can do that. Also probably its pretty obvious cspan is here. We are live so when questions come around just be aware that you could well be taken up on broadcast tv. Im the founder and ceo of the on line familys safety institute. It is want to mention we are also has taking. I know its not brief but its a good so please use it and of course this video at cspan is doing right now will be archived at cspan and we will also provide a link. Im actually going to ask this esteemed panel to introduce themselves. Starting with you mark, phuket tell us who you are and where you work and maybe a tweet links description of your work in this space. I am mark eichorn assistant director in the Privacy Division of the ftc. I have been in that job for about 10 years. With the ftc does this protect Consumer Privacy and reinforce policy work around it so we held a workshop on Educational Technology issues and will have a workshop is that tober. Thank you very much. Hi everyone thank you for me. My name is john falzone. I run a Certified Program which is an ftc approved safe harbor program. I worked with companies primarily in a entertainment and toy spaces to ensure they are complying with the law and regulations and generally doing right by consumers. Joseph wender senior advisers senator ed markey when his congressperson in the late 1990s was the author and we have been active in the last 20 years and then im pushing all sorts of kids privacy and advancement issues and most recently introduced a 2. 0 bill which i am sure i will be discussing during this panel. I am jim halpert i cochaired the global privacy and cybersecurity practices at dla piper and back in 1998 as a senior associate i helped negotiate and draft language that ed markey wound up sponsoring with conrad earns and richard dry and that became the law and was there at the creation and i think filed seven sets of comments in the 2000 rulemaking. I was there at the creation and hope to provide context over time. Thank you all. Its quite a breadth of experience both past and present and no doubt well into the future this issue is not going to go away. Mark let me start with you. What is led the ftc to see comments on the rule now then it some is some of the time . Before answer that i will spam speaking for myself and not for the commissioner of the commissioners. Oh come on. I speak for one of them and im not going to say who. [laughter] we do this predatory review process of all of our rules and guides every 10 years typically and that is on a routine schedule. With copa we revise the rule in 2013. Substantially to add personal information that wasnt really connected when the rule was first implemented or when the statute was first passed and expanded the rule in other ways to persist on identifiers but also third parties collecting information from sites when they have actual knowledge that they are working with kids. We hear about copa a lot. There are a number of statutes that reinforce and rules that we enforce and there is a lot more discussion and talk about coppa then many of the others. There is been a lot of change in technologies. The workshop we held, the time the statute was passed there was no mention of the statute whatsoever for School Senate race this issue of if somebody is using an on line service in the School Context can the teacher provide incentive for not on those kinds of issues . We have sort of address those in the statement for the rule but we have never really address them more directly in the rule itself and when we held the workshop a couple of years ago on these issues its clear that this industry is accelerating. Theres a huge amount going on there and we thought about sort of making sure that we address that issue properly and giving public ideas on how to do that. I would just say to highlight one more issue are one more change obviously a lot of us use voice assistance and when the commission revise the rule in 2013 week had coverage of audio collected from a kid. That raises questions about if you have a voice assistance that is directed to kids for some reason and you are choosing it to do voice activated searches essentially then we realized that was an issue. We issued a discretionary enforcement policy that basically said if you use it for something quick like that and immediately delete it, we are not going to be a case involving that. Thats another issue where we want to get the publics input to see how that might be integrated into the rule and also other issues about voice assistance and other issues with smart tvs and that kind of thing that we want to address. Talk a little bit about the process. Where coming up in august. What happens next and when are you going to deliver your thoughts . It will be a while. The comments are not due until october 23. We are having the workshop as i said october 7 and we expect we will get a lot of them put there as well. Once we get those comments we will sit down and go through what we have got an review the input and then figure out where to go from there. Just to make clear what this is, there is sort of a process for rulemaking where we put out particular stats basically regulatory language that we proposed. This is one step before that which is that the information gathering phase. One thing that could come out of this is the next step as we could end up making a regulatory proposal. How are you currently working with companies to create content and taking a step back from looking at it how are you currently working with the momandpop shops who are creating an Educational App for instant . Well, one of the things we do is we have a hotline for coppa where companies can reach out to us and sort of propose an issue to us or ask questions about the rules. We see this as trying to facilitate compliance with the rules as opposed to catching somebody in violation. So that is one avenue. We also have consumer and Business Education that we put out and the faq on coppa where we sort of tried to make the rules as clear as possible. There are several ways we do that. John for those of us who are not familiar with safe harbors lets do a little bit of that level said. What is safe harbor . First of all safe harbor is part of the legislation. The safe harbor regime is intended to be providing independent oversight and enforcement of the acts act but on the selfregulatory basis. In other words its not mandatory for any company to be a part of safe harbor. Something you should choose whether or not they want to work with the programs. The esrb is one of the oldest safe harbors in one of the oldest coppa safe harbors but there are seven companies that provide safe harbor services. So the companies that work with us have chosen to become part of our program. They say depending on the program some sort of fee for services and our job is to make sure that those companies are first and foremost complying with coppa and the amended coppa role. Many of our programs from the safe harbor standpoint is her primary objective. Everyday my team is in web sites and apps that our members are putting out and they are looking through them just as any user would. They are doing scans to see whats happening on the back and making sure that one practices of that member are in line with what coppa requires an two, the policies that they put out in other words the disclosures that they are making are reflecting those practices. Talk a little bit about how you guys promote the creation of content for kids particularly the under 13 market which has endeavored a lot of creators. Talk about that. Its an incredibly difficult market to be frank. Most of our members dont really even get into that market. The majority of the web sites and apps. Its difficult to monetize and complying with the law. We are lucky that some of the companies that we work with have strategies for monetization that go beyond advertising and apps. Those are your traditional ways to monetize within an asp or on a web site. Some of our members especially in the toy industry, its not as fairly about that for them because they have brands that they are just look to keep that they can monetize in other ways but its a difficult market to be in and make money in but it is one where if you have the right longterm view you can be very successful in that. Our job is we start working with their members as early as we can on the process. If they have something thats under 13 and a true child directive censor something thats going to be a be directed to an older audience we start working with them as early as we can to develop process to start flagging issues that might be coming. The companies that work with us no coppa and they are trying to do the right thing by working with us but they dont always necessarily what everything is. Then you have companies that succumb to us when they have Just Launched or are planning to launch something. Those Companies Often think that they know everything and they are compliant with everything and when you get into it its extremely complicated. There are a lot of issues that you just have to work through but you can work through them if youre willing to do it. One of the most complicated issues that we come across when talking to companies is the distinction between actual versus constructive knowledge. What is this extraordinary distinction between actual and constructive knowledge and how it relates to this coppa rules . Just by way of background coppa is triggered when the on Line Services either directed to children under 13 years old or the operator of the on line service has actual knowledge that the user is under 13 years old. That is coppa in its current state in the way that it works. Actual knowledge is what it sounds like from a legal standpoint. The company has to actually know that user is under 13 years old. The most typical way a company would know that is if the user has identified under 13 years old. A lot of web sites apps contain the registration process or some sort of age process so user may identify they are under 13. We have all seen those popup. User might identify as under 13 and automatically at that point coppa is triggered regardless of what the web site is pretty could be a site that is intended for parents but if they collect the users age than coppa would be triggered. Constructive knowledge would be a situation where the operator should have known that the user was under 13 so that could be based off of any number of actors of information that they might have available to them. Its sort of broadens the scope. Okay, thank you. Joseph votel was your reaction and your bosses reaction that coppa would be reviewed much earlier than expected . Our reaction was cautious optimism. It was very supportive when the rules were reviewed back in 2013 and he clearly sees the landscape has changed in the six years preceding. So things like biometrics, things like genetics, things like voice systems and although things that mark discussed, its clear that they are much more prevalent in the ecosystem today and that the commission should be taking a look at that, so thats good. I say cautious optimism because we dont know yet what the outcome of this world making will be. If in the end the rules are strengthened after really good thing but uis have to be wary of potential bad players or others coming in and attempting to weaken them. Until we see what the final product of the process is i cant say if we are going to be happy or sad. I dont want to prejudge the process because its good they are certainly starting it. I had the privilege of testifying to the Senate Judiciary only a month or so ago on the topic protecting innocents in the digital world. During that hearing the tc came under a barrage of criticism. Presumably you watch that hearing. Do you share the level of criticism for the ftc or what more could the ftc do in this case . I think particularly in the kids privacy space the jury is still out. As Everybody Knows in this room there is a case pending about youtube and whether they violated and what the fine is going to be and what the new obligations from going to be placed on google. That agreement has not been released and has not yet been announced so i think what they do and that particular case will be indicative of the position they are taking on how serious they are in enforcing coppa. I do want to say. We will see what they do. Im sure you talk about senator markey zone proposals which politico mention three of them this morning. Tell us in twiddling descriptions. Three different bills, the trifecta bills if you appeared the first one is a coppa 2. 0 bill which he is produced on a bipartisan basis with the republican senator from missouri what that bill would do in short is to be consistent with both california and gpr would create is that the larger acronym . Yes arra Data Protection agency. What we do is create and Everybody Knows coppa is 12 and under and senator markey as well as others believe that 13, 14 and 15yearolds need special protection. It still need special protection so what the bill would do is extend protections of 13, 14 in 15yearold who have also changed the knowledge standard. It would and targeted events for kids in the does create an eraser button consistent with the law in california that allows parents and children to erase information that they themselves have posted so as not to violate the first amendment. The other two bills on the camera act which is the children Media Research advancement act which is directing nah to do a fiveyear study on the impact of technology on children. Its obvious that kids are totally glued to these things now so what are the emotional, cognitive and the physical impacts of this incredible increase in technology by children . The last bill which has not been introduced yet is called for kids act. The kids internet design and safety act. That bill is seeking to give the ftc new authorities to address exactly what i was just describing, the practices by many web sites to glued children to the device but all the strategies they use with regard to autoplay and other functions to sort of bring kids in an picture they dont stop watching but i have a 3yearold and it works very well on him. He will not stop watching the device unless they were put out of his hands. The that bill we would be introducing it in sometime in september or october we will address what we do about that. Parents are equally glued. Oh at the problem. This room is doing pretty well. And looking around and this is a testament to how good this panel is. There arent that many people on their phones right now. We do watch the tweets from time to time. Do you think coppa should be modified or a total rewrite of the law . You arent going to throw coppa that . No. We think the markey holly bill we are seeking changes, modifications to the 12 and under regime and then we are seeking new protections for 14 and 15 but we are not looking for a complete rewrite. They have been effective but as evidenced by the tc starting their process now and my bosses billiken be improved upon because the world. Looks different than it did when it was passed in 1998. This is a perfect segue to you. When you wrote the bill in 1998 when we were all much younger, 20 years ago how has the world changed . 20 years ago i had a 1yearold child who is now driving up this afternoon to enter his senior year of college so its a good long period of time. We have seen really what was the nascent internet age where in particular forms of verified parental content were very limited to a world where people authenticate all the time on their devices for a variety of different things. I think that offers opportunities. One of the barriers we have heard from joe before is with coppa is that its so difficult to get verifiable parental consent that the idea of creating, getting into a coppa compliance framework, its a real terrier and discourages investment in the content of activities for kids. It could be very positive. On the other hand one can imagine in a world where a syndication is much easier and straightforward that may be less of a if he will Walled Garden were not much can grow practically. So i think this potential rulemaking resents an opportunity to make coppa realistic, realistically reflect that people are not going to give away their credit card for verification in todays day and age with all the information about data but to allow a much easier authentication with a lower barrier for parents to agree for their younger children to have learning opportunities. Including issues like what is content that is harder for children. The commission has done a lot of