By Alice Borrelli, Director, Global Healthcare Policy

Congressman Honda’s Health Care Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act   fosters further innovation and entrepreneurship in the health information technology sector through:

• Loaning providers funds to implement non-EHR health related technologies, and to buy services to optimize their use (and value from) technologies that they’ve purchased and  

• Instituting a Challenge grant for developers to offer new solutions for speeding care  anywhere, no matter the  location, that  will evolve new ideas, and spawn new businesses.

Congressman Honda is taking a comprehensive view of the value of Health IT and how the many different solutions ranging from telehealth to physician tablets to portable EKG’s are  giving clinicians, patients and caregivers new tools to impact our health at reduced costs.

While the bulk of health care is delivered in hospitals and clinics, today’s acute care-centered system is ultimately unsustainable.  Congressman Honda’s bill incorporates the use of technology and incentives to developers for creating a U.S. approach that opens the field to faster development of more personalized and decentralized care. 

We applaud the Congressman’s leadership in advancing better health and better health systems. 

Very few people want to shop and eat with those restrictions.   However, this would be the reality if food safety regulators created an environment similar to the current data privacy regulatory environment.

Our economy is currently going through a transformation in the use of data that has the potential to improve lives by solving problems in healthcare, energy, transportation, efficiency of government and security.   As one example, having access to location data from cell phone networks can help better time highway entrance gate ramps, thereby reducing traffic jams, saving energy and decreasing emissions.  It is not difficult to come up with hundreds of similar scenarios.

Some privacy pundits, though, would like us to restrict this use of data to situations where individuals have fully reviewed detailed notices of the privacy implications, and have explicitly consented.   This is the equivalent of having to sign a twenty page legal document before eating a bowl of soup.

Others look at the burden this puts on individuals, and the value to society from using the data, and conclude we must relegate privacy to an outdated activity like milling your own grain or butchering your own meat.  However, considering privacy obsolete fails to recognize that individuals need to trust their use of digital devices, or they will shy away from using them in new and innovative ways.

Intel sees the tremendous potential of “Big Data” to help solve the large social problems of our day, and produce a generation of economic growth.   We develop products at the core of this future, and it is our mission to make certain those products connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.  To do this, we need to both safeguard privacy and security so individuals can trust their use of technology, and make certain any necessary laws and regulations do not burden people with understanding all of the detail about how their data is processed.

In their book “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think”, Ken Cukier and Victor Mayer-Schonberger provide a template to accomplish these two synergistic goals.  They call for shifting the burden away from individuals’ need to read detailed privacy policies, and to move it to organizations to demonstrate they are accountable for using the data appropriately.  Individual consent should still play a significant role for data uses which are more likely to result in significant harm (e.g., use of data to locate a child).   In most instances, though, we should take the burden off of the individual and place it where it belongs, which is on the organization processing the data. Regulators should require those entities to demonstrate their accountability, and punish bad actors harshly.

We can live in a world of legal documents before every meal, or one of varied and inexpensive cuisine.  It is time we move to a regulatory framework of accountable and appropriate use and more fully realize the potential of data.

This week begins a dialogue we call The Innovation Economy: Information Revolution.  With our remarkable partners, the Aspen Institute and the Bipartisan Policy Center, Intel will help convene experts in a variety of fields who share our sense that data has the potential to unlock unknown opportunity, but who also realize that smart policy will play a critical role.  Join us at The Innovation Economy. 

It is an exciting time again in the international trade world.  We soon should have a very experienced trade negotiator as our next U.S. Trade Representative (USTR).   And, no matter what industry sector a business may operate in, USTR is negotiating an ambitious trade initiative that will facilitate market access for that company.  However, most of these initiatives discussed below may never materialize without the renewal of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). 

Trade Initiatives in the Works Will Empower the U.S. Economy if a High Standard is Maintained, Which Requires Renewed TPA Authority 

Formal negotiations between the U.S. and EU governments on a massive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will begin in early July.  In the meantime, negotiators are arduously preparing based on mutually agreed objectives.  Several weeks ago Intel filed comments in response to USTR’s request for input on how to maximize the value of TTIP.  Our comments suggest that the U.S. and EU develop an Innovation Initiative Framework that sets a global standard on how to fully liberalize trade in ICT goods and services to spur significant economic growth.   On May 16th, I testified in a U.S. House Ways & Means (W&M) Trade Subcommittee hearing on TTIP on behalf of the Coalition of Services Industries and the Business Coalition for Transatlantic Trade. Among other points, our written submission explains in detail why negotiators need to liberalize all modes of services in all sectors, especially digital services that are experiencing exponential growth. 

Speaking of services, the nearly two dozen countries that have begun negotiating the new Trade in International Services Agreement (TISA) convened in Geneva in early May to discuss liberalizing restrictions on the movement of people across borders.  The next negotiation session at the end of June likely will focus on cross-border data flows and state-owned enterprises. 

Last week, the 17^th round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement concluded in Lima.  Intel has participated as a stakeholder in most of the rounds held so far, pushing for enhanced protection of trade secrets, a right to cross-border data flows, reduced regulation of commercial encryption technologies, and other provisions to enable innovation to flourish. 

This week, another round of negotiations is being held on expanding the zero tariff Information Technology Agreement.   Intel and other businesses are providing support for broad coverage of ICT products, as the data are clear: eliminating tariffs increases demand for ICT, and the more dissemination and use of ICT products throughout an economy, the greater the productivity and innovation gains.  As this effort amends an existing agreement, it likely is the only trade initiative in the works that can be concluded without TPA. 

TPA Must be Renewed and Modernized ASAP 

Most of the new U.S. trade initiatives require renewal of TPA, which expired in 2007.  Without TPA, trading partners have little incentive to put their best offer on the table or accept the tough provisions that USTR is currently negotiating for the benefit of U.S. workers, business and consumers.  Why would a trading partner ever agree to make difficult concessions – e.g., remove its favorite, novel non-tariff barriers — since, absent TPA, the U.S. Congress can easily alter the agreements that USTR negotiates and ask for more after negotiations are concluded?   

TPA serves as the rudder for U.S. trade policy.  A strong TPA will set forth key negotiating objectives and provide processes for Executive-Congressional consultation to ensure USTR has the authority and ability to negotiate trade agreements that are highly relevant to U.S. interests. 

Federal legislators with trade responsibilities are anxious to get TPA done.   Back in February, W&M Trade Subcommittee Chairman Nunes announced at a meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) how important it was to get TPA done.  

Chairman Devin Nunes and Greg Slater at NAM’s International Trade Policy Subcommittee

In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch already are conferring on provisions for a TPA bill.   It is time.

The negotiating objectives in the expired TPA, 19 USC § 3802, need to be updated by addressing new trade distortions.  These should include, among others, cyber theft of trade secrets; restrictions on digital services and data flows; and emerging localization barriers that condition market access on developing domestic intellectual property, R&D or manufacturing.  We will address these and other critical objectives in detail in a subsequent blog post.

Intel fully supports these amendments and applauds the Committee for making these common-sense improvements to address how employers use the H-1B system. The amendments by Senator Hatch require that employers make every effort to hire U.S. workers before relying on foreign talent but ensure they will be able to use the H-1B system, achieving an important balance of U.S. worker protection and access to the high-skilled visa system.

This bill is encouraging for advanced U.S. manufactures like Intel, for the prospect that America will continue to lead the world in innovation, and for our nation’s economy. We encourage the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve the bill.

Paula Bruening comes to Intel from the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, a global privacy and information security think tank located in Washington DC. At the Centre she focused on policy issues related to cross border data flows, emerging technologies, government use of private sector data and cyber-security. While at the Centre she was closely involved in work at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and convened capacity building workshops in Vietnam, the Philippines and Turkey. Paula worked closely on Centre initiatives related to accountability-based models for data governance and the responsible use of “big data” and analytics. She’s testified frequently before Congress and the Federal Trade Commission on domestic and international privacy issues.

She also brings to her new position her experience as counsel for the Centre for Democracy and Technology and her work in government at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, US Department of Commerce, where she served as an advisor to the Clinton Administration on issues related to online privacy, security and commerce. Paula began her career in public policy at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment. Her papers have appeared in publications in the US and Europe, and she has spoken frequently at events in Asia, Europe and the Americas. She earned her law degree at Case Western Reserve School of Law and holds a bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University.

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 signals to the American technology companies that lawmakers understand the global competition we face for top talent and the current shortage of qualified U.S. workers.

This bill would make significant improvements to both the non-immigrant and immigrant sections of the law. It would increase the number of H-1B visas that are used to employ foreign-born workers on a temporary basis and adjust the future cap levels based on economic and market factors, eliminating the current arbitrary visa cap. The bill would also allow many spouses of H-1B holders to obtain work authorization, which can be tremendously important to the financial health of these families

The authors of the bill recognize that it is counterproductive to educate foreign born students at our U.S. universities and then send them home to build businesses, develop intellectual property and create jobs. They included an exemption of certain categories of people from the annual green card limit, including advanced-degree graduates in the STEM fields from U.S. universities. Not only will these individuals not count against the green card limit but the bill will allow them to skip the H-1B process and apply directly for a green card when they receive a job offer. This will allow employees to compete on a level playing field, without job restrictions and uncertainly about their future. It also increases the chance that these individuals will contribute to American innovation.

In addition, this bill would “recapture” employment-based visas that went unused over the last decade for bureaucratic reasons and distribute those to people are who are currently waiting in line for a green card. This will significantly reduce the backlog of people who have been waiting years to become permanent residents.

Another important provision is the removal of the “per country cap,” creating more fair, first come first served process. The cap has distorted the visa system for years and created unreasonably long green card wait lines for applicants depending on the country in which they were born.

We have long held that improving the pipeline of high skilled, technical workers in the U.S. requires a short and a long term approach. The proposed visa reform will make a great impact now and the inclusion of a mechanism to fund math and science education in the United States will fulfill what is needed in the long term – more students graduating from U.S. high schools with their sights set on a career in STEM. Intel has spent a billion dollars over the past 10 years to advance K-12 math and science education. We are happy to contribute more through the inclusion of a new fee on green card applications dedicated toward STEM education and training.

While we are supportive of the legislation, we are reviewing the bill in detail to determine how some provisions, including new requirements that would be placed on H-1B users, will impact Intel. We will work with the Senate Judiciary Committee to address any concerns and seek ways to strengthen the bill even further.

The high skilled employment visa reform in the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 is a positive contribution toward building our innovation economy. We appreciate the hard work of the eight Senators who crafted the bill, are encouraged by the progress this legislation represents and will continue to work to achieve immigration reform this year.

Google’s current court case at the European Court of Justice centers on the issue of how to provide an ability for an individual for something to be forgotten. In this case, the Spanish data protection authority searched for a mechanism to allow individuals to have Google no longer provide links to certain information. The case is about more than just requiring organizations to take down inaccurate information. Instead, the regulator required Google to also stop pointing to information that may have been true. The case raises questions of: 1. When is it reasonable to require an internet company to obscure something? and 2. How should an individual make such a request? What follows are some thoughts I have on those questions. These ideas are just some rough thinking, and need a broad spectrum of stakeholders to come together to develop the concepts. I hope this blog entry furthers the discussion.

I. When is it reasonable to ask for Obscurity?

As I noted in my blog entry about Gavin Newsom’s book “Citizenville”, many commentators have argued that the best way for individuals to protect themselves is “not to do bad things”. However, that philosophy ignores many situations where it is more than reasonable for an individual to want to obscure true information about him or herself. I have taken a stab at a partial taxonomy of the categories where it would be reasonable for an individual to request obscurity. The list below also includes illustrative examples:

1. Remorse – I did a bad thing but truly feel sorry, paid my debt and learned my lesson. (a drunk driving conviction followed by 20 years of sobriety and exemplary driving)

2. Unexpected Consequences – I did a bad thing, but could not have expected it would cause the results. (an inconsiderate breakup with a girlfriend, who then commits suicide)

3. Impossible Situation – A classic dilemma, where there are no good choices (choosing between hitting the car in front of me or swerving into the pedestrians on the sidewalk).

4. Took a Risk – I tried to do something good, but it did not end well. (start-up company fails; applied for a job with another company, but did not receive an offer).

5. Others Perceive as Bad – I think it is right, but others will discriminate against me for it. (protesting at a rally for a controversial political cause; or a teacher expressing a political opinion on a blog that is then read by students).

6. Sensitive Data – I just don’t want people knowing. (bank account information, ss#, health data, or the fact I am planning a surprise party)

7. Bad things (that aren’t so bad) – (jaywalking, driving 5 miles over the speed limit, college sophomores drinking alcohol)

8. Taken out of context – Information that looks bad out of its original context. (Placing some punk rock lyrics in a blog about the use of profanity in music, and later the lyrics are quoted as the thinking of the individual).

9. Victims – Information about how an individual was a victim of a crime (domestic violence victims).

These categories contain mostly truthful information about the individual (excepting when something is taken so out of context that it no longer can be thought of as true). Also, the concerning uses of this information are much broader than for employment or providing credit. For these two reasons, the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not solve the need for obscurity in the U.S..

II. How can individuals request obscurity?

Completely “forgetting” these categories of information, or opting-out of all tracking of them, may be impossible. However, each of the categories above argues, to varying degrees, for the limited ability for practical obscurity. To preserve the Right to Fail, we do not need absolute deletion of information. Instead, we just need to make it more difficult to find. I am a fan of the work on the concept of the privacy benefits of obscurity on which Profs. Evan Selinger and Woodrow Hartzog have written.

Given third parties might place harmful information on the internet, without consent, individuals should have some type of legal and practical remedy to have this information obscured. There may be some possibility of doing so under US tort law, such as the public disclosure of private facts. However, filing a lawsuit to enforce this right will give limited practical ability for most individuals to have the information obscured, at least in part due to the cost of hiring a lawyer. Similarly, there are technical tools and commercial services to promote obscurity (e.g. Reputation.com), but those are only available to those who can afford the solutions.  For individuals who do not have the financial and technical resources to create the obscurity, how could we create a legal mechanism allowing individuals some ability for obscurity, and thereby a preservation of the Right to Fail?

What if, Congress introduced legislation to create a public-private partnership to further obscurity? This law could focus on a co-regulatory approach, taking the best of industry led efforts, while still allowing for strong government oversight and enforcement.

The law could require any company operating internet content searching services (search engines, but likely also social networks) and data brokers (a term which would need to be defined) to create an industry self regulatory body (the “Center”) to make decisions on what should be obscured. The FTC would be given oversight responsibility over the self regulatory body, and enforcement power against those who do not participate (or who do not follow the remedy instructions).

The Center could be an independent non-profit, and could be funded and staffed by the regulated companies. The Center could be a central point of contact for individuals who believe they have a legitimate case for the obscurity of a piece of information (see the examples above). The Center could develop guidelines for each of the above categories to help make decisions of whether “practical obscurity” is warranted (e.g. it would not show up in internet searches and would be deleted from data broker profiles).

Cost to the company needing to obscure the information, the potential for harm to the individual, the relevance of the information, whether the individual originally consented to the use of the information, whether the use of the data is outside of the original context of why it was provided, and the impacts to third parties could all be captured in the guidelines as criteria for consideration. The FTC could approve these guidelines and have some oversight in how they are applied. Each entity participating in the effort would submit an annual review of their follow through on obscurity requests from the Center. The Center would submit an annual review to the FTC to show categories of obscurity requests granted and denied. This would still allow the initial collection/posting of the information (thus hopefully decreasing first amendment concerns), but would provide the individual an opportunity for limited and legitimate obscurity over time.

There may not be enough political will to put such a Center in place. However, what would it take to bring the necessary stakeholders together to discuss this and other ideas of how to provide reasonable and practical obscurity for individuals? If we are able to do so, we can go a long way to preserving the Right to Fail.

I was thinking about this “right to fail” as I recently read California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s thought provoking book Citizenville: How to take the town square digital and reinvent government.   Newsom provides a powerful and important contribution on how technology innovation can transform the way individuals engage with government.    Newsom articulates in the book that “government today is paralyzed by a fear of failure.”  If government could embrace the entrepreneurial spirit that failure is required, then we could encourage individuals to take risks and bring innovation to our democratic institutions.  This idea of needing to create structure for a tolerance of failure intuitively makes sense to me.  However, Newsom comes to some conclusions on privacy with which I do not agree.  He takes a position on privacy best summed up by his quote of Guy Kawalski (Apple’s former chief evangelist) , “Don’t do bad things”. 

Newsom tells the story of how he was criticized on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle for emails he sent to Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  The transparency required of Newsom as a public official had a chilling effect and he cut back substantially on his use of email afterwards.  He said restricting the use of email particularly impacted efficiency, and this effect of increased transparency “has made government and diplomacy much more challenging and ultimately less honest”.  He reflects that with the direction technology is headed, we will all have to face this type of transparency in our online activities.  However, he writes, “(f)or millennials, the notion of going back to a world where privacy reigns is unthinkable”.   He believes the functionality from the technology is too powerful to be compromised by concerns for privacy.  

Newsom writes, “I have a three-year-old daughter, and when she grabs my iPad and starts swiping through, playing games and looking at pictures and changing the music, it’s absolutely clear that new generations see the world completely differently than my generation does.”  I have to agree the new generation sees the world differently, but judging from the “Danger – Keep Out” sign on my 10 year old son’s bedroom door, I do not think it is “completely different”.  

We do not live in a world where privacy is either on or off.  Instead, we need to look for new solutions to give us the power of the technology, but also preserve the efficiency and honesty Newsom noted he lost.   The examples in Citizenville of how technology can transform democracy are inspiring and all easily within our reach.  As with most other aspects of our lives, technology itself does not create benefits or risks, but instead those are created by how the technology is used.  We have the obligation to find creative ways to use technology to get the full benefits of the functionality, while also protecting the individual’s right to fail.  There are some possible improvements we can look towards that would foster innovation and economic growth by providing people a protected place in which to take risks and innovate.  In my next blog entry, I will explore some ideas people have for accomplishing both of these goals.

Intel applauds the recent announcement from the leaders of the U.S. and European Union to launch negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).  We are particularly pleased with the broad, strategic scope of the TIPP.   President Obama, European Council President Van Rompuy, and European Commission President Barroso have emphasized that the agreement will “not only expand trade and investment across the Atlantic, but also contribute to the development of global rules that can strengthen the multilateral trading system.” 

The greatest value of a transatlantic agreement to Intel will be the precedent it can set across the globe on sensitive policy issues.  Other governments are more likely to follow when the EU and the U.S. speak with one voice on emerging trade, investment and innovation irritants, as the transatlantic economy accounts for nearly half the world GDP and 30 percent of world trade.   The Final Report of the U.S.-EU High Level Working Group (HLWG) on Jobs and Growth raises several global issues of interest to Intel. 

First, the HLWG recommends that the U.S. and the EU reach bilateral agreement on globally relevant rules, principles or modes of cooperation on “localization barriers to trade.”   We strongly agree with this recommendation.  Some governments are requiring businesses to locate R&D, IP and/or manufacturing within their borders as a condition of market access.  If not contained, these emerging localization requirements will interfere with global supply chains that are essential to the ICT industry.  They also will significantly impede the competitiveness of many EU and U.S. companies heavily dependent on emerging markets. 

Second, the HLWG Report also recommends that the transatlantic negotiations address, among other items, “significant IPR issues of interest to either side” to “contribute to the progressive strengthening of the multilateral trading system.”  Again, we agree, and point out several IPR issues of major interest to both the U.S. and the EU that should be considered: 

• The U.S. and the EU must enhance trade secret protection.  In the Information Economy the constant transfer of ever growing amounts of data on multiple digital devices enables trade secret theft to occur anywhere at any time, and it needs to be appropriately deterred. 
• The parties also should set global principles on preventing forced technology transfer through broad compulsory licensing, disclosure of sensitive information as a condition of market access, or otherwise.

Third, the HLWG Report suggests that the parties enhance their “cooperation on conformity assessment and standardization issues globally.”  These challenges also should include curtailing the proliferation of unnecessary, prescriptive technology regulations that may be based on international standards.  Such technology mandates are on the rise as more governments try to build up their local ICT infrastructure and industries, or overreact to legitimate privacy and security concerns.  

Redundant and/or burdensome certification requirements also are troublesome, as they can delay or even block the entry of imports.  Moreover, an increasing number of certification programs require unnecessary confidential business information that the receiving authority often is ill equipped to safeguard. 

Intel provided other examples in formal consultations that impede innovation and trade.  As the HLWG Report concluded and as stated by Commissioner De Gucht and Ambassador Kirk, “a comprehensive agreement that addresses a broad range of bilateral trade and investment issues, including regulatory issues, and contributes to the development of global rules, would provide the most significant mutual benefit of the various options [] considered.”

We look forward to working with U.S. and EU trade authorities to develop a comprehensive and creative agreement that enhances both transatlantic innovation and global competitiveness.       

By Alice Borrelli, Director, Global Healthcare Policy, Intel Corporation

Last week at the United Nations, more than 400 delegates from around the world met at the GETHealth Summit to discuss the question, “how do we GETHealth in emerging markets through ICT for the frontline healthcare worker?”

Public and private sector leaders of health programs, educators, donors, governments, and the IT industry came together equipped with our technology solutions, eLearning modules, best practices and social media reach and found a distinct difference at this conference. The time for pilots and PowerPoint presentations is over. They were replaced with a dynamic conversation, systems design, mapping in-country progress and an announcement of a serious fund raising initiative. 

We were reminded of the critical importance of training healthcare workers who augment care in African countries with less than five physicians per 100,000 patients. Can a combination of digital learning, access to clinical decision support tools and patient records provide the needed training that will lower those shocking statistics? All while ensuring that mothers and children have a chance for not only survival, but a healthy live course? Can this become the new norm?

The use of these standards facilitates data exchange among communities, hospitals and regions. Not everyone in the session agreed, and challenges to these recommendations were thoughtful and important to consider in emerging markets. These questions were brought to the discussion: “should we pursue a lighter standards approach?, and are there emerging technologies that will ensure the connection of training materials to health records and population health data repositories that will give a more in-depth understanding of the region’s healthcare challenges and treatments?

WHO and the ITU are convening standards bodies, governments, ICT companies and NGOs to discuss these issues and we are encouraged by their progress. Intel is supporting these efforts by providing expertise and technical assistance. We would go one step further and propose to the NGOs, foundations, governments and corporations that have been supporters and funders of frontline healthcare worker training, that we unite in our commitment to standards and the interoperability of both technology and programs.

Can we agree to require future funding be tied to the demonstrated ability for programs and technology to work together at every level before the funding is released? Should standards based designs be a requirement for the deployment of the digital delivery of education for frontline healthcare workers? It’s an approach that we hope will be debated as the next level of funding is rolled out through the leadership of Jeffrey, Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, which we expect to be the turning point for achieving the 1 million X 2015 goal.

Sincere thanks to Bob Bollinger and the leadership teams from Johns Hopkins Center for Clinical Global Health Education, the Global Partnerships Forum and the governments of Ethiopia, Norway, Rwanda and Uganda for convening this inspirational and impactful conference. We are ready to go beyond Powerpoints.

What questions do you have?

 More information on the Intel skoool™ Healthcare Education Platform, the company’s open access multi-media platform to strengthen the skills of midwives and community health workers maybe found through the partnership organizations: UNFPA, and USAID’s mPowering Frontline Health Workers.

By David Hoffman, Raj Samani and Christoph Luykx

Today, the European Commission and the EU’s External Action Service (EEAS) presented its response to the growing threats presented in cyberspace by releasing a policy document (the “Communication”), outlining the longer term required actions together with proposed legislation (the “Directive”).  These actions demonstrate the European Union’s commitment and resolve to address these threats. Together with the recent creation of the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in The Hague, today’s proposals further paves the way for a strong coordinated response against these 21^st century threats. Intel and McAfee welcome the EU’s resolve addressing ongoing and emerging challenges in cyberspace and the recognition that this requires global public and private cooperation.

Digital threats are very real and ever growing. McAfee labs routinely collect an immense amount of data on cyber threats, and publish statistics that highlight the threat to all citizens from nefarious actors.[1]. For 2013 it is anticipated for the volume, and complexity of threat to grow, according to McAfee’s Chief Technology Officer for EMEA, Raj Samani. At the heart of the fight against malicious actors is technological innovation. McAfee’s Global Threat Intelligence (GTI) provides a comprehensive, real-time intelligence service that enables McAfee products to protect customers across all vectors. “Whatever the regulatory response, we should ensure that such technological innovation continues to be at the forefront of efforts to out-innovate the malicious actors”, according to Mr Samani.

The EU’s proposals highlight the responsibility of private actors in the overall securing of our Global Digital Infrastructure. We agree that private organizations bear responsibility in ensuring that the products and services they bring to the market have been designed with security in mind and industry standards of care have been met. Like many responsible companies, we have a strong Security Development Lifecycle in place to ensure our products are being evaluated against possible threats. We should however avoid specific regulatory mandates for specific solutions or processes that would slow innovative technological solutions and hamper industry and government’s ability to respond to the dynamic threat environment. According to David Hoffman, Intel’s Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy officer, global standards should remain to be the guiding light for an effective global policy environment. “When looking at issues of product assurance, secure development and evaluation, these should be addressed through existing methods such as the global evaluation methodology like the Common Criteria and the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement or industry-led codes” said Mr Hoffman.

One part of the proposal that will draw significant attention is the introduction of a security breach notification system to further incentivize both public and private organizations. “Such systems can play a role in increasing awareness and responsibility”, says Mr Hoffman, “but they need to be well thought through to avoid unintended consequences such as over-notifications”. Forced notifications of vulnerabilities should be avoided. “The system as proposed will need to be further fine-tuned to ensure it will be a workable system”, says Mr Samani.

Intel and McAfee strongly welcome the focus of the proposals to not only increase public private cooperation but also to further strengthen the baseline requirements amongst public authorities. Promoting harmonized baseline capabilities across all Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) in the EU is a crucial goal. The proposals should seek to build and furhter strong coordination, including the sharing of threat information, via a strong joint public and private cooperation.

Finally, we strongly welcome the highlighting of the role of awareness raising campaigns. Educating and informing people of the threats, ways to protect their systems and their responsibilities contribute to the overall security of the GDI and should be a cornerstone of any effective cybersecurity strategy. We look forward to further build on existing awareness raising activities such as cybersecurity awareness day and McAfee’s ongoing initiatives.

Intel and McAfee are committed to continue to lead the discussion on how to address the ever changing threat landscape. We are looking forward to working with all stakeholders during the legislative process to ensure a strong outcome.

David Hoffman is Intel’s Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer

Raj Samani is McAfee’s EMEA Chief Technology Officer

Christoph Luykx is Intel’s European policy lead on Privacy and Security

On Monday, Intel in partnership with The Aspen Institute convened a thought provoking roundtable discussion addressing the topic, “Innovation Blueprints: Key Investments for Long Term American Success.”

The event, moderated by David Leonhardt, Washington Bureau Chief at The New York Times; featured, Dean Garfield, President of the Information Technology Industry Council; Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress and included approximately thirty leaders from academia, government, private sector and media in addition to our host Walter Isaacson, President and CEO of The Aspen Institute.

I had an opportunity to participate and while the discussion was diverse, addressing a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues, there was an overwhelming sense that as a nation we need to be more strategic in both our policies and long-term investments if we are to maintain U.S. national competitiveness in the long term. 

Below are three common threads from the discussion that I believe are critical to a long-term strategy for American innovation and economic growth:

1. Investing in our Workforce: In a time of economic challenge, increasing global competition and rapidly advancing technology, investing in the education of our young people is critical to American competitiveness and sustainable economic growth – particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) that will drive future innovation.

And conscious of our history, we need to remember that the next great American inventor isn’t always home-grown; both Intel and the United States have a rich history of immigrant innovators. Smart reform of our high-skilled immigration policies will ensure the U.S. continues to serve as a beacon, attracting the best and brightest from around the world to study, start businesses and create jobs here in America.

2. Building Public-Private Partnerships: Public-Private investment and partnerships have played a critical role in bringing private sector ingenuity and efficiency to bear in meeting national challenges throughout our history. The path to and ultimate achievement of the Apollo project is a perfect example which secured American technological leadership for decades to come.

As competition increases from around the world, the U.S. needs a permanent structure in place that encourages and supports public and private research and development in the basic sciences and emerging technological frontiers that will ensure American innovation leadership in the years to come.

3. Fostering Investment & Entrepreneurship: As the dynamics of the world economy continue to shift, we need to ensure U.S. trade and tax policies are in-line with our national interests and globally competitive, attracting foreign investment and encouraging American companies to build and create the jobs of the future here in the United States.

Looking 15 years into the future, we will undoubtedly see innovations that hardly seem possible today. Already we’re seeing the beginnings of this world though 3D printing, driverless cars and the increasing instrumentation of the world around us. If we take the long view and make the critical investments now, we can pave the road to achieving this future, and foster American innovation and continued economic growth in the process.

The discussion forum we held this week is the latest in a series of events Intel has convened over the years in partnership with The Aspen Institute on the crucial elements the U.S. needs to address to foster innovation and keep the U.S. globally competitive. Learn more about The Innovation Economy.

A bipartisan group of eight senators unveiled a set of principles yesterday to guide comprehensive immigration reform.  The principles call for a fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently in the country, reform to our legal immigration system including for highly skilled employees, an effective employment verification system and an improved system for admitting the workers we will need in the future.  While the principles don’t include many details they do provide a bipartisan framework for reform that has been absent in recent years.

The President will be in Las Vegas today to give his first policy speech about immigration reform since the November elections.  He is also expected to lay out principles for reform that will likely be similar to the plan put forward by the group of senators.  We have not yet seen the President’s remarks but expect high skilled immigration reform to be a key element of his plan.

And today in Washington, 10 leading Senators took the most concrete step toward reform by introducing wide-ranging, high-skilled immigration legislation that addresses nearly all of the key issues that are necessary for companies like Intel to hire the workers we need, when we need them. 

The bipartisan legislation, led by Senators Orrin Hatch (R), Amy Klobuchar (D), Marco Rubio (R), Chris Coons (D), is known as the Immigration Innovation Act of 2013.  The bill recognizes the value highly skilled foreign workers bring to the U.S. economy and the role they play in maintaining the innovation and creativity that define American companies.  And it acknowledges that while we must make it easier for employers to hire the workers they need today, we must also dedicate the resources to train the skilled workforce we will need tomorrow. 

The Immigration and Innovation Act would improve every step of the high skilled immigration process.  First, it would allow foreign born students at U.S. universities to declare their intent to immigrate and provide greater assurance they can stay in the United States after they receive their degrees.  It would increase the number of temporary H-1B visas available each year, allow spouses of H-1B employees to work in the United States, and provide greater job mobility to H-1B visas holders.  And it would increase the number of employment-based green cards by recapturing visas that were unused in previous years and exempting certain categories of applicants – such as U.S. science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) advance degree holders – from counting against the annual cap. 

The bill would increase fees on the issuance of visas by $1,000 – roughly a 40% increase over what companies currently pay.  But the money that is raised would be targeted by the bill toward state-based STEM education initiatives with the hope of improving the pipeline of American students trained with the skills necessary for today’s high tech economy.  Intel has spent over a billion dollars in the past decade to advance STEM education.  We applaud this measure and will continue to do our part.  

Despite bipartisan interest in tackling immigration reform this year, many obstacles remain.  Large and challenging questions, such as how to deal with the millions of undocumented residents in the United States and whether the current annual level of immigration is sufficient, loom over the debate.    Partisan differences are sure to be exposed and difficult compromises will be necessary.  But the current focus on immigration reform presents the best opportunity we have seen in years to make needed fixes to the employment side of the immigration equation and the Immigration Innovation Act of 2013 is an excellent start.

- Selina Kyle “The Catwoman” from Dark Knight Rises

As I noted in my previous post, Anne Hathaway’s character in the Dark Knight Rises shows us the value of providing individuals with the ability to rehabilitate their online reputations, and learn from their mistakes. Intel is honored to promote Matt Ivester’s book LOL…OMG (click here to download a free copy from January 25th – January 29th) to put practical tools in the hands of students so they can still exercise the freedom to explore, take risks and innovate.

Making mistakes is a critical component of innovation. John Stuart Mill wrote convincingly about the hazards of a culture in which liberty is curtailed to a point where individuals slide into self protective conformity out of fear of the tyranny of the majority. Jeremy Benthem discussed the coercive ability of the Panopticon (the building plan of an institution that allows a guard to watch all of the inmates without them being aware they are being watched) as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.” Michel Foucault took the Panopticon one step further in Discipline and Punish, when he extended the concept to all social spheres. Foucault raised important questions of what it means to punish individuals for their bad acts, and the role of public humiliation to chill future bad behavior. We know we can chill bad behavior by observing individuals, but how much positive behavior will it also chill?

I have written in this blog of the need to separate the Right to Privacy from the Right to Steal or the Right to Hack. We need to allow individuals a sphere of privacy in which to try new ideas, concepts and business ventures without an undue fear of the consequences of a mistake. We need what I call the “Right to Fail”. This Right to Fail should protect individuals so they can challenge themselves and attempt what others say is impossible. This concept or protecting failure has been at the heart of Silicon Valley for decades, and is the foundation of our modern innovation economy. Actually, preserving individuals’ ability to take risks, while protecting them from undue consequences has existed for millennia. For example, there are concepts of debt forgiveness in the Old Testament. Debt forgiveness has involved both punishment (debtors prisons in Europe) and rehabilitation (allowing an individual to build back a good credit rating over time).

Modern bankruptcy laws have increased their focus on allowing individuals to make limited mistakes and then rehabilitate themselves. These laws do not offer a “Clean Slate” program to wipe away all record of failure, but they do mitigate the harm to the individual or company from having taken a risk. However, these laws have also been modified over time so they do not allow individuals to use them as cover for bad acts (e.g. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCA) of 2005). Similarly, we need a system in privacy law that will allow the Catwoman a reasonable chance to start a new life, without shielding her from reasonably suffering the consequences of her bad decisions. Creating a Right to Fail that allows for rehabilitation, but still adequately encourages personal responsibility and good judgment is at the root of the discussion around the EU Right to be Forgotten proposal. It appears more discussion is warranted, as optimizing for the Right to Fail, while not creating a Right to Steal, is an enterprise requiring great nuance, precision and adjustment over time.

The Panopticon and the history of bankruptcy laws provide useful lenses through which to analyze the European Commission proposal of a Right to be Forgotten. The task in drafting a Right to be Forgotten should have as its goal to allow individuals to escape from information about them that should never have been made public (the embarrassing photo (the LOL…OMG problem)) or that is no longer relevant (the position taken on a university term paper decades ago), while still allowing individuals to know important information about people with whom they engage (credit card fraud databases). This exercise may in the end be more about obscurity than forgetting, as Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger point out in their excellent article in the Atlantic.

Would Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman really need a “Clean Slate” if there was a mechanism to ensure major search engines would not display the evidence of her misdeeds? If so, who should be trusted to make decisions about what level of obscurity is healthy for society? Who should review each request?

The proposed General Data Protection Regulation (the Regulation) attempts to break new ground on this issue. Section 3 of the Regulation covers Rectification and Erasure. Article 16 covers the rectification of inaccurate information, while Article 17 proposes provisions on the “Right to be forgotten and to erasure.” The current EU Data Protection Directive (Directive), which the Regulation would replace, also attempted to address this issue of what is an appropriate amount of forgetting. In the Directive these issues were handled under Section V “The Data Subjects Right of Access to Data”, which includes Article 12 (b) which requires “as appropriate the rectification, erasure or blocking of data the processing of which does not comply with the provisions of this Directive, in particular because of the incomplete or inaccurate nature of the data”.

The Right to be Forgotten in the Regulation is a significant expansion on the access and deletion language in the current Directive, and is potentially closer to Batman’s Clean Slate program. Under the Regulation’s language individuals would not only have the ability to withdraw consent for information they had previously provided (it is unclear how this would work in many instances where a service provider has agreed to provide a service based on the consent to provide the information), but also to demand deletion of information that relates to them, but was provided by a third party. This demand for deletion can be made for a number of reasons, but arguably the most important is Article 17 (1)(a) that “the data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed.”

The Dark Knight Rises helps us see why this construction of the Right to be Forgotten will be difficult to implement. If the Catwoman objects to internet blog postings about her prior criminal convictions, one of the arguments she could make is that such stories are no longer necessary, and she should be able to have them “forgotten”. She would argue that the stories are old, and the information is no longer necessary or relevant to inform the public. The Regulation would put the onus on the Data Controller to determine whether this information is still necessary. The Controller would have an exception under Article 17 (3)(a) to exercise the right of free expression, but this would only apply to data processed “solely for journalistic purposes or the purpose of artistic or literary expression in order to reconcile the right to the protection of the personal data with the rules governing freedom of expression.” The Regulation allows for the European Commission to create additional rules, but this does not seem to be an area where detailed implementing regulations and/or delegated acts will provide predictability or clarity.

Let’s say Selina Kyle objects to the accessibility of news stories about crimes she committed while she was under the age of 18. She complains to both the newspaper websites, and to the search engines, saying she wants the information “forgotten” (deleted from the websites) or at least “obscured” (not to show up as results in web searches). Many countries have juvenile justice systems which seal records of crimes committed by children. It seems to follow that some system of online reputation rehabilitation is consistent with the same values that are behind the juvenile justice procedures. However, society needs to remember some misdeeds to make certain similar events do not reoccur. The digital memory becomes our collective conscience. Additionally, tt is difficult to understand how completely forgetting would even be possible. In their paper “The Right to be Forgotten – between expectations and practice”, the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has expressed concerns about whether the Right to be Forgotten proposal can be technically implemented.

When do we have a Duty to Remember which outweighs the Right to be Forgotten? Who should make the decision? Should all the records be deleted or obscured? Is deleting all records even possible? What are the free speech implications?

Some argue the language in the existing Directive is better. As noted above, the Directive’s language allows requests for deletion for data or processing which “which does not comply with the provisions of the Directive”. Article 6 (1)(c) of the Directive provides personal data must be “adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which they are collected and/or further processed.” Because of this (and other language in the Directive), many have argued for some time that the existing Directive requires a “reasonable” level of deletion for information which would have a “disproportionate” impact on the individual to which the personal data relates.

As we need to optimize for the Right to Fail and Freedom of Expression at the same time, this type of flexible reasonableness standard may be the best legislation can offer. This standard would allow the Catwoman to make her case that her bad acts are behind her, and databases which have profiled her as a felon should now be modified. Such a flexible high level access and deletion obligation would still be difficult for companies to interpret and implement. Interpreting the standards will be equally challenging for courts and regulators.  Also, it will not solve issues with how individuals can request deletion from other websites and organizations which have subsequently gotten access to the data (e.g., information aggregators). However, the Directive’s access and deletion requirements at least would provide a flexible principle based method to optimize for both rehabilitation and punishment.

Regardless of the legal obligations, there are practical steps individuals can take to obscure information on the internet. Matt Ivester describes many of them in LOL…OMG, thereby helping teenagers understand the risks to their online reputation, and how they can protect themselves. Commercial services like Reputation.com also provide opportunities to obscure information on the internet. These types of educational efforts and services provide individuals with opportunities to protect their Right to Fail. Still, these systems of self help are imperfect, and depend in large part on individuals having the knowledge and resources to use them. The current debate around the Right to Be Forgotten asks important questions regarding how to provide all individuals with more control over their online reputation. The Right to be Forgotten seems at times a wonderful aspiration, but a troublesome obligation.

Sadly, in the real world it does not appear Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne will live happily ever after, as the length of her illustrious career as the Catwoman will convincingly argue against a “clean slate.” However, the practical steps described above may be enough to empower many individuals to get enough obscurity to remedy the LOL…OMG problem, and also preserve their Right to Fail.

“There’s no fresh start in today’s world. Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what you did. Everything we do is collated and quantified. Everything sticks.”

- Selina Kyle “The Catwoman” from Dark Knight Rises

The Batman Dark Knight trilogy’s exploration of privacy issues has been well covered by other commentators, such as this. However, as we approach Data Privacy Day (January 28th in case you have “forgotten”) it is useful to look at the creation of the global permanent record on the internet. In the movie, The Catwoman wants to obtain access to the “Clean Slate” software, which will erase all record of her crimes from any public database, allowing her to “start over”. The Catwoman’s situation raises important social questions about the degree to which individuals should forever carry a mark for mistakes they have made. We cannot let the Right to Privacy turn into a Right to Steal. Processing personal data to protect against theft or other malicious acts is critical, such as to provide adequate cyber-security. However, a culture where everyone can discover mistakes we made decades ago, would be invasive and unduly chilling.

Instead of the “Clean Slate” program, perhaps we should recommend Selina Kyle download a free copy of LOL…OMG on Data Privacy Day. Matt Ivester has updated his book to create a high school edition. Intel and Reed Elsevier will be working with Matt to promote five days of free downloads of the e-book version. LOL…OMG is a practical explanation of privacy risks and how to manage online reputation. One Miami teacher recently said about the book, “I wish I could make Mr. Ivester’s book mandatory reading for every parent, student and educator. It’s a landmark achievement, and I would be honored to help spread the word.” The book recognizes not only will young people make mistakes, but we want them to make mistakes. How else can they attempt to reach their potential. Click here during January 25th – January 29th to download a free copy of LOL…OMG.

Intel is honored to play a role putting this practical book’s guidance in the hands of parents, teachers and high school students. Please help us by spreading the word about Data Privacy Day and this promotion.

In my next post, I will take a look at whether the EU proposal of a Right to be Forgotten could help Selina Kyle in her attempt to start over.

Intel has multiple goals for privacy laws. We believe privacy is an important individual interest, and one needing robust legal protections. It is also critical for our business for individuals to trust their use of technology. We need individuals to have confidence in their use of the many features and services in which we invest significant capital to develop. In addition, Intel is a company founded on the concept of the social benefits of innovation. Privacy is a necessary pre-requisite for innovation.

Innovation can be the tide lifting all boats. The economic benefit of an innovation economy is not a zero sum game between countries. However, the tide will only lift those boats without holes. Each country must look at its policy environment and determine whether it has put in place the right laws and regulations to encourage innovation. This includes robust intellectual property laws, investment in education, tax benefits for research and development, immigration policies rewarding higher education and technology skills, and also robust privacy laws. Innovation happens when individuals have protected environments in which they can collaborate and take risks. A lack of privacy has a natural result of encouraging conformity, as individuals have concerns that any failure or controversial opinion will be placed in a profile about them, remembered forever, and used to discriminate against them. The technology sector has created a global digital infrastructure providing an unprecedented ability for individuals to engage with each other across generations, countries and cultures. We need to make certain we provide adequate protections so individuals will fully use the free exchange of ideas enabled by this infrastructure. This exchange of ideas will create increased innovation, economic growth and jobs for the floating boats.

With these goals in mind, we can evaluate the current state of both the US privacy environment and the Draft EU Data Protection Regulation, and see many commendable features. Both the EU and the US have recently published defenses of these privacy models in “myth-busting” pieces. Each document includes important points to clear up confusion about the existing privacy environment in the US and the proposed regulation in the EU. However, it is important to note there are still holes in both of these boats. I have spent considerable time on this blog discussing the need for comprehensive US privacy legislation. The current US administration released a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights earlier this year. In this document they noted the US framework lacks the following two elements: “a clear statement of basic privacy principles that apply to the commercial world, and a sustained commitment of all stakeholders to address consumer data privacy issues as they arise from advances in technologies and business models.” The administration then called upon the US Congress to pass legislation to patch these holes in the US boat. Intel echoes that call.

Similarly, the EU Commission recognizes there are issues with the current Regulation draft, but they are issues which can be fixed. Commission Vice President Vivienne Reding delivered a key note address at the conference mentioned above. In her speech, Ms. Reding noted changes will be made to the draft. She defended privacy as good for innovation and economic growth. She also made clear the Commission’s interest in modifying current provisions which create undue administrative burdens or uncertainty for the private sector.

Intel’s analysis of the current draft notes several areas for focus in making changes. In follow up conversations with stakeholders we understand there are robust discussions taking place on all of these issues. Here are a few of the priority holes, which can and should be repaired:

• The importance of cyber security. The EU recognizes the Right to Privacy. This is different than the Right to Steal, the Right to Hack, or the Right to Attack. We all need to recognize some of the greatest risks to privacy come from malicious attacks on legitimate and responsible stewards of personal data. Processing personal data to provide reasonable cyber security is a legitimate interest of both Controllers and Processors and should be a lawful basis for such processing. Inclusion of Recital 39 is helpful, but this issue needs language in the Regulation text.

• Moving from file clerks to privacy professionals. The current Directive requires both company privacy staff and supervisory authority employees to spend too much time processing paper, and not enough time counseling the business or taking enforcement action against bad actors (respectively). Doing away with notification and registration is a good step. However, replacing registration with an obligation in Article 28 Section 1 to document “all processing operations” will create an unreasonable burden on companies and do little to protect the privacy of individuals. Further, given the resource constraints of the supervisory authorities, it is likely 99% of these documents will never be reviewed by a regulator. The Commission needs to change these provisions to focus more on documenting the controls processes, and requiring companies to stand ready to work with supervisory authority investigators.

• Allowing the Privacy Impact Assessment to be effective. Intel has been doing Privacy by Design for over twelve years. We have integrated our privacy assessment documents into our Secure Development Lifecycle, which is the process we use to develop our products. These assessment documents need to be flexible and enable discussion between the privacy staff and the business. However, Articles 33 an 34 of the Regulation potentially place a huge burden on these assessments, both by creating prescriptive detailed requirements for a Data Protection Impact Assessment, and by requiring in Article 34 Section 6 the company to produce the document to the Supervisory Authority. If the Commission feels a document must be produced for this purpose (of which I am highly skeptical of the utility), then the scope should be substantially reduced and the requirements decreased to make clear, 1. These documents should only be produced in rare circumstances, and 2. These documents are different than those assessment documents used by the privacy staff to integrate privacy into the product and business processes.

• Avoiding Over Regulating. The Commission should be commended for proposing a principles based, technology neutral framework. However, there is concern about the many mentions in the text of Implementing and Delegated Acts. Detailed regulation is not an appropriate way to increase data protection, as providing reasonable privacy is highly contextual. Many of the references to Implementing and Delegated Acts should be removed from the text. A better method for contextual interpretation is already provided in the draft in the creation of the European Data Protection Board and its responsibilities under Chapter VII’s co-operation and consistency goals. If the Commission can make certain this Board will operate in a transparent manner, with input from all stakeholders, then the Board will provide a better mechanism for the interpretation of the principles to individual contextual situations and new technologies.

• Sanctions should be fair and not decrease investment in Europe. The current proposal in Article 79, which authorizes sanctions up to 2% of annual worldwide turnover, is excessive and will create a disincentive for large organizations to launch new products and services in the EU. In Section 3 of that Article, the text includes a carve out for situations of a first and non-intentional non-compliance. This carve out provides that no sanction will be imposed and it will instead result in a written warning. However, companies with more than 250 employees are not eligible for that exemption, when they are processing the data for a commercial interest. Even with the exemption, 2% of worldwide turnover is excessive. In addition to doing away with the concept of worldwide turnover, the exemption should be available to all organizations.

After the excellent set of presentations at the conference, and the exchange of ideas during the week, I am hopeful the Commission will patch these and other holes. We owe it to the people who want to trust their use of technology to get this right.  Let’s continue the substantive discussion, as I welcome your thoughts and comments.

By Alice Borrelli, Director, Global Healthcare Policy, Intel Corp

Congratulations to the Bipartisan Policy Center (BCP) for hosting a constructive summit on Health IT to release the report: Accelerating Electronic Information Sharing to Improve Quality and Reduce Costs in Health Care.

The report laid out progress that the Office of National Coordinator (ONC) is making through Meaningful Use Stage 2 with solid recommendations to advance interoperability.  To reach the goals of electronic information sharing which support improvements in the quality and cost effectiveness of care, the BCP calls for a national strategy and long term plan for standards and interoperability, as well as improving the accuracy of patient matching.   

The report suggests that public and private sector efforts demonstrate the attributes of a voluntary consensus standards body as outlined in the “National Technology and Transfer Act.”   Given the success of the Open Data Center Alliance to develop associated reference architectures and voluntary standards for cloud computing, we would suggest that this process could be a model for building a consensus to drive data exchange and deliver what physicians and patients need.  And to be explored through a future blog, perhaps a common data model that all vendors could implement could be developed through an industry/government alliance.

During the BPC event, Dr. Mark Blatt, MD and Intel’s Global Medical Director, offered collaborative workflow as a means to remove waste, delay and cycle time through the exchange of data.  As one example, Dr. Blatt highlighted how the marketplace could collapse the delivery of patient care, especially consults from hours to minutes, when using real time data exchange through videoconferencing and data sharing on devices such as a tablet.  In fact, we need to think about applying Moore’s Law to healthcare where we double the access to patients while cutting the costs in half – maybe not in the 24 months that technology moves, but at a much more accelerated pace than today’s practices.  And, at the same time ensuring that this patient information is securely transferred to the clinicians and patients needing the data. 

Meaningful Use Stage 2 Final Rules, which go into effect in October 2013 for hospitals and January 2014 for eligible professionals, will change the dynamics of Electronic Health Record (EHR) data exchange toward a more robust system with industry standards required for certification:  HL7, LOINC, SNOMED-CT and IHE profiles.  Additionally, certification requires EHR technology to be able to receive, display and transmit, using standards for more than 20 different types of data needed for clinical decision-making.  A summary of care record for 50% of care transitions (exchange) must include data elements for problem, medication and allergy lists which overlap physicians’ preferences.

As healthcare moves from a volume to value based system, the business case for data exchange that facilitates care coordination is being made nationally through ACO’s, Independence at Home practices and bundled payments.  With the current direction from ONC, coupled with recommendations from BPC, Health IT will provide the underlying framework to ensure the success of these programs.

Key findings from the Doctors Helping Doctors survey of over 500 clinicians showed that:

• More than 70 percent cite the lack of interoperability and an information infrastructure—along with the associated costs—as major barriers to electronic information sharing.
• Only 22 percent of clinicians surveyed perceive the lack of a business case to exchange information to be a major barrier.
• When asked about their information needs for transitions of care, a majority of clinicians agree that medication lists, relevant laboratory test results and relevant imaging test results are essential to clinical decision-making.  
• They prefer that only the information they view as “essential” be  “pushed” to them, with the ability to access the rest of the information through a “query.” 

By Christoph Luykx, Public Policy Manager Europe, and Daniel Keenan, Public Policy Intern Europe

This past week Intel submitted its response to the European Commission’s consultation on the future of EU-US trade and economic relations. Inputs from Intel and other stakeholders will help enable the European Commission and other policy-makers to gather detailed views on what priorities would be integral to any strategic, future trade and economic relationship between the US and the EU. This includes the ongoing bilateral discussion on trade but also a potential trade agreement between both economic powerhouses. 

As outlined in an earlier blogpost, Intel strongly encourages the EU and US to negotiate a realistic but comprehensive, cross sectoral, 21^st century trade and investment agreement that can not only benefit both our economies, but also serve as a role model for the rest of the world. To achieve this goal, Intel supports a flexible framework, set up to allow the negotiation of general principles that apply to all industries or goods and services, and includes specific chapters that apply on a sectoral basis. In taking this approach, slow progress in removing barriers for one sector will not hamper progress in another.  

We believe there are a number of priorities that should be addressed in the ongoing bilateral discussions as well as in a potential comprehensive trade agreement: 

• The EU and US should set the example bilaterally and in their dealings with third countries on how governments can ensure cross-border data flows while protecting legitimate privacy and security concerns. Therefore, we believe that one of the chapters in a comprehensive trade agreement should be a Transatlantic Services and Cross-Border Data Transfer Agreement.
• Promoting a robust IP system with efficient and effective enforcement mechanisms, protection of trade secrets, and a “markets, not mandates” approach to copyright that would govern all content protection issues.
• The need to continue coordination on various (cyber)security policies that third countries are creating. The goal is to ensure that these don’t disrupt the Global Digital Infrastructure (GDI). We specifically would like to see a chapter reflected in the new comprehensive agreement on guiding principles and best practices regarding security requirements and their relationship to market access issues. Intel supports the ongoing work within the EU–US cybersecurity working group and calls on both governments to intensify further their coordination.
• Working to prohibit trade distortive requirements like forced localization requirements and committing both sides to push back on those measures wherever they occur in third countries. 

Intel also provided feedback on a number of other priorities, such as the restrictions on the transfer of foreground IP to other affiliated entities on publicly financed R&D & Innovation; interoperability efforts of E-health records; the joint commitment to the current arrangement for internet governance and ensuring that the internet eco-system remains open to innovation and commerce globally; resolving divergences in regulations and standards where feasible; potential joint EU and US efforts to promote due process for competition matters, supporting joint efforts to open bilateral and global procurement markets; and avoiding divergent policy approaches in coordination between EU and US with regards to the nascent Internet of Things (IoT). 

As the Transatlantic economic relationship is of crucial importance to Intel, we will continue our involvement and input into the EU and US administrations to make the comprehensive trade and investment agreement a reality.

Today, the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington-based think tank that aims to advance responsible data practices, announced a new Smart Grid Privacy Seal Program, powered by TRUSTe, for organizations that use consumer energy data.   

Intel has long championed the responsible stewardship of consumer information and I am pleased to say that Intel contributed to the development of and supports the seal program. We believe the development of Smart Grid infrastructure should follow the principles of Privacy By Design and Accountability, where privacy requirements are taken into account early on and throughout the development lifecycle and where entities take responsibility for the information they collect and use no matter where it resides.

The development of the Smart Grid Seal Program is a visible demonstration of what can be achieved when stakeholders work in concert to develop privacy best practices. Intel’s support of the Smart Grid Seal Program is yet another demonstration of our commitment to creating an environment where consumers can trust their use of technology.

 Stop, Think, Connect

One of the best parts of my position as Intel’s Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer is working with innovative organizations to improve awareness of cyber security and privacy.  It is an honor to serve on the board of directors of one such entity: The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA).  Monday is the start of NCSA’s month long effort to educate consumers about what they can do to protect themselves online.  

NCSA is a non-profit public-private partnership focused on empowering digital citizens to stay safer online and protect digital assets.  Coordination of Data Privacy Day (January 28^th) is led by NCSA and October is annual National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM).  Over the next 30 days, I will use this blog to promote some of NCSA’s activities and add my perspective to the conversation.  The theme of the 2012 “Our Shared Responsibility,” is intended to remind consumers and businesses that the Internet is a shared resource and we all need to do our part to protect it. 

In addition to checking back at this blog, I encourage you to visit the NCSAM website and get involved.

By David Hoffman, Director Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer, Intel Corporation

The cyber security threat landscape has changed fundamentally over the last decade. Crime syndicates, terrorists, and nation states are engaging in cyber attacks to steal billions of dollars in intellectual property, disrupt business, and threaten governments.  At the 2012 Intel Developer Forum, I moderated a panel, which discussed these threats and how governments can work with industry to improve the level of cyber security. 

The panel included Renée James (Intel’s Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group), Michael DeCesare (Co-President of McAfee), Michael Kaiser (Executive Director of the National Cyber Security Alliance), Bruce Aitken (Director of Global Policy, Intel China), and Prof. Deirdre Mulligan (Professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a Faculty Director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology). The panel explored themes introduced in Ms. James’s keynote earlier in the day of the importance of increasing the pace of cyber security innovation, and the substantial investment Intel and McAfee are making to do so.

Two alternate visions of the future were forecast by the discussion: (1) Individual countries increasingly pass laws regulating cyber-security or which apply primarily to the “local” jurisdiction, or (2) multi-jurisdictional efforts to address cyber-security challenges gain traction, increasing inter-governmental coordination and cooperation amongst states.  There is a great need for governments to take action to protect their citizens.  However, efforts which have the unintended consequence of inhibiting global collaboration or increasing the cost of complying with non-interoperable requirements and standards, run the risk of decreasing the investment in cyber security innovation.  The panel urged policy makers to pursue solutions that increase investment in cyber security research and development, and which scale to allow for more secure technology which can be sold around the world.   Cyber security risks are growing and can come from anywhere.  These global threats require pursuit of global solutions. 

The video of the panel discussion is now available: http://newsroom.intel.com/docs/DOC-2925.  

Next week begins a month of Cyber Security Awareness activities, please join the conversation here or look for other opportunities to get involved. 

The House of Representatives considered today a proposal to provide up to 55,000 new employment-based visas (green cards) for highly skilled workers. The legislation, known as the STEM Jobs Act of 2012, failed to receive the 2/3 vote necessary to pass and was defeated by a vote of 257-158. The legislation would have created a new visa category for foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities who earn an advanced degree in the areas of science, technology, engineering or mathematics. Intel supported this legislation and encouraged members of congress to vote for it.

This issue, at its core, is about job creation in America. The national unemployment average is above 8% but in STEM fields, where we have a shortage of talent, the unemployment rate for engineers is around 3%. Additional visas for STEM graduates will ensure we have access to the talent we need to help our companies grow and create new opportunities for American workers.

The issue of high skilled immigration is often misunderstood. Highly skilled foreign workers do not take the place of American’s with similar abilities, they fill skills gaps in our domestic workforce and often generate new jobs for American workers. Highly skilled employees are vital to the continued success of Intel. They help us expand our technological knowledge, create new products, and develop innovative manufacturing techniques.

The proposal that was considered today had the support of nearly all Republicans but was opposed by most Democrats who supported the concept but disagreed on where the visas should come from. Democrats lined up behind an alternative version of the legislation, known as the Attracting the Best and Brightest Act of 2012. Even had the STEM Jobs Act passed the House it was unlikely the Senate would consider the legislation this year.

However it is achieved, the addition of new STEM visas is critically important to Intel and all employers who depend on a highly skilled workforce. At Intel we have thousands of employees who are working on temporary visas and waiting in lines that stretch for years to receive their permanent, employment-based visa. During this waiting period, our colleagues are restricted in the activities they can perform, their opportunities to move up within the company are limited, and their personal lives are unsettled.

Despite the failure of this bill to pass, it is encouraging to see a consensus develop in Congress around the idea that highly skilled workers are essential to our nation’s growth and prosperity. Both political parties recognize that foreign-born students who are educated in the United States should be allowed, and encouraged, to remain in this country and contribute to established companies like Intel and start-up companies we have not year heard of. The legislative process was designed to be slow and painstaking, and on this issue it certainly has been. But the support expressed this week for the differing Republican and Democratic proposals can be seen as a sign that our deeply divided political parties are inching toward consensus on this important issue.

In its interim report, the working group reached the preliminary conclusion that a comprehensive agreement that addresses a broad range of bilateral trade and investment policies as well as issues of common concern with respect to third countries would, if achievable, provide the most significant benefit of the various options considered. The report states that a comprehensive agreement could include ambitious reciprocal market opening in goods, services, and investment, and address the challenges of modernising trade rules and enhancing the compatibility of regulatory regimes. The political endorsement by both EU and US leaders and their call for a final report before year’s end is a strong indication for growing momentum towards an new spark in the Transatlantic marriage.

Intel support for an ambitious, reinvigorated transatlantic partnership

Intel strongly welcomes these developments and calls for both governments to keep up the political momentum. Peter Cleveland, Intel’s global Vice President for public policy, highlighted the importance of a strong Transatlantic economic relationship for a global company like Intel during a trip last week to Brussels.

Peter Cleveland Euractiv interview

As outlined by Mr. Cleveland in various events in Brussels, both parties should keep an open mind and craft a 21^st century agreement that not only addresses the traditional areas of tariffs and regulatory convergence but also serves as a beacon towards third countries. “A strong agreement between the EU and US with regards to cooperation on rules and principles on global issues of common concern will send a strong signal that the EU and US are sharing the same objectives and guiding principles to jointly address market access concerns that are currently spreading across the world” according to Mr Cleveland.

Joint responsibility

The report indicates the need for continued consultation with public and private stakeholders to further analyze the different components of a comprehensive transatlantic agreement and to be able to make a final recommendation end of year. Intel will continue to work to this end with governments and other industry stakeholders to provide additional input and build momentum towards a renewed Transatlantic marriage, ready to address 21^st century challenges. 

PETER CLEVELAND SPEAKING AT EURACTIV PANEL

By Wendy Hawkins, Executive Director, Intel Foundation

Charlie Rose had some pointed questions for Hillary Clinton and James Baker last night – What should the US do about Pakistan?  Are we being tough enough with Iran? Will the Arab Spring turn out to be the Arab Winter?  Between them they answered… diplomatically.  While former Secretary Baker had the latitude to be a bit testier than Secretary Clinton could be as the person in the thick of it all, they agreed about a good deal.  They agreed that Iran is the number one issue for the US right now.  They agreed that Pakistan is not behaving as it should toward the US.  While they agreed that the Arab Spring is going through rocky times, they pointed out that the US took some time to get its act together in the early days of our own experiment with democracy.  They are keeping a close eye on developments, but remain hopeful. 

Once again, representing Intel allowed me to be in the front row to enjoy the fascinating discussion.  We were gathered not only to hear the Secretary and her predecessor share their thoughts, but to celebrate the formal launch of the campaign to build the US Diplomacy Center.  This museum and learning center to educate Americans – and our visitors – about the critical role that diplomacy plays in advancing US interests, and building an environment in which peace can thrive, is slated to break ground this fall.  Intel is one of the early contributors to this effort with a commitment of $1,000,000. 

The Benjamin Franklin Dining Room at the State Department was filled with a Who’s Who of American Diplomacy, all of them excited at the prospect of their story being told.  This year’s crop of still-wet-behind-the-ears diplomats-to-be was also there, also excited, though their stories are yet to be lived, let alone told. 

As for me, I got my picture taken with the two Secretary’s, and got to take a great deal of pride in the role that Intel plays in the world today.  Whether with our products, our influence, or our philanthropy, Intel is shaping the world everywhere we look.  I walked pretty tall on my way back to the hotel. 

Earlier this week, I participated in a memorable event at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland.  The WTO hosted a symposium at which a number of presenters from various governments, academia and industry espoused the significant impact that the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) has had in developing our global information economy over the last 15 years since its launch in late 1996.   As WTO Director General Pascal Lamy remarked in his keynote address, by removing tariffs on ICT products sold in many countries the ITA has empowered people and helped bridge the digital divide.   

The symposium presenters also strongly encouraged WTO members to promptly expand the product scope and membership of the now outdated ITA to create an additional $190 billion in global GDP.  Many WTO members already have committed to working on such an expansion, providing a potential building block for further trade liberalization efforts at the WTO level.  Indeed, after the symposium, officials representing many of the 74 signatories to the ITA agreed they would start informal consultations on what products to add to the ITA.   

The ITA has been a real engine of economic growth for all of its signatories.  The data are clear and convincing.  By eliminating tariffs on a range of ICT products, the ITA has: 

• Significantly increased the demand for and dissemination of those ICT products across the world.  One study found that for every $1 drop in price for ICT, there is an increase of 1.5% in demand.  From 1996 when the ITA was finalized to 2008, total globe trade in ICT products increased more than 10% annually, from $1.2 trillion to $4.0 trillion, caused in large part by trade liberalization efforts like the ITA.  As the world’s largest producers of ICT goods and services, U.S. technology firms have benefitted tremendously from that increase in ICT trade. 

• The increased demand has led to a significant increase in use of ICT across a variety of industries, which has resulted in immense gains in productivity in both developing and developed countries.  For example, ICT was responsible for 75% of U.S. productivity growth from 1995 to 2002, and 44% from 2000 to 2006.  Most ICT products covered by the ITA are known as general purpose technologies that touch all industries in making them more efficient.

•  The greater use of ICT has enabled more innovation in both manufacturing and service firms.  In the EU, for instance, 32% of companies report being active innovators, with ICT enabling about 50% of those firms’ product innovations and 75% of their process innovations.   A WTO report on the ITA’s benefits that was released at the symposium notes that the widespread use of ICT in sectors as diverse as retail and financial services has created more organizational innovation and new business models.  Moreover, by lowering the price of key ICT inputs, the ITA has facilitated the development of booming ICT software and services industries in many developing countries such as India, Malaysia and the Philippines. 

• The enhanced productivity and greater innovation from increased use of ICT also has resulted in overall employment gains.  Firms which are most ITC-intensive are 25 to 30% more likely to grow in terms of employment.   One study found that “intensive users of ICT” grew jobs at a rate of 5.1% from 2001 to 2009 even as overall employment shrank 0.5 percent during that period.   

In brief, as the World Bank found in 2007, firms that use more ICT enjoy greater sales, stronger employment growth, higher productivity, and more innovation.  The ITA has enabled all of those benefits.   (Unless otherwise noted, references to all data cited above can be found in a recent ITIF study.) 

In contrast, high tariffs on ICT products decrease their demand and reduce the associated productivity gains.  Tariffs also shield inefficient domestic ICT firms from competition, leading to higher prices and less ICT investment and innovation — including in downstream industries.   Tariffs on ICT products affect all economic sectors because they all depend on such products.   

The ITA, one of the most successful WTO agreements, is now 15 years old and has never been revised.  Many ICT products were invented after 1997, such as multichip integrated circuits and DVD players; other core products like DRAMs and consumer products like video cameras were not originally included in the ITA.   These products are subject to tariffs today.   It is estimated that expansion of the ITA would remove tariffs on an additional $800 billion in global ICT trade benefitting consumers and businesses alike; add $190 billion to the global GDP benefitting many economies; and support the creation of 60,000 new jobs in the U.S. alone.   

It is time to claim these significant additional economic benefits.   At Intel we have tremendous optimism for the future, and an expanded ITA supports our company’s mission to “create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.” 

Todd shared Intel’s efforts to reduce the environmental footprint of our operations and make our products more energy efficient. Intel technology will enable the billion personal computers (PCs) and servers installed between 2007 and 2014 to consume half the energy and deliver 17X the computing capacity of the first billion computers! But he argued that perhaps the most compelling opportunity to align our business strategies with sustainability is the use of Intel technology to solve the world’s environmental challenges. For example, technology products are making buildings, transportation and our electric grids “smarter” and more energy efficient.

Intel and Environment: Conserving the Environment in Which We Innovate: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/intel-and-the-environment.html 

We appreciated the leadership of Senators Alexander and Udall and hope, as they do, that this discussion will be a catalyst for action.

Without my realizing it at the time, that nagging question set me off on a 20-year (so far) journey to figure out how technologies might help to promote independence, choice, and a great quality of life for seniors wherever they choose to age-in-place. And after two decades of prototypes, policy advocacy, and product launches, I have to admit that our society is still all too ready to stash older people away in institutions or alone in their own homes because we have not yet figured out how to build a thriving, sustainable, multi-generational community where the predominance of people over age 65 can thrive. And we have failed to develop new care models—supported by new technologies—that help those older people to have affordable access to healthcare as they deal with the infirmities, injuries, and chronic conditions that so often come with age.

 So it was, admittedly, with some amount of skepticism almost two years ago when I first met with a Chinese delegation from the Minister of Social Affairs and the Minister of Health offices to discuss how they might build whole new communities—cities even—that were designed for aging-in-place. I understood the consequences of China’s one-child policy resulting in a demographic challenge to find enough younger people to care for a swiftly aging society. And I had seen those amazing photos that showed the urbanization of China, as their government built entirely new thriving cities on former tracts of farmland almost overnight. Also shocking were the charts showing the growth of the middle class in China, with its new expectations for different levels of access and service for healthcare. But to truly design and build an “age friendly city” seemed impossible—almost science fiction.

But now, as we approach the official launch of China’s Age Friendly Cities initiative, I can see a nation that is truly committed to answering that two-decade question that has plagued me: how do we use new technologies (and policies and care models) to promote healthy and independent living for older people? Over the past year, our Intel team in China has worked closely with key government stakeholders, academics, and companies to begin to lay out a plan for how to achieve this audacious vision. In particular, we have begun to work with eco-system partners to design the blueprint for building a sustainable healthcare “grid” and “careforce” that will allow this city to deliver care into the homes and community locations of its citizens instead of in expensive, unsustainable hospitals, nursing homes, and other institutions.

 The “healthcare grid” will be a lattice work of intelligent communications, computing, and health IT technologies—with billions of dollars of stimulus from the Chinese government—designed to enable remote patient monitoring, care coordination, personalized coaching, social networking, caregiver support, and accessibility and engagement by seniors in the flow of daily life in their city. Key to success will be ensuring that the healthcare grid, transportation grid, energy grid, communications grid, and other city infrastructures are designed to be interoperable and to promote and support independence whenever possible. Think of this as “grid convergence,” where all aspects of city life are built upon a common, scalable infrastructure that serves a wide range of needs. This is in sharp contrast with the model today that most cities use, whereby piecemeal design and funding of different “grids” at different times leads to fragmentation, redundancy, and inefficient use of public resources.

For example, the home energy management solutions must be able to not only reduce power consumption to protect the environment and keep power bills affordable, but that energy usage data can also become part of an activities-of-daily-living monitoring system to make sure Mom or Dad are doing okay. Similarly, the intelligence in the transportation grid should help older people to safely and successfully navigate the public transportation system so that they are able to be active and mobile in the community. And the broadband infrastructure must support not only high-definition movies for entertainment purposes, but also high-definition, multi-party video conferences between a chronic disease patient at home with her daughter, doctor, and neighbor simultaneously. Sustainable health will require all of these elements coming together in a well-designed and intentional way to promote independence.

 These—and many other experiences—will be possible in China’s Age Friendly City because of the purposeful design of technologies, policies, and workforce training that support team-based care models and independent living at home. Sure, there will be a small hospital in the community for the most extreme, emergency situations that always occur, but the use of institutions for care will become the exception, not the norm. Planning out a sustainable health system from the ground up will allow the Chinese government to achieve the “triple aims” of health reform—better quality, access, and costs—that almost every nation is striving for. And in China, it’s on a scale that most countries cannot begin to imagine because our legacy healthcare paradigms (and reimbursement models) are so institutionally heavy.

This audacious vision, investment, and action plan to make Age Friendly Cities a reality, not just a concept on paper and in prototypes, will put China in a global leadership position that is hard to compete with. The knowledge that the Chinese people and companies will gain from these initiatives will fuel entire new applications, intellectual property, and industries, helping them not only to solve their own sustainable health challenges but also to export new goods and services to the rest of the world that is also dealing with the consequences of global aging. They don’t have to get it all “right” the first time—they just have to get started, to learn, and then to iterate.

For two decades, I have preached about the need to invent “gray technologies” and “gray jobs” for global aging—much as nations have created “green technologies” and “green jobs” for global warming—but now China is about to deliver upon that promise. As a global entrepreneur, I am honored and excited to have my Intel team at the table…collaborating, learning, teaching, inventing, revising, and rethinking old notions of hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics. As a U.S. citizen, I can only hope that these kinds of approaches will begin to take hold so that my own family—and so that I myself—might have these options as we age. May the global competition to invent independence—to achieve sustainable health—begin.  As far as I can tell, China’s efforts put it far ahead of a very hungry, needy pack.

Over the last decade we have invested billions of dollars to develop software, hardware, services and integrated solutions designed to advance cybersecurity across the compute continuum. Governments, businesses and consumers are facing a cybersecurity threat landscape that has become dramatically more challenging. Countering these increasingly sophisticated threats to networks, intellectual property and privacy requires breaking down the legal and policy barriers that currently impede the sharing of actionable threat information from government to industry, and from industry to both government and other private sector entities.

The “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011” represents a critical first step in facilitating the sharing of the threat and vulnerability information that will help government and industry to better protect themselves and their citizens and customers, and will also help maximize the effectiveness of innovative security technologies that rely on this information.

Intel has long advocated that building trust in the global digital infrastructure requires not only strengthening security, but protecting personal information and privacy. Improving cybersecurity is fundamentally important for protecting consumer privacy and decreasing unauthorized access to personal data. It is also critical individuals have confidence their private data is not inappropriately shared with the government. We are pleased with the effort congressional staff has taken to make clear in the revised language of the bill that the intent is not to monitor the daily activities of individuals, or for the information sharing mechanisms contemplated in the bill to be used to enforce copyright restrictions on movies and music.
We look forward to working with stakeholders as the bill heads toward possible consideration on the floor of the House of Representatives next week to help address additional privacy implications in a way that does not unnecessarily dilute the important cybersecurity enhancing provisions. Industry, government and individuals share a common need for improved cybersecurity and this bill represents a substantial step forward.

This week, the U.S. House Committee on Small Business held a hearing to better understand the significant benefits that result from collaborations between large and small businesses. Bob Bruck, an Intel Corporate Vice President and General Manager of our Technology Manufacturing Engineering organization, testified on the significant economic impact of Intel’s large supply network and investments in small businesses. He provided concrete examples of U.S. jobs that were saved and small businesses that grew as a result of Intel’s technical assistance, monetary investment, and/or product demand. One example pertained to our strategic collaboration with Energetiq Technologies, a supplier of critical technologies to some of Intel’s larger tool suppliers.

Intel grew from a small startup to a Fortune 50 company as a result of sales to large customers. Today, our company still supplies many of the same customers it has for decades, but the nature of Intel’s products has required an increasingly complex and growing supply chain.

Intel has about 10,000 suppliers worldwide. More than half of these suppliers are in the U.S., with approximately 2,200 of them classified as small businesses. In the last decade, we have spent $68 billion on our U.S. operations, R&D and manufacturing. In 2011 alone, Intel spent more than $3 billion on goods and services purchased from American small businesses in industry sectors that range from the supply of chemicals and gases to construction services. Such spending is growing these small businesses and creating jobs.

Don’t just take our word for it. The value of both small and large firms to the U.S. economy is evident from the data. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses account for 99.7% of all business in America; employ half of all private sector employees (43% of high tech workers); and generated 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years. Matthew Slaughter, an economist who also testified yesterday, noted that in 2009 the U.S. operations of U.S. based multinational companies (which account for only 0.3% of all business in America) made 40.9% of all private-sector non-residential capital investment and are responsible for 71.15% of all goods exported to the rest of the world. In addition, these companies performed 84.2% of the total U.S. R&D and paid over $1.9 trillion in wages, with a per worker average of $69,796, about 25% above the private-sector average.

The value and interdependency of small and large businesses is evident by the fact that in 2008 U.S. parent operations of U.S.-based multinationals purchased $6.33 trillion in parts and components, with nearly 90% bought from other companies in the U.S.

As the U.S. government considers various policies to increase the competitiveness of American companies (for example tax reform), it should carefully evaluate the potential impact those policies may have on our dynamic and complex business ecosystem.

By David Hoffman, Intel’s director of security policy and global privacy officer

Intel is pleased that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission today has released its final privacy report, “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change,” its follow-up report issued in December 2010.  The Commission should be commended for their thorough analysis of the issues, thoughtful consideration of submitted comments, and for furthering the protection of consumer privacy.

We are particularly pleased that the Commission has recommended that Congress consider enacting comprehensive privacy legislation, a position we have advocated in our filings with the Commission and the Administration.  The Commission wrote that it “is prepared to work with Congress and other stakeholders to craft such legislation.”  Intel is ready to work with Congress and the Commission to make technology neutral and flexible baseline legislation a reality.  Intel calls upon others to support the Commission’s efforts to pass a law to provide an environment where individuals can trust their use of technology.

Intel supports the principle in the FTC’s final report that encourages companies to incorporate privacy protection into their design processes.  We agree that a Privacy by Design model should ensure that privacy is included as a foundational component of the product and service development process.  As the report notes, incorporating privacy protections into the product development process is much preferable to requiring after-the-fact reviews.

The report carefully makes some particularly important revisions to its preliminary report.  The FTC has now specifically recognized that privacy is highly contextual.  Like the Administration’s recent privacy blueprint, it recognizes that privacy protection must be flexible and look to the expectations individuals have when they use technology within a specific context.  The Commission calls out specific contexts where individuals have implicitly chosen to have their data collected and processed.  The Commission’s inclusion of the need to process data for security purposes, as one of these contexts, is a welcome recognition of the increased need for improved cybersecurity.

The report also now recognizes data which can be reasonably linked to a specific consumer, computer, or device, requires privacy protection.  However, the Commission also provided useful guidance on how an organization can avoid a determination that the data is “reasonably linked.”  The elements for avoiding falling under the definition of “reasonably linked” are: (1) a company takes reasonable measures to de-identify data, (2) it publicly commits to maintain and use the data in a de-identified fashion and not attempt to re-identify the data, and (3)  if using service providers or third parties, the company contractually prohibits those others from attempting to re-identify the data.

We are pleased that the FTC has recognized the importance of providing certainty to businesses and setting baseline standards of privacy protections for all businesses, a view that we at Intel have long held as essential to providing consumer trust in technology.  If individuals are confident their privacy will be protected, they will be further encouraged to adopt new and innovative technologies and services.  The resulting investment in new businesses can spark development of new technologies and drive economic growth.  We look forward to continued discussion and future work with the Commission on these important issues.

By David Hoffman, Intel’s director of security policy and global privacy officer

Intel is pleased that the U.S. government has continued its valuable contributions to the privacy policy landscape by today releasing the White House’s framework for “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World.”  This paper is a follow up to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “green paper.”  Providing a policy environment where consumers can trust their personal information is protected is essential to the creation of a computing continuum that will enrich the lives of individuals worldwide. As we stated upon the release of the green paper, Intel continues to strongly support the Department’s and Administration’s leadership in protecting privacy while at the same time promoting innovation.

We are pleased the Administration, in testimony last year, and reinforced in this paper, calls for U.S. federal privacy legislation based upon the Fair Information Practices.  Intel has long supported federal privacy legislation to ensure consumer trust in technology.  As we have discussed previously, Intel sees computing moving in a direction where an individual’s applications and data will move as that person moves through his or her day. To manage these applications and data, the individual will use a wide assortment of digital devices, including servers, laptop computers, smartphones, tablets, televisions, and handheld PCs. Thus, it is necessary individuals have trust in being able to create, process, and share all types of data, including data that may be quite sensitive, such as health and financial information. The Administration’s paper rightly recognizes that this innovation will only be possible if policymakers create a legislative framework to ensure this trust. Additionally, as we wait for the Federal Trade Commission to issue its follow-up report to the preliminary staff privacy report it issued, we hope that the FTC will follow the Administration’s lead and similarly recommend that Congress enact privacy legislation.

The Administration’s paper continues to recognize we are at a critical time in the development of computing where promoting an environment that allows for innovation is essential. Intel strongly supports the Administration’s conclusion that industry and government must work closely together to provide greater privacy protection for individuals.  The paper also correctly recognizes that privacy is highly contextual, and a “Respect for Context” principle is prominently featured in the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.  This approach requires a flexible system that looks to the expectations individuals have when they use technology within a specific context.  Rather than creating detailed rules for specific technologies, we support the government’s effort to act as an “impatient convener” of industry to create best practices or codes of conduct to implement fair information practices. Non-governmental organizations and the FTC can then play the important role to verify conformance to a company’s stated practices. This type of co-regulation allows both government and industry to leverage their respective strengths and to efficiently use scarce resources.

Finally, we are pleased the Administration has again recognized the international implications of our U.S. privacy system.  For instance, we are pleased with the Department of Commerce’s progress in developing within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation a system of Cross-Border Privacy Rules. In both APEC and elsewhere, there is a growing call for not necessarily harmonized, but most certainly interoperable, privacy rules that allow for accountable cross-border flows of information while ensuring both the protection of consumers and allowing for the benefits of ecommerce.  The broad international perspective and expertise the Department brings to the privacy debate is critical, and we urge policymakers to heed their call for a coordinated government-wide approach and greater leadership on these issues.

We are pleased that the President and the Administration have rightly recognized that “privacy protections are critical to maintaining consumer trust in networked technologies,” a view we at Intel have long held.  We look forward to continued discussion and welcome your comments.

By Margie Dickman, Senior Policy Counsel at Intel

The decision by the U.S. Congress to include voluntary incentive auction authority in its comprehensive payroll tax agreement marks a milestone for our nation’s spectrum policy and the U.S. economy. Voluntary incentive auction authority will help America meet our nation’s ever-increasing demand for mobile broadband connectivity and promote U.S. leadership in technology innovation — while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and raising tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.

The surge in mobile broadband use is rapidly transforming the American digital landscape. It has vastly improved our ability to connect with family, friends, and co-workers via ever smaller and faster Ultrabooks, smartphones, and similar computing devices.

Spectrum is the scarce resource currently constraining this U.S. mobile data revolution. With the passage of voluntary incentive auction authority, the U.S. takes the lead as the first country in the world to adopt this market-based auction mechanism. This innovative spectrum auction tool will spur the transition of our limited spectrum resource from existing uses to newer, higher-valued uses like mobile broadband.

Voluntary incentive auctions will give existing spectrum licensees like TV broadcasters an opportunity to relinquish their spectrum in exchange for a portion of the auction proceeds. The relinquished spectrum then will be auctioned to mobile broadband carriers to deploy faster, more robust networks that U.S. consumers and businesses are demanding for seamless mobile connectivity.

Intel commends the bicameral and bipartisan leadership that made this landmark achievement in spectrum policy possible.

In particular, we appreciate the dedication of the Senate Committee on Commerce and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, as well as the champions of voluntary incentive auctions: Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-CA), Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), and Ranking Member Jim DeMint (R-SC) and their committed staffs.

Intel also applauds the Senate and House Leadership for not only recognizing the positive budget impact of spectrum auctions, but also the long-term benefits to U.S. leadership and the American economy. Indeed, economists project that the societal benefits to the American economy from new spectrum auctions and increased mobile broadband connectivity will be 10 to 20 times the actual auction revenue.

At a time when our country needed both, Congress has delivered a technology and economic win for the American people.

I am very honored to be here today on behalf of Intel Corporation and our joint venture with GE, Care Innovations, to help celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the Rio conference and to help plan for the next 20 years of sustainable development and innovation. I realized as I prepared for today that my own career as a social scientist in high tech, focused on home health and independent living, has paralleled those 20 years. In fact, it was the summer of 1992 while working for Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, at his think-tank in Silicon Valley when I designed my first remote patient monitoring prototype to help monitor the heart rate and blood pressure of seniors who found it too challenging to get to a doctor’s office for a check-up.  What was vision back then is a much-needed reality today. If you take only one message away from my comments here this morning, it should be this: if we are to develop sustainable, worldwide healthcare systems, we must build a workforce, a business model, and a technology infrastructure to take healthcare home.

For a moment, I ask you to visualize in your imagination the oldest person you have ever known. It could be a parent, a grandparent, a neighbor, a former boss. Just capture their image in your mind, when they were at their oldest. What did they look like? Their clothes? Their hair? (Or lack thereof?) What surprised you about what they could still do at their age? And what depressed you that they had lost? Now look around this auditorium and imagine a fifth of the people here sharing the same looks, needs, and capabilities of that oldest person you can remember. Now you will begin to have a sense, thanks to so many advances in healthcare, agriculture, and technology, that we have a “longevity challenge” ahead of us. It is most striking when you realize that back in 1950, there were only 3000 centenarians on our planet but, by 2050, demographers believe there will be more than 6 million people over age 100! It is, indeed, a swiftly graying planet.

The Rio conference in 1992 served as a wakeup call about Global Warming and helped to energize innovation and investment in climate change sciences and industries. But Global Aging, by comparison and with every bit as much impact on our global economy and lifestyle as Global Warming, has received inadequate attention and investment. Thus, Intel, a company whose history and heart is about trying to solve big, audacious societal challenges through computing, started about 12 years ago to study Global Aging. Over this time, our social scientists, engineers, and designers have observed over 1000 elderly households and 250 care facilities in 20 countries. This body of work has helped to fuel everything from new products and businesses like those in Care Innovations to policy work in the U.S. and the European Union to our current work with China on “Age Friendly Cities” as they strive to move 90% of their care for older people to the home by 2020.

As part of that fieldwork, almost a decade ago, I spent time studying rural villages throughout Europe to try to figure out how to deliver healthcare to those resource-limited communities. In one town in particular, the local leader—sort of the unofficial mayor—drove me out a few miles from the center of the town to show me an empty lot that he and others in the community were attempting to buy to build a hospital. He proclaimed to me: “If you have a hospital, then you have arrived as a community…you have made it!” They were doing everything from bake sale fund raisers to major capital campaigns to try to build a hospital for their isolated region.

About a year ago, I checked in on their “progress,” and it was a sad story. The unofficial mayor had died of emphysema, and the group of investors in that community had never been able to raise the money for such an expensive endeavor as a hospital. They had lost their down-payment money (and, in some cases, their retirement nest eggs) in the midst of the financial mayhem of the European debt crisis. And the lot, to this day, sits empty, with nothing but a gravel parking lot and bushes and trees poking up through a lone, crumbling sidewalk to nowhere.  Perhaps most tragic to me is the lost decade—two decades, really, from when they had first started—of having no care available for the local people of that town in the interim.

Herein lies some of the thinking about healthcare development that I want to try to “un-do” today. The notion of a hospital as a symbol of “having arrived”—of economic and technological progress—is not surprising, but also not very healthy in the long run. I ask you to consider the idea that real progress—truly successful innovation—would be to use hospitals only as a last resort and to build out a 21^st century healthcare infrastructure that shifts care to the home and community, that focuses more on prevention and early detection, and that is accessible and affordable for everyone. As a global society, we need to accept the idea that the hospital as the end goal—as the marker of medical progress—no longer fits our needs. In the midst of Global Aging, a hospital-centric model must somehow begin to give way to a home-centric model for the future.

So how might we begin to get there—how do we begin to take healthcare home? I’m somewhat notorious at Intel for coming up with alliterative phrases, and today will be no different. As you break out into workgroups this afternoon at the conference—and as you prepare your national strategies back home for the Rio conference in June—I urge you to think about the following “3Cs”: Connectivity, Careforce, and Community.

By “connectivity,” I mean many of the connection technologies already discussed here at the conference today. In particular, how do we insure we build a broadband infrastructure that is ready for 21^st century healthcare delivery all the way to the home? So many countries are rightfully investing in fiber or wireless of many types and flavors, but they have done little to define requirements for the kinds of healthcare needs we will have in a graying world. We can’t let digital movies and music be the only source for driving our requirements for broadband networks. Healthcare requirements—for a virtual visit with a doctor, vital signs capture from the home, a sensor network for helping to prevent falls, a security solution that protects patient data from the bedside to “the cloud” and all points between—should also be part of the mix. We must come to ask: Do we have the right speed, security, network redundancy, packet prioritization, and other capabilities to make the home a plausible, affordable, and safe node of care?

Connectivity technologies and innovations for a 21^st century healthcare “grid” abound. For example, Intel has recently worked with doctors and officials in Mexico to build a solution called “Medicina a Distancia” to bring hospital quality expertise to remote and rural parts of the country. I know many of you here have been working on similar telehealth initiatives to bring the access and expertise of the city to rural areas, which is an amazing beginning. But we still treat such telehealth encounters as the exception to a face-to-face visit instead of the norm. We have to make the face-to-face visit the rare exception. And to do so, we have to carry the “last mile” of that connection all the way to the patient’s home, workplace, and community for some rather creative applications that drive prevention, wellness, behavior change, and adherence to a care plan.

For example, years ago, researchers in Intel Labs in Ireland took off-the-shelf GPS technologies and an internet connection to prototype an online service that allowed senior citizens who still could drive their cars to share their weekly routing information online with frail, home-bound seniors who could no longer drive. Pretty soon, they were carpooling and sharing rides all around town, getting people out of the house, and offloading the local healthcare authorities who didn’t have time or money to check in on each homebound elder. The connective power of the internet can unleash amazing social support systems that we have only begun to tap into as a society; we must leverage this connectivity if we are to give everyone access to high quality care.

The “second C” I ask you to think about is what I call “careforce.” That is, how do we use information and communication technologies to help skill-shift care to increasingly informed and empowered patients, friends, neighbors, and community health workers? In the era of Global Aging, we simply cannot train enough doctors and nurses to catch up with the demographic realities of the age wave, so we must come up with creative ways to better leverage the family caregivers and community workers who already provide the bulk of daily care anyway. Online training and time banking tools for volunteers, social support networks, decision support tools…all of these can be key enablers for a 21^st century careforce that must learn to assist and complement the hard work of increasingly scarce doctors, nurses, and highly trained medical specialists.

To help achieve this end, we recently launched the “Intel Skoool Healthcare Education Platform” for multimedia content and assessment on mobile computers in Sri Lanka. This program seeks to expand and to give technology training to 1 million healthcare workers in developing countries by 2015. This will also entail delivering basic electronic health records to children in 5000 schools by that same year. Furthermore, Intel social scientists have continued to study “team based care models” around the world to help figure out what new tools and workflow training is needed to do virtual, coordinated care between general practice doctors, nurses, medical assistants, volunteer community health workers, and patients themselves. We believe developing a tech-savvy careforce—and the coordination tools to support them—is crucial for a sustainable healthcare system in the long run.

The third and final “C” I ask you to consider is “community.” I opened this talk with the call to “take healthcare home.” While I sometimes mean specifically building care capacity in the actual homes of citizens—and that is certainly a focus for our Care Innovations joint venture—I also more broadly mean that we have to move beyond hospital-and-clinic-centric models to home-and-community-centric models. In short, we must learn how to place-shift care to these more inexpensive, accessible settings—for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. And we must learn how to design buildings and neighborhoods where care-at-home is a priority, instead of an after-thought or a panicked, expensive retrofit for our parents’ homes after they have already become ill or injured.

This may involve putting a telehealth unit—like our Care Innovations “Guide” technology—into the actual homes of chronic disease patients, who can remotely collect their vital signs, get just-in-time video coaching or content, or hear reminders for medication and other behavioral supports. Or it may mean using a health kiosk at the workplace or library or grocery store for a quick checkup, instead of an often un-necessary, expensive pilgrimage to the clinic. Our social science team has been studying models like the Veteran’s Administration Home-Base Primary Care program in the U.S. and various “hospital at home” models in Europe to understand just how much care can safely and effectively be done in the home. As a result, we have come to believe that each nation should be exploring how to achieve the goal of shifting at least 50% of care done in hospitals or clinics today to the home or community by 2020, as a starting point for building a sustainable healthcare economy!

These 3Cs provoke us to ask questions—and to challenge long-standing assumptions—about who delivers care, where it gets done, and how it is funded. And they ignite possibilities for connectivity and computing technologies that we have only begun to explore. In no way do I mean to suggest that we should become “anti hospital” or that clinics and hospitals will go away completely. But we should build and use fewer of them—so that we reduce our dependency on those expensive settings that require more and more of society’s resources to maintain. And we should focus our energy and investment, instead, on building out this “healthcare grid” to the home and community, thus offloading our overburdened mainframe medical systems. At an individual level, these questions can also help us to think about how each of us might reduce our “clinical footprint”—much as we have our carbon footprint—by taking ownership of our own health, wellness, and prevention in a proactive way to reduce our impact on the medical system.

Thanks to the ripples of innovation and policy change coming out of Rio 20 years ago, all of us in this room now know “Global Warming” as a megatrend to contend with. We all now know that there is an international race to be at the front of the pack for developing “green technologies” and “green jobs.” And we now know that, in many cases, developing countries may well leap ahead of developed countries in innovating eco-technology because they do not have the “old way of doing things” to maintain and defend. Their historical lack becomes their potential future gain.

I suggest to you that Global Aging is no less urgent or impactful than Global Warming—it is the other inconvenient truth which has been too long ignored or glosses over. Longevity is a societal “success catastrophe” that requires new thinking and new investment by all of us. Thus, perhaps together, here today, we can move towards making Rio 2012 the beginning of the wakeup call for Global Aging. So too, developing economies may well achieve a 21^st century healthcare system faster than the developed world because there is no old, hospital-centric way of delivering care to protect. Many of you have the chance to move straight to a home-and-community-based care model. I hope these 3Cs help you to think about that possibility. I hope they help ignite your country’s efforts to develop “gray technologies” and “gray jobs” to address the global needs of the more than two billion people aged 60 and above who will share this planet—who will inhabit this room with us—in the not so distant future of 2050.

So, in closing…let’s have no more empty lots waiting for enough cash to build the mega hospital complex that says our community “has arrived.” Let’s use the widely available, increasingly affordable connection technologies that are already here in our midst to build a new kind of healthcare system—a 21^st century healthcare grid—that is available and affordable for everyone….in their workplaces, their communities, and their homes. Let’s build a society in which aging-in-place—in which independence—is a reality, even for those who celebrate more than 100 birthdays.

Thank you. And I look forward to joining you in the breakout sessions and in this noble human endeavor!

By David Hoffman, Intel’s director of security policy and global privacy officer

Get your free privacy eBook!

Intel is pleased to announce a special promotion in recognition of Data Privacy Day. Intel has arranged with the Stanford Student Association and Amazon for free downloads of the electronic version of Matt Ivester’s excellent book “LOL…OMG.”  This book describes why individuals need to protect their privacy in their use of social media, and provides practical steps on how to do so.  LOL…OMG will be especially relevant for older high school and college students, but adults will also find it engagingly written, though provoking and useful. This is a book that everyone using social media should read. Intel is interested in helping to establish trust in the use of technology. Promoting practical guidance like that found in LOL…OMG aligns perfectly with Intel’s mission to create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.

The promotion is available from 12:01AM Jan. 27th to 11:59PM Jan 30th .  Click here for information on how to get the free download from Amazon.

Intel’s Chief Executive Officer, Paul Otellini, takes the opportunity for Data Privacy Day to recognize the important role technology can play to increase privacy and security protections.  Watch the video here:

By Christoph Luykx, Manager, Global Public Policy

Today, the European Commission’s Vice President Viviane Reding introduced new and comprehensive legislation on data protection. This proposal is part of the review of the EU’s current data protection legislation, the data protection directive.  This directive has been one of the leading approaches to protecting privacy in the world. It helped focus member state regulators on a technology neutral approach, structured around flexible principles which were articulated previously in the 1980 OECD privacy guidelines. Intel believes these principles are still valid and the technology neutral approach is still critical to foster innovation and economic growth. However, the directive also was not implemented uniformly and has created several overly bureaucratic structures (e.g. database registration and notification), which require modernization.

Intel welcomes strong legislation

Intel supports robust, harmonized and predictable privacy protections. From that perspective, we welcome the new proposals by the European Commission. We think this is an opportunity to streamline and harmonize the different rules and bring more predictability not only to organizations but more importantly to users who want to trust the information society and the devices and services that drive it.

Global issues

International data transfers are a key component of the global information society. Intel believes simplifying processes for global data transfer is critical and in particular welcomes the acknowledgement of the growing importance of Binding Corporate Rules (BCR). On Friday 20^th January, Intel announced  the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s approval of Intel’s BCRs (known as the Intel Corporate Privacy Rules), and we are looking forward to sharing our positive experiences during this legislative process. For Intel, these BCRs apply to our operations globally, as today’s economy requires data to flow worldwide.  European regulators need to continue to focus on how their regulation can be compatible with approaches in other geographies.

Responsibility

Intel supports a legal framework which focuses on outcomes rather than prescriptive rules. The foundation of such a framework should be organizations demonstrating that they manage personal data responsibly.   BCRs are one mechanism for demonstrating such responsibility, but regulators should continue to explore other alternatives that can scale to small and medium businesses without creating administrative burdens which could chill innovation and economic growth.

Next steps

This proposal will now be discussed within the European Parliament and the different EU Member States. These discussions will be lengthy and challenging. However, the fact that these discussions will occur in Europe and globally is an opportunity to bring all stakeholders together and ensure a joint path forward that will stand the test of time.

Finally, Intel would like to commend Vice President Reding and her team within the European Commission’s DG Justice for their efforts over the past years to involve all stakeholders in this crucial debate. Having such a comprehensive proposal on the table is a huge effort and although there is still room for improvement on several aspects, Intel is looking forward to working with all stakeholders to create a policy environment that promotes trust in the use of technology

By David A. Hoffman, Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer

Today kicks off a week of activities surrounding Data Privacy Day.  Data Privacy Day (or Data Protection Day in Europe) is celebrated on January 28 each year.  The day honors worldwide commitment to privacy and security, and to recognize the anniversary (this year, the 30^th anniversary) of The Council of Europe’s Convention 108, which recognized Privacy as a fundamental human right.  To start the week off, Intel today is releasing a brand new brochure (found here: Intel_Priv_Sec_Guide) describing our policy positions on a whole host of privacy and security issues. 

Increasing trust in the use of digital devices is fundamental to Intel’s business.  Our mission is to create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.   Privacy and Security are foundational components for what is required for this enrichment.  Intel has invested substantially in privacy and security innovation in our technologies.  We also want to see innovation in the privacy and security policy environment.   This brochure includes our ideas on how to create global privacy and security protections, which will protect individuals, spur innovation and increase economic growth.

 Please take a look at our policy positions and let us know what you think.

By David Hoffman, Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer

I am pleased to announce that Intel’s Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs), to be known as the Intel Corporate Privacy Rules (ICPRs) (found here: IntelCorporatePrivacyRules), have been approved by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. This announcement from the lead data protection authority for Intel’s BCRs application signals many other European Union data protection authorities consider the ICPRs sufficient for the global transfer of personal data between Intel companies.

The ICPRs describe our approach to privacy and data protection compliance, and will invigorate the existing privacy program. 

Intel has long been a strong proponent for the concept of “accountability” in privacy and data protection.  We believe private sector companies should work together with all stakeholders – governments, non-governmental organizations, and users – to create and increase trust in the use of digital devices and the way those devices are used to collect, process and use personal data.  The primary way organizations can increase trust in privacy is by demonstrating accountability to the privacy commitments required by law and promised in privacy policies.  For instance, one way companies can demonstrate privacy accountability is by innovating to build trust in their products or design processes.  We strongly believe industry must do more, in a systemic and systematic way, to demonstrate accountability processes than to simply say, “Trust us—we’re accountable.”  Acknowledgement by European data protection authorities that Intel’s ICPRs satisfy European Union requirements in the BCRs mutual recognition procedure is a significant step in demonstrating our commitment to privacy accountability.

As the EU is revising its main data protection legislation, it becomes clear that BCR approval by data protection authorities will play an even stronger role in the future system of international data transfers.  We look forward to sharing our positive experience in obtaining BCR approval as we work with European policymakers and legislators on the data protection review.

Next week kicks off a series of events in honor of Data Privacy Day, an international celebration taking place on January 28 each year to honor worldwide commitment to data privacy and security. Intel is a proud founding sponsor of Data Privacy Day, and we are participating in a variety of internal and external activities in honor of the event. Data Privacy Day 2012 comes at a particularly critical time given the tremendous amount of attention being paid to privacy policy worldwide. The U.S. Administration and the Federal Trade Commission soon will be releasing final reports outlining their views about a privacy regulatory framework and the European Commission is in the midst of a comprehensive revision of their data protection framework. This year’s Data Privacy Day provides the perfect opportunity to discuss these developments at events in Washington, DC and Brussels.

• For instance, our Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer David Hoffman is speaking at an event in Washington, DC sponsored by the National Cybersecurity Alliance on the intersection between privacy and security (taking place at 9:00 am on Thursday, January 26 at the George Washington University Law School, see http://dpd12.eventbrite.com/ for registration).
• Also on that day, The Future of Privacy Forum and Intel are hosting an event for thought leaders to discuss the leading privacy issues.
• In Brussels, Intel is sponsoring the 5^th Annual Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference.  At this conference on Thursday, January 26, Intel’s Christoph Luykx will be moderating a panel with Rosa Barcelo from the European Commission on how technology companies can maintain and increase trust in technology and Intel is supporting the multidisciplinary privacy research award.

And we’re celebrating Data Privacy Day not just through external events.  We’re also using the occasion to educate our employees and others about the importance of data protection.

• We’re recognizing our internal “privacy champions” within Intel who have made extraordinary efforts to ensure a high level of privacy within the company.
• We’re promoting Intel’s privacy accountability processes throughout the company through statements by Intel senior executives and internal communications.
• We’re making data privacy educational materials available to teachers through Intel Engage, a network of 15,000 teachers.
• We’re also making privacy training materials available to Intel employees who volunteer in local schools through the Intel Involved volunteer program.

For a collection of other events happening around the world for Data Privacy Day, check out the National Cybersecurity Alliance’s Data Privacy Day website.  At Intel, we take seriously our commitment to privacy and security, and we would love to hear your thoughts about privacy and its role in innovation.  Please comment and let us know.

By Brian Huseman, Senior Policy Counsel

Today, I had the opportunity to participate in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop on facial recognition, facial detection, and digital signage technologies, called “Face Facts.”As usual, the FTC staff did a tremendous job of pulling together a great series of panels, which explored in depth a particularly timely set of new technologies.

I spoke about Intel’s facial detection software called AIM Suite (Audience Impression Metrics), which uses Anonymous Viewer Analytics (or AVA), a technology that through pattern detection algorithms can detect faces and identify a person’s gender and age range.Facial detection technology is being used in digital signs, which allow advertisers to display ads that are more relevant for consumers. Consumers also get more interactive retail displays (such as those being provided by Adidas, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble) with the potential for real-time coupons and QR code discounts.

Intel strongly believes in the principle of “Privacy by Design,” as first championed by the Ontario, Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian, and we have built privacy protections into our facial detection technology.For example, Intel’s AIM Suite software does not record or capture personally identifiable information. Facial representations are detected from optical sensors and processed to collect anonymous data. No individually identifiable data is collected or categorized. No image is recorded or captured.Fred Carter from Dr. Cavoukian’s office was a fellow panelist at the workshop and discussed the recent white paper issued by their office, which highlighted Intel’s AIM Suite as a good example of the concept of Privacy by Design.

Harley Geiger from the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) also was a fellow panelist today.In advance of the workshop, CDT released a must-read paper on the privacy implications of facial recognition and detection technology. CDT has set forth varying levels of consumer privacy interests based upon the level of identification of the individual (from just counting individuals to targeting them with content up to the identification of individuals via facial recognition).CDT also spoke about the Digital Signage Federation self-regulatory privacy guidance which has done a good job of shaping this nascent industry.Importantly, Intel agrees with CDT’s call for comprehensive federal privacy legislation dealing with all practices and technologies instead of regulation of facial recognition and detection alone.

Intel is pleased that the FTC is on the forefront of examining these emerging technologies.There are obvious privacy implications from facial detection and digital signage, but rather than limiting the use of the technologies themselves, strong privacy protections can be built into the technology.I am glad to have participated in the FTC event today and look forward to continued discussion of these issues.

Just several weeks after Congress approved the U.S./Korea free trade agreement (FTA), our third FTA with a country in the most dynamic region of the world, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) announced a number of major market access commitments. As this year’s host to the other 20 APEC member economies, the U.S. Administration spear headed some of the critical 2011 developments. The following are of particular interest to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies like Intel:

Innovation Policy:APEC member economies agreed to implement 14 principles to promote effective, non-discriminatory and market driven innovation policy. More than 35 countries have developed national innovation plans, yet many government officials fail to understand that innovation cannot be managed or mandated. The APEC policy principles help ensure innovation is properly incentivized without distorting trade flows. They address critical ICT issues such as (i) promoting voluntary, market led, global standards; (ii) ensuring that governments leave the terms of technology transfer to agreement between private parties; and (iii) avoiding undue limitations on technologies that use spectrum.

Expanded Information Technology Agreement (ITA):APEC committed to “Play a leadership role in launching negotiations to expand the product coverage and membership of the WTO Information Technology Agreement.” Studies indicate that an expanded ITA could remove tariffs on an additional $800 billion in global ICT trade, with over $122 billion in U.S. ICT trade affected.

Cross Border Privacy Rules:The 21 economies endorsed the APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules to reduce barriers to information flows, enhance consumer privacy, and promote interoperability across regional data privacy regimes. My colleague, Brian Huseman, provides more detail in a post below.

Health and Aging Policy:APEC also will “encourage efforts to develop Age Friendly Economies using innovative policy, practices, and technologies to support healthy lives” and reduce tariffs and eliminate non-tariff barriers, including local content requirements, which distort trade on environmental goods and services.

How valuable are these commitments? APEC economies include 2.7 billion consumers, account for 44 percent of world trade, and represent 55 percent of global economic output (more than $35 trillion in 2010). Six of America’s 10 largest trading partners are in APEC.

Although APEC commitments are not binding, they provide the foundation for an eventual Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAA) Agreement. Another precursor to an FTAA is the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement by nine APEC economies. On the sidelines of the APEC summit last week, those nine economies announced a framework for an ambitious agreement.

The TPP agreement is different from other FTAs. It is unique in that it is designed to be a living or working agreement to allow it to effectively address trade issues that emerge in the future, a critical feature given the rapid pace of globalization and technological developments.

The agreement covers subjects that are not typically addressed in FTAs, such as ensuring internet data flows and a more level playing field related to competition with state-owned enterprises. And, other countries will to be able to sign onto it at a later stage. Japan, the third largest economy, has already indicated an interest in joining the TPP.

These APEC and TPP developments bode well for companies like Intel that depend heavily on revenues generated overseas to maintain a strong manufacturing base and associated jobs here in the United States. Intel is encouraged by our government’s accelerating efforts to ensure and expand market access for American goods and services.

This past weekend, President Obama and representatives from the other APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) economies endorsed the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules at their leaders’ meeting in Honolulu. We welcome adoption of the APEC privacy rules and applaud the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for their leadership in this process during the U.S. host year.

The APEC cross-border privacy rules is a code of conduct designed to ensure more consistent privacy protections as data moves between different countries within the APEC region. Intel has long stated that there is an urgent need for greater harmonization and interoperability between the multitude of international privacy regimes. We believe that the APEC privacy framework is the prime example of multilateral cooperation efforts on privacy. Since the APEC Ministers endorsed the Privacy Framework in 2004, Intel, along with other U.S. businesses, has supported the efforts of the U.S. government to develop a system that would ensure accountable cross-border flows of information while both protecting consumers and allowing for the benefits of ecommerce.

We congratulate APEC on the adoption of the cross-border privacy rules, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Department of Commerce, the FTC, privacy advocates, our business counterparts, and other APEC economies towards speedy implementation and further discussion of the interoperable nature of the system next year.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the statute that governs government access to electronic information, was enacted 25 years ago. When it was passed, ECPA was a cutting-edge statute.  The pace of technological innovation has left ECPA outdated, however, and it urgently needs reform.

ECPA was designed to deal with the technology of a 1986 world, where cell phones cost thousands of dollars and were the size of bricks, the Internet was confined to a handful of labs and military facilities, and GPS technology was not really publicly available. Take a look at this still working example of a technology that is a contemporary of ECPA. This old Compaq III Portable was the cutting edge of mobile computing technology almost a quarter of a century ago. It only weighs 20 pounds, cost about $5,000-6,000, and has an an Intel 286 processor with 134 thousand transistors. By comparison, most recent Intel computer processors have between 150 and 820 million transistors (and cost a lot less too).

As apparent from this example, technology has undergone tremendous advancement since the inception of ECPA, and it will continue to evolve rapidly. The world is witnessing an explosion of connected devices, and within the next few years billions of additional devices will be connected. As part of this increased connectivity, Intel believes individuals will be able to seamlessly move their data between devices, with individuals having the same user experience across different devices. We call this seamless connectivity between devices the computing continuum.

However, in its current form, ECPA is unable to appropriately address today’s technology, not to mention tomorrow’s technological progress toward the computing continuum. For example, under ECPA, email is subjected to different legal standards while it is being typed, when it is opened, and when it is stored by an Internet Service Provider, and there are also different standards depending on whether data is stored on a PC or on the cloud. Moreover, ECPA has been interpreted inconsistently by courts across the country, leading to law enforcement and industry confusion.

Intel, along with other members of the Digital Due Process coalition, has called for a number of specific reforms for ECPA. Senator Leahy’s ECPA Amendments Act of 2011, and Senators Wyden and Kirk’s GPS Act, each contain some of the coalition’s recommendations, and are a good foundation for Congress to take up this issue. 

ECPA reform would greatly benefit consumers, the government, and industry. With a reformed ECPA, consumers would gain the assurance of consistent and clear privacy protections. Law enforcement also would have clear rules to follow. Industry, too, would have clear and consistent rules, freeing up resources to spend on innovation.  

So Happy Birthday, ECPA!  Sorry to say, but you’re looking pretty old.  I think it’s time for a facelift courtesy of Congress. 

By David Hoffman, director of security policy and global privacy officer at Intel

On October 18th, I had the opportunity to join the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, for the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell. The event was in recognition of Cyber Security Awareness Month, and the Stop, Think, Connect campaign. The National Cyber Security Alliance(NCSA) organized the day, as part of their month long series of activities to create awareness to improve cyber security.

I am fortunate to be a member of the NCSA board of directors, and am constantly impressed with the dedication and energy of the staff and my other board members. This year’s Cyber Security Awareness Month is particularly important as we continue to see significant cyber security threats and proposed solutions from policymakers in Congress and the Administration. Earlier this month, the House Republican Cyber Security Task Force issued its set of recommendations, which build on proposals made in the Senate and by the Administration. The Task Force specifically called out the Stop, Think, Connect campaign in their document.

The House’s legislative recommendations are worth taking note of, as they appropriately recognize the cyber security threat as real and immediate, while also understanding cyber security needs to benefit from the innovation that can come from targeted regulation with specific encouragement for private sector cyber security investment. The Task Force noted the special importance of protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure. They also recommended that any definition of critical infrastructure should be limited to elements “that, if damaged or destroyed, could cause great loss of life or significant economic damage impacting our national security.” This proposed definition recognizes that the broader the scope of critical infrastructure, the more diluted the regulations addressing it will have to be. To make the biggest impact on protecting the critical infrastructure, Congress will need to focus regulation only on the most critical functions and organizations.

The Task Force recommendations also realize that to make a significant impact across the entire economy and digital infrastructure, it will take collaboration and cooperation between government and private industry. Whether it is the development of standards and best practices, improved information sharing or continuing awareness campaigns, the document recognizes that best results can come from effective public – private partnerships. I was reminded of this private – public collaboration point during the event at the NASDAQ.

NCSA’s leadership in developing the Stop, Think, Connect campaign and working with the Department of Homeland Security shows we can make progress. The NASDAQ has been an engine for investment in the most innovative companies. The technologies these companies develop and bring to market have created the great bulk of the global digital infrastructure. Companies like Intel continue to invest in security innovation to better protect data so individuals can trust their use of connected digital devices across the Compute Continuum.

The Task Force recommendations create a model for discussion not just for US legislation, but for how many countries can address these significant issues by focusing on public – private partnerships. The commitment symbolized by both Secretary Napolitano and the many company executives on stage at the NASDAQ shows that this public – private relationship can serve as a model to inspire the global collaboration necessary to improve cyber security.

This past weekend, Crystal Sayles, from our Legal team, and I were proud to represent Intel at the rescheduled unveiling of the memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. Hurricane Irene thwarted the originally scheduled dedication of the MLK memorial and the Gala event in August, but during this past weekend’s events we were fortunate to have clear blue sunny skies and warm temperatures.

This was an especially important event to me as a member of Intel’s Global Public Policy team and as a proud member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Dr. King was also a member of Alpha, initiated into the Sigma Chapter on June 22, 1952, while he was attending Boston University.

Rep. Connie Morella (D-MD) originally introduced legislation in 1996, to authorize Alpha Phi Alpha to establish the memorial, and the Alphas with Morella lobbyied for two years in an effort to see the passage of the bill. In 1998, they were successful. The bill was passed and signed by President Bill Clinton. Congress authorized the fraternity to establish a foundation and approved the building of the memorial on the National Mall. The winning design was unveiled on Sept. 13, 2000, in Washington, D.C. at a gala event addressed by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, who expressed her pleasure with the project and the design, stating, “I thank my husband’s Fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, which led the 15-year effort to bring this memorial to this point.” The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, led by my friend and fraternity brother, Harry Johnson, was charged to manage the memorial’s fundraising and design, and It was due in large part to Harry’s efforts in raising the $120 million that the memorial we see today has become a reality.

My fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., was founded in 1906 at Cornell University, becoming the first Greek-letter organization established by African-Americans. Today, the group counts more than 125,000 members and true to its form as the “first of firsts,” Alpha Phi Alpha has been interracial since 1945. Other legendary Alphas include Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (D-NY); W.E.B. Du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP; and jazz composer Duke Ellington. Today’s prominent members include Edward Brooke former Senator from Massachusetts; Reps. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; Bobby Scott (D-VA); Chaka Fattah (D-PA); Charles Rangel (D-NY); my pledge brother, Hansen Clarke (D-MI); and former ambassador Andrew Young and many others.

As a native of Detroit, Michigan I was also quite proud that two of my hometown natives, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder were on hand to salute the crowd in song and honor the dedication of the memorial. In the audience seated near me were members of the Obama administration including Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury; Eric Holder, Attorney General; Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the EPA and many members of Congress including John Lewis (D-GA); Karen Bass (D-CA); Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) and others.

As you can imagine I was elated that Deb Conrad, Intel VP & General Manager Corporate Marketing Group and Roz Hudnell, Intel’s Chief Diversity Officer, led Intel’s commitment to the memorial as Intel was a platinum sponsor of the Civil Rights Ladies Luncheon “Women Who Dare to Dream” which was held August 26th.

As the father of a 12 year old girl, It makes me proud to know that Intel remains committed to bringing traditionally unrepresented groups, especially minorities and women, into science, technology, engineering and math, so called STEM fields, and as of this year has enabled 10 million teachers world-wide to effectively integrate technology into their lessons to promote problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills among their students, many of which Dr. King’s efforts were meant to impact. Rosalind indicated in her earlier blog, that during Dr. King’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he remarked that “mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.” This weekend’s historic events made me proud to be in Washington, D.C. representing a company that is working hard so that my daughter, and women and girls alike, are excited about science, technology, engineering and math, and have an opportunity to be a future contributor to the innovation in this nation.

By Greg Slater, director of Global Trade and Competition Policy at Intel

Last night was historic. There is no doubt that the three Free Trade Agreements (FTA) approved by Congress will boost the U.S. economy for decades to come. However, we may soon forget how much work went into these agreements. U.S. officials spent thousands of hours advocating the FTAs after they were signed by our President and South Korean Ambassador Han visited 31 states and 57 cities to persuade many skeptical Americans that increased trade delivers major economic benefit to them.

Last Spring, Intel invited the Ambassador to speak to our employees in New Mexico so they would better understand how foreign markets worked. Yesterday, in a roundtable discussion with various trade associations and companies, South Korea’s President Lee and Ambassador Han praised the sophisticated and extensive collaboration that has existed among FTA supporters. Despite this collaboration and broad support, it took more than five years from the inception of the U.S – Korea FTA (KORUS) to its passage last night.

To be sure, KORUS is the largest FTA the U.S. has negotiated in over a decade. As South Korea’s President Lee stressed yesterday KORUS sends a powerful message to the global community that both our governments stand for the principles of free, fair and open trade. This message is sorely needed for two reasons.

First, we have a major challenge concerning mounting protectionism in the face of widespread economic problems. Isolationism no longer works in a global economy, but unfortunately it is a natural reaction in the face of increasing competition.

Second, while trade barriers are increasing in certain critical areas of the world, the number of trade agreements addressing those barriers is exploding; yet the U.S. is being left behind. According to the WTO, there are at least 380 trade agreements around the world of which 202 are currently in force and many others remain in various stages of negotiation. Korea alone has entered into 45 FTAs. In contrast, the United States has just 20 FTAs overall and only three agreements with countries in the Asia Pacific area – the region that is most critical for exports of U.S. goods and services.

My hope is that last night does not signify so much the end of a multi-year negotiation process involving three valuable FTAs, but more the beginning of a new and aggressive bipartisan U.S. trade agenda. The U.S. cannot afford to take another five years to open up additional key markets, or U.S. competitiveness will continue to suffer.

How can we multiply by 10 the 250,000 new jobs and the extra $10 billion in U.S. gross domestic product that the three FTAs passed last night by Congress are expected to produce? The answer: By negotiating additional robust FTAs. Intel looks forward to supporting the U.S. government’s effort to open up more markets on an accelerated basis so we can rapidly increase U.S. exports and the jobs they produce.

By Peter Cleveland, vice president of Global Public Policy at Intel

Today’s vote in Congress to pass the three pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia marks an important step forward for U.S. manufacturing and American jobs. Intel has been a strong supporter of free trade and the trade agreements, and we applaud Congress for voting in favor of them.

These trade agreements are critical to Intel’s business and its ability to create and maintain jobs in the U.S. While more than three-fourths of Intel’s revenue comes from overseas, more than three quarters of its manufacturing facilities are located in the U.S. These FTAs will help American companies like Intel to compete internationally through greater access to key global markets.

In particular, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement is a big win for U.S. manufacturers. Korea is the United States’ seventh largest trading partner and, given the rapid growth of the information technology sector, it is a very important market to Intel. The provisions within this and other trade agreements protect intellectual property, ensure technical standards will be market driven, and help lower prices for American goods and services. The Korea-U.S. FTA will greatly benefit both the U.S. and the Korean economy. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) estimates that the agreement will create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs in the U.S. and increase the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by $10 billion per year through increased exports. Intel is extremely grateful for the significant efforts by a number of U.S. and Korean officials that paved the way for today’s vote.

Intel joins many other businesses, large and small, across multiple industries in thanking Congress for its vote in favor of these agreements. We also look forward to the Administration’s future (and hopefully speedy) negotiation of other robust trade agreements that can open up additional markets for U.S. goods and services. Today, Congress put aside partisanship discord and made it a great day for American workers and business.

This week, Intel is participating in the Sixth Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF), held in Nairobi, Kenya. Since its inauguration in 2006, IGF has provided a unique opportunity to exchange views and best practices on a wide variety of important policy issues that affect the continued development of the Internet. The strength of the multistakeholder IGF model is that it brings together governments, business, the Internet technical community, civil society, and international and intergovernmental representatives with all participants on an equal footing. This is a unique global policy forum and opportunity for multistakeholder dialogue.

This year’s IGF covers a broad array of topics – from how best to protect privacy and provide for security to how policy should deal with the growth of cloud computing to how the growth of the mobile Internet can help developing economies. We also have heard from officials such as Larry Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce and Neelie Kroes, Digital Agenda Commissioner for the European Commission, among many others. Intel is a global company whose business depends upon adoption and use of new forms of technology along the computing continuum. Internet governance is an importance part of furthering the growth of the computing continuum, and we are pleased that there is such a broad spectrum of participation and a rich substantive discussion at IGF. For more information on the latest developments and panels at this IGF, you can search for the Twitter hashtags #IGF or #IGF2011.

Today, I was in New York State to help announce a significant development in the advancement of our manufacturing process. Together with industry partners and the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, Intel announced the creation of G450C, a consortium which aims to accelerate the advancement of 450mm wafers.

The transition to 450mm requires unprecedented industry-wide collaboration between device makers, consortia and the equipment and materials industries. This is necessary and exciting for the future of Intel manufacturing.

A move to 450mm enables the progression of Moore’s Law economics, which provides benefits at every level of the semiconductor value chain. Transitioning to 450mm means producing more than twice the number of die processed on today’s 300mm wafers, thus lowering the cost per die and substantially reducing our per chip environmental footprint. We reduced aggregate emissions by 43% during the last wafer size transition and the transition to 450mm provides a similar opportunity.

The G450C consortium announced today establishes a joint cooperative program to conduct research into deploying test lines to facilitate the industry wide transition of 300mm wafers to 450mm wafers. Founding Members of the G450C consortium will be Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Global Foundries and IBM. The scope of this program will include the establishment and operation of a state of the art cleanroom and associated infrastructure to demonstrate and deploy 450mm wafer equipment and collateral technologies.

The combined funding commitments by all parties of the G450C is at least $575M; and supporting the creation of at least 350 jobs in the Albany area. We continue to maintain three quarters of our R&D in the U.S. and are proud that this new consortium site will further innovation in New York.

We appreciate all government officials and others who have worked with Intel and its Consortium partners to make the 450 project a reality, including the Governor, his senior staff, Speaker Silver, CNSE management, Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of testifying at a U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee hearing on manufacturing and trade. While views on how trade relates to U.S. manufacturing and how to get the latter to grow again differed somewhat among the witnesses and committee members, I was encouraged by some important common themes:

> • We need an overarching trade policy. Chairman Casey commented that the policy could be used as a measuring stick to ensure that a specific trade agreement being negotiated will level the playing field for U.S. business, increase U.S. exports and create U.S. jobs. I believe such a policy would provide all stakeholders the opportunity to converge on cutting edge trade issues at a strategic level, for example how to holistically handle trade issues related to cloud computing services. This policy convergence would avoid the last minute fire drills during intense trade negotiations that often arise to address controversial trade issues such as regulating state owned enterprises and preventing the forced disclosure of trade secrets as a condition of market access.

> • Vice- Chairman Brady quoted some great statistics on the benefits of greater market access overseas and its importance to U.S. business interests. But he also talked about the need to create a better enabling environment at home, including lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate to increase investment and jobs in the U.S. He’s right. Increasing both U.S. competitiveness and foreign market access is essential for America’s growth and prosperity.

> • There were many comments suggesting the U.S. government should enter into significantly more robust free trade agreements, so that we don’t continue to fall behind other governments and put U.S. companies and workers at a competitive disadvantage.

> • Several participants, including me, commented that trade agreements need to be modernized to address emerging trade barriers such as new domestic market preferences, discriminatory standards, intellectual property erosion, etc.

I am hopeful that the discussion and the identification of this common ground will enable future progress in the area of trade. And I encourage Congress to act quickly to approve the three pending trade agreements. My written submission, which discusses some of these issues in more detail, is available here:Joint Economic Committee Testimony 09_17_11.docx.

Intel welcomes the Administration’s and Congress’ renewed focus on schools and education as demonstrated by several actions taken this week. We are very encouraged that the President’s American Jobs Act supports modernizing school classrooms as well as computer and science labs, investments which we believe will bolster Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. We also see the five education bills introduced by Senators Alexander, Burr, Isakson and Kirk and House action on charter schools legislation as catalysts for the long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

This encouragement comes while Intel’s Schools of Distinction finalists from 18 schools throughout the country are in Washington, DC meeting with Members of Congress. Intel’s Schools of Distinction Awards (SODA) program honors U.S. K-12 schools that have some of the most successful math and science educational programs in the country, with a total of $1 million in cash grants and awards to the winning schools.

While we are still reviewing the proposed legislation, we support these and other efforts to restart the education conversation and look forward to working with the Administration and Members of Congress to promote our shared vision for improving our nation’s schools.

In the meantime, please join me in congratulating our SODA finalists and thanking them for their dedication to America’s future innovators. Tonight the winners will be announced. Good luck to all.

This week, I join the thousands traveling to Washington D.C. for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on the National Mall. This will be the first major monument on the Mall honoring someone who was not a past president and the first for an African American.

While many connect King’s dream and life work to the civil rights movement, those who recognize only his work to ensure equality for African Americans may miss the true impact of his life legacy for worldwide peace and humanity for all. King spoke out for equality for all citizens and dreamed of a world where people, all people, would be judged only by the content of their character.

Long before any holidays or monuments in his home country, the world acknowledged King’s significance by granting him the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. During his acceptance speech, he remarked that “mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.” King remains one of the most heavily quoted leaders even today and his messages continue to inspire and teach.

Formed in 1968, Intel has grown from a few hundred engineers focused on a vision to a company of over 90,000 employees driving technological innovation around the world. The late Robert Noyce, one of Intel’s founders, expressed often, “Do not be encumbered by past history – go off and do something wonderful”, and we have continually strived to do just that.

Intel has continued to build products that have changed how the world lives, works and plays. Simultaneously, we have remained committed to being a socially responsible corporate citizen of the world. Our employees volunteer millions of hours in classrooms and community centers around the world and over the past decade alone Intel has donated over $1B to education. Our commitment is based on the fundamental belief that we cannot succeed until all people have the opportunity to fully participate in the growth economy.

As a global operation in over 50 countries, we recognize the power of working collaboratively together across cultures and geographies. Our employees represent a mosaic of humanity, many of which weren’t even alive during the civil rights era, and yet recognize and express the significance of Mr. King’s legacy on their lives. His fight for their rights to pursue their life ambition is one they recognize and one that helped bring them to Intel thus, representing an achievement for which we can all be grateful.

The decision for us to support this week’s dedication events was an easy one to make. As the platinum sponsor of the Dare to Dream luncheon, we are proud to honor the women of the civil rights movement and their legacy of strength, hope and dignity. That they dreamed so much for us at a time when evidence of progress was invisible reminds me that we have the responsibility to dream as big and build on their legacy for the next generation. With that in mind, our Intel team will also volunteer at the “Dream Keepers: Encouraging Future Leaders” youth event encouraging youth to pursue science, technology, engineering and math.

Our team will watch, with a tremendous sense of pride this Sunday, the unveiling of the monument to the life of a great leader and be reminded of how far we have come and how much has been sacrificed for us to achieve the progress we have accomplished to date. I, for one, will stand in awe knowing that forever there will be children who will visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial and learn about what he stood for, what this country stands for, and what it means to role model true leadership for the world. But, as I return to my office Monday morning, I will do so with the humbling reminder of how much work we still have to do to ensure that his dream is a reality for all. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial stands as a testament to what we can do when we come together to drive positive change.

Intel is a strong supporter of both free trade and investment in the U.S.  We hope that Congress soon passes the three pending free trade agreements.

Free trade agreements: There is a vital link between foreign markets and Oregon jobs

By Peter Cleveland

According to a recent study commissioned by the Portland Business Alliance, one quarter of Oregon’s total manufacturing jobs in 2008 depended on exporting. For Intel Corp., the largest private employer in the state, foreign markets are the greatest driver of growth for the company. We depend on the ingenuity, education and experience of 16,000 Oregonians to manufacture our products here to ship and sell abroad.

Last quarter, more than half of Intel’s revenue came from emerging markets — places like Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia. With 95 percent of consumers living outside of the United States, our employees in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico are manufacturing technology to power laptops, mobile devices, servers, automobile computers and more to be used around the globe.

To sell products in markets worldwide, the U.S. government negotiates free trade agreements (FTAs) with the governments of those counties. These agreements are critical to Intel’s ability to compete internationally. FTAs not only help American companies compete on price by reducing tariffs on products and services, but they also specify rules around strong intellectual property enforcement, e-commerce enablement, state-of-the-art public participation and technology standard setting. All of these are key components to success in new, distant markets around the globe.

President Barack Obama set a goal to double U.S. exports in five years as a means of sustaining and growing jobs domestically. Finding effective ways for American companies to access foreign markets should generate broad cooperation among policymakers inclined to shore up our economy and maintain manufacturing jobs in the United States.

The administration has finished negotiations with the South Korean government on the U.S.-Korea FTA, as well as agreements with the governments of Colombia and Panama. To level the economic playing field for Intel and others, Congress and the president ought to lay partisanship aside and approve these pacts, along with worker dislocation assistance, immediately after returning from the August recess period.

South Korea has become a very important market to U.S. technology industries. It is the United States’ seventh-largest trading partner, with U.S. exports totaling about $38 billion in 2010. However, the U.S. share of the Korean market has declined over the past several years; China, Japan and now Europe all enjoy greater market shares. In fact, the trade agreement between the European Union and Korea went into effect this month. As long as the U.S.-Korea FTA remains unapproved, U.S. companies exporting goods and services to Korea will do so at a distinct disadvantage. Time is of the essence.

Better market access in a global economy is a top priority, but it is important to know that countries and regions around the world, with which we have long-standing FTAs, have helped fuel the U.S. economy. Overseas consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth and more than three-quarters of Intel’s revenue.

The value of exports and imports of goods and services meant $15 billion to the Portland region in 2008, according to the Portland Business Alliance study.

This is revenue that is put to good use in the United States. At Intel, we are able to build a new research and development facility, now under construction, at our Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro and a new facility announced in Chandler, Ariz., to manufacture our newest technology breakthrough — the 3-D Tri-Gate transistor. Combined with upgrades to existing factories, we are spending upward of $12 billion to create the most advanced manufacturing process in the country.

Intel is proud to be a leading U.S. manufacturer and part of the community fabric and culture in Oregon. To expand the economic pie for our state and the country, we believe that the three pending trade agreements ought to be passed in the next few weeks.

Peter Cleveland is vice president of global public policy at Intel Corp.

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/08/19/op-ed_free_trade_helps_us_jobs/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/08/19/op-ed_free_trade_helps_us_jobs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/kmh8d1ufxSI/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/29/httpthehillcomblogscongress-blogtechnology169039-reputation-in-the-modern-world/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:11:44 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/29/httpthehillcomblogscongress-blogtechnology169039-reputation-in-the-modern-world/ Read more >]]> Intel’s director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer, David Hoffman, wrote an op-ed for The Hill’s Congress Blog. Check it out!

Today, the important discussion about online privacy continues with the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on how best to protect consumers’ privacy in the modern world. Intel has worked hard to understand what consumers want out of technology and why.

We consistently hear that consumers have different ideas about what information deserves to be private. Consumers want to control information that is important to them, specifically information that shapes their online reputations and their families, friends, and work colleagues. People want to be able to choose what, when, and with whom to share certain information. After having made choices about how to protect this information, they do not want to be surprised by how the data will be used. By exercising control over their information, consumers aim to manage their reputation and to protect those they care about.

Technology provides a significant opportunity for individuals to make choices and exercise control over their online reputations. However, this exercise of control requires that the companies that create the hardware, software, and online services develop user experiences that allow individuals to understand what can be done to protect access to data. For this system to work, there must be a backstop of government enforcement to hold companies accountable when they mislead people about how technology will operate.

Therefore, the best way to ensure consumers can manage their information is through comprehensive privacy legislation. Such legislation would create baseline protections that apply to all actors in the marketplace. Additionally, comprehensive privacy legislation provides important statutory guidance to companies.

The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, co-sponsored by Senators John Kerry and John McCain, would provide consumers with strong controls over their information. This bill simultaneously provides consumers with strong privacy protections while allowing innovation to continue. Importantly, the bill is technology neutral: it does not mandate the adoption of one specific technology. This is a key provision because technology changes rapidly, and the proscription of specific technical solutions can hinder the adoption of new and more effective technologies. Additionally, the bill encourages privacy by design, the principle that companies should build technologies with privacy in mind. The bill also includes many of the principles of the Fair Information Practices such as (a) identification of who is collecting what data and why, (b) allowing consumers to choose whether or not to share their personal information, and (c) providing strong security protections to keep any shared data safe from malicious actors. Intel believes the bill deserves robust consideration and discussion as it goes through the legislative process to finalize its language.

Consumers care deeply about exercising control over their personal information. Intel supports discussion of the Kerry-McCain Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, as it provides an excellent framework to provide consumers with the controls and protections they want.

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/29/httpthehillcomblogscongress-blogtechnology169039-reputation-in-the-modern-world/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/29/httpthehillcomblogscongress-blogtechnology169039-reputation-in-the-modern-world/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/Mhc3TXbNOxk/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/23/modernizing_our_trade_agenda/#comments Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:45:23 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/23/modernizing_our_trade_agenda/ Read more >]]> By Greg Slater, director of Trade and Competition Policy for Intel

Open markets and free trade are critical to Intel’s business. With 95% of worldwide consumers living outside of the U.S., Intel’s ability to efficiently access global markets is essential to our continued prosperity and to maintaining jobs in the U.S.

Today, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on Capitol Hill focusing on how to modernize our nation’s trade agenda – an important conversation to ensure that American businesses are competing on a level playing field in this global marketplace. The event included participants such as Members of Congress and congressional staff, representatives from the business community, academic leaders, and former trade negotiators.

As I discussed in congressional testimony last year, Intel believes that a modern trade agenda should (1) update relevant trade rules to effectively address emerging non-tariff barriers in the digital world; (2) provide greater governmental support for international standards and best practices that encourage e-commerce and resolve concerns not effectively addressed by trade agreements; and (3) eliminate tariffs on digital products. The first two points apply to activity and transactions broader than e-commerce.

For example, existing World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements do not address the regulation of encryption in widely available ICT products, which can be overbearing or discriminatory and thus significantly impair the dissemination of leading edge technologies if not constrained by sound market access principles. In addition, governments are increasingly requiring the disclosure of sensitive business information in conjunction with the certification of ICT products without the safeguards necessary to prevent misappropriation of such information. Moreover the use of compulsory licensing by governments to force access to valuable technologies is increasing, yet applicable licensing restrictions in WTO law have rather limited impact.

Even so, the most advanced agreements cannot keep pace with the rapid innovation in the digital world. Industry also must develop appropriate best practices, and voluntary standards to fill in the “regulatory gaps” not yet suited for binding international agreements. International best practices and voluntary standards are more flexible than technical regulations, ensure interoperability, develop more quickly because they require less negotiation, and are easier to update to accommodate evolving technologies and address legitimate privacy, security, IP and other concerns that arise with new electronic products and services.

Governments also should work to reduce or eliminate tariffs on digital goods. Intel strongly supports USTR’s recent interest in expanding the scope of the zero tariff Information Technology Agreement to include a host of ICT products developed since it was executed 14 years ago.

We are pleased to participate in discussions such as today’s event that are intended to develop market access strategies to increase the prosperity and competitiveness of U.S. companies and their employees. We thank Representatives Dreier and Polis for their bipartisan support of trade and look forward to continuing to work with partners on this important issue.

Today, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Immigration Driving Entrepreneurship In America (IDEA) Act of 2011. Intel supports this bill and commends Rep. Lofgren for addressing the important issue of high-skilled immigration reform. The IDEA Act would make it easier for foreign-born students who graduate with advanced degrees from U.S. universities to obtain work visas, known as green cards. It would also reduce the backlog of people waiting for permanent visas – including many Intel employees who currently work under more-restrictive temporary visas.

Since Intel does 80% of its Research and Development in the United States, this is a critical issue for us. We first seek to hire U.S. citizens for U.S. jobs. But where we have skill shortages, we need to be able to hire students from the top U.S. universities – no matter where they were born. We rely on the ability to hire the best talent to innovate, to be competitive in the global marketplace and to manage our business.

Under the current visa system, foreign born employees hired to work permanently in the United States must secure some form of a visa – generally an H-1B visa. While this visa designation permits an employee to work in the United States it impedes that employee’s ability to advance in the company, restricts the employee’s spouse from working and otherwise limits the options available to the employee. Not only is this system difficult for the employee, but it makes working in a U.S. Intel facility less attractive to many of the people we want to hire.

Currently, some Intel employees are left waiting for as many as 10 years for green cards because not enough permanent-residency visas are available. As a high tech company in a global innovation race and an employer proud of being a great place to work, this is unacceptable. It is imperative that employees receive permanent resident status in a timely manner.

The IDEA Act calls for permanent residence visas to be awarded to foreign born students who graduate with an advanced degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics from a U.S. university, if that person has a relevant job offer from a U.S. company. It further reduces the green card backlog by recapturing visas that were issued in previous years in other categories but were never used. And it eliminates arbitrary caps in the current system that restricts the number of employment based visas that can be awarded to citizens of any one country in a given year.

Like any legislation, there are some provisions of the bill that Intel would like to continue to address with Rep. Lofgren as the legislative process moves forward. We applaud the work the Rep. Lofgren has done to address high-skilled immigration and encourage Congress to pass this needed reform.

Encouraging the best and brightest minds to work in and for America will help secure our economic recovery and innovation leadership, and ensure the creation of quality U.S. jobs.

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/14/_by_peter_muller_director/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/14/_by_peter_muller_director/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/9tU63mr6Nqg/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/09/the_department_of_commerce_green_paper_cybersecurity_innovation_and_the_internet_economy/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:12:46 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/09/the_department_of_commerce_green_paper_cybersecurity_innovation_and_the_internet_economy/ Read more >]]> By David Hoffman, director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer

Today, the Department of Commerce released the green paper Cybersecurity, Innovation and the Internet Economy. This follows the release of both a Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal and an International Strategy for Cyberspacefrom the White House last month. Intel commends the Department of Commerce’s efforts to address some of the most challenging cybersecurity policy topics while focusing on two fundamental principles: 1. Improving “Trust” through increased privacy and security; and 2. Relying on a multi-stakeholder policymaking process.

In recent years there has been significant public debate about the role of government and the private sector in protecting systems and networks that support infrastructure upon which national and economic security depend. Some proposals suggest a regulatory model covering a broad cross-section of industry, including the IT sector, while other proposals support a more voluntary, standards-based approach tailored to finding the right level of protections for each sector and sub-sector. We are pleased that the green paper advances the concept of voluntary partnership through the identification of the “Internet and Information Innovation Sector” (I3S), which would explicitly be differentiated from any definition of covered Critical Infrastructure. The Department of Commerce’s approach of looking towards voluntary codes of conduct for a dynamic sector like I3S is an innovative approach to addressing cybersecurity challenges across this varied sector. We advocate continued discussion about the definition of I3S and whether it includes of the right mix of information and communications technology industry companies necessary to meet the Department’s stated goal of “enhancing our national cybersecurity posture.”

Intel would also like to offer support for the following concepts reflected in the green paper:

• The importance of innovation and the need for technology sector to play a vital role in bringing to market new and improved security products and solutions to address the evolving cyber landscape.

• The importance of international collaboration and cooperation activities to promote cybersecurity policies, standards, and research, and the need for any national efforts to acknowledge the necessity of working with other governments to create a global approach to cybersecurity.

• The need to further enable the Common Criteria to serve a primary role in demonstrating trust and confidence in information technology products and services. Common Criteria (CC) is currently the only internationally recognized product assurance evaluation and certification scheme for hardware, firmware, and software. Common Criteria allows for mutual recognition by twenty six countries of the certifications provided by authorized independent laboratories through the Common Criteria Recognition Arrangement (CCRA). Please see my accompanying blog post that describes the CC reform efforts we have been working on with members of industry and governments around the world.

• The importance of a genuine public/private partnership as reflected in the notion that any disclosure of cybersecurity plans and evaluations within I3S would need to be voluntary, and would need to address important issues of cost, protection of intellectual property, and whether such disclosure might increase cybersecurity threats.

• A desire to focus on improved structures for threat and vulnerability information sharing.

• Analysis for how to provide government incentives to increase investment in cybersecurity.

• A goal to improve cybersecurity education, with a priority on K-12 education, and the creation of formal cybersecurity oriented curricula.

Intel commends the efforts of the Department of Commerce to address some of the most complex and challenging cybersecurity policy issues. The Department’s approach of asking difficult questions and inviting multi-stakeholder dialogue is both helpful and necessary, and the Department can play an important role as an impatient convener in these discussions. Intel looks forward to responding to the green paper and working with the Department of Commerce and other government departments and agencies to further the concepts of voluntary partnerships for cybersecurity and product assurance.

The White House has recently released both a Cybersecurity Legislative Proposal and an International Strategy for Cyberspace. Other governments are similarly focused on what they can do to increase the security of their government and critical information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure. One component of these government efforts is the analysis of how to promote more secure hardware and software.

Security and privacy are major focuses for Intel Corporation. Intel understands it is fundamental that governments, organizations and individuals must be able to trust their use of technology. Further, increasing the level of security is an important means to better protect the personal data of individuals. One method of increasing trust and confidence in hardware and software is to improve the methods for evaluating technology product assurance. This progress must be made while also increasing the efficiency of such evaluations so Intel and other companies can innovate security features and solutions that keep pace with the innovations made by malicious actors.

Improving evaluation methods should focus on improving the Common Criteria (CC) evaluation system. Countries around the world are defining their own evaluation and certification processes for products. This proliferation creates a burden on vendors and could result in the unintended effect of of increased costs and less secure products. By making CC relevant for countries globally, the ICT sector can continue to provide the next generation of innovation while meeting customer requirements for functionality and security assurance.

Embracing, extending and reforming the CC will help: increase the value derived from evaluation and mutual recognition, improve certainty and consistency, facilitate international trade, enhance security assurance and create market access opportunities. Additionally, providing greater cost and time efficiency around evaluations will yield a longer effective sales life for evaluated products.

To adequately address today’s environment, there are improvements which need to be made to modernize and reform the CC. This discussion draft recommends the following actions:

1. Use the Common Criteria Forum to drive mutual recognition and reduce or eliminate the need for geography specific certification. In turn, this will reduce cost to vendors from having to certify the same product in multiple geographies and allow vendors to more rapidly deliver the assurance and certifications that customers demand.

2. Establish and work through technical communities to develop new Protection Profiles to drive mutual recognition of certified products.

3. Accelerate and enhance Protection Profile development, through a community led process, to cover the needed product categories and enhance mutual recognition of certifications across participating schemes.

4. Improve the consistency and efficiency of evaluations to drive increased value in the certification and more trust and confidence in certified products.

5. Expand Common Criteria to address manufacturing process integrity aspects of the supply chain.

To read more about these reform proposals, please review our white paper:CC -Embrace Reform Extend.pdf.

Intel welcomes your comments on this discussion draft. We look forward to working with others in academia, government and industry to further refine and implement these reform recommendations.

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/09/intel_draft_proposal_to_reform_common_criteria/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/06/09/intel_draft_proposal_to_reform_common_criteria/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/p9jLKoSBqzk/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/05/19/need_for_a_21st_century_immigration_policy/#comments Thu, 19 May 2011 13:46:20 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/05/19/need_for_a_21st_century_immigration_policy/ Read more >]]> Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, along with other members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, wrote a joint op-ed on the need for a 21st Century immigration policy. Check out the op-ed, which is posted below

America needs a 21st century immigration policy

May 19, 2011 11:47 EDT

From members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness

President Obama’s recent focus on immigration highlights America’s “broken” system and its impact on our economy.Fixing it requires Republicans and Democrats to show political courage and implement reforms to expand and strengthen the American economy. As members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, we share his deep concern that our nation’s ability to compete economically is being damaged by the two parties battling over immigration laws and policies.

To some, the link between immigration reform and economic growth may be surprising.To America’s most innovative industries, it is a link we know is fundamental.

The global economy means companies that drive U.S. job creation and economic growth are in a worldwide competition for talent.While other countries are aggressively creating policies and incentives to attract a highly educated workforce, America has stagnated.Once a magnet for the world’s top minds, America now faces a “reverse brain drain” and is no longer the first choice for many entrepreneurs creating new companies and jobs.

America needs a pro-growth immigration system that works for U.S. workers and employers in today’s global economy. And we need it now.

First, we need to invest in homegrown talent that is educated and trained in the critical science, technology, engineering and math fields.The U.S. education system must be improved, top to bottom,so that our most precious resource – our children – can compete in the increasingly global world economy.Statistically our K-12 students are falling farther behind students in Korea, China and elsewhere in the physical sciences. We can and must do better.

Second, the United States must allow employers to recruit and retain the world’s best brains.We need a pro-growth based green card system to replace the current system that is plagued with years-long backlogs. Waiting a decade or more during the H1B specialty visa and green card process demoralizes the next great American immigrant Nobel laureate.More of them are returning to their home countries, like China and India, and driving new scientific breakthroughs and innovations there.

Third, we should staple a green card to every advanced diploma in critical fields to keep foreign-born students graduating from a U.S. university or college here in America, working for our future.Today foreign nationals account for 50% of master’s degrees and 70% of Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering in the U.S.Yet, our antiquated immigration laws numerically limit the numbers of these individuals, by the thousands, from entering our country annually.What kind of strategy is it to train the world’s best and brightest in our great universities – and then require them to leave?

America’s cutting-edge job creating industries – from computing to biotech – rely on immigrant scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs to remain competitive. And as the President said in his speech, they are responsible for founding iconic companies like Google, Yahoo and eBay.

According to a Kauffman Foundation study, 40 million jobs have been created in the past 25 years by high growth U.S. entrepreneurial companies. Of those, according to a Duke and UC Berkeley report, more than a quarter of U.S. technology and engineering businesses launched between 1995 and 2005 had a foreign-born founder. And in 2005, companies created by immigrants produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers, so getting this right is paramount.

Silicon Valley offers a good example of the impact foreign nationals make on U.S. innovation – and the arduous process companies must go through to retain them. With 80% of Intel R&D conducted in the U.S., employing people with specific expertise in U.S. facilities is imperative. Right now, there are software engineers in the UK, who cannot come to work in a U.S. Intel facility until visas are available in the next fiscal year. And experts in next-generation mobile technology who must remain in Finland, rather than joining an Intel research and development team in the U.S.

At Facebook, Javier Olivan was instrumental in creating the technology that has translated the site into more than 70 languages, connecting people and businesses in the U.S. with markets around the world. Despite making a significant contribution to economic growth, Javier was lucky to be able to stay in this country. The year he applied for an H-1B visa, there were 150,000 applicants and only 65,000 visas.

U.S. employers must look ahead to coming talent shortages and plan their workforce needs years in advance.They need policy certainty from Washington to know they will be able to hire the very best talent to meet the demands of the global innovation marketplace.It is time for Congress and the Administration to pass bi-partisan immigration reforms. In particular, taking quick action to attract and retain science and engineering talent is critical to the growth of our economy.

Let’s create a pro-growth immigration system that works. Our global competitiveness should not be a partisan debate, it should be a top American priority.

The writers, Steve Case, CEO of Revolution, John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ; Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel Corporation, and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, are members of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

As David’s op-ed states, “We believe that now is the time for federal privacy legislation. Senators Kerry and McCain’s bill has drawn from excellent work that was done in the last Congress and is in line with the administration’s proposals. Intel supports the Kerry-McCain bill and encourages all stakeholders to engage in robust and productive discussion about the bill. Providing a baseline set of protections to ensure consumer trust is the only way that the Internet and ecommerce will continue to grow and help drive innovation in the economy.”

We look forward to continuing the discussion on this important issue.

Today, Intel, along with eBay, Microsoft and HP, issued a joint statement supporting the introduction by Senator John Kerry and Senator John McCain of the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act.

Intel has long advocated for comprehensive federal privacy legislation, which we believe will promote innovation and ensure consumer trust in the use of technology. We support the Kerry-McCain bill’s overall framework, which is built upon the Fair Information Practices principles. We appreciate that this legislation is technology neutral and allows for flexibility to adapt to changes in technology. The bill also strikes the appropriate balance by providing businesses with the opportunity to enter into a robust self-regulatory program.

We are also pleased that the Department of Commerce recently testified before Congress that the Administration supports comprehensive federal privacy legislation. The Department has been a leader in the development of privacy policy. We applaud the Administration for taking this position, and we urge Congress to make the enactment of strong privacy legislation a priority.

Please read the full statement here and below:

Joint Statement on Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights-final.docx

Today, HP, Microsoft, eBay and Intel issued the following statement upon the introduction of the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights by Senator Kerry (D-MA) and Senator McCain (R-AZ).

“We are pleased that Senator Kerry and Senator McCain, both long-timeadvocates for strong consumer privacy protections, have introduced the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011. We support the bill and look forward to working with Congress as it moves forward.

We have long advocated for comprehensive federal privacy legislation, which we believe will support business growth, promote innovation and ensure consumer trust in the use of technology. The complexity of existing privacy regulations makes it difficult for many businesses to comply with the law.

We support the bill’s overall framework, which is built upon the Fair Information Practices principles. We appreciate that this legislation is technology neutral and allows for flexibility to adapt to changes in technology. The bill also strikes the appropriate balance by providing businesses with the opportunity to enter into a robust self-regulatory program.

We look forward to continuing our engagement to improve the effectiveness of the U.S. legal framework for the protection of privacy.”

Below is Noushin’s first post on Policy@Intel. We are very excited she has joined our team.

The American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2011– Driving Jobs and Innovation

By Noushin Jahanian, director of Tax Policy and Government Relations at Intel

Yesterday, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), John Larson (D-CT), Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced the American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2011. This bipartisan bill would increase the R&D Alternative Simplified Credit (ASC) from 14% to 20% and make it permanent. Incidentally, the Obama Administration’s 2012 budget also called for increasing the ASC and making the R&D credit permanent.

For Intel, innovation is our lifeblood. Intel applies for a thousand patents a year and in 2010, we invested over $6.6 billion in R&D – 80% of which was here in the U.S. And we’re not alone…

A strengthened, permanent R&D tax credit will not only spur innovation but will also create more high-skilled, high-paying jobs in the U.S. A January 2010 report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) found that increasing the ASC to 20% would not only create 162,000 in the short-term, but it would also increase annual GDP by $90 billion, increase the number of patents issued to American inventors by 3,850, and increase federal tax revenues by $17 billion.

The R&D tax credit is set to expire again at the end of this year. Intel thanks these members for their strong leadership on this issue. Now is the time for Congress to come together and pass a strengthened and permanent R&D tax credit.

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I’m sure that no one in DC’s policy world has an obsession with checking their mobile devices. Right?

A recent survey commissioned by Intel found that nine out of ten American adults claim they have seen people misuse mobile technology, and 75 percent say mobile manners are becoming worse compared to just 1 year ago. With so many small and powerful mobile devices on the market, people can now take their mobile devices with them wherever they go, making it easy to commit “public displays of technology” or (PDT). The survey revealed that U.S. adults see an average of five mobile offenses every day. The top mobile etiquette gripes are the use of mobile devices while driving (73 percent), talking on a device loudly in public places (65 percent), and using a mobile device while walking on the street (28 percent).

As the innovator behind the processors, or “brains,” and complementary technologies that power many of today’s mobile devices, Intel is tapping its team of social scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and industrial designers to provide a glimpse into how people use, will use or would like to use technology, including mobile devices, well into the future, across different cultures.

It’s hard to believe that it was only eight years ago was when Intel integrated WiFi into the computer with our Intel Centrino processor technology, thus enabling the unwired laptop. Look at what has happened since.

So DC tech policy geeks, take note of the survey’s findings and be careful to limit your PDT.

Today, the West Wing Week humorously subtitled “Don’t Bump My Atoms” (a quip from President Obama while Intel’s Barbara Miner explained the workings of an electron microscope) includes must see footage from President Obama’s tour of one of Intel’s most advanced manufacturing facilities and his experience meeting the seventh grade girls who make up the BindleBot Intel FIRST LEGO Robotics Team.

We were honored to host President Obama last Friday in Oregon and are thrilled by his enthusiasm and humor.

Check it out!

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I am on a plane returning from the annual HIMSS conference on health information technologies. As I watch the borderless states go by far below, I can see the lines and circles of our interstates and highways, which previous generations had the vision and audacity to create for us. Even with the depressing news headlines in the seat pocket in front of me about violence in Libya, continued economic uncertainty, and the threat of $5 gas prices, I find myself, well, inspired.

Last Friday I had the honor of attending President Obama’s visit to Intel in Oregon. Our CEO, Paul Otellini, gave us some much-needed good news about an additional 4000 jobs Intel will create in the U.S. this year as well as investment in a new Arizona fab. Then the President, humbly and humorously, took the stage in celebration of the accomplishments of some student winners who had invented amazing things in Intel’s education and science fair competitions. In his State of the Union address weeks ago, the President said we should celebrate the science fair winners as much as we do the winners of the Super Bowl, and we did exactly that. Then the President celebrated the magic of Intel’s microprocessor manufacturing. It was nothing less than inspiring.

As part of the President’s “Winning the Future” message, he and Paul reminded us of the importance of investing in education, science, and technology to help a nation solve its own problems and to compete globally. Afterwards, I had the thrill of shaking the hand of the President and speaking with him ever so briefly in what, for me, was the best receiving line of my life. I thanked him for having the courage to push for healthcare reform, introduced myself, and he shocked me when he thanked me for Intel’s work on healthcare innovation to move care into the home. Yes, I was star struck. I was, for once, speechless. I was inspired.

In today’s world, it is easy to be cynical. It is easy to be partisan. It is easy to simply dismiss “Winning the Future” and the President’s visit to Intel as mere electioneering or advertising. And I well recognize that the word “innovation” is fast becoming hackneyed and cheapened in our discourse from overuse and manipulation. It is actually harder to choose to be inspired—and to invest the effort to make these words and slogans real. But here’s the thing: I believe in winning the future. I believe in investing in new technologies, industries, education, and jobs that help us compete globally. And I believe we have to do all of these things for healthcare in particular, with urgency.

Which brings me back to the HIMSS conference, where I had the good fortune to share the stage with the President’s Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, in a panel about healthcare innovation and the hot topic of the conference: Accountable Care Organizations or ACOs. Aneesh gave a rousing call-to-action for those on the front lines of healthcare to reimagine and reinvent our healthcare system. He explained how elements of the reform bill such as the CMS Innovation Center and the transition to value-based payment (through care models like ACOs) are meant as mechanisms to open up healthcare innovation, not to prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions from Dr. Government to the medical masses. And, echoing Paul and the President’s Friday messages, Aneesh reminded us that healthcare—like every other part of our society—faces a global competition and that the United States must become an exporter—not just an importer—of new technologies and services for next generation healthcare.

There was a great deal of discussion about ACOs at HIMSS—some decrying them with gloom-and-doom scenarios, some celebrating them as utopia. But I think those positions miss the real spirit and intent of the healthcare reform legislation. Neither Aneesh, nor the President, nor the Secretary of Health, nor the federal agencies rushing around to implement these reforms are claiming that ACOs will solve all of our problems or that they have it all figured out. They are, quite simply, instigating innovation and creating the conditions (investment,incentives for quality, regulatory support, collaboration, innovation training, data mining, etc.) in which American ingenuity can come to the rescue of our outdated, unsustainable healthcare system. Healthcare innovation in America is going to happen—indeed, it has to happen—whether in the form of ACOs or something else we haven’t imagined yet. We just have to get started without delay.

It is important to realize that healthcare reform is a global competition to invent the 21^st century care infrastructure, technologies, services, and jobs that each country needs to solve its own demographic/economic challenges and to export to the rest of the world. Healthcare reform and economic stimulus are intertwined. At HIMSS and here in this blog, I have described this as the race to invent “gray technologies for Global Aging,” just as the U.S. and other nations are in a global competition to create green technologies, industries, and jobs to address Global Warming. Same message: solve our problems; grow our economy by exporting our solutions.

The United States can’t bury our heads in the sand on the issue of Global Aging, but it feels like we are doing just that. Meanwhile, other countries heed and lead. The European Union recently announced Aging as one of its top priorities, launching a new EU Active & Healthy Ageing Innovation Partnership. Intel just joined a Global Coalition on Aging effort with APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) as well as the China Public Private Partnership for Health to help other countries put together strategies and action plans to deal with the age wave and the resulting healthcare challenges it has created. But somehow the U.S. has failed to face this other inconvenient truth with equal intensity and urgency.

Thus, I call upon the President to inspire innovation—to bring his “Winning the Future” message—to healthcare and to work with Congress to do four simple, powerful things to get us started:

1) Create a national commission on Global Aging preparation, innovation, and competitiveness to catalyze U.S. imagination, investment, and action in this sector;

2) Convene a White House Conference on Aging on the topic of Global Aging, with Presidential sponsorship to bring together the nation’s brightest minds and ideas for building out our aging-in-place infrastructure and healthcare system;

3) Make aging-in-place and innovative models of long term care a fundamental pillar in the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act;

4) Build innovation capacity within every federal agency that touches healthcare, so that we keep iterating and improving healthcare quality, cost, and access over time. After all, no one healthcare reform bill, no single care model like an ACO, no one wave of health information technology will solve all our problems; we need to create a culture of continuous innovation in healthcare. All that innovation that the President celebrated at Intel—from the 7^th grade students to the fab workers—is not really “magic.” It is innovation, education, process, and rigor that can be brought to government, too.

Let’s inspire the U.S. innovation engine for healthcare—that could be our most important Sputnik moment in the midst of Global Aging. And that could help insure that we, like the generations before who gave us the highway system, the airport transportation system, and so many other national capabilities that empower modern life, leave behind a healthcare system that is available, affordable, and amazing for ourselves and all who come after us.

By Peter Cleveland, vice president of Global Public Policy at Intel

This morning, Intel had the honor of hosting President Obama at our Ronler Acres site in Hillsboro, Oregon. It was a memorable and historic day for our company and a proud moment for more than 45,000 U.S. Intel employees. During the visit, we showed the President the world’s newest, most advanced manufacturing facility allowing him to see firsthand what sets Intel apart from any other silicon manufacturer – or any other U.S. technology company for that matter. The microprocessors manufactured by Intel are the enabling force behind computers, advanced consumer electronics and mobile devices, the next generation of robotics, GPS systems in cars, and thousands of other applications that have yet to be imagined.

In his introductory remarks, Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced plans to build another new major manufacturing facility in Arizona. A few moments later, the President commended Intel for placing its bets on America. This new facility represents a $5 billion vote of confidence in our nation’s economy, supporting thousands of construction and permanent manufacturing jobs. Otellini also revealed plans to hire 4,000 U.S. employees this year. We invest in our home country because, as Paul said today, “We think of ourselves as an American Enterprise.”

President Obama said that visiting Intel today made him optimistic about America’s future. We are also optimistic. We recognize, though, that a bright future requires more than investments in technology and manufacturing. It requires an investment in the U.S. educational system. To that end, in the past 10 years alone, Intel has dedicated more than $1 billion toward improving education. We need to ensure that our students are getting the science and math education necessary to be future innovators at companies like Intel. The President said today that we can’t win the future if we lose the race to educate our students. Intel wholeheartedly agrees!

A bright future also requires the investment of time, collaboration and bipartisan good faith in Washington, DC to implement policies that encourage all U.S. businesses to place their bets on America. We should be advancing new laws and regulations that enhance innovation, such as embracing a competitive statutory tax rate, opening overseas markets, expediting the roll out of broadband and internet access, and ensuring that sufficient privacy and security on the net is the rule for all of our citizens. We also ought to change immigration statutes so that Intel and other leading U.S. technology companies have the ability to hire the brightest students from U.S. universities regardless of their nationality.

Among the most impressive people President Obama met today were six seventh grade girls who formed an award winning LEGO Robotics team. Paul Otellini’s closing message was that the way forward for our country is to unleash the unmatched creative energies of the American people and transform our manufacturing base for the 21st century. These seventh graders represent the hope and future of American innovation and we trust them to lead our nation to even greater heights.

We deeply appreciated the President visiting Intel Oregon and will partner with his administration on these issues in the years ahead.

By David Hoffman, Director of Security Policy and Global Privacy Officer

The past two weeks have included a number of important events for privacy and security. At the top of my mind have been the protests in Egypt, as I worry about the welfare of the Egyptian people and the many non-Egyptians in the country. One of the more disturbing aspects of the developments in Egypt, was the Egyptian government’s actions to require local internet service providers to disconnect from the global internet. The internet has become an integral component of individuals’ lives. Disconnecting a country from the global internet is an extreme and unfortunate reaction.

The Egyptian government had a solid record of assisting the private sector in making the internet available to its citizens. That record made the government’s decision to take down the connections more impactful, as local internet infrastructure suppliers appear not to have had plans to deal with the government decision.

In an interesting coincidence, the Egyptian government’s actions took place while many around the world were recognizing Data Privacy Day. Intel has been one of the core supporters of Data Privacy Day since its inception. Intel embraces Data Privacy Day’s goal of educating individuals on how they can use technology to provide benefits for their lives, while still having their personal data protected. Intel has been working in several areas to provide recommendations on how we can continue to foster technology innovation, while improving cybersecurity and privacy.

The Egyptian government’s actions call attention to the need of providing strong protections for individuals and companies so they can depend upon technology. Efforts to allow government access to, or control over, private components of the global digital infrastructure have been finding their way to light in many countries. These government attempts to control technology, include providing government the right to take down all, or a portion of, a private network. Any such government ability to impact technology in such a manner, creates substantial privacy concerns for individuals and industry. National security and law enforcement are fundamental obligations of government, but reasonable due process is necessary before government should take steps to access communications or take down private networks.

Several organizations have proposed alternative mechanisms to address government concerns. One example of these efforts are the Cybersecurity Principles authored by the Information Technology Industry Council, which were finalized on January 31st. The ITI Principles focus on building off of existing public-private partnerships and fostering the development of standards, best practices and international assurance programs.

Also distributed on January 31st, was the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Cybersecurity Commission report “Cybersecurity Two Years Later.”    I have been honored to sit on the Commission and to take part in some of the discussion that led to this report. The Commission operates as a body to provide input to the Project Director and Co-chairs. By its nature and size the Commission does not endeavor to create a report that all Commission members agree with fully. Not surprisingly, there are elements of the report with which I disagree. However, the document is an important piece of work assembled by some of the best minds in cybersecurity policy.

The report aptly calls for investment in cybersecurity education, more focus on the international implications of a patchwork of differing national regulations of the global digital infrastructure, improvements in the area of authentication and the fundamental importance of meeting the privacy expectations of individuals. Conversely, I do have concern about extending cybersecurity regulations to the private sector component of the “critical infrastructure”, when the report does not define the term. I also find the report too critical of existing public-private partnerships, as many of these activities have focused on building needed trust, while still providing transparency of operation. The Egyptian government’s actions highlight the danger of moving away from structures which create trust between government and industry.

Many companies, like Intel, are investing significantly in privacy and security to make certain individuals will be able to reasonably trust their use of technology. This busy time for privacy and security policy both brings some of these issues to the forefront, and provides useful fodder for debate on how we should move forward.

By Greg Slater, director of Trade and Competition Policy at Intel Corporation

President Obama spoke to the U.S. Chamber yesterday, and despite serious disagreements in the past, both the President and the Chamber are now seeking common ground. In this economy, that’s not a hard task. We all agree with the President that “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build our competitors”and that our economy needs to be “based not on what we consume and borrow from other nations, but what we make and sell around the world.” In other words, increasing competitiveness at home while increasing market access abroad are synergistic objectives. Indeed, the Administration’s recently released innovation strategy treats those objectives as one.The vigorous pursuit of both is essential to America’s future and prosperity.

The pursuit of greater market access for U.S. goods and services should begin with one critical task: The Administration needs to submit the U.S./South Korea free trade agreement (KORUS) to Congress as soon as possible, and for its part, Congress needs to approve KORUS promptly. As we discussed in a recent op-ed, the implementation of KORUS will result in significant benefits to the U.S. economy and provide the right momentum for a balanced trade policy going forward. The longer we wait to move on KORUS, the greater the decline in our market share of the Korean market as Europe, China, India and other countries pursue their own trade agreements with South Korea. And the more we delay approval of KORUS, the less confidence other foreign governments will have in our ability to successfully conclude additional market access initiatives.

As President Obama said in his SOTU address, our real challenge is not whether we share common ground and can sit together and speak to each other civilly — “but whether we can work together.” That time has come. KORUS is a perfect opportunity to test the trade rhetoric. Promptly approving KORUS could be the first bipartisan success of this new Congress and a signal to the American people and business owners, both large and small, that Washington has their best economic interest at heart.

Once again, she called me “James” even though I have explained to them for nine years running that I go by my middle name “Eric.” Once again, I corrected their medication list that was at least five years out of date—which is baffling to me since I have corrected it each time I have come to the clinic. Once again, I sat in a cough-and-hack filled waiting room for over an hour after my supposed appointment time came and went, with the attendant’s voice repeating “the doctor will be with you as soon as possible” like the droning security announcements one hears at the airport.

Finally, I had my seven minutes with the doctor, who asked “James” a few questions, fumbled through a yellowed folder of paper lab work looking for my latest bloodwork numbers (which he never found), and typed a bunch of stuff in what appeared to be a software program from the 1970s. He never physically touched me during the entire visit. It could and should have been a five minute phone call. But this was the price to pay to get my prescriptions renewed, which he dutifully handed to me as I rushed out the door to the awaiting traffic jam.

I got home in time to miss all the pre-punditry and pageantry, just as President Obama was starting to speak, and just as my wife was finishing up a frustrating call with her own doctor’s office trying to find the results of some routine tests she had gone through the week before.  My wife sat beside me in a rage because the nurse had finally told her that one of her test results was abnormal—but that this test is “often abnormal” so the doctor wants to do a series of other tests—but that my wife would have to schedule an appointment with the doctor for any further information because the doctor doesn’t have time to do phone calls.

Then we sat together listening to President Obama lay out his vision for American competitiveness and the need for innovation and investment for us to compete in the global economy. And I about literally fell out of my chair at the point in which he talked about the importance of building out a next generation internet infrastructure: “This isn’t about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.”

On any day of the week, I would have celebrated this important soundbyte, given my ongoing advocacy for using 21^st century technologies to redesign our healthcare relationships and responsibilities.  Electronic care—or “e-care” as many of us have come to refer to it—must be a part of reforming our healthcare system, and there is enormous potential in leveraging information and communication technologies to drive better healthcare quality, cost, and access. But to hear that sentence from the President on a day in which both my wife and I struggled to be educated, empowered, proactive patients up against a healthcare infrastructure still stuck in the days of fax machines and a healthcare business model premised upon face-to-face visits for every care encounter…well, it was lucky serendipity at least, and I’ll take it as a more fate-full sign of positive things to come!

The speech may not have been the President’s “most inspired”, but looking back on it, I think it may be one of the most important and serious. We have to wake up as a nation to the fact that we are not on a path to compete in a global economy for inventing the next generation of transportation, education, or healthcare systems. We have to recognize that, at this moment, we no longer have the educational base, the scientific edge, or the economic power to be the leader of  “what’s next” as we have so often been in the past. We can get there again, but not without changing our plans and attitudes.

In the case of healthcare, we’ve got to stop the polarizing and misleading rhetorics around “government takeovers of healthcare” versus “evil insurance companies” and realize that America has to  get its competitive act together to invent and invest in a 21^st century healthcare system. Much as we face Global Warming, we must deal with Global Aging, which presents us with both threats and opportunities. We have the opportunity and, indeed, the strategic imperative ahead of us to invest in new technologies and industries that will enable a global, 21^st century healthcare system. We can and must reform our own healthcare system amidst serious economic crises we will face due to Global Aging; we can and must create a lot of new jobs and industries for ourselves along the way.

What concerns me the most in the media cycle following the President’s speech is the cynical characterization of his call for “investment” as merely a smokescreen for “spend, spend, spend.” There is no doubt that we have hard decisions to make about how to deal with the deficit, how and where we allocate our resources, where we cut spending, and where we increase spending to invest in strategic capabilities that help our country grow new industries, markets, and jobs. We can certainly neither “tax and spend” endlessly, nor “slash and burn” recklessly.

But investment means more than spending. It means choosing key areas to try to grow—informed by data, a strategy, a plan, and a means of determining returns on that investment over time. As we revise and improve the health reform bill, we need to move from a “reform” mentality to an “innovation” mentality about healthcare. We need government, education, industry, and the not-for-profit sectors to  develop an investment plan and strategy that achieves our urgent cost, quality, and access goals for healthcare while also opening up new markets for American goods and services. Innovating 21^st century healthcare—the largest sector of every economy and an issue important to every one of us—can generate our next Sputnik moment, if we decide as a nation that we want to lead again—and hold our elected leaders accountable for showing great returns on our national investments.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go search for a new doctor—one who is ready to do secure email and video visits with an empowered patient. I’m tired of waiting.

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/waiting_and_innovating_for_21st_century_healthcare/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/waiting_and_innovating_for_21st_century_healthcare/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/2Koy9CRFtkE/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/happy_data_privacy_day/#comments Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:57:39 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/happy_data_privacy_day/ Read more >]]> Today, January 28, Intel is celebrating Data Privacy Day, an annual international event to raise awareness and generate discussion about information privacy.  Over the past few years, privacy professionals, government officials, and academics from around the world have participated in events designed to stress the importance of information privacy in our daily lives.  Data Privacy Day also is an opportunity to promote consumer education and awareness about privacy challenges when using mobile devices, social networking sites and other online services.

Intel has taken an active role in promoting policies that would protect privacy and promote innovation.  For instance, we have signaled our support for U.S. federal privacy legislation in testimony and in conjunction with fellow tech companies.  We also promote consumer awareness and empowerment when it comes to protecting privacy and making sure that computers are kept secure from malware and viruses.  

We encourage you to use January 28 as an opportunity to reflect on the government policies that can encourage the protection of privacy and on steps that you can take to protect your own privacy and computer security. 

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/happy_data_privacy_day/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/28/happy_data_privacy_day/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/lKonrNct9Jk/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/19/us_and_chinas_strike_new_program_to_address_healthcare_solutions/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 16:25:12 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/19/us_and_chinas_strike_new_program_to_address_healthcare_solutions/ Read more >]]> Intel is pleased to be included as one of the 12 companies and associations joining the Public-Private Partnership on Healthcare between the US and China announced today by Secretary Sebelius. We hope to continue the partnerships already established through joint work on the Regional Healthcare Information Networks with this newly formed collaborative group. Both China and the US have recognized the need for modernizing outdated healthcare systems with the aid of health IT and the partnership will provide the framework for exchanging current success stories while paving the way for designing improvements to this sector. For more information on the RHIN, link to:

http://projectftp.pmgasia.com.cn/pmgftp/sharon/ISMC.rar

]]> http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/19/us_and_chinas_strike_new_program_to_address_healthcare_solutions/feed/ 0 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2011/01/19/us_and_chinas_strike_new_program_to_address_healthcare_solutions/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IntelPolicy/~3/CDSQss8w-hU/ http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2010/12/14/by_david_hoffman_intels_director/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 21:35:37 +0000 http://blogs.intel.com/policy/2010/12/14/by_david_hoffman_intels_director/ Read more >]]> By David Hoffman, Intel’s director of security policy and global privacy officer

Intel is pleased that the U.S. Department of Commerce today, with the release of its “green paper”has made a valuable contribution to the discussion about how best to protect consumer privacy. We believe that providing a policy environment where consumers can trust that their information is protected is essential to the creation of a computing continuum with robust security. Intel strongly supports the Department’s leadership in protecting privacy while at the same time promoting U.S. innovation.

The Department, under the leadership of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the International Trade Administration, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has done an excellent job of soliciting a wide array of stakeholder views and coming to an informed set of preliminary conclusions. Intel is pleased that the Department’s green paper supports the adoption of the full set of fair information practices. Intel additionally has advocated for federal legislation that provides strong baseline protections for data but also is flexible enough to adapt to each business’s individual circumstances.

The Department’s paper wisely recognizes that we are at a critical time in the development of computing where promoting an environment that allows for innovation is essential. As we have discussed previously, Intel sees computing moving in a direction where an individual’s applications and data will move as that person moves through his or her day. To manage these applications and data, the individual will use a wide assortment of digital devices, including servers, laptop computers, smartphones, tablets, televisions, and handheld PCs. Thus, it is necessary that individuals have trust in being able to create, process, and share all types of data, including data that may be quite sensitive, such as health and financial information. The Department’s paper rightly recognizes that this innovation will only be possible if policymakers create a framework to ensure this trust.

Intel strongly supports the Department’s conclusion that industry and government must work closely together to provide greater privacy protection for individuals. Rather than creating detailed rules for specific technologies, government instead should act as an “impatient convener” of industry to create best practices to implement fair information practices. Non-governmental organizations can then play the important role to verify best practice conformance. This type of co-regulation allows both government and industry to leverage their respective strengths and to efficiently use scarce resources.

Finally, we are pleased that the Department has recognized the international implications of our U.S. privacy system.

The Department of Commerce has long been a leader in global privacy issues. For instance, the Department has made great progress in developing within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperationa system of Cross-Border Privacy Rules that would ensure accountable cross-border flows of information while ensuring both the protection of consumers and allowing for the benefits of ecommerce. The broad international perspective and expertise that the Department brings to the privacy debate is critical, and we urge policymakers to heed their call for a coordinated government-wide approach and greater U.S. leadership on these issues.

We look forward to continued discussion and welcome your comments.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission released its long-awaited reporton its review of U.S. federal privacy policy and regulation. Intel applauds the FTC for its leadership on privacy issues and we believe that the report will make valuable contributions to the ongoing debate about how best to protect consumer privacy. Intel also continues to strongly support the enactment of U.S. federal privacy legislation, as we believe that innovation requires a policy environment in which individuals feel confident that their privacy interests are protected.

The FTC’s process for undertaking its review of privacy policy in the U.S. has been a model for transparency and the solicitation of stakeholder views. I had the opportunity to participate in the three roundtables that the Commission held last year where I spoke about the need for federal legislation that incorporates the full set of fair information principles and that includes provisions encouraging “privacy by design” and organizational accountability. I echoed these themes in my testimonybefore the U.S. House of Representatives this summer.

Intel is pleased that the FTC report encourages companies to incorporate privacy protection into their design processes. We also support the report’s recognition of the valuable role that accountability can play in protecting privacy and security. We agree that a Privacy by Design model should ensure that privacy is included as a foundational component of the product and service development process. Further, accountability is important because it shifts the focus from an obligation on the individual to have to understand complicated privacy notices to an organization’s ability to demonstrate its capacity to achieve specified objectives. The accountable organization complies with applicable laws and then takes the further step of implementing a program ensuring the privacy and protection of data based on an assessment of risks to individuals.

The FTC’s important report comes at a crucial time in the development of computing. Intel sees computing moving in a direction where an individual’s applications and data will move as that person moves through his or her day. To manage these applications and data, the individual will use a wide assortment of digital devices, including servers, laptop computers, smartphones, tablets, televisions, and handheld PCs. Thus, it is necessary that individuals have trust in being able to create, process, and share all types of data, including data that may be quite sensitive, such as health and financial information. We encourage policymakers to heed the issues discussed in the FTC report and create a policy environment which creates that trust.

I had the opportunity today to testify before the Senate trade subcommittee on international trade issues involving the digital economy. My testimony noted Intel’s goal of creating a computing continuum where an individual’s applications and data will move with that person as he or she engages in different activities throughout the day, and stated that this continuum will tremendously increase trade in the digital economy. For instance, Intel and 70 other companies recently have invested $50 billion in the creation of an initiative to drive interoperability for cloud computing. Intel also this year launched a software application store – the Intel AppUp center – for netbook computers.

I highlighted three general international trade issues of particular concern for the digital ecosystem. First, trade agreements need to be modernized to ensure their commitments effectively address actual or potential barriers unique to the digital world. Even so, the most advanced agreements cannot keep pace with the rapid innovation in the digital world and emerging barriers to trade in new digital goods and services. Second, to help fill in the “regulatory gaps” not suited for binding international agreements, industry must develop appropriate private agreements, best practices, and voluntary standards. International voluntary standards and best practices are more flexible than technical regulations, ensure interoperability, and are easier to update to accommodate evolving technologies and address any legitimate privacy, security, IP and other concerns that arise with new electronic products and services. Third, governments should work to reduce or eliminate tariffs on digital goods. In sum, we need both proactive standards and practices (typically the “do’s”) and updated, binding international rules (generally the “do not’s”) to further reap the benefits of a digital economy.

Intel thanks Senator Wyden for holding this hearing and proactively addressing the role of international trade in the digital economy, as free trade is critical to preserving American innovation and jobs.

Read my testimony here: Intel Corp. Senate Trade Subcmte testimony Nov 18 2010.pdf.

At the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel entitled “A Smart New World? Internet of Things.” We refer to the “Internet of Things” as what Intel sees as the future of computing – many household and personal devices are increasingly becoming a connected computing continuum, which allows them to transfer applications and data from device to device using the internet. Although there are great benefits to individuals from this computing continuum, these “smart” devices will present privacy challenges, which require an examination of how the Fair Information Practices should be applied to this use of technology.

My panel discussed many of the Fair Information Practices, but specifically analyzed how the principles of notice and consent, will apply. This challenge is especially pronounced if there is not a direct individual interface with the particular device, such as with certain implementations of sensor networks. Most of the panel agreed that Privacy by Design, or incorporating privacy protections into technology in the design and manufacturing, can help alleviate many of the privacy issues that these connected devices might present. Privacy by Design can be an important component of organizational accountability, so that organizations implementing these technology solutions can demonstrate how they are designing privacy into the technology. The panel unanimously agreed that such accountable implementations could be aided by the development of industry best practices, which would also guide regulators on how to interpret the flexible Fair Information Practices which are the foundation of most global privacy laws and regulations.

The data protection commissioners conference always provides an opportunity for privacy regulators, academics, and the business community to come together to discuss the most pressing issues of the day. I look forward to continuing the debate about how to provide a policy environment where consumers can trust that their data is kept private and secure.