Congress Hears Tech Policy Debates

Date: Thursday, March 24, 2016 Description: The predecessor to the Privacy Shield was the EU-US Safe Harbor, which was invalidated by a European Court back in October over surveillance concerns (watch prior event here). That court ruling triggered widespread concern over the effect on Internet businesses in the U.S. Our event features officials from the […]

Date: Friday, January 15, 12:00 pm Location: Rayburn House Office Building Room 2226 Follow: @NetCaucusAC | #ConsumerSpeech Online review sites have enabled millions of consumers to share feedback about products and businesses — even the federal government has begun to encourage the public to review its services as a way to improve performance. But some […]

Date: Friday, October 13 Speakers:  Damien Levie, Head of Trade Section, Delegation of the European Union to the United States (Bio) Mary Ellen Callahan, Partner, Jenner & Block, Moderator (Bio) Adam Schlosser, Director, Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation International, U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Bio) Abigail Slater, VP, Legal and Regulatory Policy at the Internet Association (Bio) Amie […]

Date: Tuesday, September 25 Speaker: Julia Hartz Details: Join the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus and the Women’s High Tech Coalition for a fireside chat about re-imagining the workplace with Julia Hartz, Co-Founder & President of Eventbrite. As co-founder and President of Eventbrite, Julia Hartz has evolved the company from an innovative ticketing […]

Date: Friday, September 25 Details: Join us for a discussion on the history of WiFi and the role it plays in everyone’s mobile data usage. Our panel will explain how clever engineers developed WiFi in a backwater band of spectrum that the FCC set aside in the 80’s for “junk” common household appliances like cordless […]

Date: Friday, September 18 Details: From sheckels to silver dollars, the medium with which we exchange for goods and services has always been indicative of the times. Today we explore the next era of currency, one backed by mathematics, powered by the Internet, driven by the market and delivered by the innovative open source protocol […]

Date:Monday, August 3, 2015 Details: Details: In just ten years, the commercial drone sector is projected to become a multi-billion-dollar industry, creating thousands of jobs and putting over 80,000 new vehicles in the air. These Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have extended the Internet to the skies, bridging the gap between atoms and bits and promising […]

Date:Friday, July 24, 2015 Details: Do warrants allow law enforcement to reach into data centers across borders? Can 19th-century international legal processes keep up with 21st-century speed? Join us for a briefing on the law and policy that determines the reach of law enforcement into data stored outside of the United States and the important […]

Date:Friday, July 17, 2015 Details: Did you know Congress is a major player in the music streaming business? Really, Taylor Swift and Apple have nothing on the House and Senate. Congress has been at the policy turntables a long time making key decisions on how music is distributed through every new medium from radio to […]

Date: Friday, July 10, 2015 Details: The explosion of online platforms enabling public participation — blogs, comment sections, review websites, and social media, among others — has let millions of individuals share opinions and exercise their freedom of speech online. However, such public declarations can also expose contributors to retaliation by the subjects of their […]

Date: Friday, June 5, 2015 Our expert panel debates the latest developments in the international drama that is Internet governance. There is much fodder for discussion: the federal government’s decision to cede control of key Internet functions to ICANN, ICANN’s efforts to become an accountable steward of these functions, attempts by international organizations such as […]

Date: Friday, May 1, 2015 On June 1, 2015 a set of key provisions of the PATRIOT Act will expire unless Congress reauthorizes them. The provisions due to sunset without Congressional reauthorization have become extremely controversial in the wake of the revelations by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The PATRIOT Act serves as the basis the […]

Date: Friday, April 10, 2015 President Obama has made the public-private sharing of threat information one of the most pressing priorities in his massive push to protect the nation’s cyber infrastructure. In February at the Cyber Security Summit, the President signed an executive order to promote better sharing of threat information, “both within the private […]

Date: Thursday, March 12, 2015 Recently the “Crypto Wars” debate started anew when FBI Director Comey suggested that Apple and Google’s encrypting their smart phones presented grave concerns to law enforcement. He suggested that law enforcement should hold to the keys to such communications. UK Prime Minister David Cameron amplified that concern in the wake […]

Date: February 27, 2015 Panelists debate and discuss the new FCC “Open Internet” rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the prior day. Panelists review what may be in new rules and what the future holds for net neutrality law and policy. Panelists: Anna-Maria Kovacs, Visiting Senior Policy Scholar, Georgetown University Tim Lordan, Executive […]

Date: December 8, 2014 Companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb are high profile examples of the so-called sharing economy, in which ordinary people use online platforms to rent (rather than sell) products and services to each other. Also known as collaborative consumption, or peer to peer commerce, this new way of doing business uses the […]

Date: November 6, 2014 “Hunger Games” Actress Jennifer Lawrence stated in November’s Vanity Fair that exposure of her personal nude photos was a “sex crime.” Was it? If not, what kind of legal recourse does Jennifer Lawrence — or an everyday American citizen like you — have against hackers and web sites that peddle such […]

Date: October 16, 2014 Since the last update of the Communications Act (in 1996) many leaders have proposed updating the act for the digital age. Our panel discusses whether the Internet — which started out digital — needs to be part of a rewrite that includes broadcast, cable, telephone, and satellite services. Speakers: Doug Brake, […]

A panel of experts explains what the Internet tax moratorium is and what failing to reauthorize it will mean for constituents and for the economy.

Date: August 8, 2014 In May, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Google and other search engines must consider requests by any EU citizen to delete information about them, under a policy known as “the right to be forgotten.” Google alone has processed more than 90,000 take down requests since May. Europe’s new […]