BoomTown » Tech Policy Summit

Facebook's Privacy Chief (And California Attorney General Candidate) Chris Kelly Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:52:53 +0000

BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly (pictured here) to give up more during an onstage interview I did with the Facebook chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.

He talked about the recent Terms of Service debacle as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media, the Beacon advertising controversy as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media and the Free-the-Scoble-5,000 data-sharing debate as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media.

But Kelly also managed to say that the media were sensational for keeping Facebook–the dominant social-networking site in the whole wide world–honest as it grows into a behemoth grasping a scary amount of personal information on its 200 million users in its claws.

Oh, he is a smoothie all right, as a lawyer and now as a wannabe politician.

Kelly–who is still working at the start-up, where his job it is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also running for the job of California’s attorney general.

(Here is his Facebook page about the effort.)

Born in Silicon Valley, with a troika of diplomas from fancy schools (undergraduate from Georgetown in 1991, a master’s from Yale in 1992 and a law degree from Harvard in 1997), Kelly worked as a lawyer and also as a policy adviser for President Bill Clinton’s White House Domestic Policy Council and Department of Education before coming to Facebook four years ago.

For a closer look-see at the candidate for the Golden State’s top cop position, here’s a video interview I did with him after the onstage chat in San Mateo, Calif.:

[ See post to watch video ]

Kara Visits the Tech Policy Summit: Content

Kara Swisher — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:42:15 +0000

Last week, I appeared at the second annual Tech Policy Summit, held in Hollywood, which covered a wide range of important issues related to digital topics and public policy.

The one on content was titled, “How New Media Is Changing Content Creation and Distribution.” Conclusion: A lot!

I did video interviews after the session with two of the three panelists: Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder and CEO of JibJab Media; and Andrew Keen, author of the book, “Cult of the Amateur” (the other panelist was Jonathan Taplin, longtime entrepreneur and now a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication).

Both Spiridellis and Keen discuss the changing nature of content and how new media will pay for itself.

Here’s the video (and here is another video I made for a panel I also moderated, on privacy):

[ See post to watch video ]

Kara Visits the Tech Policy Summit: Privacy

Kara Swisher — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 09:29:21 +0000

Last week, I appeared at the second annual Tech Policy Summit, held in Hollywood, which covered a wide range of important topics related to digital issues and public policy.

The privacy panel I moderated was called “Personalization and Privacy: Deciding Who Does What with Customer Data.”

And the decision right now on that critical issue? Pretty much anyone does what they want with consumer data!

I did video interviews with two of the three panelists on the privacy panel: Jules Polonetsky, AOL SVP and chief privacy officer and Joanne McNabb, who is the chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection (the third panelist was Leslie Harris, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology).

In these, Polonetsky discusses challenges big companies like AOL (TWX) can do for consumers and McNabb talks about what government can do.

(Actually, not nearly enough!)

Here’s the video (and here is another video I did, related to the content panel I also moderated):

[ See post to watch video ]