With a new session of Congress–and a power shift in the House–looming in January, big tech companies are looking toward 2019 and possible new privacy legislation that will alter the shape of their business models.
“I’m very optimistic on an actual privacy law being passed in Washington,” said Niki Christoff, senior vice president, strategy and government relations at Salesforce, during Bloomberg’s Next.2018 event on Tuesday. “We’ve already got the Democratic caucus over the summer, who have very sophisticated members like Congresswoman [Zoe] Lofgren [D-Calif.] and Congresswoman [Anna] Eshoo [D-Calif.], who are already writing language. You have tons of engagement from industry, because we need a harmonized law.”
Frederick Humphries, corporate vice president of U.S. government affairs for Microsoft, offered an anecdote to show the current interest in privacy legislation in the United States following the European Union’s implementation earlier this year of its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“There is a data privacy dashboard that we have. In the EU, two million people have checked and are utilizing the data dashboard. In the U.S., 2.9 million [people have used the dashboard]. I share that with you, in case you were wondering if there’s an appetite. People want to know about privacy and data and different aspects,” he said.
However, industry does not want to see GDPR cut and pasted into the Federal Register.
“We’re not Europe. We have the first amendment really high up in the Constitution, so we’re not going to have a regime in which we delete things from the internet, like the right to be forgotten in Europe. You do it a disservice by saying this is an American GDPR. This is an idea of an American privacy framework,” said Christoff.
In the run-up this fall to possible congressional action on privacy next year, numerous parties including the Commerce Department, major tech trade groups, and members of Congress have floated policy positions that debate the merits of consumer opt-in or opt-out regimes for collection of personal data, how data collectors and sellers should be regulated by the Federal government, and which agency should be tapped for such a role.
Christoff said that Salesforce has submitted comments to the White House on privacy issues, among other things arguing against an opt-in approach to date use, and against a new agency that would enforce privacy regulations.
“The fact that the Chamber of Commerce, which obviously represents a lot of businesses, is supporting this too shows that it’s not just an internet technology issue,” said Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Internet Association, which includes numerous tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
He pointed to multiple American businesses that locked their sites to European visitors as an example of the failings of GDPR, and added, “I think we can do better.”
When asked to name a key member of Congress for tech issues, panelists offered up multiple members to watch, but all agreed one member in particular.
“Will Hurd is just phenomenal. He actually knows the issues, and he…is just a thoughtful, hardworking great member when it comes to tech,” said Humphries of the Texas Republican who will be giving up his chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee in January.
“I think, for Salesforce, Congressman Hurd is going to be important. He’s been great on IT modernization, and getting the government into the cloud. Anybody working on IT modernization is going to be huge for Salesforce, and I think good for Federal government,” said Christoff.
On other issues such as privacy, however, expect to see some bipartisan cooperation, speakers at Tuesday’s event said.
“Before the election, even when we didn’t know the outcome, it was Republican senators leading the hearings, and it was the House Dem caucus leading a lot of the discussion behind the scenes,” said Christoff.
“(Privacy) is an issue that can bridge that divide…I hope to see members of both parties working closely together,” said Beckerman.
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DISA Tech Expert on Finding Value in Rapid AI DevelopmentThe challenge with artificial intelligence (AI) is not a lack of capabilities but providing valuable AI-enabled easy-to-use capabilities to the warfighter, according to an official at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). At today’s AFCEA NOVA’s DoD Enterprise IT Day, Deepak Seth, the AI technical lead for DISA’s Emerging Technologies Directorate, explained that the current AI landscape offers DISA a plethora of capabilities to choose from, but “the question is, how can we take advantage of them, and how do we push them towards operational use?” For example, large language models (LLMs) offer users a model pre-trained to a large dataset and can be fine-tuned for a specific task. However, according to Seth, these models “tend to lack enterprise knowledge.” “So, we’re looking at how [we] can augment these pre-trained models with enterprises datasets, so when asked the question [the response] is grounded in data that is within the organization,” Seth said. One of the capabilities that DISA is working on is offering agency officials and warfighters a question-and-answer model. “The idea is [to] take all this information that we have and then build it in some type of application,” Seth said. This capability is similar to DISA’s digital concierge, which is slated for full deployment in August. Concierge AI aims to integrate data with AI and minimize friction for users to find and analyze data. The digital concierge will take data from controlled unclassified information settings and drop them into a database where – via LLMs – that database presents users with answers. In addition to generative AI and LLMs, DISA seeks to apply AI models, tools, and services to improve its Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO). According to Seth, the challenge DCO analysts face is not just an increase in attacks, but the attacks have been more rapid and sophisticated. The agency wants to leverage AI tools to analyze incoming data and “detect any anomalies” much quicker. DISA released a request for information (RFI) published on SAM.gov on March 25, which outlined its interest in exploring the potential applications of commercial AI/ML models, tools, services, and best practices to augment and enhance its current DCO capabilities and methods. The agency received hundreds of responses and is currently reviewing them.
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DISA CTO Sees Data as Next Frontier for Thunderdome
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GSA Debuts FedRAMP Technical Advisory Group