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Consumers enjoy recommendations based on their television viewing habits (“viewers who watched Mr. Robot… may enjoy Fight Club”), but who else knows what you’re watching? The golden age of television has arrived with the golden age of television tracking. In 2016, virtually all television delivery systems – smart TVs, streaming devices, game consoles, apps, and even old-fashioned set top boxes – track consumers’ viewing habits, and sometimes in new and unexpected ways. Television and streaming device manufacturers, software developers, and the advertising industry are collaborating to learn more about what consumers are watching. These collaborations are allowing advertisers to precisely target consumers and better understand what ads are working. Consumers may even find advertisements based on their television viewing habits appearing on their phones and desktop browsers. The Smart TV workshop will explore the following questions:

What are the roles of hardware manufacturers and software developers in creating tracking technologies?

What do consumers understand about how their entertainment preferences are being tracked, disclosed, and used for various purposes?

How are entertainment preferences being linked to individuals or to individuals’ device graphs?

How is the advertising industry using this information?

What are some best practices for addressing consumer privacy on entertainment systems?

*Can’t make the webinar? Register anyway! We’ll send you a followup email with the slides and recording after the webinar!*

This workshop is designed to help health care entrepreneurs and application developers determine the necessary and appropriate privacy and security safeguards for managing consumer data. Session participants will learn about their responsibilities under the Privacy and Security Rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and other federal and California privacy and security laws, and consider strategies for their effective navigation.

Presenters include Linda Sanches from HHS and Jodi Daniel from Crowell and Moring LLP. The session begins with a networking lunch, offering attendees the opportunity to connect with other colleagues interested in risk assessment and compliance issues.

As part of the Federal Trade Commission’s PrivacyCon forum in January, the FTC will host a privacy research and development networking event on Jan. 11, 2017, designed to provide a platform for government agencies and non-profits that fund or support privacy research to share information about their programs with researchers.

The networking event will be structured in an exhibition style, enabling attendees to circulate among the various participating organizations to learn more about their research and collaboration opportunities.  Participating organizations will include those that offer research grants, fellowships, scholarships, internships, or publication forums for privacy research, as well as organizations interested in partnering on privacy research or providing privacy researchers with access to data, software or other resources.

The event will take place from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the FTC’s Constitution Center offices at 400 7th Street SW, Washington, DC, in conference rooms A, B and C.

Agencies and non-profits wishing to participate in the networking event should review the requirements for participation. The deadline for agencies to request to participate is December 9, 2016.

An annual event to explore the year’s leading privacy research and scholarship that has been judged most useful for policymakers in the United States Congress, in federal and state agencies, and around the world.

We look forward to an exciting program of thought leadership, including academic guest speakers and the authors of this year’s PPPM scholarship (announced & awarded in November), who will engage with policymakers in a discussion of academic ideas with practical real-world impact.

Featuring the official launch of the Privacy Research and Data Responsibility Research Coordination Network (RCN), an effort supported by the National Science Foundation to produce a community of academic researchers and industry practitioners to address research priorities in the National Privacy Research Strategy.

What the privacy debate gets wrong Friday, January 13, 2017, 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. The Brookings Institution, Saul/Zilkha Room, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W Washington, DC  20036 In the post-Snowden world, debates about privacy are ubiquitous. Some of the most heated debates center around consumer data collection by the government and large corporations, a practice that many advocates and watchdog groups seek to protect Americans from. But do Americans want or need such protection? A new Brookings paper illustrates how many of the technologies often considered to pose the greatest threats to data privacy actually offer consumers another kind of privacy that they value even more: the privacy to consume goods and media away from prying eyes. On January 13, Governance Studies at Brookings will convene a panel of experts to discuss this “privacy paradox,” to challenge the common belief that consumers are simply willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience and cost-effectiveness when making purchasing decisions, and to determine whether it is time to redefine privacy with the consumer perspective in mind. After the session, panelists will take audience questions. Panel discussion Moderator: Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution; Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Lawfare Stewart A. Baker, Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP Amie Stepanovich, U.S. Policy Manager, Access Now