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.