Prior to joining Novell in 1997, I worked at Sun Microsystems where I was one of the original members of the team that created Java. I testify before the Committee today not as an expert on privacy policy, but as a technologist who is building software products that are relevant to the online privacy debate. At Novell, we view it as an extension of Internet identity. It is about empowering users to make decisions about how much information they wish to share and with whom.
Online privacy is a front-page story.
With all the press attention has come a chorus of calls for government legislation and regulations. We should exercise great caution in responding to them. It would be a mistake to pass legislation regulating privacy on the Net before we fully understand the commercial products and services that will be available to us in this new environment. The first line of defense for online privacy is commercial technology. Entrepreneurs have already established several new firms to address privacy on the web, and they are attracting significant amounts of venture capital.