January 14, 2009 11:35 AM PST
Podcast: Harvard Law's John Palfrey on Internet Safety Task Force Report
Harvard Law Professor and former Berkman Center director John Palfrey has been a busy guy. For most of the past year he has chaired the Internet Safety Technical Task Force which, as I explain in this longer post, just released a report showing that predator danger for kids is not what a lot of people feared.
I sat down with Palfrey Washington DC on Wednesday January 14th just before he took the stage at the State of the Net conference to deliver the task force's final report.
As I disclose in the podcast, I was a member of that task force, representing ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety group I co-direct.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
Larry Magid is a technology journalist and an Internet safety advocate. He's been writing and speaking about Internet safety since he wrote Internet safety guide "Child Safety on the Information Highway" in 1994. He is co-director of ConnectSafely.org, founder of SafeKids.com and SafeTeens.com, and a board member of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Larry's technology analysis and commentary can be heard on CBS News and CBS affiliates, and read on CBSNews.com. He also writes a personal-tech column for the San Jose Mercury News. You can e-mail Larry or follow him on Twitter @larrymagid. 
I enjoyed reading your post about the Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF).
As you know, our company VerificAge was among the 12 companies selected by the Task Force to present its solution during their public meeting held in Boston.
We received good feedback from many of the attendees at the meeting that our solution, which is unique in that it does not rely upon any personal data or databases, is effective and especially that it focuses on protecting children's privacy while online. Our one-time, anonymous, real-time verification process is our core strength.
The Task Force report discusses our solution in its biometrics chapter on page 14 of the report. After reading through the chapter, we were astonished to realize that the people who wrote it did not bother to read the materials we submitted to them. Their claims with regards to biometrics totally don't relate to our solution which overcomes many of their so-called negative features. The report, paradoxically, dismisses our biometric solution based on reasons which have nothing to do with our solution - the risks involved from reliance on personal identification data or the need to store personal data, which as explained before, we do not employ at all in our solution.
Being a member of the Task Force, I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter
Shmuel Levin
VerificAge
shmuel.levin@verificage.com