Wednesdays with Winston

The Family Online Safety Institute and Womble Carlyle hosted the first in the “Wednesday with Winston” series, which focused on Privacy & Online Safety. Stephen Balkam, CEO, FOSI moderated a discussion with speakers, Danielle Benoit, Womble Carlyle; Adam Palmer, .ORG; and Denise Tayloe, Privo. The discussion centered on three items: education, legislation and technology. All the speakers agreed that education was key to increasing awareness of Internet Safety, and that parents, teachers, kids, law-enforcement and judges were important groups to target with education messages. There was some discussion about whether current and proposed legislation would achieve the desired outcome of keeping kids safe online while at the same time protecting privacy. As one panelist put it, “is it possible to legislate safety?” Interesting ideas concerning technological solutions to keep kids safe online were discussed, for example, using digital rights management as a means for flagging photos and emails from being shared, as well as other ideas that FOSI will be looking into.