The White House recently announced on its official blog that the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Technology has launched a new Subcommittee on Privacy and Internet Policy.  The subcommittee will be co-chaired by a representative from the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice and will include representatives from over a dozen other departments and federal agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Security Council.  The goal of the subcommittee is to “develop principles and strategic directions” that will foster “consensus in legislative, regulatory, and international Internet policy realms.”  Some of these principles include “facilitating transparency, promoting cooperation, empowering individuals to make informed and intelligent choices, strengthening multi-stakeholder governance models, and building trust in online environments.”

The subcommittee intends to work with private industry to “identify Internet policy principles that promote innovation and economic expansion, while also protecting the rule of law and individual privacy” and to “strike the appropriate balance between the privacy expectations of consumers and the needs of industry, law enforcement and other public-safety governmental entities, and other Internet stakeholders.”