0:04 Do I have it on? Is it on? It's on. Okay. Thank you. For me, there's a lot of
0:09 distrust in digital platforms that are going on right now. And there's, as you
0:16 saw today, and as you already have known, there's been many people that do bad
0:20 things that will really scare people. And one of the things for me is that your
0:29 personal data is just scattered and having the opportunity to have Utah lead in this
0:37 area and to be able to make it that we and recall that we own our data. The
0:46 government doesn't own our data. We own our data or we should at least. So it's
0:52 important to me that we have privacy, autonomy and with our state having the
0:58 consent of the governed I have many constituents who reach out to me even as
1:02 of yesterday telling me a digital ID is not the way to go. But as you'll hear
1:07 today, there's many reasons why we should go with it. And I have a firm belief that
1:11 even before I took office that we have the right people in the right place here. And
1:17 I think our other states need to join us with this one and making sure that we
1:21 don't do like other countries have done with our data. Senator Collin Moore,
1:28 Representative Keller, You got SB260 passed unanimously through the House and
1:34 the Senate a couple years after there was a different digital identity bill which
1:38 I've heard there were pitchforks in committee hearing and it did not come out.
1:43 Why are you supporting and championing SEDI?
1:49 I'll start. I've been fortunate to be able to work on technology policy in the Senate
1:55 over the last several years. It started with data privacy just in the consumer
2:00 aspect and recognizing how important that is. We've since passed a government data
2:07 privacy, the first of its kind, which I think is also important. But in the middle
2:11 there, we're also working on social media bills and social media policy because
2:15 government with technology typically is always, well, government by its nature is
2:22 reactionary, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. But in some of
2:26 these technology policies, it moves so fast that we are not in front of this and
2:31 we are allowing people to be exploited. And the way the internet came up was using
2:40 data. The way this has been monetized is using our data. Facebook, Instagram,
2:48 Snapchat, Google, any of these services are free to us because, as we all know,
2:54 you are what's being sold. You are the commodity. and that in and of itself is
3:02 scary and that's what we're having to deal with as social media right now is social
3:06 media companies have exploited that to the detriment of our kids. They're not only
3:11 affecting their mental health but they're causing actual real world harm like we
3:15 just heard about and it's terrible and putting that same type of power into the
3:20 government's hands that has even more control over so many aspects of our lives
3:25 is just super scary. and something that we need to avoid. We need to flip the script
3:31 of how this is being developed and what this actually means. We need to put the
3:35 power back into the citizenry, into people. People are not commodities. And
3:42 that is what the digital age has created. We are all commodities now. And I think
3:48 that's one of the fundamental evils of our day and age is when we commoditize human
3:52 life, that's problematic. And if government is going to do that, that's
3:56 even more problematic. And so we needed to find a way to flip the script. SEDI, the
4:01 bill that we passed, is really just the first fundamental step. It's laying the
4:05 foundation for flipping the script and saying, no, the power is back in the
4:09 people. The power is back in the individual.
4:14 If we look back at history, history shows us that fighting technology advancement is
4:23 often a futile effort. Whether you're a buggy maker, maker trying to put laws to
4:29 stop the automobile or trying to fight industrialization that technology is going
4:35 to move forward because there are so many benefits to society. So we have a choice
4:40 to be proactive and influence and control these standards or we can stick our head
4:49 in the sand and say, no, I don't want this. I don't I want to fight it. And I
4:54 choose to try to be part of the solution. Digital identity is coming. I think we
5:02 all, especially everyone in this room recognizes that. And the only choice is do
5:09 we want to influence the standards and the adoption of this to protect freedom and
5:14 individual liberties or will we acquiesce to efficiency and monetization. There are
5:22 bold visions out there for artificial intelligence. We hear all around us, hey,
5:29 the future is agentic AI. We're going to have all these agents acting on our
5:35 behalf, acting on behalf of an entity or software program.
5:47 The security concerns are very real. You are not going to feel a smart security
5:54 person will not allow an agent to take on a task on their behalf if there is not
6:02 trust. And as has been talked about, our digital trust structure is under constant
6:09 attack right now. And in many areas it fails. So we have got to come up with a
6:15 better system for verifiable credentials for trusting people and eventually
6:24 entities if this agentic future has any chance of making a real impact without
6:30 doing incredible harm in our society. I'm going to go off script here for the rest
6:37 of the time.
6:41 Utah in my view has been unique compared to what I've heard actually from many in
6:46 the audience and how we work together between branches of government. We have
6:51 CIOs in the audience. We have chief privacy officers in the audience. We have
6:55 legislators in the audience. We have civil rights groups in the audience and I've
7:00 heard them comment of how is Utah able to do these things it's doing. So I'm going
7:05 to ask this to Senator Kullimore. What is it that Utah is doing differently than
7:10 other states and what should they know so they can go back to their states and
7:14 replicate the success we're having across our government on both sides of the aisle?
7:21 Well, you know, we have to put we have to set aside our trying to be humble here
7:25 because there are some things that work really well here in Utah and we call it
7:29 the Utah Way. But the Utah Way really is just recognizing that we are here as
7:34 public servants. We're servants of the people. And when you approach these types
7:39 of policies, you have to have a little bit of humility to say, I don't know
7:43 everything. And that's especially true in technology, right? Like I fundamentally
7:47 believe in certain principles, but I don't actually know how the technology actually
7:54 works, right? And so sometimes you want to implement a law and we're talking about
7:58 very basic things right here, but whether it's like whatever the type of law is, I
8:04 think it's critically important that you bring in all the stakeholders and who best
8:07 than the private sector and academia. And so whenever we've worked on these
8:11 policies, we have good working relationships between the Senate and the
8:15 House. We have good working relationships between the legislature and the executive
8:19 branch, the regulators who are actually enforcing this or implementing the laws
8:25 that we pass. And it's important because the policy does not actually work if the
8:31 implementer just has their own idea and goes a certain direction. And none of this
8:35 actually works because most of the time people in government don't have the
8:38 technical expertise to know what they're actually talking about. And so we have one
8:42 of the shortest sessions, legislative sessions in the country. It's 45 days,
8:46 begins in the middle of January and goes to about the first weekend of March. And
8:50 we are a part-time legislature. That is becoming less and less a reality. We're
8:54 becoming more and more full-time because really that January to March, that's game
8:59 time, but it's happening all year round. And so we're meeting with stakeholders and
9:05 most of the best policy that we pass involves academia, people who have the
9:10 research and the background on their private sector, people who are actually
9:14 developing these technologies or deploying these technologies or using them within
9:18 their business, policymakers, and and the executive branch. And so I don't think
9:24 we've passed any tech technological policy in the state of Utah without input from
9:29 all of them. And sometimes it takes time. The consumer data privacy bill that we
9:33 passed, I think we were the fourth state in the nation to pass it, but it ran for
9:37 three years and we were getting input from everybody and it gets whittled down. We
9:43 passed a digital asset bill that recognizes what digital assets are. And it
9:49 started out as 16 pages even when it when it was introduced in the session and
9:53 because of input it got whittled down and said no let's boil this down to the
9:58 fundamental principles and then build on that and I think that's what we've done
10:01 here with SEDI is we haven't made this I mean it's policy it's agnostic to what the
10:08 technology is and in fact the technology is not even out there right now that could
10:12 be implemented but it's steering the boat and it's steering the direction of how
10:16 that technology is going to be implemented and so So this is the opposite of being
10:22 humble, but using humility to get to these policy decisions, I think is what helps
10:29 drive the advancements that we've seen in Utah. Chris, I'd love to comment on that.
10:35 I think we have been successful as Senator Kolemore, and he deserves a lot of the
10:39 credit for bringing people together, as do you, and making some policy. But it's
10:45 premature to pat ourselves on the back yet and say that this great. We have some good
10:51 policy, but we haven't seen adoption. And we can't do adoption on our own. We can't
10:58 do adoption by just the legislature passing a policy. Adoption requires
11:03 industry to come up with tools and use cases that are compelling. And also
11:12 because Utah is small, to be successful, we need your help. We need other states to
11:19 join together and show that we have enough of a consortium to get attention from the
11:26 big players to say this matters and privacy and security and individual rights
11:33 are important. So while we've had a little bit of success, we need to replicate that
11:41 by having you join us and agreeing on some key principles and some key standards
11:49 where we can move forward together and have a larger coalition.
11:56 Representative Chevrier and Shepard, I'm actually going to ask you the same
12:00 question. You two probably represent some of the most conservative areas in the
12:06 nation in Utah County. And the fact that this bill is passed unanimously, I think
12:16 one is representative of the work done, but what is it that's different about this
12:21 approach that is helping to win over or at least gain the trust of those that each of
12:26 you represent?
12:31 – I can go first. So I think this is going to be off topic for a second, but it's
12:42 really on topic. We have a system of government in Utah that is different from
12:48 most other states, and that is the caucus convention system, which makes it so that
12:54 the grassroots are far more involved with their legislators than they are in most
12:59 states. And I think that that's been a huge factor because both Representative
13:06 Shepard and I have been very involved in the party and in the caucus convention
13:11 system. We have built trust in that arena that allows us to help transfer that trust
13:21 to the legislature and to this technology that we're talking about. So because we
13:28 have that opportunity to build trust, I think that makes it easier for us to help
13:35 people understand because they're willing to listen to us because we have built
13:40 trust with them through that system. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay.
13:49 Part of being elected, I had a town hall and I had experts in this area come and
13:57 speak to those who came. And yes, of course, we use it through the caucus
14:02 convention system that we have that allows us to have a direct report and be held
14:07 accountable by delegates. And that is where you get the biggest pushback. In
14:14 honesty, delegates are very engaged aged and they know issues and you can't hide.
14:20 And it's a great, actually a really great process. And I appreciate that. I
14:25 appreciate the accountability. The delegates and my voters that I have talked
14:30 to about this by knocking on the doors, they want us to leave them alone. They
14:35 want to be able to be safe in this community, not only physically, but also
14:41 digitally. And I believe that the relationships that having served on a
14:49 state level in my party and served just across the entire state and worked in some
14:56 national areas. I believe that that does open the door to when I bring experts to
15:02 my district that they're willing to take a chance and listen. And it has changed the
15:07 hearts of some of them to actually listen. Sometimes we get stuck in our ways and
15:13 think that we have the answers and something is the boogeyman. But honestly,
15:17 when you listen and Chris Bramwell has come to my district along with Timothy
15:22 Ruff and when they have when they have spoken, people in my district have
15:27 listened and that's what I really appreciate. It's the opportunity to bring
15:31 these experts as the good senator to my left here has mentioned to bring these
15:36 experts and to trust them. We have to have trust in the experts and our people that
15:44 we represent have to have trust in us. It's quite the partnership that we have.
15:51 Chris, can I add one thing to that? I think your policy of engaging with critics
15:57 has been key to some of the success. There are some times where in politics where you
16:03 don't engage with the critics, you say, I have a majority. I'm just going to pass
16:06 this through. But that hasn't been how the privacy legislation that Senator Colomore
16:12 has helped with or this legislation has been handled. You've held town halls where
16:20 you invited critics to come and poke holes and things. You've brought in key members
16:24 of staff and industry to come and engage and you slowed down the process to help
16:32 convince the critics that this is the right way forward. And I think that made a
16:36 big difference. Thank you. We have six minutes. I actually I'd like to ask does
16:44 anybody have any questions? Any questions that maybe I
16:52 can do it. What is this? The Murray show? Hi, my name is Sarah Thunberg. I'm the
17:00 director of the Colorado Digital Service. Thank you for having us. We are watching
17:05 very closely the work you've done and are talking about our own legislative agenda
17:09 as the legislature, the legislators that moved a lot of this forward. Do you have
17:16 any recommendations for those of us to take home with us? How we can model
17:20 lessons learned, things now in retrospect, you think maybe we would have done it
17:25 differently?
17:29 I'm not sure about the done it differently, but I'll tell you what we've
17:32 done that has been working in it. And Paul, we well, we've all talked a little
17:36 bit about it, but Chris has been very proactive in interacting with the people
17:42 who are most likely to be the critics. And so Lisa and I have been able to set up
17:47 these town halls where we can bring Chris in and have him explain to people. We've
17:53 set up meetings with individuals who are all at night and on weekends, by the way.
17:59 Yes, it is out of regular business hours always. But we've been able to have
18:05 discussions with the most vocal critics, people who have large followings on social
18:11 media and we've been able to help them understand what it is we're actually doing
18:16 because the reaction is visceral. I had somebody on Facebook this morning say to
18:21 me that having you endorse digital identity was not on my bingo card. It
18:30 wasn't on mine either, but here I am because I believe that this is the right
18:35 system and I believe that we either have to choose a system that is going to
18:39 respect privacy or we're going to get the other one. And so we need to make the
18:45 choice and we need to make it soon. I'm going to make a comment too. You need a
18:49 champion in your state. When Senator Kallamore and Moss created the CPO role,
18:56 they empowered it to be a champion. You need every government entity fights for
19:00 certain rights for the public. Public safety is to provide safety. Lands is to
19:04 protect the public lands. Health and human services is to ensure there's public
19:08 health and human service. do you have a privacy or digital identity champion in
19:12 your state that is empowered to even fight for this issue? It's a balancing and
19:16 that's part of the governance framework. So if you don't have that, get it going or
19:21 be the champion. I'll just add, you know, as state legislators, what's awesome about
19:28 being in state policy is that you can pass a bill and then you see the effects of it
19:33 like almost immediately. And that's pretty rewarding. The downside of that is you
19:39 want to do everything right now. And that's just not possible in these types of
19:44 bills. We could have said you will implement these policies and forced it
19:48 upon all the government agencies and all the political subdivisions of the state
19:52 and cities and counties and it would have fell on its face and we would have got
19:56 zero adoption because there's no way to even adopt it right now. We're doing about
19:59 that with government data privacy. We wanted all of the cities, the counties,
20:04 the state agencies, our schools and everything like that to adopt all these
20:09 things and you will implement data privacy right now and you will implement all these
20:12 retention policies and you'll get rid of this stuff. And it's just impractical and
20:18 you're setting yourself up for failure. And so you do have to reel back a little
20:21 bit and say, you know what, I'm just gonna let's just pass this right now and let's
20:26 build that. And even as Chris said, you know, we did a data private or we did the
20:30 chief privacy officer a few years ago and we just keep slowly building on that. And
20:35 so you do have to have patience, which is not always a virtue of state legislators.
20:42 – Good morning. I'm Shanna Durant with the Department of Public Safety. Thanks for
20:46 having us. I have a question particularly for representatives. You say you've had a
20:51 lot of town halls. I'm curious about how often you're having them and how much
20:56 you're publicizing them because you say that we're talking to a lot of people who
21:01 are social media influencers. But for example, Representative Cutler, my parents
21:08 are actually some of your neighbors. So they've never heard about this until I
21:12 talked to them. So how much is their public outreach to more than just social
21:18 media and advocacy groups? And what can we do on our side as public entities as state
21:25 entities to assist in that but also give other solutions to help you with an
21:32 enhanced identity and what can we bring to the table in order to make it better.
21:38 Thanks for the question. I think that's important. So when I mentioned all these
21:43 town halls, they were fairly targeted and the efforts to focus on the policy have
21:51 been targeted with those who are probably the fiercest advocates either for or
21:56 against. Let's be honest. Most regular people, most people, this issue hasn't hit
22:04 them yet because there is nothing for them to adopt. today. Yes, they could adopt our
22:11 mobile driver's license, which they may or may not be able to get through Homeland
22:15 Security.
22:19 But we don't have a digital identity for them to adopt yet. So the efforts for
22:28 advocacy were targeted at the key stakeholders, those who are most concerned
22:32 about privacy, those who are most concerned about the technology used. And
22:37 the next wave once we have a solution ready to be adopted would be to go out to
22:43 all the citizens and explain how this is used, how this helps your life, how this
22:49 can help verify ages on social media, how it helps protect their family from online
22:55 fraud, which are real pressing problems that we all recognize and we're all trying
23:00 to deal with. And we've got to get to a point where we have a solution for them.
23:05 So we have a policy solution today. We do not have a market solution until we get
23:11 your help to agree on a standard and products. And I know we're out of time,
23:18 but it's a little bit of a catch-22, right? Because if you go to a town hall,
23:22 you've got, you know, I'll publish a town hall for thousands of people and the same
23:27 12 people show up and they're a little bit older oftentimes and they're not
23:32 technologically savvy. and I would bring up some of these topics and my wife would
23:37 be there and she'd be like, you've got to stop talking about that. They don't care.
23:43 It goes over their head and I think you're just scaring them anyways. So it's a
23:48 little bit hard, right? Because you have to find these focus groups of people who
23:51 are like keyed in on this, tuned in. But to your point, we've got to find a way
23:57 that people understand that. I do believe this is critically important. And as we're
24:01 moving into this digital age, if government does not get out in front of
24:04 us, of this, it's going to be a problem. It's going to undermine democracy. So I
24:09 will say the approach for communication though has been to communicate with every
24:13 elected official where a town hall is being held. So UVU was partnered with for
24:17 that. So they emailed every elected senator, representative, county
24:22 commissioner, mayors in every one of the areas where the town halls were. So it was
24:26 very much focused toward who are the people actually elected to represent the
24:30 people. And then they were asked to communicate it out. The other thing I'll
24:34 say though is This approach we're talking about SEDI doesn't even exist yet. We're
24:38 so early in bringing the public in. You have 29 states already going down a
24:43 digital identity path with mobile driver's license or with W3C credentials or others
24:48 in California or Colorado. This is unique of how early this is happening and people
24:53 don't realize the train has already left the station in some way and we're having
24:57 to move the market to try to move everything in this direction and we're
25:01 needing to now come in with new policies and standards that we need to have all of
25:05 that stuff now go back and be compared to to make sure it can meet them. Let's end
25:11 15 seconds. What's your pitch for states to come and join the consortium? I'll
25:19 throw out on this. Many of us recognize that we let tech
25:27 giants and the market determine the principles by which social media operates
25:33 and and is distributed and affects our families. I think we have a lesson learned
25:40 from that that we need to think carefully about in this AI world, how do we want to
25:47 change that or influence how we control digital identity so we don't have the
25:53 mistake of people who are kids accessing things they shouldn't. So this is a chance
26:00 to help solve that problem with youth identity and to solve the economic problem
26:07 of how do I put
26:12 Greece in the system to allow economic transactions with trust to happen across
26:19 the world? – I think we need 49 more Chris Bramwell across the country. That's a
26:34 definite statement. And his team. I've seen the hard work that they do and the
26:39 innovation. Utah's famous for being innovative. And we need the other states
26:45 to join us. We can't do this alone. I think get your states to get a data
26:51 privacy expert and an officer, a director, whatever your role is, all of the above.
26:59 And get your teams of the experts in the field. I'll tell you, I was on a panel
27:04 here for synthetic data. I'm just a normal person just carrying the voice of the
27:10 people. And I sat there and every other person had a PhD. I'm looking at one right
27:14 now. And they are incredibly brilliant. They are the ones that have come up with
27:19 the solutions. We're the ones up here that are helping to implement those across the
27:23 country. So we need your help. Are you going to go? I'll go. Sure. So I have zero
27:31 confidence in Congress getting anything done in this space. I have to the extent
27:37 they get anything done, I have less confidence that it's going to be done
27:41 right and not influenced by the big tech giants that are looking to again
27:46 commoditize our data and our people. We need to get back to the principles of
27:53 America that made us great. We are the laboratories of democracy and if we want
27:56 to push this policy, we need a critical mass of states that align with with these
28:01 policies, adopt these principles, and we will see mass implementation and mass
28:07 adoption of these types of principles and policies because the states are going to
28:10 lead out. And that's why you're here. We need you to help us. We need you to join
28:15 with us. And your idea might look just a little bit different and that's okay. But
28:21 if the states are working together and leading this effort, the interoperability
28:27 that people are concerned about will happen naturally because we're working
28:31 together and we don't have to rely on the federal government nor should we. That's
28:34 not how our country was set up. We can find the solution here and we encourage
28:41 you to join us. So I think since I'm last, this is what I want to say. We have worked
28:49 together as a group in our state and we would like to now extend that out to other
28:56 states and start bringing each of you in. We'll talk to you one-on-one. That's what
29:01 we've done here. Anytime there's somebody who has questions, Chris will go and talk
29:06 to them. Now there's only one Chris, so we can't we can't we don't want to spend him.
29:14 But what we can do is help people to understand this one-on-one. Nobody that
29:19 we've talked to that I'm aware of has been opposed to this once they understood it.
29:26 So I think the key is educating people on what it is we're trying to do and what the
29:31 stakes are and the stakes are very high. So for future generations let's work
29:37 together and let's get this done. Thank you. Let's give them a round of applause.
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