| January 5, 1999
Dear Sirs, I am writing to nominate myself to serve on the FTC Advisory Committee on Online Access and Security. I have a strong personal and professional interest in the area as well as significant experience with these issues. In my current role as Vice President, eCommerce Applications Development at Oracle corporation, I am responsible for defining and building a family of products to support internet commerce. In defining these products, my team and I are faced with a number of difficult issues and choices on how we handle personal data. The decisions that we make during the course of my job are influenced by domestic as well as international public policy, and in turn directly influence many hundreds of customers who have purchased and deployed our eCommerce applications to date. My job at Oracle also includes implementing Oracle's electronic commerce presence on the web. As we drive towards conducting 100% of our business on the web, we are building a $10 billion electronic commerce site on the internet. Beyond the sheer size of the site, it will be particularly visible because of Oracle's position as the leading provider of information management applications for the Internet. This puts additional pressure on us to be at the forefront of any trends with regards to privacy. In addition to my developing Oracle's products and systems, I also founded and grew Oracle's electronic commerce consulting practice. In that role, I was responsible for implementations such as Bertelsmann's online bookstore www.bol.com, one of the two leading online booksellers in Europe. Separately from my role at Oracle, I am also a Director of giftemporia.com, a destination web site for luxury gifts. Giftemporia.com has a number of partnerships with high end retailers. Each of these retailers considers their customer base to be an absolutely critical asset, so finding the right policies and practices for ensuring appropriate treatment of these customer lists and related customer data is critical to giftemporia.com's success. Based on my experience and responsibilities, I think I have a lot to offer your advisory committee as well as a strong stake in its recommendations. Thank you for your time and consideration, and feel free to contact me with any questions. Sincerely, Max Schireson |