Congresswoman Anna Eshoo discusses the importance of Internet privacy with community members at a special meeting held at Palo Alto’s City Hall.

7:33 p.m.: Meeting adjourns.

7:32: Eshoo: “Thank you very, very much. Thank you everyone.”

7:29: Eshoo: “I really want to thank Larry and Joe because you’ve been very enlightening. This is an area that is very perplexing… There are a whole series of complicated things that are part of something that we are all embracing and enjoy. The more we talk about, the more we deepen our understanding of how the technology works…the better off we are… This has been very enlightening and very helpful to me.”

7:26: Magid: “If you have a cellphone–someone, or some machine–knows where you are at all times… The fact is that you’ve got a lot of different people who can theoretically track you… We really need more transparency.”

7:26: Eshoo: “How widespread is tracking?”

7:22: Sullivan: On falsified Facebook identities: “It’s a challenge to prevent people from lying sometimes.”

7:18: Magid: “There are times when you can make mistakes, so use it [Facebook Places] with caution.”

7:17: Sullivan: On Facebook Places: “When you go to a location, you can check-in at that place. We treat that [Facebook Places] and statuses in the same way.”

7:12: Eshoo: “My private life is private. My public life is public. We have to balance these things out.”

7:11: Eshoo: “We want to protect the ingredients in that [innovation], but I’m also a supporter of privacy… This is a balancing act.”

7:09: Eshoo: “Responsibility has to be operational in this [social networking]… The technology can be sometimes complicated…but we have to exercise our own responsibilities. I don’t think there’s anything that takes the place of that.”

7:08: Magid: “Parents: don’t overreact. Don’t blame your kids when they come to you with a problem… Be calm about things and don’t overreact… You don’t want to drive them underground.”

7:04: Sullivan: On social networking and college admissions: “What you should do is look at your profile from the outside… You need to be aware of what you have done in the past.”

7:00: Eshoo: “I’ve come to learn that good will is not a policy.”

6:59: Magid: “It’s not a coincidence that we see ads that are relevant to us. There are pros and cons. It’s about transparency and control; the good news is that the new browsers… basically allow you to opt out of tracking.”

6:56: Eshoo: “Don’t do or say anything unless you can picture it above the fold in bold letters. You really have to be on your toes… Is that what you want in your college file? Is that what you want a potential employer to see about you? It’s not okay to play dumb. If you’re going to use these technologies, you have to know that there are responsibilities that come with it.”

6:54: Eshoo: “Today, there are probably more documented things that then end up being consequential down the road… Watch what you’re doing.”

6:52: Sullivan: “The most impactful thing for me in the past few months was standing in front of 400 middle school students and listening to their questions… If you’re trying to build safety into Facebook, you have to have those experiences.”

6:49: Sullivan: “When we think about privacy, we think about control. The idea is always: if you’re going to put something on Facebook, we want you to have control over how exactly it is shared.”

6:47: Sullivan: “We’re [Facebook] working behind the scenes to build those [anti-predator] mechanisms in… We should all expect that from any service.”

6:45: Magid: “The harm that we tend to have online is typically reputation issues… Predators are a very, very small part… Fortunately, they [predator attacks] are very rare.”

6:39: Sullivan: “As a person who experiences something bad, we want to give you options… Our goal is to try and address those [issues] in 24 hours.”

6:35: Sullivan: “How can we start that conversation about safety [between parents and kids]?”

6:34: Sullivan: “[On Facebook], it’s going to be real names interacting with real people.”

6:32: Sullivan: “Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Facebook.”

6:29: Eshoo: “I’d like to call on Joe Sullivan; Joe is the chief security officer at Facebook.”

6:25: Magid: “Privacy issues have been around forever. Safety issues have been around forever… But the Net changes the situation.”

6:22: Magid: “PlayStation. All of us are very conscious about security… We do all the right things… They’re [individuals] not only at risk on the PlayStation network, they’re at risk on every other online service… What can we do to make sure these companies are protecting our privacy?”

6:19: Larry Magid, technology journalist and co-director of ConnectSafely.org: “I have been working in online safety now for 15 years… We have now evolved to what we call online safety 3.0…we need to be flexible and layered.”

6:10 p.m.: Eshoo: “I think that the issue of privacy is something that is very deeply embedded in the D.N.A. of all Americans… We don’t want people have information that we feel belongs to us.”