Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch will be honored this evening by the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) with a FOSI Award for Outstanding Achievement, given to those individuals who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to advancing the goal of a safer Internet.

Lynch will be presented with the award at FOSI’s 2009 annual conference, Building a Culture of Responsibility: From Online Safety to Digital Citizenship. FOSI’s third annual online safety conference is being held today and tomorrow at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. It will draw Internet safety advocates from 14 countries, representing industry, academia, government and non-profit groups.

FOSI is honoring Lynch for making online safety the centerpiece of his tenure as President of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), declaring June 2008-2009 as The Year of the Child: Protecting and Empowering the Next Generation. The award also is given in acknowledgement of Lynch’s NAAG Presidential Summit on Online Safety held in May in Philadelphia, an event that brought a number of attorneys general together with the nation’s top online safety experts to discuss tools and practices that keep children safe online.

“The Family Online Safety Institute is a powerful force for good in safeguarding our kids from the threats that they face, knowingly and unknowingly, online,” Lynch said. “Because the work it accomplishes in bringing together the government, corporate and non-profit sectors to promote online safety has such a strong track record, this award is especially meaningful. I’m grateful to have my work acknowledged by an organization whose mission — as technological advances develop daily — is so necessary.”

Other recipients of the 2009 FOSI Award for Outstanding Achievement are Washington Attorney General Robert McKenna, US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, Dr. Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist in child and adolescent mental health, author, journalist and broadcaster in Great Britain; Victoria Grand, YouTube’s policy chief; Emily Hancock, senior legal director, Yahoo!; Marsali Hancock, president of iKeepSafe Coalition; Harriet Novet, regional vice president, Time Warner Cable; and Ed Palmieri, deputy chief privacy officer, Sprint Corporation.

Lynch also this evening will serve as a panelist on the topic of law enforcement trends and prevention initiatives. The panel, moderated by Mike McKeehan, Verizon’s executive director of Internet and technology policy, also includes AG McKenna, Sgt. Jim Smith, commander of the State of Connecticut’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Ann Harkins, president and CEO of the National Crime Prevention Council, and Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.

FOSI is an international non-profit organization dedicated to promoting education on online safety. This year’s conference focuses on best practices and methods to teach kids how to be responsible digital citizens and the tools needed to keep families of all ages safer online. # # #

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