a civil war class and i wanted to have enough maps that students could begin to see this as this own dynamic period. >> you've been watching book tv on c-span2. every weekend we bring you 48 hours of nonfiction books, public affairs, history and biography saturday morning at 8:00 through monday at 8:00 am eastern. ..

>> this week on "the communicators," interviews from the congressional internet caucus 13th annual technology policy exhibition. every year this event highlights emerging internet technologies that shape congressional policy making. it took place in the hart senate office building in january. we'll begin with remarks from

senator patrick leahy of vermont, the caucus co-chair. >> i reminded my staff i'm supposed to be back on the floor, but i look at all the very famous people. if i had any 11-year-old grandson with me, he was 5 and wanted to get on interactive computer programs. he could draw pictures and play games. so i called him up, he said, yep, that's the one. five years old. he takes the mouse out of my hand, he said, i have had to take over, it gets very complicated. [laughter] but i think i'm still at least for the time as we reference here, we did have senators who were not quite sure of that

computer screen, why it couldn't get the news, and we showed them, yes, they could. now we have 150 members of congress, 200 diverse organizations on the caucus advisory board, i think that that's great. i think the internet's been a vital tool to protect our rights and freedoms, the human rights of people everywhere. look how some of the countries where speech and the internet has allowed to get -- speech to get through. we've affirmed and reaffirmed our nation's -- [inaudible] do i grind my teeth sometimes when i see things blasting on the internet? maybe for a second, but then i think, thank goodness. because that means people feel free to speak about whatever they want. and we have to do that,

government has to do that, american businesses have to do that. i would hope businesses would work together to promote global internet freedom. you promote global internet freedom, you're also promoting freedom itself. i think that's something we should never lose sight of. we have to figure the best way to protect our nation's cyber security. not just the security of our businesses, but of our government. a lot of businesses here -- [inaudible] their designs, their work product, but the u.s. government does every day. and we have to, we have criminals who know how easy it is to use internet for crime. when i was a prosecutor and somebody would do a $20,000 bank

robbery, that was a big deal. we would catch them usually within a few miles of the bank. now you do much, much more and perhaps even another country away. we have to guard about that. my home state of vermont we established a national center for the study of counterterrorism and cyber crime at nor witch university. some of that -- [inaudible] if anybody's interested in going up there and see it. it's a kind of public/private partnership. they can help all of us. as the chairman of the senate judiciary committee, i worked last year, last congress with the identity theft enforcement restitution act. it's a new anti-cybercrime law, and next month our hearings on that examine other ways to fight cybercrime. so there's a lot to be done, and

i realize i've only touched on a couple things. i'm committed as long as i'm here to keep the internet open, to keep it as a valuable tool. but i also want to make sure those who want damage -- [inaudible] those who want to commit crimes, we're able to stop them too. and you're the folks with the expertise to get it right. so thank you, jerry, thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> host: why are points of light and causes on facebook here today? >> guest: well, we've partnered together to build an online volunteer center that is completely integrated with facebook and allows people that are searching for and signing up

for volunteer opportunities to share that opportunity with all of their friends on facebook. >> host: how does it work? >> guest: so the basic concept is when you, when you're looking for a solen too early opportunity on the causes/ volunteer center, you'll be immediately shown a list of volunteer opportunities in your situation. we can tell from your ip address where you're logging in, so if you're in washington, we'll tell you all the volunteer opportunities in the local area. if you have friends who have signed up, we can tell you that because this is all based on your facebook networks. and so you can see what your friends are doing, if you want to sign up for a particular event, you will insert your information which ties into a back-end system that hands on has already built for managing

its volunteers, and then you're prompted to share that opportunity with your friends and say, hey, i'm going to go to this site, i'm going to go to the soup kitchen on saturday, and you guys should all come with me, there are five slots left, hurry up and sign up. this should increase the number of people doing volunteer work, should increase the actual turnout on the day they've signed up to do something because they know their friends are going to be there with them, and hopefully it will increase repeat engagement and get more people coming back to sites to do volunteer work and make it a more social experience to do really important work. >> host: how did points of light get involved in this? >> guest: so points of light is a organization that encourages folks to volunteer. we inspire and mobilize folks to get out and volunteer and make a difference in their community, and this unit is actually hands on network which partnered with

causes on facebook. and what hands on network does is operate 250 different affiliates throughout the country who all have their own ways of recruiting volunteers and posting their opportunities and telling their friends about it. so we thought what bigger way, use technology that already exists and tap into the social networking that's going on anyway and have people sign up a cause on facebook and recruit their friends, tell them that they're volunteering and really make volunteering cool. >> host: and why are you here demonstrating this for members of congress and staffers? >> guest: i can take that one. essentially, we want them to know that their constituents are out there, that they care about a lot of different issues, they want to volunteer, they want to make a difference in their community, and just because they don't have a chance to come to the hill every day or even once a week or a month that they're out there, they're making a

difference, and all the members have to do is check out facebook to see what their con stitch wents are doing, so pretty easy. >> host: is there any potential federal money involved? >> guest: not that we know of right now. there is an organization vying for money to further their technology and to make their, you know, programs bigger and better, so there's a possibility. maybe in the future. yeah. >> host: thanks. >> guest: you're welcome. >> guest: thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> host: what is q me.gov? >> guest: it's a speech-based

application where it's a one-stop shop for government-related questions. imagine that someone has a question about a government-related question whether it's federal or state, health care related or education related, when would they go today? they're carrying a mobile phone, there is no one place to go. and it's a prototype. we pull data so that any question you have that's government related has one place to go, and we will give you the answer. we will not try to give you pages to read, we will simply give you that direct answer. >> host: how do you get from prototype to reality? >> guest: so there's certainly many components to scale a service like this to make it a reality. we actually partnered with a start-up company called cha cha a few months back, and we rolled out a consumer version of a system like this where consumers can ask any question, it's available at the iphone score. you can type it or you can speak it.

we use at&t speech recognition it can, and then -- technology, and then we would use the database where they have acquired over 400 million questions and answers. so that consumer version is already out, it's a prototype. the government version, it's still in a prototype mode, and what we are looking for right now is, you know, government customers or ones who are interested in the technology of helping their sort of bring that information out to their society. so we're looking for partners right now to work with to bring something like that out. >> host: what is colon cancer? >> guest: you can see how fast it was. i asked the question, what's colon cancer, and it gave me several sort of possible answers for this. i don't know if you're able to see this on the screen, but basically it walks you through what colon cancer is, how you get it. now, even though i only asked the question, what's colon cancer, i also got very related

questions to that. for example, this one says what are the stages of colon cancer, and this is a very relevant question for something i'm looking for. let me try a couple of those just to give you an idea of how it works, how fast it is. how do i apply for medicare? okay. you can see a very similar thing. >> host: why bring it here to the congressional internet caucus expo? >> guest: there's several reasons for that. one is this is a place about how the internet is revolutionizing the way we access information and we interact with each other. and this is truly an application where it really simplifies the way people access information wherever they are. i could be in china and have a question about medicare, medicare part d, and i can basically ask that question and get the answer to my question. that's one important aspect. the second part of this is that

simply finding the way consumers access that information. at the moment today there is no really one place for people to get information. there are many places to get information. and to get one place it's very hard, basically, to do that. so we sort of brought it here as a way to sort of expose it to the masses here as to how can we bring information together and allow our consumers our, you know, people out there to have a one-stop place where they can access the information. the third one is from an at&t point of view we believe in an open internet, and we believe that by having technology like this that sits in our cloud, in our network and exposing it to the masses, the technology here doesn't have to come all from at&t. you could have a technology that could be complimentary to this that could sit in our cloud and make it available to the masses. again, this idea we heard earlier about open internet, that's exactly what we're shooting for.

[inaudible conversations] >> host: what is the entertainment software association? >> guest: we're the u.s. trade association that represents the computer and video game industry. right now we have, we have about 30 members, and they're all, you know, game publishers. three of them are console makers that you can see behind me, microsoft, sony and nintendo. >> host: so what are you showing here? >> guest: today we're showing what our latest consoles are, the nintendo wii, the sony playstation 3 and the xbox 360. these are the latest devices out on the market.

they also have hand held devices, but we wanted to show, you know, we wanted you guys to see the latest consoles and what controllers, you know, we're using with them. the wii is really, it's a great console because it has a motion motion-censored controller, and they're all wireless encouraging activity for, you know, for all game players. and we've been a member of the internet caucus for quite a few years now, and, you know, we just like to show everyone what some of our latest technology is and also let them know how people are placing games in sort of their daily life. you know, it's not just for entertainment purposes anymore, they're also being used for medical training, being used for fitness, education, rehabilitation, there's some really uses now. so we try and encourage that, that's why we're here today.

[inaudible conversations] >> host: okay, what is this map that we're looking at? >> guest: over the past three years we've had ways to displace pds maps and other online tools, but folks have asked us, can i do this, can i do that, can i look at it in this way?

well, broadband stat allows us to show the data in various formats based on what your needs are. for example, this is just a general map of, to give you an idea of where the cursor is, is nashville. so this is looking at upper middle tennessee. and anywhere that you see the red color means broadband is available. so very briefly, you can look at and see that broadband is available, and you can scroll across the state of tennessee and see that the areas and the pockets where broadband is and more importantly where broadband is not. so you can look at it in a number of different ways. so this is just looking at the served areas. so what if we wanted to look at where is coverage one provider and where is coverage with multiple providers? so what now is showing anywhere in pink means that broadband is

available by one provider where it's in orange means it's from multiple providers. so that's another thing that a lot of folks have asked me, is broadband available, but is it available from mtiple providers or? so we can zoom into a particular area and start the looking and see what is available. and it'll, it'll refresh every time that you zoom in to show what's available and what's not available. one of the other ways to look at it, let me let it catch up with me, is by looking at the density of the areas that are unserved. what providers and what folks that are making funding decisions want to know is what's the impact of the dollars spent? so by looking at the density of the unserved areas, and that's what it's going to load now is the density of those unserved

areas, we can make those decisions on where can we get the best bang for our buck. so this is showing the density. so you can keep zooming in to a particular area and continue to see how many homes are in that particular area. so in this area right here this represents over 85 homes per mile, per square mile. so you can see that there's a dense area there. well, you want to learn as much as you can about that area, so you could even switch to a satellite view and look at it from a satellite stand point to see exactly where those homes are located, and you can zoom down even further and look at those homes. but if you're wanting to see a -- let me switch off that -- what a larger impact broadband would have, you can look at a particular area, select the

tool, and it'll tell you, it'll highlight all the census blocks in an area that you designate so you can look, if i built o in this area, this is what i could expect on availability. this would be the number of homes that we would pass that are already served, and this is the number of homes we would pass that are currently unserved. >> host: how does all this tie into the national broadband plan? >> guest: in, in tennessee we have been working on mapping for some time. with the national broadband plan, it is asking for a number of factors that we haven't looked at yet. what broadband stat will allow us to do in tennessee is show those additional layers, but what it can also do is display the same data being displayed in tennessee for any state in the country or for the nation, for that matter. so the areas where population is the lowest or where income is the lowest, tt availability is

the lowest. look at that to adoption so the data that the fcc's collecting, the data through the census, we can take all that data as a nation, piece it together and try to come up with the best way to attack the unserved areas. and that's where it all starts to come together, that all the great technology that's here today the, most of it's wanting the internet, most of of it needs the internet. and if you live in rural areas and broadband's not available, then all these great applications are not usable. so this allows us to know where those gaps are, know where those areas are and make the best decision we can about addressing those areas. [inaudible conversations]

>> host: what is yao demonstrating today here? >> guest: today we're demonstrating our clear ad notice. so congress has been looking a lot at the issue of online privacy. last year i testified in front of the energy and commerce committee about this issue, so we're trying to give users better notice about what kinds of information are collected and used for online behavioral advertising and give them really meaningful choice over what categories are used and choice over whether they can opt out entirely of online behavioral advertising. so that's what we're demoing here today. >> host: you mentioned two different technologies, what does even of them do specifically? >> clear ad notice starts out by giving users an icon and a label

that comes with the ads. when ads are served online with various web sites, with it will travel the label that the user can click on, click on that icon and find out who's serving that ad to them, and they can find out where they can opt out of behavioral advertising. so with that opt-out choice, they can go to our ad interest manager that we unveiled in december of last year, and they can see the categories we have about them, and they can opt out of the selected categories or all behavioral targeting categories from yahoo!. so we think that's the kind of transparency and choice that users ultimately are looking for that will give them more comfort with the whole process of behavioral advertising. >> host: and why bring it to the internet caucus? >> guest: well, the internet caucus, this is the really all the members and the staffers who are really interested in technology issues. this is a key technology issue that the energy and commerce committee has looked at, so we want to let people know that industry self-regulation in this particular way can work, that we are one of the leaders in that

space and really let them know that industry is taking this very seriously. >> that's it from the congressional internet caucus event. if you want to watch this or other programs, go to our web site, c-span.org. >> "the communicators" also airs in prime time each monday night. if you missed any of this program on emerging technologies from the congressional internet caucus' annual exhibition, you can catch "the communicators" again tonight and each monday night at 8 p.m. eastern right here on c-span2.

>> the new c-span video library is a digital archive of c-span's programming from barack obama to ronald reagan and everyone in between. over 157,000 hours of c-span video now available to you. it's fast and free. try it out at c-span video.org. >> in washington last week, israeli defense minister ehud barak called for u.n. sanctions against iran to compel that nation to stop its nuclear program. he talked about this and other

security threats to israel during a speech to the washington institute for near east policy. this event is a little over an hour. [applause] >> the leadership of the washington institute, distinguished guests, it is great honor for me as minister of defense of israel to address you at this conference in memory of zev who in his life proved that he was worthy of the title journalist, commentator and security person. the years since he was taken have only deepened the professional vacuum that his passing created in israel probably beyond and the absence of one who was a guiding light

to his colleagues. time shows us how much we need people like him h the world of military journalism and at the same time, the world of security work. as commentator, zev did not hesitate to give criticisms of israel. he was steadfast in his opinions and did not hesitate to say things neither pleasant nor part of the consensus. sometimes odd things, tough writing according to his perception of the world concerns, faults and failures which needed to be collected. but everything was always done with the realization that all this evolves from a desire to influence and change