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>> host: "the communicators" is on location at the state of the net conference sponsored by the congressional internet caucus. joining us now is ambassador philip verveer. he is the deputy assistant secretary of state and u.s. coordinator for communications and information policy. ambassador, what does the u.s. coordinator for communications and information policy do? >> guest: well, we try to represent the united states with respect to those issues with our counterparts around the world and, obviously, in the course of doing that we try to coordinate the u.s. government positions so that we're going forward with unified perspectives when we see our counterparts. >> host: on telecommunications policy? >> guest: that's right. >> host: okay. so billions of people are connected around the world today via the internet. does the u.s. government need to have a policy about that? >> guest: well, we do. among other things,

communications turns out to be one of those areas of life where cooperation is critically important. it's essential. we wouldn't be able to deal with our foreign friends if we didn't find modalities of cooperation. there are institutions that deal with that on a regular basis. we have to participate in those, and we also have very important bilateral arrangements that we need to attend to on a regular basis. >> host: now, your boss, secretary clinton, gave a speech about a year ago on internet freedom. what was the basis of that speech, and how has that affected u.s. policy around the world? >> guest: well, i think the speech probably it's fair to say in simple terms has two foundations. one is there is, clearly, a human rights aspect to internet freedom that is the ability of all people in the world to communicate their views freely to one another. something that you find in the universal declaration of human rights. there's also an economic aspect to it.

connectivity is something that is very important in terms of commercial activities. and so the speech was intended to make the case that we need to have mechanisms that respect the rights of individuals to communicate. of we also need to have mechanisms that assure the free flow of information for economic reasons as well. >> host: recently in tunisia, of course, the president was kicked out, but the use of social networking and text messages and mobile technology was, played a key role in leading to that downfall. >> >> guest: i think that's right. it's only one factor among a great many, but the relative ease of communication, the ability of people to know what's going on, to have some sense of the concerns of the whole make some difference. it does permit some mobilization

of societies in terms of political activities as well as many other activities. and so in tunisia it seems to have had an important role. >> host: now, ambassador verveer, tunisia, essentially, was a u.s. ally. we had a foreign language school there, foreign language training school there. did the u.s. get itself involved in in this revolution at all? >> guest: well, i don't think we were involved, i'm reasonably confident we were not involve inside fomenting any revolution. it is the case that our ambassador was very clear with the now-detarted tunisian government that some of the activities that were taking place terms of trying to suppress the demonstrations, trying to limit the uses of social media were things that we thought were objectionable and ought not occur. so our ambassador, i think, in that sense was anxious to see to it that the principles that we

believe are very important were well articulated and we had hoped would be observed by the government there. >> host: hu jintao of china is in town, and that's one of the -- china has been in the news quite a bit when it comes to telecommunications policy and social media. what is the u.s. position when it comes to the chinese government and its view of, essentially, private technology? >> guest: well, we have as we like to say very broad and deep and comprehensive relationship with our chinese friends. there are a lot of areas where we have significant agreements and where our interactions, we think, are being very productive. it is one of the most essential relationships on the planet and one that may be among the most important for the 31st sent -- 21st century to work out well with. so it's something we work at very hard on a continuing basis. we have issues with the chinese that we're very frank about with

respect both to the free flow of information within china and also with respect to chinese respect for intellectual property rights. these are issues that we discuss with them, we discuss them on a regular basis, and we discuss them in a very frank way with the hope that over time we're going to see what we would regard as improvements in terms of the chinese activities. >> host: do, does a facebook, does a google need to develop a policy when it comes to a business model in china, or should they be allowed to operate as a private business? >> guest: ing well, i think -- well, i think these are very complicated questions, and the things that one might say about it are something like, first, engagement including commercial engagement tends to be good so that in the absence of other important factors one would like to see our companies involved in activities all over the world.

secondly, the chinese are very quick to say that companies that operate in china have to observe chinese law. now i, in many respects that's an unobjectionable objective, but you then get to the third point which is that chinese law with respect to the privacy of communications, with respect to the free flow of information, with respect to enforcement of property rights arrangements are areas where we think that very significant improvement is available, and we rather hope that that improvement will take place. for private companies this kind of issue is a very difficult one. there is a very important institution called the global network initiative that certain of our private companies and our ngos have evolved. developed and evolved. that tries to lay out some

principles that companies would engage in, would observe when they operate in societies that may not have quite the same records as we might, we might find here in the united states and in many other countries that share our values. and i think that this global network initiative, gni, is something that in its own right and in terms of the principles it's espoused can be very helpful to our companies that might engage in the china or elsewhere where we continue to have some concerns about political repression. >> host: does the u.s. government have a position on the south korean initiative to require people to use their real names when registering an e-mailsome. >> guest: well, we have, i think it's fair to say generally we have a view that anonymity continues to be something that is valuable in terms of internet activities, in terms of

communication. but you can understand why this is a close question in many societies. and so we're not, we're not trying to dictate to people. i mean, i think our views about internet free are not unnuanced. we appreciate that certain kinds of efforts to find a proper balance are, in fact, appropriate. so we're not, we're not trying to claim that everybody has to do things precisely the way we do them. >> host: ambassador verveer, when it comes to a country like reaction, what kind of efforts -- iran, what kind of efforts have been made to open up internet freedom? >> guest: well, iran presents, perhaps, a very extreme case because it's clear that the authorities there have understood taken extraordinary efforts to suppress free speech, to censor activities, to persecute people who might attempt to exercise or what we would regard as elemental human rights with respect to their

discussion of political and related kinds of matters. the united states, of course, is concerned about that. we have pairly strong sanctions -- fairly strong sanctions now in place that we try to bring to bear with respect to iran. when it comes to communications-related products, we try to be sophisticated about whether or not those sanctions ought to limit what's made available in iran. this is a responsibility at the end of of the day of the treasury department, but it's one that the state department engages in as well. so we try to have a relatively broad approach to trying to encourage the government of iran to make certain concessions to free speech, to political participation. i think it's fair to say that at the moment we don't feel as though these are areas where we're making great headway.

>> host: what is the budget of the communications and information agenciesome. >> guest: well, it's not really a separate agency as such. it's a part of the economics bureau in the department of state. it is an area where there are roughly 25 professionals who work at this full time. as you would expect, anybody responsible for these kinds of matters say our budget is only barely adequate, and we'd be very grateful for more resources if they could be made available. >> host: you've been in public service for about 35 years. >> guest: well -- >> host: many and out -- >> guest: in and out, that's right. >> host: how did you get interested in communications policy, for lack of a better term? >> guest: well, it was an accident. i was staff attorney at the antitrust division of the justice justice back in the early '70s, and by some chance that i've never understood the basis of i was asked to look into the question of whether or not the

old bell system, the old at&t telephone system might be in violation of section two of the sherman act. i began that process in september of 973, and -- 1973, and that has caused me to address communications-related issues almost constantly ever since. >> host: and that 1973 work you did led to what? is. >> guest: well, it eventually led in 1974 to the bringing of an antitrust complaint against the old bell system, and over time -- i want to be very clear about this -- after i had safely moved on to other things, it led to the break up of the phone company into several different pieces. this was something that we had theorized at the antitrust division would increase the dynamism in the sector, and that turns out to have been proved correct in the very, very dramatic ways, unforeseeably dramatic ways, i would say. >> host: what was your work at the fcc? >> guest: i was, serially, the

chief of the common carrier bureau. of. >> host: and what kind of work did you do while you were there? >> guest: well, the chief is the senior civil servant who reports and makes recommendations to the commissioners about what the policy should be and also is a person who manages the implementation of those policies in the various bureaus. this is going back a very long time now, 30 years by actual count, and the issues in the cable area were essentially whether or not the cable it's industry should be -- television industry should be permitted much broader latitude to offer services. at the time it was somewhat suppressed by virtue of concerns about what it might do to over-the-air broadcasting and in the telephone area it was a whole series of issues, some of which tend to be with us even today including the rather current issue of how we deal with transmission companies and the conduct of transmission

companies vis-a-vis the companies that offer content. something a little bit similar to this recent net neutrality decision that the fcc made. >> host: now, you've worked on breaking up the baby bells, you've worked on cable tv, you also worked with the federal advisory committee on spectrum issues. now you're at the state department working on social policy and international communications. is that a natural transition? >> guest: i think it's fair to say that a lot of these things that i've done over the prior 35 years or so are adjacent to what i'm doing today. there are differences, there's no question about that. the international dimension, the geopolitical dimension is something that's quite new to me. but a lot of the issues, a lot of the foundational questions have some genuine familiarity. >> host: is it, are we at a point in our world today that telecommunications policy needs to be internationally regulated? >> guest: well, i don't know about regulated. it is certainly true that we

need to have common understandings, we need to have common standards for these things to work out as well as we might hope. there are particularly with respect to the internet, i think, genuine anxieties, genuine concerns about it falling summit to intergovernmental -- subject to intergovernmental controls. intergovernmental controls of any kind would effect the dine mihm of the -- dynamism of the internet, and it also in some instances might aid in terms of administrations that are inclined towards censorship or inclined toward political repression. so we're very anxious to try to keep the internet largely free from controls operating, rather, the way it does today. >> host: would it be fair to say that some of those countries that might be inclined towards that are u.s. allies such as egypt? >> guest: well, there are countries that for a variety of

reasons would prefer to see some sort of intergovernmental controls. and it's not difficult to understand why they might feel that way. the internet has become critical, it's become essential to every country in the world and to its citizens. so you can understand the sense that there may be anomalies in terms of it not really being subject to any sort of overarching or overall control. there's also a tendency, i think, very badly overstated but a tendency to think that the united states controls the internet because it originated here. but i think that really is a kind of misplaced sense of the situation. we don't control the internet, it turns out no national administration controls the internet. it is, i think by almost any assessment, the largest and most successful cooperative venture in the history of the world, and it has been very successful of in that, in that particular way, and we'd like to see it continue on that way.

>> host: is one of your issues of concern or one of the areas you work on cybersecurity especially from overseas? >> guest: yes. it is something we're concerned with. there are a lot of centers of activity in the u.s. government with respect to cybersecurity. howard schmidt is the president's coordinator, and on the civilian side he is the person we all look to for guidance, advice, ultimately recommendations to the president. but it is something that comes up in the bilateral realms in which i operate and also the multilateral realms. so it remains and is an important activity. >> host: deputy assistant secretary of state and u.s. coordinator for communications and information policy, ambassador philip verveer. what are you doing at this conference? is. >> guest: i'm going to participate in a panel that has to do with cloud computing and the kind of broader implications of cloud computing for privacy and security. >> host: and generally, what's going to be your message? >> guest: well, i think that the message would be something like

this is very close to the top of the agenda with respect to every country that we engage in conversations with. there are concerns across an extraordinarily broad range of subject matters about how we're going to contend with this very important developing activity. the thing that i think we're most concerned about and i think most people are most concerned about are maintaining a surgeon amount of privacy -- a certain amount of privacy so that all those making use of cloud computing will feel secure their information isn't going to be misused, stolen and so forth on the one hand. and on the other hand, to see to it that the uncertainties are not necessarily diminished by virtue of our efforts to be sure that privacy is well maintained. so we've got a balance that we're, or an optimization that we're trying to work with, and i

think it's fair to say that this is a subject that is then seriously affected by legitimate concerns on the part of law enforcement and security agencies about how they can get access in appropriate circumstances to information they need with respect to their investigations, their activities in terms of trying to maintain the security of the respective societies. very complicated area. we are much closer to the beginning of the story than we are the end of the story. >> host: ambassador philip verveer, thank you for being on "the communicators." >> guest: peter, thank you very much. >> host: joining us now on "the communicators" is ed felten who is the chief technologist at the federal trade commission. mr. felten, what does a chief technologist do? >> guest: well, i do a bunch of things. i'm senior adviser to the chairman and the other commissioners at the ftc, i'm an internal consultant on technology and policy issues, i do some liaison and ambassador to the technical community and to the tech industry, and i help

the other technologists within the agency to be more effective. >> host: why does the ftc need a chief technologist? >> guest: well, the ftc is doing an increasing amount of work in areas like online privacy and competition and so on, so the leadership in the agency decided that they wanted to have more access to technical advice. and if you're going to be working in this area as a government agency, it helped to have people in house who speak the language. >> host: what's your background when it comes to online privacy, and what's your general philosophy? >> guest: well, my background, i'm a computer scientist. i've been a computer science professor at princeton for 17 years. and my technical research and teaching has been largely in online security and privacy. so i come out of a long background in the technical aspects of this. but i've also worked on some of the public policy issues as an

academic related to security and privacy. and so that is a basis for a lot of what i expect to be doing at the ftc. as far as a basic approach to the issues, it seems to me that the key issue is empowering consumers, giving consumers better information about what's happening and more effective choices about how their information is gathered and used. and ideally, that's something that can be done through the technology. but, obviously, government is watching to make sure that companies behave responsibly with consumer data. >> host: there's so much information already out there. can we protect consumers' privacies right now? >> guest: i think there are some things we can do. people make decisions every day about when to reveal information and to whom to reveal it, and i think people understand that there are some sometimes risks when you decide to revel

information to someone. that's always been true even before the internet. but what we can do, i think, is to make sure that people have better visibility into the consequences of the choices they're making and more effective choice. what we don't want is consumers to be surprised to learn that information was gathered in a particular way or that information they gave up thinking that it would be limited to one use is finding a very different use online. >> host: do you, do you agree with the current opt-out policies? >> guest: um, generally speaking, i do. i think that if, that if consumers understand what the choice they're making -- that is, adult consumers, young kids are different -- but if adults understand what uses are being made of their data and those uses are reasonable, then they ought to be able to make that choice. >> host: this is your first d.c. job. what -- >> guest: yes. >> host: what's surprised you or what have you -- what's

surprised you? >> guest: what has surprised me? well, it's certainly been a different experience being inside government looking out as opposed to outside looking in. i've been involved in the policy process for a while even as an academic. i testified on the hill a few times and so on, and before coming full time to the ftc i worked part time as a consultant, so identify sort of -- i've sort of eased in this. but certainly things do look different. one of the things i've learned is there are things going on that happen quietly that are not visible to the outside, and when you're watching and reading and attending events and so on, you get a lot of the picture, but you don't get the full picture as to what's happening and why the decisions are being made the way they are. >> host: do you find that comforting? >> guest: i do. certainly, my experience at the ftc has been comforting in the sense that the people making the decision, i think, are well

informed and do have the best interests of consumers at heart. um, certainly i've been impressed by the people i've worked with thus far. >> host: what's freedom to tinker? >> >> guest: freedom to tinker is, well, it's two things. first, it's a blog that, a tech policy blog that i started about ten years ago and has grown into a group blog talking about technology and policy issues. i'm not writing there while i'm in government, but some of my colleagues still are. but the name arose out of the idea that people who work with technology ought to be able to get their hands on to technologies and that people ought to be able to repair and study and discuss the technologies that they use every day. >> host: well, there are two separate technologies that you tinkered with; music and voting machines. >> guest: well, among others, yes. of. >> host: okay. but those two are very well known. >> guest: sure. >> host: tell us about that. >> guest: sure.

well, let's start with, i guess, voting machines. there's been a trend in recent years in the u.s. to vote more electronically, and in particular in some places voting has gone to an all-electronic system where you just vote by pushing buttons on a screen, and the votes are recorded in an entirely electronic way. and computer scientists have had a lot of concerns about that system because of of a lack of technological transparency. you push some buttons, and at the end of the day some numbers come out of the machine that you hope are the vote totals. but how do you know? how can you be sure that things were done correctly? there's a level of -- there's less transparency with that system than there has been with more traditional voting systems. so computer scientists in general have been concerned about that. i've done, specifically, work on particular voting machines used in certain parts of the country raising some issues, some problems with them and then trying to work on how to vote

electronically in a way that's more secure. >> host: and music. >> guest: and music. sure. so i've also done in wearing my academic hat research on technologies for delivering and copy protecting music and looking at the implications of technologies that try to prevent illegal copying of music. and, of course, preventing illegal copying is itself a perfectly legitimate and appropriate thing for technology to do, but some of these systems have had side effects that have been harmful. >> host: such as? >> guest: well, so for one of the more famous cases of this and one that i had some involvement in related to a bunch of compact discs that installed software onto consumers' computers without obtaining consent. and that caused some security problems on consumers'

computers. and certainly, you wouldn't expect when you went to listen to a compact disc on your computer that you'd be letting yourself in for potential security trouble. and so my technical work was around how that happened and what could be done to keep it from happening again. >> host: so is it safe to say you hacked both into voting machines and into music software? >> guest: well, i mean, you have to be careful about the use of the word hack because it tends to be used differently between the technical community and sometimes in the press. the way i guess i would characterize it is that we studied these systems, and we learned how they worked and talked about what the implications were. and i think hack has a connotation that doesn't really match. >> host: now, you're hear at the state of the net -- here at the state of the net conference. why are you here, what will you be talking aboutsome. >> guest: i'm on a panel about cloud computing and security and privacy implications, and cloud computing is the trend toward taking data and come pew iation

that people and companies have traditionally done on their own computers or in their own corporate data center and moving it out to a facility that's run by a company. and so there's a panel to talk about the security and privacy policy implications of that. >> host: as a computer scientist, what are your concerns about the security of cloud computing? >> guest: well, there are really two issues, i think, that are relatively new with cloud computing. one of them is that your data tends to be stored in the more places with cloud computing. so data -- your e e-mail might once have been stored just on your laptop or just on your desktop computer. now it might be stored on a few different servers from a service provider on your laptop, on your phone be, on some other computer that you have. and so the number of places where something could go wrong or where your data could leak from will be greater. and ask all of those need to be defended. that's number one. number two is that when you move

to the cloud, there are generally more different parties, companies or entities involved, and therefore, there are more relationships, and there are more -- and those new relationships need to be understood. people need to understand what promises, what guarantees the cloud provider is providing to them, and they need to have a conversation with the cloud provider about what kind of guarantees they're getting and what they expect. so more relationships and also more places where data could leak, and those all need to be dealt with. >> host: do you -- where did the term cloud computing come from? >> guest: i actually don't know the origin of it. the -- i think, you know, it's meant to evoke the idea that your data are out there somewhere, and you may not know exactly where physically the data is located. as far as you're concerned, you have, say, an e-mail service which is available to you on your mobile device where you are right now. but ato