and do you know if the international law provides for the embassy officials to carry guns outside embassies outside national territories? in the foreign country. >> there are people, you know, based on your particular job or authorized to carry weapons. you know, would be authorized inside or outside the compound. that's about all i can say at this point. i'll see what else i can. yeah, it is. i'm making a general point. i'm not going to comment on. this is a matter that's still being investigated. i'm reluctant to go into great details. >> are you referring to u.s. or -- >> no, just referring in the conduct of the individuals who work at embassies around the world, you know, there are specific individuals with specific jobs that are authorized to carry weapons in

the conduct of their duties. and this is something that we work out with the government's in question. but i'm not going to comment on this particular individual. >> is he directly employed by the state spotlight? >> he's directly employed. >> what does the technical staff mean? >> i can repeat what -- i'm not going to expand on it. thank you. :

joining us now is ambassador philip verveer. he is is the deputy assistant secretary of state and the west coordinator for communications and information policy. ambassador, what does the u.s. coordinator for communications and information policy do? >> guest: we try to represent the united states with respect to those issues with their counterparts around the world and obviously in the course of doing that, we try to coordinate the u.s. government positions so that we are going forward in a unified perspective when we see our counterparts. >> host: on telecommuting patients policy? >> guest: that's right. >> host: 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: we do. among other things,

communications turns out to be one of those areas of life where cooperation is critically important. it is essential. we wouldn't be able to deal with our foreign friends if we didn't have modalities of cooperation. their institutions that you look at 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? >> well i think the speech probably it is fair to say in simple terms has two foundations. one is there is clearly 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 you find in the universe -- universal decoration of human rights. there is 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 who communicate. we also need to have mechanisms that ensure the free flow of information for economic reasons as well. >> host: recently in tunisia of course president ben ali was kicked out with the use of social networking and text messages and mobile technology was -- played a key role in leading to the downfall. >> guest: i think that is right and it is only one, only one factor among a great many, but the relative ease of communication, the ability of people to know what is going on, to have some sense of the concerns as a whole makes 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 important role. >> host: now ambassador verveer tunisia was essentially u.s. ally and we had a foreign language school there, foreign language training school there. did the u.s. get itself involved in this revolution at all? >> guest: well i don't think we were involved at least i'm reasonably confident we'll were not involved in fomenting a resident -- revolution. our ambassador was very clear with the tunisian government, now departed tunisian government, that some of the activities that were taking place in terms of trying to suppress the demonstrations, trying to limit the uses of social media were things that we thought were objectionable ought not to occur. 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: president hu jintao china is in town. that is one of the -- china has been in the news quite a bit when it comes to tolkien indications policies 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 a very broad but 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 in the 21st century to see work out well. so it is something we work at very hard on a continuing basis. we have issues with the chinese that we are 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 discussed them on a regular basis and we discussed them in a very frank way. with the hope that over time we are going to see what we regard as improvements in terms of the chinese to these. >> host: does facebook, does google need to develop a policy when it comes to a business model in china or should they be allowed to operate in a private business? >> guest: well, i think these are very complicated questions, and the things that one might say about it are something like first-come engagement including commercial engagement tends to be good, so 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. in many respects, that is an objectionable principle and we would say the same things about companies operating here in the united states but then you get to the third . 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 very significant improvement is available and we rather hope the 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 their ngo's 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 find here in the united states and many other countries that share our values. and i think that this global network initiative is something bad in its own right and in terms of principles it has a spouse can be very helpful to our companies that might engage in china or elsewhere where we continue to have some concerns about censorship or even political repression. >> host: does the u.s. government have a position on south korea and initiatives to require people to use their real names when registering an e-mail? >> guest: i think it is fair to say we have generally, we have the view that anonymity continues to be something that is valuable in terms of internet

activities, terms of communication, but you can understand why this is the close question in many societies. and so we are not trying to dictate to people. i mean i think our views about internet freedom are not unsettled. we appreciate that certain kinds of efforts to find a proper balance are in fact appropriate, so we are not, we are not trying to claim that everybody has to do things precisely the way we do them. >> host: ambassador verveer when it comes to countries like iran and what have -- to open up internet freedom? >> guest: live rand presents perhaps a very extreme case because it is clear that the authorities there have undertaken extraordinary efforts to suppress free speech, to censorship activities, to persecute people who might attempt to exercise 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 a fairly small sanctions now in place that we bring to bear with respect to iran. when it comes to communications related products we try to be as sophisticated about whether or not the sanctions ought to limit what is made available in iran. this is the responsibility at the end of the day of the treasury department that is 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 and i think it is fair to say that at the moment we don't feel as though these are areas where we are making great headway.

>> host: what is the budget of the committee patience and information agency? >> guest: well it's not really a separate agency of such. it is part of the economics bureau in the department of the state. it is in areas where there are roughly 25 professionals to work who work at this full time. as you would expect anybody responsible for these kinds of matters to say, our budget is only barely adequate. we would be very grateful for more resources that they could be made available. >> host: ambassador said verveer open and public service for about 35 years. >> guest: in and out of public service. in and out is the right way to think of it. >> host: how did you get interested in communications policy for lack of a better term? >> guest: well it was an accident. i was staff staff attorney at the antitrust division of the justice department back in the early 70s and by some chance that i have 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 a violation of sanctions to of the sherman act. i began that process in september of 1973 and that has caused me to address communications related issues almost constantly ever since. >> host: that 1973 work you did lead to what? >> guest: well it eventually led to the 1974, the bringing of anti-trust complaint against old bell system and overtime, actually i want to be very clear about this after i had safely moved onto other things, it led to the breakup of the phone company into several different pieces. this was something that we had theorized in the antitrust division would increase the dynamism in the sector and that turns out to have been proven correct and very very dramatic ways, i'm foreseeably dramatic ways. >> host: what was your work at the fcc? >> guest: i was the chief of the table table -- not cable

television bureau in the broadcast bureau and the common carrier bureau. >> host: what kind of work did you do what you were there? >> guest: of the chief of these girls is the senior civil servant who reports to and makes recommendations to the commissioners about what the polish he should be and also as a personal manager, the implementation of these policies of the various girls. 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 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's. and in a telephone area it was a whole series of issues some of which are tentative with us even today including the rather current issue of how we deal with transmission companies and the concept of transmission

companies, companies that offer content. something a little bit similar to this net neutrality decision that the fcc made. >> host: you have worked on breaking up the baby bells and he worked on cable tv and you also worked with the federal adviser committee on spectrum issues. now you were at are the state department working on social policies and international committee patients. is that a natural transition? >> guest: i think it's fair to say a lot of these things that i have done over the prior 35 years or so are adjacent to what i'm doing today. there are differences. there is no question about that. the geopolitical dimension is something that is quite new to me, but a lot of these issues, a lot of the foundational questions have some genuine miliary. >> host: are we had a point in our world today that telecommunications policy needs to be internationally regulated? >> 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 subject to intergovernmental controls. intergovernmental controls of any kind would inevitably affect the dynamism of the internet in ways that ultimately would be counterproductive i think and it also in some instances might aid in terms of administrations that are inclined toward towards censorship or inclined toward political repression, so we are very anxious to try to keep it, keep the internet largely free controls operating rather the way it does today. >> host: would be fair to say that some of those countries that might be inclined toward that are u.s. allies such as egypt? >> guest: while there are countries that for a variety of reasons would prefer to see some

sort of intergovernmental controls and it is not difficult to understand why they might feel that way. the internet has become critical and become essential to every country in the world to assist. so you can understand the sense that there may be anomalies in terms of it not really being subject to any sort of overarching our overall control. there is also a tendency i thin, but a tendency to think that the united states controls the internet because it originated here, but i think that 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 in that particular way and we would like to see it continue on that way. >> host: is one of your issues

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

this is very close to the top of the agenda with respect to every country that we engage encumber station with. there are concerns across an extraordinarily broad range of subject matter about how we are going to contend with this very important developing activity. the thing i think we are most concerned about, at least and i think most people are most concerned about are maintaining a certain amount of privacy so that all concerned to use cloud computing and make use of it can feel secure that 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 inherited -- inherent efficiencies are not necessarily diminished by virtue of our efforts to assure the privacy is well maintained. so we have got a balance that -- or an optimization we are trying to work with and i think it's

fair to say that this is a subject that has been seriously affected by legitimate concerns on the part of law enforcement and security agencies about how they can get access in appropriate circumstances to get information they need with respect to their investigationsr activities in terms of trying to maintain the security and the respective societies. it is a very complicated area and 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 computer's -- communicators. joining us now is set to the chief technologist at the federal trade commission. mr. felten what does the chief technologist do? >> guest: well i do a bunch of things. i'm senior adviser to the chairman and the other commissioner with the ftc. i'm internal consultant on technology and policy issues. i do some of the liaison and ambassador to the technical community and to the tech industry.

and i help the other technologist within the agency to be more effective. >> host: why does the ftc needed chief technologist? >> guest: well the ftc is doing an increasingly amount of work that relates technology in areas such as on line privacy and competition and so on, and so the leadership of the agency decided that they wanted to have more access to technical advice. and if you are going to be working in this area, the government agency, helps to have people in house to speak the language. >> host: what is your background when it comes to on line privacy and what is your general philosophy? >> guest: well my background, i'm a computer scientist and have been a computer science professor for 17 years. my technical research and teaching has been largely in on line security and privacy. so i come out of the long background in the technical aspect of this. but i have also worked on some of the public policy issues as

an academic relates to security and privacy. and so, that is the 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 is happening and more effective choices about how their information is gathered and used, and ideally that is something that can be done through the technology. but obviously government is watching to make sure that companies are behaving responsibly with consumer data. >> host: there is so much information already out there. can we protect the consumer's privacy 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 repeal it and i think people understand that there are some, sometimes risks when you decide to reveal

information to someone. that has always been true even before the internet. but what we can do a think is to make sure that people have better visibility into the consequences of the choices they are making it more effective choice. what we don't want his 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 on line. >> host: do you agree with the current opt-out policies? >> guest: generally speaking, i do. i think that if consumers understand what the choices they're they are 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 surprised you or a -- what

has surprised you? >> guest: certainly it has been a different experience being inside the government looking out as opposed to outside looking in. i have 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 to them so i am sort of eased in. certainly things to look different. one of the things i have learned is that there are things going on that happen quietly that are not visible to the outside and when you are sitting in the outside watching and reading and attending events and so on, you get a lot of the pictures but you don't get the full picture as to what is happening and why this decision is being made. >> host: do you find that comforting? >> guest: why 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 interest of consumers have hard. certainly i've been impressed by the people i have worked with thus far. >> host: what is "freedom to tinker"? >> guest: "freedom to tinker" is two things. first is a tech policy blog that i started about 10 years ago, and it has grown into a group blog, talking about technology and policy issues. i am not writing their lot in government, but some of my colleagues still are. but the name rose out of the idea that people who work with technology ought to be able to get their hands on the technologies and the people ought to be able to prepare and study and discuss the technologies that they use every day. >> host: there are two separate technologies that you tinkered with. music and voting machines. >> guest: among others, yes. >> host: but those two are very well-known. tell us about that. >> guest: let's start i guess

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

electronically in a way that is more secure. >> host: and music. >> guest: and music, sure. 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 perfectly legitimate and appropriate thing for technology to do but some of the systems have had side effects that have been harmful. >> host: such as? >> guest: oh 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 cause 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 would 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: is it safe to say you hacked into voting machines and into music software? >> guest: well, 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 study the system seminar and how they worked and talked about what the implications were. i think hack has the connotation that doesn't really match. >> host: you were here this data to that conference. why are you here and what we be talking about. >> guest: why make them panel about cloud computing and security and cloud computing is a trend towards taking data and

computation 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 is run by a company. and so, there is a panel that talked about the security and privacy policy implications of that. >> host: as a computer scientist what are the concerns about cloud computing? >> guest: 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 more places with cloud computing, so data -- your 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, on some other computer that you have and so the number of places where something could go wrong or for your data could leak from would be greater. it also needs to be defended. that is number one. number two is when you move

through the clouds 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 a cloud provider about what kind of guarantees they are getting and what they expect. >> host: so more relationship and also more places we