the format. booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. otd.org. >> this week on the communicator's, look at privacy issues on the internet and the cookies into the cookies that track where internet users go on the web. "wall street journal" technology editor joins us to talk about legislation concerning how internet users are tracked. ..

>> guest: hi, thanks for having me on. this year is what they now launched last year. and it's really about privacy in the digital age. we started off by writing about how they were all these third parties on websites that you face it, to keep track of what you're doing on this website and transmit that information and use it for advertising and other purposes. and we quickly found that was just the tip of the iceberg and we ended up doing a whole bunch of stories last year on all sorts of techniques people were using to track internet users on the web. and we also did -- looked into how they are tracking people apps on iphone and android phones. we unveiled a situation where facebook was inadvertently transmitting information about it users identities to dozens of

companies. and so, we ended up basically finding ourselves in a situation where we had more to write about and continued the series this year, not with the same branding, but covering a lot of the same issues. >> host: who are some of those third parties and how do they track? >> guest: , so we found there were hundreds of companies basically in the business of collecting information about how people behave and digital media. and selling it. the most often they are selling it to advertisers. so a lot of these companies are advertising companies to either collect the information for themselves to figure out, if you got a website about coffee, and they give you a night for coffee. but there's an increasing number of companies to do it as intermediaries. so they would collect information about you going to a website about coffee and saw that on an exchange or auction

house. then they might sell to a whole range of companies that either went to target at stores you are in some cases be found other types of nonadvertising companies are experimenting with using this type of data. for instance, a life insurance company that was looking at whether some of the data that could be obtained about people online habits as well as credit card history might be a replacement for the blood and test in terms of helping to decide when to give life insurance. >> host: one of those thirst parties -- first of all, how is that third parties are able to track you? today i saw something? are the internet providers aware that this is being installed on their computers? >> guest: yes, essentially what happens is the website i made up of hundreds of elements

that are provided by all sorts of different companies. so one company may be running some sort of backend service and then provide some peace at the page. so when you look at a single page, there's actually a lot of different companies involved in creating different pieces of that page. and some of those pieces, companies basically tracking personal data. and it's very difficult to police this because they sort of outsource all sorts of pieces of their website. so they often don't know what's happening on their website. for instance, this year we wrote a story about super cookies, which are a type of tracking that his theory hard for users to delete. microsoft -- we found that microsoft that they didn't know it was there. they didn't realize there is some old code lying around. there's not a lot of quality control basically in this

industry. there's a lot of people that might place a piece of code on a website because they an advertising or some other relationship and then it never gets removed. >> host: what struck me as it seemed to be a case of, where you would talk with a company and say we had no idea we were keeping that information. they seem to have been rather frequently. >> host: i think that happens in almost every single case. i can't think of any that work like that. and i think a lot of what emerged from our reporting was sort of how unruly this whole marketplace is, that there is just -- people aren't aware of what going on. we sort of joke that we've become the privacy police. they come in and there's this thing happening. i didn't realize that was happening. we'll clean it up. >> host: julia angwin come if

you would come and talk about the tracking devices, cookies, super cookies and the beacons you read about in "the wall street journal." >> guest: yet come we started off looking the way i see keys which are typing test files when you visit a website are downloaded onto your computer. they are basically an idea. it's a little stand. her number is 123456. once you have the idea from one website, if you visit another website that has a relationship with that i.d. company come and they know you are there too. so companies like double-click on by google, i think we found there in the majority of websites. in the majority of websites there is some code of double-click that will notice that you have a cookie with a little double-click idna can put in your file like now we seen this place come in place and they have a pretty extensive dossier on different websites you visit.

now one caveat is all these companies say they do not have your name and don't know who you are. and that is generally true, although the amount of detail that somebody's dossier makes it possible that she could probably figure out who somebody is. the theoretical reason that they're allowed to do this tracking is because it's anonymous. cookies were the first thing. and now there's been an explosion in all sorts of different things. so beacons are little bits of javascript, it kind of computer code that writes live. sometimes they can see where you move your mouse. they can read content on the page and say looks like this person is not on a page with this, the reading content about this medical condition and will add that the dossier, which is her mouse is hovering over the section about diabetes. she must be diabetic. so those are some of the

techniques. then we found super cookies, you whole range of super cookies which were essentially other places you could do the same ids. so cookies generally dropped their i.d. file and a little place in their browser you could look at where it's all for cookies. by some creative companies have found new places on your computer to store these i.d. numbers. so in your browser cache file, and your flash player, which is a play some of your videos. so generally all these other storage places for i.d. numbers are considered super cookies and they are difficult for users to manage because even if you delete your cookies come you might not overlook an obvious other places to delete the super cookies. >> host: what are the opt-out provisions generally used? are there any? >> guest: you can opt-out of all these different -- most

tracking companies. there's no law that says they have to offer an opt-out. but if you coded double-click and click on their opt-out button on their privacy page, you will be opted out from receiving targeted advertising from double-click. you don't get to a job of the tracking. so they are still likely collecting the data about you. because in some ways it is transmitted automatically by your computer. but they basically promised not to use it to deliver targeted ads to you. not all the companies we found had opt outs. >> host: julia angwin, how quickly has the sophistication of tracking devices grow quiet and how close are we to personally identifying people? >> guest: well, this industry has really been exploding. so it really started to take off in 2006, 2007. in the past 30 years, there has been hundreds of companies and

at least 5 billion in venture capital have been put into this industry. so they've come up with all sorts of new creative ways to track people. there is an insatiable demand to find out ever more information. so they are getting closer and closer to identification. there is a study released last week that we wrote about, which said there is a huge amount of identity information on the web and a lot of it is being sent to these tracking companies. so the researcher created an account and almost 200 websites that they could create accounts and then look to see how much of that information was identifiable either e-mail or user i.d. or other identifying detail is transmitted through parties. and once again, this is a situation where when confronted,

most companies that they weren't using this data or they didn't know was being transmitted. but it is becoming harder to make the argument that the tracking is truly anonymous, particularly when you have services like facebook and google who already know who you are. and so what they are doing no and then very little light buttons are all over the web, they also see you around those sites. so they know who you are and which websites iran. >> host: what are the benefits to being tracked down the internet? what is the downside to that? >> guest: the benefits are that you get advertisements that mean something to you. so i am sure most people watching us about the experience of looking at something i might like a sweater for some toy they wanted to buy and then later seen an advertisement for something similar because the advertisers figure which are interested not to provides you with a relevant advertisement.

it's also true that your content can be tailored. when you google website, they might tailor the content based on they know a general you look at political articles save him articles. so you do get some personal stationery. at the same time, the problem. so even if you don't mind targeted ads come you don't know whether people collect them as an insurer at some point. and also, some people don't like having everything personalized them. they might want the experience of the internet is a commonplace, that is not just on the totally tailored to you. it can feel like a hall of mirrors, where everything you see is a reflection of what people think you are. oftentimes a lease for me when i do research about something new, i don't want google, for instance, to make a guess about what i'm looking for. i want to see what is out there

in the world. >> host: julia angwin, have you found if you do a google search or search in google or big knows who you are what is your computer or where it is located, that some of the research could tailored towards you? >> guest: most people don't realize there's researchers are used for them. i often use a plug-in or visit a site where i can do anonymous google searching. i like to compare the results to what i get when google knows who i am. it's often very different. sometimes i feel it's personalized, but i like to be aware and to choose which avenue i want to go down. >> host: you've talked about writing your personal experience while going online and finding your soul track what you put things in your shopping cart. >> guest: yeah, oftentimes you

end up saying that item and you don't. that item will follow you around. so i've had this experience where i'd like to do sort of window shopping online and the carpet and i'm really not going to buy them. it's like my idea of fun. and then the shoes i continue to see for two weeks. one time i was looking for a bathtub in the bathtub followed me around for a couple weeks. >> host: julia angwin, what about privacy concerns on this new ability or sophisticated level of tracking online? >> guest: well, i think the concerns are -- actually, eric schmidt, chairman of google express them really well. he said i don't think you really understand implications. i'm paraphrasing. he said i don't think we understand implications of living in a society where everything we do is being

watched. our phones are transmitting our location and our computers, per se are transmitting everything we are looking not. and it's becoming a situation where we actually are creating sort of a total surveillance system. now it's an imperfect system and it doesn't always have your name attached, et cetera. but it does have implications because living in some kind of society where you are always being watched is different than living in a society where you are not and can affect your behavior. it could make you feel paranoid. and so come without some limits on the use of that data, i do think people will continue to be fearful about what might happen when they are being monitored. >> host: are there limits on the use of that data today? are there any laws against it? this congress and stress it and it court cases?

>> guest: there's no comprehensive privacy law in the u.s. some laws address the different types of privacy. there is a well-known health privacy law. there is a law that protects them of your information when you're a college student on campus. a lot of these flaws are very limited in scope. so for instance, the law protecting your information when you're a college student at the moment you graduate. so at that point, the alumni association of your university can sell your name and information to anyone they want. most people experience that they're some of the more aggressive marketers out there. similarly, the hezbollah is restrictive in terms of medical researchers giving access to data. that is strangely not as good with university -- with the hospitals sharing it with affiliates. so these days in hospitals have

a part of the companies, they can share data through your system much easier than somebody who's trying to cure cancer can get a hold of the data set. so there is a lot of current lot that we have, you could say that they are not perfect and i really comprehensively looking under privacy in the digital age. >> host: so, is there legislation that is pending or being introduced, julia angwin? what about the courts? had they spoken out on this issue? >> guest: so, there is legislation pending. there's several bills in congress. senator kerry and senator mccain introduced a comprehensive privacy bill that would have sent some baseline privacy laws about minimizing the sale of data once it's been collected for one purpose and then using it for another purpose would require companies to minimize the amount of data they collect in that at some

baseline rules about started making companies accountable. and there's those more sectorial. they do not track legislation, which aims to set up a system where people could choose not to be tracked and would have to respect that request. it's also location privacy bills that try to limit the automatic transmission of location from cell phones. so there are road should bills. i haven't seen huge progress with any of them. but that might have to do more with what the election cycle and with those bills and cycle. >> host: this is "the communicators" and we are talking with julia angwin come a senior technology editor with "the wall street journal." she is also the author of the book, "stealing myspace: the battle to control the most popular website in america."

that came out from random house in 2009. she is a pulitzer prize winner in 2003 as part of "the wall street journal" team and explanatory reporting. she is an illinois native and university of chicago and columbia university graduate. trans three back to the medical records issues. for years we've been hearing about the need or desire on people's parts to put medical records online electronically. if the privacy issue, the fact of these companies have so much information one of the reasons that hasn't happened? >> guest: you know, i'm not entirely sure why the medical records issue. i think of a complex issue because of the warehouse systems, et cetera. but i would say that generally people are really anxious to control their own data online.

certainly people we talked to him would want to have their medical records because that is something they can't control. google tried to set up sort of a help file but this didn't work out. but i think the issue that i see in writing about this area is that there are these companies out there that control bits of our data. i think a lot of people would feel much more comfortable if they controlled it themselves or at least had access to it. often times come you don't have a right to access your data in this country. in europe you do, for instance. so right now, facebook has been handing out his files about everybody in europe because people realize they can use to lodge a request of the data facebook has about them. we don't have a similar law that allows you access to your data. that is becoming more of the fast playing, which is not so much you don't want to did it to

exist, but she won access to it. >> host: how can people protect themselves if they are concerned their keystrokes or where they put their mouse on a webpage is being tracked? how can people protect that? >> guest: yeah, it is difficult. you can turn off javascript. there's a plug-in called no script they think that would turn off javascript and would prevent that from happening. however, your experience on a lot of websites would be broken. similarly, you can turn on cookie blocking or other things like that. and your experience will be diminished. so the problem is that there are great ways to prevent this kind of tracking. most of the instruments we have are very blunt because they're really good uses of these technologies. there's really good uses for cookies. you want to remember what's in your shopping cart. that's where cookie remembers

your logins cited all the sites you don't want to. suppose that the good uses. it's difficult to turn off the bad news for keeping good uses on. so there are tools out there, but all of them are sort of will make your experience a little bit slower or possibly more complicated. >> host: julia angwin, tracking is not only used for advertising purposes, but for law enforcement purposes. how is that done? >> guest: so, law-enforcement has access to some of the types of data that we are talking about. and one thing we've been writing about recently is how law enforcement has lower standards for getting access to data, for instance from our e-mail accounts or cell phone location and they do if they want to search our homes. so there is a growing concern in the courts about the differing standards for searches and

seizures. so we have written about this law, the electronic communications privacy act, passed in 1986, which really aimed to protect digital communication from search, but it's really looking outdated these days. and so, it allows law enforcement to get a lot of data from -- without notifying a subscriber. they can go just to google or verizon and information about a subscriber without showing probable cause. they just have to show up the relevant to an investigation. >> host: and, has this come into the courtship? have the courts ruled on this case? >> guest: so what has been happening is that the courts are divided. so most of these requests that governments put for data are going to the federal magistrate judges. and some judges are saying asset number saying now.

the ruling that both sides and oftentimes these cases are sealed, so it is difficult for reporters to know exactly. a few of them have made it to appeals. and there are people on both sides of the issue saying it is totally fine or there needs to be a higher standard for these kind of searches. >> host: julia angwin, what kind of resources does "the wall street journal" put towards telecommunication issues, internet policy and public policy that goes with those issues? >> guest: you know, at the journal we are really lucky to have huge resources by the standards of most newspapers. we have heroes all over the world. we have a very big washington bureau. i'm a new york. i have a very small team myself, but i can pass the resources we have across the journal. so we have people in san francisco he covered these companies who contributed to the series and we have -- i would

say it's hard to quantify exactly because it's all a loose network. i can't say appointed these 10 people towards the topic in rural reporting on it, but generally we have great resources. >> guest: >> host: now, something you've written about recently is a 3-d tools. what are those? >> guest: yeah, facial recognition technology has come a long way. right after 9/11 there was a bunch of experiments with facial recognition that knowledge if that were flopped. they were trying to spatial recognition to identify possible terrorists. it was too early and they didn't quite understand some of the parameters for recognizing faces. recognizing faces is really difficult. the biggest problem is actually which basis to compare them to. you can get sort of a glimpse of

my faith and figure out the space between the eyes of the various attributes, but what database do you look at to find where am i? to the past 10 years, what has happened is the technology for recognizing the databases to which to compare these spaces has gotten better. so we wrote a story this summer about the police and sheriffs around the country are rolling out these new iphone's that are going to use for facial recognition. and so, they also can do iris recognition, which is even more accurate. they're hoping to build a big database and use this to identify people who might be violating parole or some other issue that they wouldn't have realized when they stopped them for a speeding ticket. that by doing the facial i.t. company can pull up a database and see if there's anything else of dean being and make sure they catch them for that.

>> host: julia angwin, finally, when you look back at what you have reported on over the last couple of years and some of the trends that you see in internet technology and the use of social networking and other privacy issues around it, what concerns you the most about this? in word you see the trends going? >> guest: well, i guess the thing is i grew up in this era where the internet was so full of promise, right? and at first i think we all felt this burst of euphoria that i can find other people with interests like i do in research any topic under the sun. the internet has been such an exciting and incredible developments in my generation. but i do feel like we are now entering a period of where we the cost of this great tool,

which is that it is not the tool is a great, but it does come with some cost. some of the costs or you can be constantly survey of the monitor. other costs as well that sure conkling apply. hindering your spouse is going to divorce you. the one i'm most concerned about for society right now is how do we limit the possible harms? because we don't want to live in a surveillance state. you know, we don't want to live in libya where they were keeping files. i don't think were anywhere near that, but the tools are available. if we don't bring them in, that her skin used in that way. >> host: julia angwin to the senior technology editor for "the wall street journal." you can read here reporting and her teams reporting online at "the wall street journal." thank you for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you. >> now but tv, tom broke

presents his thoughts on the current state of american society and politics. this is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> good evening. i am the direct terror of life from the new york public library as all of you know, my goal of the library simply to make the lions roar, to make a heavy institution levitate. and when successful, to make it dance. i would like to thank tonight's sponsor. they are a proud sponsor of the new york public library and has been live for many a public library for some years now. and they are also members of the new york public library lawyers for the library committee, the firm which was founded in 1924 and offers forward taking approaches and