visited keep track of what you are doing most web sites and trying to submit that information and use it for advertising and other purposes, and we quickly found that was just the tip of the iceberg and landed 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 selling at. most often they are selling it to advertisers, so a lot of these companies are advertising companies who either collect information for themselves to figure out if you go to a website about coffee they might give you an ad for coffee the there's an increase the number of companies that do it as intermediaries said they would collect information about you going to a website about coffee and itself on the exchange or an auction house and they might sell it to a whole range of different types of companies to target ads towards you and in some cases we found other cases of non-advertising companies are experimenting with using this type of data for instance we were devotee life insurance company that was looking at

whether some of the data that can be obtained about people on-line habits as well as their source of credit card history might be a replacement for the blood and urine test in terms of predicting to decide when to give. >> host: one of those third-party is, and first of all how is it that the third parties are able to track you? do they install something? are the internet providers aware of this is being installed on their computers? >> guest: yes. essentially what happens is that what sites are made up of hundreds of different elements that are provided by all sorts of different companies. so one company might be running some sort of a backhand service and then provide some piece of the page so when you look at a single page there is a lot of different companies involved in creating different pieces of that page, and some of those

pieces are the companies that basically trafficking and personal data and so it's very difficult for the website to police this because they sort of outsource all sorts of pieces of the web sites and they often don't know what is happening on the website comes a for instance this year we wrote a story about super cookies which are a type of tracking that is hard for you to delete and microsoft we found that on microsoft's website they didn't know it was there. they just didn't realize it was an old code of law and morality and this happens a lot. there is not a lot of quality control basically in this industry, so there's a lot of people that might find a way to place the code on the web site because they had in advertising or relationship about one point and it never gets removed. >> host: what struck me about the series is that seemed to be the case a lot where you would talk with a company and they would say we had no idea we were

getting that information. it seemed to happen rather frequently. >> guest: i think it happens with every single case. i can't think of any that were not like that. and it just i think a lot of what emerged from our reporting was how amoore will leave the marketplace is. people are not aware of what is going on. and we joked that we would become like the privacy police. we just come in and there is this thing happening. i didn't realize that was happening. we will clean it up. >> host: julie angwin if you would talk about some of the different tracking devices, the cookies, the super cookies you write about in the "wall street journal." >> guest: we started off mostly looking at cookies which are tiny little files that when you visit a web site or download it onto your computer and they basically are just in on eda so

it's like a little stamp your ied number is room 23456. what happens is when you have that from wim website if you visit the mother web site that has a relationship with that company they know that you, are there, too seóul companies owned by google we found they are on the majority of web sites come sold a majority of web sites there is a code or double click that will notice that you have a cookie with a little double click ayittey and they can put it in your file like now we've seen her this place and this place and they have a pretty expensive dossier on all the different websites visited. one caveat is all the companies say they do not have your name and they don't know who you are and that is generally true although there are the immelt of detail in some of these makes it possible that you could probably figure out who somebody is that the theoretical reason for the

-- they are allowed to do this is because it is anonymous. what's happened is cookies were the first thing the and now there's been an explosion in all sorts of different things so the begins our little bits of scripts which is the kind of computer code that runs live while you are on the page. sometimes it will drop a cookie and sometimes it can see where you are moving your mouse. it can read the content on the page to say it looks like this person is not just on the page but his reading content about this medical condition and we will add that which is like her nose is hovering over this section of dalia these come must be diabetic. those are some of the techniques and then we found super cookies which is a range that is essentially other places on your computer that you can drop the same ied so cookies' generally dropped their final and a little place in your browser you can look at where it is all of your cookies but some creative

companies have found new places to store these numbers, so in your browser cache file, in your flashy player, generally all of these other places for on the numbers are considered super cookies and they are difficult for users to manage because most even if you go to delete your cookies you may not know to look in these other places to delete those super cookies. >> host: what are the of tough provisions that are generally used? are there any? >> guest: you can opt out of most companies but there is mel law saying to have to offer an opt out. but if you go to 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 opt out of the tracking. so they are still likely

collecting the data about you because in some ways it is transmitted automatically by your computer with a sickly promise not to use it to deliver targeted end to you but not all the companies that we found had opted out. >> host: julia angwin, how quickly has the sophistication of tracking devices grown, and how close are we to personally identify and people? >> guest: well, this industry has really been exploding so it really started to take off in 2006, 2007, in the past three years there's just been hundreds of companies and at least 5 billion in venture-capital put into this industry. and so they have come up with all sorts of new creative ways to attract people and there is an insatiable demand of the part of the marketers to find out ever more information.

so, they are getting closer and closer to identification. there was a studied released last week that we wrote about which says that there's a huge amount of identity information on the web, and a lot of it is being sent to these trucking companies. so the researchers went and created an account at almost 200 web sites where you could create an account and then look to see how much of that account information that was identifiable either e-mail or userid work detail transmitted to earth to parties and was more than half of them and once again this is a situation when confronted most of the companies said they were not using this data or they didn't know it was being transmitted. but it is becoming harder to make the argument that the tracking is anonymous particularly when you have services like facebook and google who really already know who you are and so when they already know that and then there

little like buttons and stuff are all over the web the also see were almost sites so they know who you are in and what websites you are on. >> what are the benefits to being tracked on the internet and what is the downside of this? >> guest: the benefits are that you could advertisements that mean something to you. and sure most people watching this have had the experience of looking at something online like a sweater or some toy they wanted to buy and then leader seeing an advertisement for something similar because the of rukeyser's were able to figure out your interest in that and then provide you with a relative advertisement. it's also true that your content can be tailored so when you go to a news website they might if tailor the content based on the know that in general you always look at political articles so you want more articles about politics so you do get some personalization there but at the

same time the problems are there is no limits on the resale on the the the stevan if you don't mind targeted ads you don't know whether the people collecting data might resell lit to ensure our employer of some point and some people don't like having everything personalized to them. the light of the experience of them internet commonplace that isn't one that is totally tailors to you. it can feel like a hall of mirrors where everything you see is a reflection of what people think you are and oftentimes for me when i'm doing research about something new, i don't want google for instance to make a guess about when looking for. i really want to see what is out there in the world. >> host: so have you found a few dewey google search or bing they know who you are or where your computer is located at some of that research its tailored to you?

>> guest: yes some people don't realize that there google searches are unique to them. i often use a plug in or a site where i can do sort of anonymous google searches and i like to compare the results to what i get from google those y yemen and it is often very different, and sometimes i prefer to personalize it and sometimes i don't but i like to be aware that volume making that choice and to choose which avenue i want to go down. >> host: you talk about in your writing your personal experience while going on line and finding yourself trapped when you put things in your shopping cart. >> guest: often times when you put something in your shopping cart you see something you don't buy it that i will follow url so i've had this experience will like to do sort of window shopping the dilemma of really going to buy them and then those

shoes i continue to see for two weeks or one time i was looking for a bathtub and that bathtub fall would be irrevocable weeks. >> host: that the privacy concerns on this new era devotee or sophisticated level of tracking online? >> guest: i think the concerns are actively eric schmidt, the chairman of google expressed them really well. he said i don't think that we really understand the implications, and i am paraphrasing. he said i don't think we've really understand the implications of living in the society where everything that we do is being watched. our phones, transmitting, location and computers are transmitting everything that we are looking at. it's just becoming a situation where we actually are creating a sort of total surveillance

system. now it is an imperfect system and it doesn't always have your name attached etc., but it does have implications because living in a society where you are always being watched is different than living in the society were not and it can affect your own behavior of your feeling it can make you feel paranoid and so without some limits on the use of that data i do think people are going to continue to be fearful about what might happen when they are being monitored. >> host: are there limits on use of that data today? are there any laws, is congress interested in it? court cases? >> guest: there is no comprehensive privacy law in the u.s.. there are some that address specific types of privacy. so there is hippa which is a fairly known privacy law that protect some of your information when you are a college student on campus. a lot of these laws though our

very limited in scope so for instance the law predicting your college student in second place of the alumni association and the university can learn call your name to information to anybody they want and i'm sure much will experience this for some of the more aggressive marketers out there. similarly, the hippa law is very restrictive and medical researchers giving access to data strangely not as restrictive with hospitals sharing it with affiliate's and so when hospitals have a part of the companies they can share your data for lubber system much more is somebody who's tried to cure cancer condoled of the data set so the current wall used to say they are not perfect are not really comprehensive of looking

at the visual age. >> host: is there a legislation that is tending bar be introduced into the but the courts have the spoken out on this issue? >> guest: there is legislation pending the there are several bills in congress senator mccain introduced a country inns of privacy bill minimizing the sale once it's been collected for one purpose and then using it for another purpose and would require companies to the amount of data to set up some baseline rules by making companies accountable for their use of data i don't believe that bill as lived anywhere. there are several other bills that are a little more sectorial. there is one that tracks legislation which aims to set up the system where people can choose not to be tracked and

then companies doing tracking would have to respect that. it's also location privacy bills that try to let that limit the transition from small firms so there are a bunch of bills i haven't seen huge progress with them this year but that might have to do with the election cycle. horse to this is the committee kidder's on c-span and we are talking with julia angwin a senior technology editor with the "wall street journal." she is also the author of the book stealing lice based the battle to control the most popular web site in america that cannot from random house and to those a point. she's a pulitzer prize winner in 2003 as a part of "the wall street journal" team in the explanatory reporting she is an illinois native at the university of chicago and columbia university graduate.

julia angwin, back to the medical records issues. for years we have been hearing about the need or the desire on a lot of people's parts to put medical records online and electronically. is the privacy issue the fact that all these private companies have so much information about us one of the reasons it hasn't happened? >> guest: i am not entirely sure why the medical records issue hasn't happened. i think it's a really complex issue because of the warehouse system set up, but i would say that generally people are really anxious to control their own data online. certainly people we talk to it would want to have the medical records because that is something then they can control. so google charness to set the pace were deutsch it didn't work out a think they were too early. but the issue i see right about

this area is these companies out there that controls the data and would feel comfortable if they control themselves and have access to. oftentimes you don't have a right to access your data and in europe you for instance. right now and facebook has been handing out its files about everybody because they could use the law to request all the data face because about that and we don't have a similar law that allows you access and that is becoming the flashpoint which is not so much you don't want the data to exist but you want access to. >> host: how can people protect themselves if they are concerned that there keystrokes or where they put their mills on the web page is being tracked? how can people protect that? >> guest: it's difficult. you can turn off java script

caruthers a program called no script i think it would prefer that from happening. however, your experience a lot of web sites would be broken. similarly, you can turn on a cookie blocking or other things like that and your experience will be diminished. so the problem is there are a great ways to the tracking most of them are very blunt and the uses of the technology are good uses for cookies. you to remember what you're shopping cart that is why the cookies with remembers all the sites you don't want to remember your log into and so it's very difficult to turn off the bad uses while turning them and keeping the good news is on the there are all sort of what complicates them.

>> host: tracking is only used for advertising purposes but law enforcement purposes. how was that done? >> guest: law enforcement has access to some of the data that we are talking about, and one thing that we've been writing about recently is how law in force that has lower standards for getting access to data in instance the former e-mail accounts or so from location the and they do with the will to search the homes would is a growing concern of the court is the different standards for the searches and seizures so we have written about this law, the electronic communications privacy act passed in 1986 aimed to protect a visual communications from search looking of these days so it allows law enforcement to get a lot of data without notifying

the subscriber to google or verizon and get information about the subscriber without showing probable cause they just have to show the information would be relevant to the information. >> host: has this come into the courts and have the courts rule on that case? >> guest: what's been happening is that some court, the courts are divided most of these requests the government puts for the data are going to the federal magistrate judge's some are saying yes and some are saying no and then oftentimes the cases are sealed so it's difficult to know but a few of them have needed to the appeals for the decisions of both sides of the issues saying that it's totally find but their needs to

be a higher standard for the searches. >> host: what kind of resources as "the wall street journal" put words telecommunications issues commensurate policy and public policy that goes with those issues? >> guest: well the journal is really lucky to have huge resources by the standards of most newspapers we've bureaus of the world, we have a very big washington bureau. on the new yorker have a very small team. myself, but i can tap the resources we have across sort of people lives in francisco who cover these companies who contributed to this series and washington has contributed and so it's actually i would say it's hard to quantify exactly because it's old a loose network. i don't have -- i can't say that i've played to these people towards the topic and we are all reporting of it, but generally we have resources.

host qassam feels he's written a book recently is face ied tools. what are those? >> guest: facial recognition technology has actually come a long way. right after line 11 there was a bunch of experiments with facial recognition technology that were just basically flopped. they were trying to use facial recognition to identify possible terrorists and was too early and they didn't understand the parameters. the biggest problem is actually which faces compare them to. you can figure out a space between the eyes and the various attributes but then what database to you look at to find where and why? in the past 10-years-old i happen is technologies aren't recognizing and databases to which to compare these faces

have gotten better so we wrote a story this summer about how the police and sheriff's of the country or ruling out these new life forms that are going to use for official recognition so they are going to do recognition which is even more accurate and to use it to identify people who might be violating parole for several other issues they might not have realized when they stopped them for a speeding ticket but by giving the facial lady can put the database to see if there is anything else outstanding and make sure they catch them for that. >> host: shelia angwin, finally, when you look back at what you are reporting on over the last couple of years and some of the trends that you see in internet technology the use of social networking and all the

privacy issues are real but what concerns you the most about this and where do you see the trend is going? >> guest: the thing is i grew up in this era where the internet was so full of promise and we all felt this first euphoria about i can find other people who have interests like i do and i can research and the topic under the sun you it's been an exciting and incredible development in my generation we've entered a per go where we are realizing the cost in this great tool which is another that was great but it does come with the cost some of the costs are that you can be constantly sergel and monitored. there are other costs as well that you're constantly on your blackberry and your spouse is going to divorce you but the one that they are most concerned about for society as well as how do we limit the possible arms

because we don't want to live in surveillance states we don't want to live in libya where we are keeping final and different and dissidents. but to random and i think like a bad actors can use them that way. was to julia angwin is the senior technology editor for "the wall street journal." you can read her reporting in teams reporting on line. think for below the communicators. >> thank you. nellis book tv tom brokaw former managing editor and anchor of nbc nightly news with tom brokaw. he presents his thoughts on the current state of american society and politics. this is about in an hour and 20 minutes. >> good evening.

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