beginning saturday morning at eight eastern through monday morning at 8 a.m. future. nonfiction books all weekend every weekend right here on c-span2. .. >> and later a look at school policies to help fight childhood obesity. >> this week on "the communicators," a discussion on the role of states when it comes to privacy and the internet.

our guest is douglas gansler, maryland attorney general and president of the national association of attorneys general. >> host: well, doug gansler is attorney general of the state of maryland. he is also the new president of the national association of attorneys general, and he is our guest this week on "the communicators." general gansler, your presidency of the naag, you chose online privacy as the issue you wanted to stress. why did you choose that? >> guest: each year the new president of naag has a presidential initiative, so rob mckenna of washington state was our president last year. he picked human trafficking, a great issue, obviously, underexposed, and it's important to expose the other 49 attorneys general to the issue. i thought privacy on the internet was a critical issue as a bipartisan issue, and it effects everybody. everybody, for the most part, is

going to be on the internet whether at their home, at the library or at work, and they're going to be buying and purchasing and things and being susceptible to having privacy rights infringed. we don't look at it as having privacy rights, where is the line between privacy and the legitimate business rights of the internet providers where should that be drawn? people will draw it in a different place, but we want to have that dialogue and insure the consumers are protected and google and other bear net providers are able -- internet providers are able to conduct their business. most of what we do on the internet is free to the consumer, but they certainly have a legitimate issue in advertising to us. >> host: why are you looking at that issue at the state attorney general level? >> guest: well, we've really become the de facto internet police at the attorney general level. we've done a number of cases whether it's craig's list,

myspace, facebook, we have interaction with them all the time because we are the protectors of the consumers, and the consumers that are the people on the internet. the federal government is focused, as properly they should be, on terrorism and homeland security, those types of issues. local das are focused on street crime, rape, robbery and murld, and we've really let the internet providers sort of conduct themselves, and we've started to take more of a regulatory role over the internet at the attorney general level. >> host: i want to read an article from our guest reporter this week, juliana gruenwald of the national journal, but in july ms. grunewald wrote this article, and here's the first sentence, i want to get your reaction. when the obama administration in february rolled out it approach to protecting consumer privacy online, it put as much emphasis on industry self-regulation as it did in its call for legislation to provide consumers with priestles protection. >> guest: and there is, you know, the industry's

self-regulation component is essential to it, um, in the sense that it is the free market, and people will go to places where they're protected. look at ebay. you're in maryland, you buy a product in oregon, and the person that sends you that product, it's fraudulent, it's not good. who has jurisdiction to bring that to the local da? the attorney general, the u.s. attorney, but, you know, for ebay if people keep sending fraudulent products, then nobody's going to use ebay anymore. you're not going to pay the money to get the bad product, so they have an interest in regulating their own site to make sure that it works. the government also has an interest in regulating fraud that does occur. so i think it's a dual approach. but there are people who cut corners, and there's a lot of other interests that come in. one of the issues we're working on, for example, is protection of intellectual property, american intellectual property. you go on rosetta stone, you want to learn to speak french,

four of the five ads on the right side are for knockoff row set a saw -- rosetta stone products in china. they're not going to get what they paid for in return. >> host: juliana gruenwald. >> host: thank you, mr. gansler. are you hearing from consumers that privacy is a concern? one thing i've heard there a lot of companies is, where's the harm? we don't see the consumer harm. are you hearing from your constituents that this is a concern, this is something you need to be watching? >> guest: people are very, very concerned about information on the internet, and absolutely, yes. they're going to look at your gmail accounts and couple that with all other applications of bag to 8 on the internet, you know, youtube and google maps and develop personal profiles and use that to laser focus their advertising to you. people have concerns about it. if they're looking at your gmail

account, looking for certain words, and then going to send ads to your computer based on those words, it's not that dissimilar to somebody listening to your phone calls and then sending mail to your house. so people are concerned about privacy, but they're willing to compromise some of their privacy for access to the internet. so there's, um, the question is whether the invasion of privacy is an appropriate one and an acceptable one. just think about going on an airplane every day. so you go on an airplane, we now realize it's okay, we'll let our privacy be invaded by going through the metal detector. now, you know, the main goal is to make sure the plane doesn't blow up. when they put the next x-ray machines in, people were like, well, do i really want to people to see me naked? if strip searches were started, that would be unacceptable.

people are willing to sacrifice some privacy for a bigger game, being able to go on a computer and get information at their fingertips for free, but perhaps not a all their privacy. >> host: do you favor do not track, this idea of allowing consumers to opt out of having these targeted ads based on their personal preferences? >> guest: yes. and so what we've seen as we sort of have been digging into this issue talking to consumers, talking to different companies and different people are two issues that really had sort of surfaced for us. one is the ability to opt out of this. i don't want to be searched, i don't want to be followed on the internet by this particular company. and second, transparency. what are they doing with my information? when you buy a product on the internet from someplace that maybe has a brick and mortar facility or maybe doesn't, what do they do with that information? how are they collecting it, how are they storing it? are they protecting it from hackers, from identity thieves,

and to who are they disseminating that information, who are they selling it to, and for what purpose? you ought to have an ability to not -- to opt out of that or not, but you can't opt out unless you know what it is they're going to do with the information. >> host: can this be done on a state-by-state level? >> guest: it can. you know, we work most effectively collectively as attorney general. picture the tobacco litigation which sort of put the attorney general on the modern day map, or most recently the mortgage foreclosure setment, $26 billion where we're helping people get out of foreclosure. when we work collectively, yes, we have that kind of impact. internet companies like us to get together because they don't want to have 50 different regulations that they have to comply with. the federal government is much slower, pretty much on everything, in terms of regulation. so if something's going to get done -- if something gets done by the federal government, everybody agrees it ought to be done. but we sort of push the envelope

a little bit more on the regulatory side only on this space because technology is being pushed much faster. so the laws are woefully behind where the technology is. i just worked on a bill this day in maryland talking about e-mail harassment, electronic harassment. and the only way you could be accused of cyberbullying or getting in trouble for harassing somebody electronically was by e-mail. how many victims of cyberbullying are using e-mail? we had to update that to include social networking sites, texts and so forth. so the laws are that far behind the technology. >> host: does maryland have a specific or unique set of laws as opposed to the other 49 states? >> guest: no. no, they don't, and there are different laws regarding different examples, for example, our electronic harassment statute looks probably different than a thurm of other states, but the basic principle is the same. what we're trying to do through naag is really not establish laws as much as have a dialogue of where should that line be,

you know? where is the line between privacy ending and the legitimate business interests of the internet companies? because, you know, there are very, very few things you're paying for on the internet without getting a product back, so you can go on there, and it's wonderful, and maybe you want relevant ads, ads that are about something. when you're gmailing back and forth about the truck you just got, how you like to drive trucks, and all of a sudden you start to get chevy or ford truck ads, that might be something you're much more interested in having that bicycle ads when you don't ride bikes. so there are people that are interested in it. you're going to get ads, that's going to happen. otherwise, there's no incentive for the company to be on the internet. so the question for them and, i guess, the consumer is are those ads relevant and should they be? >> host: you did mention gmail. back in february you wrote a letter to gary page of google requesting a meeting because of

their changes in privacy. were you able to effect any change? did you have that meeting? >> guest: we've had a number of meetings with google, and they're ongoing, and we're working through this process. i mean, i've got to say it's been interesting because most of our interaction with the internet companies, the big ones in particular, have resulted in agreements. i don't need to say settlements because they don't get to where we have to sue them, sometimes that does happen, craig's list and others. but mostly we come to an agreement as to what is appropriate. they've got 26-year-old kids in cubicles in san francisco with ponytails saying, how cool is this, look what i can do? not with concern about how does that effect children and the laws? so we've been able to meet with google and talk to them about their particular privacy policy. we haven't come to a final resolution that's ongoing, but with companies like google that are basically monopolies, you could argue whether it's in the legal sense, but certainly monopolies in the pedestrian sense, everybody uses that for

their search engine, their interest in maintaining our privacy might be reduced. and so there's even bigger issues regarding privacy for the companies that really have a huge market share. >> host: juliana gruenwald. >> host: as i'm sure you're probably aware of, the federal trade commission last week reached a settlement with google over violations that they violated a previous settlement last year on privacy, and google agreed to pay $22 million fine. now, they had more than $40 million in the bank at the end of 2011. do you feel like google's gotten off too easy? they've come back several times before the federal trade commission over allegations related to privacy. what's your -- >> guest: well, i wasn't involve inside those negotiations, so i don't know whether it's a good settlement or bad settlement, but it certainly sounds like not -- they're going to get up the next day and go back to work. they're going to shake that right off, it's not going to drive them into bankruptcy, of course. but no one wants to drive them into bankruptcy. all we want to do is pick sure

that as we are in this -- look, google was invented in 1999, so it's -- my math's not great, but we're about 13 years in to having google even exist. so what is appropriate for google to do vis-a-vis the consumer is still being really fleshed out. and, you know, cases like that where they've been resolved, um, are important. and i think we see that as important from the attorney general level because we actually are able to, some of us who are more active, harris out in california being one, she started a whole privacy division within her office, she has the resources to do that, and she's doing a great job b out there. but these are places that companies worry about and need to worry about because we're representatives of the people. that's what we do. we are -- different attorneys general have different priorities, but we all are the consumer advocates. >> host: would you favor federal privacy legislation? would you like to see congress pass something that covered the whole country?

>> guest: it would be much better, absolutely. if the federal government actually could -- ever watch c-span or television, you know? i mean, these guys can't agree what day it is. so it's unlikely that the federal government, the people on capitol hill would ever come to some sort of agreement that everybody -- because all of a sudden it'd become political somehow. but really people's privacy shouldn't be political, and where that line should be drawn, um, would seemingly be best met at the federal level. and that we could certainly -- we should and do have concurrent enforcement authority, you know? the consumer protection, um, bureau, financial protection bureau rich cordray, one of the former attorneys general, is also getting into the space as well on the federal side. so there's going to be a lot of different people looking at these issues as it becomes more and more important. it was funny, when i actually picked -- i knew i was going to be president of naag a couple years back, they have a little queue, i was vice president and so forth.

i said this will be a great issue, it effects everybody, it's bipartisan, and somebody said to me, oh, don't worry, in two years it's going to be all fixed. well, it's really not, and we're really on the cusp of this issue, and it's getting more and more important to consumers as they, you know, they go on a map site, mapquest, google maps and map out their trip for their vacation next week, and the next time over the computer they're starting to get ads for the bed and breakfast a at that place, gassations, whoa, that's spooky. and people want to know, what are they doing with that information, and how are they protecting it, and who are they giving it to? so i think that's become a bigger issue, not a smaller one. >> host: do you support the obama administration's sort of two-pronged approach? they say they favor privacy legislation, they want congress to pass a bill, but at the same time they're launching these meetings to try to get industry privacy codes of conduct. >> guest: yeah. i think that's, actually, the only way to go.

i don't think this is an area where government should make all the rules. i think there's a huge, huge role for industry as they've been doing to self-regulate. um and, you know, we, you know, facebook has, pays a lot of people a lot of money to make sure they're secure. because if kids start getting taken out of the homes and people, you know, facebook's compromised in any way, it hurts facebook, and the next thing that'll happen. so they have an interest in it, so i think there needs to be regulation. it's not that dissimilar from the real world. i mean, the virtual world in this sense is the same. there's industry regulation, but there's also some governmental oversight which i think needs to be part of it. >> host: this is "the communicators," c-span's weekly look at technology and public policy. this week the attorney general of maryland who is also the president of the national association of attorneys general, douglas gansler. our guest reporter, juliana

gruenwald, of the national journal. you mentioned cyberbullying earlier and a couple other issues. what about for those under 18? should there be special rules, special laws included when it comes to privacy? >> guest: yeah. and when you talk about privacy, many different areas come under it, you know? we've talked a little bit about data collection and dissemination, and then there's -- we talked about intellectual property protection, there's, you know, online payments on mobile devices. five years from now we're not going to have wallets, we're going to be buying everything request our iphone and turn on our car with our iphone, we're not going to have car keys, how is that information protected? cyberbullying is one of those areas that comes under, in my view, privacy in the digital age. and, yes, we should be looking at how to protect people under 18 in the cyberbullying context and the social media context. i mean, that's all -- kids can't talk on the phone to each other anymore. they grunt, you know, the way

they communicate is through texting and social networks. and so we need to, yeah, we need to have certain rules for them. and then the issue we've been grappling with in the last few weeks and months is actually going lower than 18 which is 13, you know? right now -- and reasonable minds can differ on this issue, but, you know, facebook has seven million plus kids under 13 on it. how do they get on it? their parents want them on it. they sign them in. and the kids are lying, and the parents are helping them lie to get onto the internet, to get on to facebook. so you have seven million kids, and that number's going to continue to grow because their older brothers and sisters are, and that's how they communicate with their friends, and that's this world. so the question is, do we try and work with facebook to make it so they can't get on there, increase the technology to identify these kids earlier and sooner and kick them off, or do we acknowledge that's happening and say but you need to have

different privacy policies and standards and privacy settings for kids under 13? and different people can advertise for those kids. you ought to have, for example, the same standards you have on sunday morning cartoons on television to the under-13 crowd, so, i mean, be concerned with childhood obesity issues and that kind of thing. it's a really interesting debate, i think at least, on how to resolve that. >> host: why is that your role or the government's role at some level to police whether or not kids can go on facebook? isn't that, isn't that a parental, parental role just like watching tv? this. >> guest: the parents have a big role on social networks, but none of them know -- very few people -- certainly, not every parent knows how they work, not every parent is privy to their child's facebook account. and the government has a role because we're there to protect consumers, we're there to protect kids. and if 9-year-olds are on there

and they become, you know, are susceptible to other predators and people, we're the ones who have to go after them. and we prefer not to go after them. we prefer not to have a sort of fertile playground for sexual predators on facebook. for example, if you're talking about kids under 13 being on there, how do you make sure no one over 18 can contact them other than their parents or people designated by their parents? for example, their sports coaches or teachers? how far beyond that do you want to get? i would argue not very far because then you get this, the problems that we've had in the past. you know, talking about parents, it's interesting, you know, in terms of privacy and other issues, the issue five years ago was sexual predators. there were a lot of kids who were getting taken out of the virtual world into the real world and being violated. that happens still, you hear much, much fewer cases of that. there are very few cases, and i would argue it's because parents

really get that and say don't give any private information out to people you don't know and so forth. so i think education is absolutely an essential component of it, and parents have a huge role in this. >> host: other issues when it comes to privacy and under 18 still major issues, and what's your experience been like in maryland? >> guest: yeah. i think cyberbullying is real. and people always think that's not going to happen to my kid, and it happens to your kid. and that, i think, is more and more of a problem because the bullyor is hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. and so there's always been bullies on the playground, true. but when the bully was on the playground, other people were able to see it, and you knew exactly who the bully was. here it's a little bit different, and i think it's a contributor to the huge problem that we have with teenage suicide in the united states, and ety that that -- i think

that that, the cyberbullying piece is an important issue for kids under 18. >> host: and if you go to doug gansler's web site, oag.m d.us, you will find all sorts of information and resources for parents of children under 18. juliana group world -- group wallet. >> host: facebook has talked about possibly opening up their site to children 13 and younger. how do you think -- would that make the bullying situation worse? what's your take on that proposition? >> guest: well, as i mentioned, identify actually sent an -- i've actually spent an enormous amount of time talking with facebook about this issue and sort of the intellectual argument. most people think that kids under 13 ought to be out in the streets playing kick the can and spud like we did when we were young, and you'd rather not have kids sitting in front of screens all day whether it's playstation, xbox or facebook.

that said, there are seven million kids on there, so -- and growing. so the question is how to protect them, how to make sure it's okay that they're on there and what are the parameters under which they operate on there. is that going to enhance the amount of cyberbullying that goes on? probably, but that's why we want to make sure that there are protections built in and that you are able to, you know, that there are avenues to report the cyberbullying. and that's what parents are -- a little bit like the sexual predator stuff, parents are going to have to educate their kids. look, if something makes you feel yucky or uncomfortable inside, you need to talk to us, your parents, your teacher, whoever you're comfortable talking to about this before it gets worse. >> host: the children's online privacy protection act is aimed at children under 13, and do you feel like that provides enough protection if, say, a facebook were to open to kids under 13? do you feel like there's enough protections in there?

>> guest: no. >> host: okay. >> guest: and that, again, like i said earlier, when the federal government does it, it's going to be pretty vanilla. but i think one of the insidious, potential components of opening the facebook up to kids under 13 is who is advertising to them? who is the new market that is getting at them? are, you know, food chains going after them? are, you know, soda companies going after them? you know, you really want to make sure that there are, the advertising -- because that's why they're doing this, they're making money out of this -- is really, really child-appropriate. and i think that that certainly is one of the components that needs to be added. >> host: mr. gansler, i want to come back to one of juliana's earlier questions, get more specific, what would you like to see congress do? what could they do best in your view to help attorneys general? >> guest: well, i think there should be privacy policies that most companies now do have, should be very accessible right out front, very easy to get, not

having to go into dashboards and different levels of their site to then find something that's, you know, 30 pages long with small print and somewhere at the end saying, oh, by the way, every time you buy something, we're selling it to 35 other companies that are going to have direct market to you. so i think the transparency needs to be easily accessible and up front. the opt out or even opt-in ability -- opt-in is a little bit ambitious -- but the ability to opt out, i think, is essential. those are at least two of the components we'd like to see the federal government get involved in. >> host: didn't microsoft just change their new policy on their new operating system to opt-in? >> guest: which is what you were saying earlier about the industry component. microsoft can do that and say, by the way, go to us because we have this and no one else does. so i think that's a piece of where the industry side actually works and, yes, we congratulated them. we talked to them, they told us about it ahead of time, and we're very appreciative of it.

i think that's exactly where we ought to be going. now, they could decide tomorrow to jettison that policy, but at least it's there now, and if you had a federal law that oversaw and encompassed that, it would probably be better. >> host: what's your view on how the obama administration has approached privacy online, the justice department, dhs, etc. >> guest: we've had positive dealings with justice on it. um, and, you know, and the ftc, all the companies that -- all the agencies that are involved, and there are a few of them. i mentioned the consumer financial protection bureau because i think they're going to take a bigger and bigger role. richard cordray is not only smart, but he was an attorney general, and he gets it, and he's a consumer advocate. i think they're going to take a bigger role and hopefully be more effective, but we've had nothing but positive dealings with justice and stuff. but they're just, it's -- the federal bureaucracy and the inertia that's inherent in an institutionalized way is much more difficult to break through.

so they've been sort of supportive, but i think we've actually been driving a lot of this. >> host: juliana gruenwald. >> host: i wanted to shift focus and talk about internet gambling. i know in your state there's been talking possibly including online gambling as part of an effort to expand gambling in the state of maryland. what -- where do you stand on that issue? >> guest: i haven't taken a stand one way or the other, but i think it's certainly dangerous. you know, most people get addicted to gambling, it's an addictive practice. you can lose a lot of money, and it tends to be done by younger people. it's not taxed, so it's sort of -- there's a lot of money being transacted without the government getting anything out of it. so, you know, that said, um, there are a number of overseas gambling sites the people use whether it's in costa rica or the cayman islands or elsewhere, so the reality is that it does exist. so i think that is certainly,

um, an area that the federal government would be best positioned to have regulations. if they're going to have online gambling, the federal government ought to be regulating it because most of it right now is international, so it's federal by definition. >> host: well, as you're probably aware of, the justice department last year reinterpreted the wire act to basically open the door to internet gambling by saying that the wire act only applies to sports betting, so now you're seeing states starting the move on this issue. do you believe that the federal government needs to step up here and clarify the law? >> guest: yeah, i do. i mean, i think there's millions and millions and millions of dollars being bet over the internet all the time, you know, gambled over the internet all the time and that it's, there's very, very little regulation. it's one of the areas, in fact, there's almost no regulations, it's one of the areas that the industry in a sense there's an industry, and there is, is regulated. the one thing where you actually get paid and that works, they're driving -- most of the business

is being driven to those particular sites. could they decide to steal everybody's money one day? yeah. what are you going to do about it? nothing. >> host: is this an issue that naag is looking into? >> guest: not much. it's not an issue naag's addressed much because it's kind of like immigration. there's nothing more federal than stuff that is coming from outside our country into our country. so we kind of know where our bounds are, start and finish. >> host: and one final question. another internet issue which is something that's coming up in congress which is internet taxation. that might be coming back as law, it seems. what's your view from the state level on that? >> guest: well, it's an issue that, you know, it's not a privacy issue, but it is an issue that's been talked about in great deal in the every state because we're all strapped financially and think of this as a great way of getting some revenue. i think that, ultimately, there's going to be taxation on the sales that occur over t