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>> host: this week a look at some new technology sponsored by the consumer electronics association. several companies up on capitol hill displaying some of their wares to members of congress and their staff. gimena hartsock, what was the issue that caused phone2action come in? >> guest: i was look for different process. i was the national director of outreach of an education organization that it was national, and what i found is that we didn't have the tools available for people for them to make it, that made it easy for people to connect with their elected officials. so at the time i asked a lot of people for help, developers, and i went to, you know, some

meet-ups in technology, and eventually i found someone who understood the problem and tell me to put together the technology to solve it, and that was, that is my current co-founder, jeb ory. >> host: what were you trying to solve? be how were you trying to connect people? >> guest: so people care about issues. everyone does. people may be busy and they may not be able to physically attend to events or to visit the legislators, but it doesn't mean people do not care. people want to tell others how they feel about a variety of issues, and they also want to hear from people. if they hear from their constituents, if they hear from people that live in their districts, they'll listen. and so at the time i was trying to connect people that care about education issues to connect with the legislators and tell them how they feel about their schools, and it was very hard to do. so today, for example, some of our campaigns deal with education issues, but others deal with issues like the

start-up act 3.0 which is actually one of the campaigns we have that is on immigration. so people care about a variety of issues, and what we did is create a technology to connect people with their elected officials. >> host: jeb ory is the software developer, is that fair to say? >> guest: i helped commercialize the technology. >> host: okay. well, walk us through this technology ximena was describing the problem or the issue to be addressed. what was your real? >> guest: so after she talked to lots of other people, we had a mutual friend, and she said i have this problem. i'm trying to make it easy for people that believe in our issue to let their elected officials know. i said, okay, let me see what i can do. so we determined, yes, we actually can build something. and then i wanted to spend some time determining if there was a business. so we spent a few months trying to figure out if there was a business opportunity around this. and we realized ximena's problem

was just the outer cusp of a solution we could solve. so she want withs to find -- wanted to find an easier way to contact elected officials. and what we ended up doing is building a platform that makes it easy for people, organizations or candidates, any kind of campaign, to reach out and connect with supporters and allow them a whole tool box they can use to engage their membership, their supporters all the way along the engagement period serving people from, you know, kind of interested in a cause to being active and engaged. just so ximena's group can send an alert to people if there's leg they're interested in? >> >> guest: well, they were using solutions that didn't work on mobile. what we are doing so innovative from a technology stand point, and the reason we're able to innovate is because we're coming in with fresh eyes.

i have a background in mobile technology. we looked at the existing systems, and we know why they don't work, because they're not talking to different systems. so we've been able to despate apis to make something that works on mobile quites which are becoming ubiquitous in our society. it used to be a 0-step process and brought it down to five steps, and we built tools around that to help organizations and campaigns move their issues across the goal line and able to advance their causes. >> guest: we had knowledge that people, that the world has changed and that people today are as interested as they have always been for issue, but their behavior is different. this is 2005, this is 2513. you see the number of mobile devices on a picture. that tells you that the world is mobile. so what we do is we mobilize.

>> host: now, you're wearing this button, text jobs to 52886. >> guest: yes. >> host: what -- is this -- do you have to be part of phone2action? >> guest: no. this is actually a campaign that the consumer electronics association has put together to support the start-up act 3.0 that it was introduced by senator warner who is my senator and senator moran from kansas and a few ores. and it's a bipartisan legislation that among a variety of things keep talent from other countries that are interested in staying in the united states, creating an innovative, keeps them here. so people like me that would normally have a lot of staying, start-up act 3.0 keep them here. so this campaign is sponsored by cea. cea is our client. and it's really great because we have technology that not only

helps, but this is particularly a cause we deeply care about. >> host: ximena hartsock, do you come from a political point of view if you want to join phone2action? >> guest: so people don't join phone2action, because we serve the people. we are in the business of amplifying the voices of everyone to be heard. >> host: jeb ory, anything you want to add? >> guest: no, i think that's it. our clients are organizations and campaigns, and we help move the ball across the goal line for our clients with technology that, you know, was not existence until today. >> host: and we're here at cea on the hill talking to the developers and founders of phone2action inc.. we're joined by kevin strong of the future dash corporation. mr. strong, show us what you're exhibiting here. >> guest: sure, absolutely. we're a start-up based in southern california.

we have a product which we call energy buddy. it's a -- >> host: it's this right here. >> guest: well, actually, the heart of the system is this thing here. it's a system of hardware and software that helps you long-term manage your electricity use am at home. -- usage at home. this is kind of the brains of the system. you'd store that on your home network, and you can get information one of two ways. either you can install this at your main electrical panel, or in areas where they've already rolled out smart meters, we can get the information directly from those smart meters. so there's two ways to do that. all right. that's the technology portion. what are we looking at here display wise? >> guest: once you have that installed, you can look at the realtime data and present statistics for you via our software. and the software comes in a couple different ways. you can look at it in a browser,

in this case on a tablet, or specifically with an app, this is an ipad app. it can give you realtime information, cost information -- >> host: does this tell us, mr. strong, that so far today we've spent $2.37 on electricitiesome. >> guest: yes, it does, yeah. this data is coming live from my house in california. i've used eight kilowatt hours of energy -- >> host: how is it you're plugged in here on capitol hill, but we're seeing what you're doing in california? >> guest: okay. well, this is just a demo unit. >> host: ah. >> guest: the real hardware back at the house. >> guest: okay. so this is legit. now, what are these sensors? >> guest: so these are, this is an optional add-on. you plug these into the wall whenever you want. it could be your washer, your dryer, a whole power strip so you can monitor your home

office. and then you can monitor and control whatever is on that circuit. so here on my system at home i've actually got three lamps plugged in, two switched on, and you can then actually turn those off. sometimes it takes a while to respond. >> host: right. okay. so this went -- if you'll turn that on, and we'll watch the number change this time. >> guest: it hasn't actually changed yet. >> host: i think it was. it was 802. >> guest: there we go, it went down. so if i left those lamps on, those would cost me $2 a day. admittedly, those are all incandescent bulbs -- >> host: now, if somebody at home turned on your washing machine right now, what what woe see this rise -- >> guest: you'd see that jump up. particularly if i'm doing demos, i know my wife is using the

only. sometimes i call and say, well, what's in the oven? >> host: is this product on the market right now? >> guest: it'll be available if a few months' time. >> host: who's the developer? >> guest: we developed it. >> host: who's we? >> guest: the founder, we're a pretty small company, but developed that product. >> host: what's the founder's background? engineer? >> guest: he's a software due rue. my background is on the hardware side, so we complement each other on that respect. >> host: what's the benefit of being up on capitol hill to show it to members of congress? >> guest: great exposure. we're a start-up, we're always looking for exposure to help us get the message out about our product. certainly saving energy is a big topic. we also have some more sophisticated abilities, automatically turn things off

when the utility sends a signal. >> host: energy buddy is the name of the company, energybuddy.com -- >> guest: future jr. dash is the name of the company. >> host: kevin strong from california. >> guest: thank you very much. >> host: and joining us up here on capitol hit at ces on the hill is congressman darrell issa who serves as chair of the government reform and oversight committee. what brings you to this display? >> guest: for me, this is a family rebruin on. i was chairman of this years ago and continue to find the products that bring delight to so many people a plus for our economy. we're a consumer economy. what is it we consume? we generate and develop more consumer products whether it's watching live television that would otherwise be through an antenna or microsoft's latest offerings, this is a great

opportunity to see a mini ces. you don't get it this easy. under our ethics rules it's hard to go to las vegas even though i would say two million square feet of this is even more exciting. >> host: congressman, if you would put on your congressional hat for a minute. when you see the area of technology, there's some issue, some court cases involved with that. do you see congress getting involved? another thing is some of the health care apps and technologies that they have here. do you see those getting medicare reimbursement? how does that play into this whole thing? >> guest: one of the delightful things about consumer electronics is they drive down the price to where, to be honest, medicare getting involved in reimbursement may not be necessary. they're bringing something to regular portability. no senior's expecting their iphone to be financed as part of their health care, and yet many, if not most seniors now have a smartphone. i think the court spoke pretty how oldly in sony beta max case

about the ability to time shift, the right of a consumer. the real question is, doesn't everybody win when a live broadcast -- including its commercials -- are made available to a broader audience? it can, in fact, potentially be a win/win. if anything, it would be great from the cable offerings were added to it, again, with their full and complete advertising. you know, one of the great questions is if i want to cash my recording and watch it on slingbox, the court's pretty well ruled that it's mine to do. it's not a rebroadcast. if i pay a service to do it, congress and the courts are going to have to consider it, but it's likely that they're going to consider that personal right to be consistent with the supreme court case in sony betamax. >> host: how do you feel about congress' understanding in general of silicon valley, of new technology, of some of these products? >> guest: you know, one of the challenges is we're in the business of making law, and laws

are often difficult to write in the face of technology. even within the government, if you will, the big data. we're the largest data producer and consumer, and yet we have some of the least structured, least readable data. so we have two problems. one is understanding what the res of the world is doing, secondly and more importantly, making sure that there's a world class efficiency and availability to the american people of what the federal government is doing. they're both pretty vexing to people who don't work in technology every day. >> host: congressman darrell issa, chair of the government oversight and reform committee here on ces on the hill. we appreciate your time. and now on "the communicators" we're talking with yuri cose chuck. why is spell here? what are you demonstrating for members of congress and their staffs? >> guest: we're demonstrating the technology that we're driving the intel perceptual

computing which is the ability for the computer, the brain, to understand the human world much like we do. so we're trying to give the computer the eyes. of when we see each other, we might not recognize each other by name next time, but we'll definitely remember that, hey, i saw him somewhere. so now the computer has the ability to do that, except utilize the memory and remember you for who you are. >> host: are you saying no more passwords? >> guest: that's exactly what i'm saying. >> host: okay. if you'd demonstrate for us. >> guest: so in this case this is my machine, right? i'm just going to go ahead and log off, sign out. >> host: okay. >> guest: i'm at the log loginscreen. there are three different users. i'm going to point the machine at my face. my face. might take a while because of the lighting. give me a second. >> host: and what is it doing? is it looking at your facial features? and recognizing you? >> guest: it's looking for the shoulder to head movement to

figure out that i'm actually a human being rather than a picture, because if i'm going to hold up a picture, it's going to say i'm testing for a photo, start moving your head and shoulders, because it wants to move i'm not actually a machine or anything. >> host: so it signed you on. >> guest: it signed me on to my account. and, unfortunately, right now we don't have the internet capabilities, but the software doesn't stop there. the software allows you now to go ahead and log into your facebook, to your gmail, to any web site that you want with your face. you're no longer limited to typing in the password. and unlike the current scenarios for remembering the pass w0rd well it fills out the field and you just need to click enter, in this case it leaves the fields blank, and it just looks for your face. your face is not there, it's not going to give it away. >> host: how have you addressed the potential security concerns people might have? >> guest: the security right

now, we're considering this a ten-character equivalent password. so if you set it up, it's going to be as good as your ten-character password. the same time, you can set up the settings to be a parental control settings where, for example, you step away from the machine, the machine recognizes that you, specifically you -- not anybody else, but you -- are in front of the machine for a certain amount of time that you specify, the machine is going to log you off. if the machine is going to be set for the user switching, you can safely pass the machine to someone else, machine is going to recognize that, hey, that's another user, it's going to log you off, log you in. that's -- if you have a kid, your kid is not going to be able to anymore send the e-mails to your boss or check your e-mails while pretending to be playing angry birds or what not, right? >> host: yuriy, have you tested this with video, the video

recognition? >> >> guest: yes. we've tested it with video, and right now it's as stable as it's going to get. now, that being said, what intel is doing is we're working on the depth technology camera where now the camera can also understand the depth. not only start at the, not only stop at the 720, but also has the depth, and it can understand where your nose begins, where your ear ends, and with that no amount of video is going to save you from trying to log in, because you're not going to -- unless you're going to create a video structure of yourself where it's going to be full, humanlike held statue, you're just going to be out of luck. >> host: yuriy kozachuk, are these products on the market right now? >> guest: they are on the market right now. the fast access is available in the intel store. the camera is available for the developers only, currently.

the sdk is on the w sior freend is available on web -- >> host: wgard to the fast access, can people takeh own laptops table and download that app -- >> guest: as long as they have web cam, they can start using it today. >> host: yuriyuriy kozachuk with intel corporation. also up on capitol hill, verizon is displaying some new wares. ben gemski is with verizon. mr. gemski, what are you showing off here to members of congress? >> guest: yes. we've got two devices. our first device is the golden eye, a collaboration between risen, panasonic and copen. and, basically, it's a mobile headset for different verticals such as health care, fire fighting, mechanical spaces. and take the idea of any industry that would need laptop or tablet or mobile device that could enhance the work process and put it into a, you know, heads-up display. so this is a heads-up display,

and all over voice command you're able to aggregate different things s. so if you're in the case of public safety, you could pull down live cameras from an existing facility so that you could, you know, take one officer looking at 20 cameras and be able to spread those feeds to your officers in the field. in the case of fire fighting, we created a prototype here which you'll see on a bunch of the commercials where the tour fighters -- firefighters are able to send and receive information from their helmet. >> host: there's a heads-up display -- >> guest: so that the command is able to send updated floor plan, different stuff like that, and command is also able to see realtime what's happening inside the building. so we're not just relying on audio communication over the radio, we're able to see realtime what's happening inside the building. >> host: is this a new venture for verizon to branch into? >> guest: yeah. we're trying to get into nontraditional devices. so the handset markets, the functioning innovation center is to do nontraditional devices.

devices you don't see in the everyday use but certainly enhance different verticals. >> host: so when we hear about google glasses, is this similar? >> guest: same thing. yep. >> host: what kind of technology goes into this? >> guest: the connectivity portion of it. all these devices are created with manufacturers, and they have these, you know, start-up, but they want the connectivity. time runs on wi-fi, but that's related to a particular building. with 4g/3g, you're able to have connectivity anywhere in the contiguous u.s. so a lot of times with 4g you're able to get those speeds to be able to stream high-definition video, audio. >> host: why did you come to ces on the hill? why is it important to show to members of congress? >> guest: just wanted to continue to spread the word, show that verizon's into nontraditional devices and more

the innovation sector. >> wha ht:else are you showing off here? >> guest: we've got a collaboration with verizon and band labs, and this is a mat that would sit inside the home or health care environment, and it takes the idea if you've got a nurse that's going to be around her rounds every 20 minutes or so or a visiting nurse that would come into the home, this mat is going to take the place of that. so this mat is able to monitor have different biometrics, one specifically is pulse so the nurse is able to see realtime, you know, events. if the patient rolls over in bed, if the patient gets up at night. >> host: so angela's now sitting on the mat. what is, what's being sent, and is it going to a cloud? >> guest: the mat is being sent to, it's going to usb to the little box, and the computer is sending it up to the cloud where the doctor or health care provider is able to see it realtime on their mobile device.

and you can see all the different events that have happened. so the patient comes in and out of bed. >> host: if you could hold that up just a minute for the camera. >> guest: yep. >> host: out of bed alert, in bed alert. >> guest: yep. >> host: okay. >> guest: so all the different alerts for the different patients. so that happens in the alert. after she sits there for a matter of time, it's going to pull down pulse so the doctor can say, you know, at one a.m. the pulse rose, and the patient got out of bed. that's an anomaly they need to look into. that's something they miss if the nurse isn't there to see it. >> host: where are you based? >> massachusetts. >> host: how long have you been with verizon? >> guest: two years now. >> host: what's your welcomed? >> engineering. we do everything from engineering to i.t. the backgrounds for all the engineers there are pretty vast, and we work in all these products, so --

>> host: ben gemski is with verizon. verizon is on capitol hill showing off some of its new wares. and blackberry is also on display here at ces on capitol hill. john noble is with blackberry. mr. noble, what are you showing to members of congress here? >> guest: well, what we're showing is our new blackberry z10 which is the latest and most updated model blackberry device based on our new operating system, blackberry 10. >> host: is it separate from android or ios or microsoft? >> guest: yes. >> host: it's your own operating system? >> guest: it's our own operating system. it's from pry tear. it's a realtime multitasking operating system, so basically it's designed for multiple applications to be running at once. it's based on a company we acquired called qnx, so anything mission critical that needs to run constantly, basically, that's the foundation of

blackberry 10. it's also held true to three core principles which is messaging, security and a really easy, fast typing experience. >> host: when it comes to government and security, etc., is blackberry still the leader as far as contracts go across the federal government? >> guest: i believe so. i think you'll find blackberry in almost every government agency. and nobody does mobile security and mobile solutions out of the box end to end as well as we do. >> host: all right. >> guest: so you'll still see a blackberry has a very large presence in the federal government. >> host: why don't you show us what you've got here. >> guest: okay. so this is the device. this is the culmination of two years of work to develop a completely new quite from the ground can -- device from the ground up. it holds true to our core principles and core talents being messaging, security and excellent typing experience. so you can see there's no

buttons on the device except the volume control. and sleep button on top. just a simple gesture wakes the device up, and i'm in my blackberry hub. the blackberry hub is one of our innovations where, basically, one messaging is done in one location and all notifications come from -- and can be managed, in one location. so i have facebook, my work e-mail, personal e-mail, all text messages, all responses can be made from there. you can actually design it however you want, it's up to you, but i have a lot of information this there, and i like the fact that it's in one place. you can even page down -- sorry about that. if you page down on the device, you'll see your next calendar meetings, and actually, you can go right into your calendar from that location. you can see who's attending those meetings, and you can see any e-mails associated with

those meetings. so all from one location you can, you're sharing all the applications, and that's how it's designed. it's designed that all the applications can work at one time and share into each other as opposed to to going in and ot of applications. >> host: why are you up here on capitol hill? what's the importance? >>ing is the importance is capitol hill, the fast is a core customer of ours, there's thousands of customers up here, and we want them to join in. it gives you kind of a fun side and a work side, and i'll show you a little bit about that. if i go back to the main screen, you can see if i pull down on it, i can go right into my personal persona which has all my applications, social networking, games, things like that in one place. these two are completely separate and secure. never the two shall meet. you can't even copy and paris

e-mail -- paste e-mail messages. i can go back into my work perimeter, and you'll see i have a separate app world, a separate browser, and this is all completely managed by your i.t. team. so this is all secure and locked down, but one of the complaints about, from people about blackberry devices is it's only for work. there's only one persona on the device. so we have this innovation called blackberry balance to give users a fun side and the serious side. work life and personal life partition. >> host: anything else on this phone you want to show us? >> guest: just something called blackberry peek. anywhere and any application in the device if you just slide up, you can always see what kind of messaging or notifications are coming in. >> host: off to the left. >> guest: off to the left. and if you want to look into it, you just slide the right. it's all gesture-based, and it's

very easy, very fluid. might be a little learning curve for people used to the older blackberry, but believe me, it's simple and intuitive, and it's fast. >> host: john noble of blackberry, thank you for your time. >> guest: thank you. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979 brought to you as a public service by your it's provider. television provider. >> coming up next, a house subcommittee hearing on a bill to expand a system that allows businesses to determine the immigration status of their employees. after that we'll be live from capitol hill as members of the senate judiciary committee continue their markup of the immigration bill. and later, the senate's back at 2 p.m. eastern for general speeches followed by debate on the reauthorization on farm and nutrition programs and debate and votes on two judicial nominations.