explore fully. .. >> right here on c-span2. >> here's a look at what's ahead on c-span2. next, "the communicators" talks with three house members on a range of proposed legislation that includes setting limits on the government's tracking of americans' phone records. then remarks by the ceo of sri international on his company's

major innovations. that'll be with followed by the ceo of twitter who comments on his company's policy concerning national security data requests. and later, a house subcommittee looks at the use of social media during emergencies. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. and this week on "the communicators" we want to talk about some of the telecommunications legislation that's being introduced in congress. joining us first is representative jared polis, he's a democrat from colorado, and he has a couple of pieces of legislation we want to ask him about. representative polis, could you start by telling us what is the epa, the electronic privacy act? >> guest: hey, peter, how are you? well, you know, a lot of these

laws were essentially written before the advent of the -- before the advent, before the popularization of e-mail, of other kinds of communications, kind of written for the telephonic era. so we're looking at an area where, for instance, irs' ability to read old e-mails, obviously, specifically in the patriot act we have other provisions. there's sort of several things that hit at once on the personal communications fronts. so we have several bills, happy to talk about any one of them that address different aspects of this. but essentially, digital communications -- that includes through skype, conventional e-mail -- is becoming common place and effectively displaced in many ways telephone communications. we have a totally different set of laws around protecting people's private phone conversations than we do, for instance, for protecting their private skype conversations even though they're essentially the same thing to the consumer. >> host: so, representative

polis, are, is postal mail, phone calls, e-mails, are they treated the same by the law when it comes to privacy? >> guest: sure. so postal mail is a different category as well. postal mail, physical parcels, has, in fact, the most severe criminal penalties for any type of tampering. on the continuum telephonic conversations which typically require a warrant to listen into, now, under the patriot act we do have an issue with foreign nationals speaking to american citizens, putting that aside, when two americans are talking to one another, that would be the most protected end. e-mail or skype currently fall in the middle. what i essentially argue is it should be more similar to telephone conversations and kind of the level of protection that we have where there has to be a reasonable due process around any law enforcement interception. >> host: now, did you introduce this legislation in response to some of the revelations about

the nsa? >> guest: so the nsa issue is -- the answer is with one piece of legislation, yes, but it's a different issue. the nsa issue is not around listening to conversations, it's about phone records. and it's phone records of americans talking to foreign nationals. it is permitted under the patriot act. now, i oppose the patriot act in part because i knew this sort of violations of privacy were allowed. i do support either repealing the patriot act or if we want to at least find a better balance between privacy and protecting our country. i know that we can do it. look, you know, there's no doubt that on the intelligence side of things they would rather have access to everything. if we were a totalitarian state, we, in fact, probably would be safer from terrorist attack. but the question is you don't want to give up what makes your country special, you don't want to give up your freedom, and that's how the terrorists truly

win, is if we give up the freedom we have as a country. so we do need a fix on the patriot act. again, i'm happy to talk about either repealing it and going in another direction or a narrow fix around the specific revelations of snowden. >> host: so to go to the e-mail question, though, representative, are our e-mails private at this point? do they need to be subpoenaed? how can government officials read those? >> guest: so the biggest concern that we're addressing around e-mails has to do with irs' ability to look at old e-mails. and, again, that's without any warrant, it's simply -- they're able to do that whereas they're not able to absent a court, a court order access phone conversations or recordings or things of that nature. e-mails don't have that same protection. so what we're trying to do there is, again, create some kind of due process around e-mail communications which would also

include video e-mail communications, for example, a skype or a peer-to-peer network communication, anything oaf the internet should have -- over the internet should have, we argue, and i believe a similar level of protection. it's not going to be exactly the same because the technology's different, but a similar level of protection for anything you do other a telephone, and we have procedures for when any entity does neat to get at phone -- need to get at phone records is absolutely able to do that. we just need to apply a similar set of regulations to how the government can access e-mail video communications over tcp/ip. >> host: so what is the significance of 180 days? >> guest: it's simply in the law. there's no great reason why it was there. but we're talking about e-mails that are newer or older than 180 days and the different procedures on accessing them. i don't know how they came up with why that's the cutoff point, to tell the truth.

>> host: what is the op to decision to protecting the e-mails? >> guest: you know, i would say in general, you know, again, anybody on the law enforcement or intelligence side would argue, well, it's quicker if we have access toering. why not listen to every phone conversation, why not have a tracker in everybody's car so you know exactly where it is? i mean, it's a slippery slope. of course these things are better from a strict law enforcement perspective. if you have a tracker on every person, you know where they are, and they're not committing crimes. but at the expense of our liberty, freedom and privacy. striking the right balance where we have safety, we take safety into account, the public safety, but we also allow privacy and freedom. so, again, i argue that we're too far towards kind of the police state, totalitarian side of things with regard to insufficient checks and balances around government checking e-mails, government finding out phone records, those sorts of things. and we need to balance it in a

way more similar to the way we've done it traditionally, even during the height of the cold war in the '70s and '80s as well as when crime was higher in the '80s. again, it's simply looking at a balance between the two. a similar standard for what we already have for intercepting phone calls, for instance. or a search warrant of somebody's home, for instance. >> host: so, representative polis, with regard to your e-mail legislation is it bipartisan? do you have many co-sponsors? do you foresee action in 2013? >> guest: so we've talked about a couple bills here, the e-mail one, the phone records one. these are all bipartisan pieces of legislation, every one of them. we have strong support from both sides. i think what increasingly many republicans have found to even might have supported some of these measures in the past, they say, guess what? we now have a chief executive that we don't trust or like, and why did we give him all this power? and i ask any of my friends before signing this much power realize that we don't have

control over future executives. even though i have great confidence in president obama, i don't know who his successor will be. so we always need to make sure we have the right checks and balances, and we should be very wary of assigning blanket authority to the executive side. when authority is assigned, they will use it. >> host: representative polis is currently in his third term in congress, a democrat from colorado, boulder, vail, and thornton are some of the cities in his district. what's your background? >> guest: i was a tech entrepreneur before i came to congress, and i also served on the school board and started a couple charter schools. >> host: as a tech entrepreneur, do you find that congress' level of understanding some of these issues, where is it? >> guest: well, you know, it's -- many of these issues in addition to being inherently important for privacy are also important for what we call the tech ecosystem, sort of the whole growth of the internet, the confidence that people have putting their private information in the internet. if people don't know where that information is going, it'll hurt

the growth of companies, people will be hesitant to share information because they think the government might be getting ahold of it, so it really hurts the entire internet economy. i think members of congress are becoming more and more net savvy. i see members with all sorts of iphones and devices that are running apps and using skype, and it's certainly not universal yet, but i don't think congress is too far behind the curve of the general population and, hopefully, catching up. >> host: i wanted to ask you, also, about another piece of legislation that you have introduced, the unlocking technology of 2013 act. what is that? >> guest: it's another bipartisan bill that overturns a decision by the librarian of congress who actually works for us that criminalizes cell phone unlocking. if you can believe that. so this is basically when you buy a cell phone and sometimes there's, you have some contractual obligations, and we certainly don't talk about interfering with that, but it actually criminalizes the act of delocking your own cell phone or

putting in another card or changing it to a different number. absolutely absurd and unlocked cell phones in many countries are very popular. there's many perfectly legitimate reasons somebody might want to do that. may might want to have two or three numbers on the same phone, they might want to have their phone be verizon in one area and t-mobile in another, and yet those are criminalized, and it also prevents innovation around cell phone apps. so this bipartisan bill would simply overrule the decision of the librarian of congress and prevent people from going to jail for just unlocking their cell phones. >> host: why is a librarian of congress involved with cell phones? >> guest: you know, like a lot of members, i was quite surprised that we had a librarian who had these kinds of powers. i knew we had a library of congress, but i didn't realize they had this type of broad authority. the argument that you'll hear is that this is to, it's because of some treaty obligations that we

have and because of a certain interpretation of laws that congress has passed in the past. but, again, we argue it was not a necessary decision. there was a specific date and, by the way, your unlocked cell phones from prior to that date that makes no sense from a policy perspective. i don't know if some attorneys made this based on some, you know, with magnifying glasses looking at statutes or what, but we're hoping there's some common sense that can prevail and we can repeal that. >> host: is there a sense in congress, do you feel a sense in congress that this is something that should pass? >> guest: if we can get enough attention, peter. i mean, again, it's one of these things constituents, hopefully thai calling in. we've certainly got a lot of calls. a lot of the digital freedom

groups are engaged with this, but it's got to get on the agenda of members of congress to show that this is important. it really puts american innovation at a competitive disadvantage to the many countries that certainly don't have any criminal penalty for cell phone unlocking in europe and elsewhere. >> host: now, the chairman -- >> guest: one more thing. if the government actually starts putting can kids in jail over this, that'll also attract attention. this is something that prosecutors can do, and it might just take a few cases of, you know, a 19-year-old unlocked their cell phone and suddenly they found find themselves in jail, and i think that would force congress to act. >> host: representative polis, the chairman of the judiciary committee has also introduced a cell phone unlocking bill, bob goodlatte. could you support his bill? >> guest: yeah. there's different ways of getting there and, you know, we have a bipartisan proposal that i've been working on, and we're happy to look at other members' as well. i'm glad the broader the interest, the more likely this can move forward and, again, i'm

happy to work with representative goodlatte towards this goal because nobody should go to prison for unlocking their cell phone no criminal intent -- with no criminal intent. >> host: and as we hook at some of the telecommunications legislation on capitol hill, we've been joined by jared polis of colorado. thank you for your time, sir. >> guest: thank you. >> host: and now joining us is representative justin amash, republican from michigan, he sevens on the oversight and government reform committee. representative, before we start talking about specific legislation, what was your reaction to the ap phone records and the nsa revelations? >> guest: well, i was quite upset about them. you might say i was outraged about it. finish it's the kind of -- it's the kind o inghat t've feared has been going on but didn't have strong evidence, didn't have anything out in the public at least, and it's first time we're seeing that the government is dramatically

overreaching, collecting phone records from americans -- not just journalists, but all americans -- and trying to use it to, essentially, track our whereabouts is the ultimate direction this is going. >> host: so in reaction to that, what legislatively have you proposed? >> guest: well, we've introduced the telephone records protection act. that would require a court order to go after phone records like the ap phone records, for example. and i've also worked on a bill with representative john copiers, ranking member of the judiciary committee. he's a democrat. and we put together a bill called the liberty act. what we try to do is narrow the scope of the patriot act so that we're only targeting people who are under investigation rather than sweeping up the records of all americans. and it also creates more openness so that members of co can receive the classified court cases, court opinions that are being released

by the fisa court and that only members of the intelligence committee have access to right now. and also having unclassified summaries of those cases available to the public. >> host: so in that liberty bill that you just talked about, narrowing it to the person under investigation. what is swept up now, everything? >> guest: well, right now the way the government is interpreting the patriot act they are treating all telephone records as relevant to the investigation of terrorism. so they are gathering and collecting everyone's telephone records. they obviously can use it to track more thans. they claim thatter -- americans. they claim they are not using it, but that's more of a policy prohibition on their part than anything else. so what we want to do is prevent this kind of collection of records. we believe it violates the constitution, violates the fourth amendment, and we don't want this kind of information being held by the government. >> host: so, now, do you and john conyers have access to the

same information? he's the dean of the michigan delegation, been here 40 years or so. do you have the same levels of clearance? >> guest: technically, all members of congress have top secret clearance. but because of administrative decisions, and this is on the part of congress as well as the obama administration, not all members of congress have access to all of the court opinions. not all members of congress have access to all of the classified documents. when we get the opportunity for a classified briefing or classified information being presented to us, we often just get an empty room and a huge stack of papers that we have to sift think. maybe 100, 200, 300 pages of documents and with no assistance. well, that's not really the kind of disclosure we'd like as members of congress. we want to represent our constituents, and to do that we need fair disclosure. >> host: so when it comes to the liberty bill, you and congressman conyers, how many

co-sponsors at this point? >> guest: i think we're up to about 38 co-sponsors. we continue to add them every day. and it's a very bipartisan bill. it has members of congress who are high-ranking democrats, it's got republicans who are high ranking and rank and members on both sides. >> host: what's the opposition? what are they saying about this bill? >> guest: well, the opposition will say that the collection of these records is constitutional. they often point to a court case from the 1970s, smith v. maryland, which is not on point at all. it's completely distinguishable from this situation. in that case the government was going after one person who was under suspicion, and the operation was for a limited period of time to go after his phone records using a very primitive device we don't really use anymore. it's a pen register. right now we have computers that can calculate expansive data, and the government is sweeping up everyone's records.

so the case is not really on point. it's completely distinguishable. and i'm very confident that the supreme court would strike down what we're doing right now. >> host: does it take your bill any teeth out of fisa and the secret court proceedings? >> guest: no. it just makes the court more transparent. so our bill would not affect what the fisa court is doing. it would make it more transparent. when it comes to the revisions to the patriot act, we would narrow it from just relevant information so the government can't -- currently it just goes after relevant information. and as i said, they're sweeping up everyone's telephone records and be other records, not just telephone records. it allows them to search all business records under the patriot act. and we would change that to relevant and material, and the government would have to state specific and articulable facts rather than just facts to go after the information. and the information would have to pertain to the person under investigation. so that would narrow it so that you could only gather records

that are connected to someone who's actually under investigation. >> host: have you gotten reaction from the leadership on this bill? >> guest: i haven't heard from the leadership about it. i'm hopeful that they'll provide support, because it is a bipartisan effort, and there are certainly senators as well who are introducing similar legislation in a bipartisan fashion. >> host: now working with democratic representatives jared polis, zoe lofgren, you've introduced the telephone records protection act. what does that do specifically? >> guest: well, that deals more directly with the ap phone records issue. currently, the government only has to get an administrative subpoena to go after phone records like they did in the ap phone records case. and that's an internal thing. it's all through the executive branch. what we would require under that bill is for the government to go to a court and get a court order showing that the material, that the information is, again can, relevant and material to an investigation. that would narrow the scope of the search and would still provide the government with the

information they need. if a judge said you need this information, the judge could provide that authority. >> host: are current laws particularly like the patriot act compatible with current and future technology? >> guest: no. current laws aren't really compatible with the changes in technology. and that's part of the problem we're facing right now. and we're also facing the issue of how to apply the constitution to current technologies. the original meaning of the fourth amendment would be that, of course, your papers and your effects are free from government searches. well, now most of our papers and effects are digital. they're kept on some third party device or third party server. so how do we apply the constitution to that information? i believe the founders would say, well, that information is still private as long as you had an agreement with the third party provider that they're going to keep your information private, it's treated as your private desk, your private

place. and the government can't touch it. >> host: what is the liberty caucus? >> guest: we have a house liberty caucus that meets every couple weeks, and i'm the chairman of that caucus. it's a group of about a couple dozen members. we probably get a dozen members who show up at any particular meeting. they're lunch meetings. and sometimes we have special guests. we're going to have judge napolitano on this week, and it's just a group of members who are trying to get the information out there about bills that are coming up to make sure that we have a pro-liberty perspective on issues, a pro-constitution perspective. >> host: and we've been talking with justin amash, a member of congress from michigan, a republican. >> guest: thanks. >> host: thank you. and now joining us on "the communicators" is representative michael capuano who's a democrat from massachusetts. representative capuano, i want to ask you about a couple of pieces of legislation that you're sponsoring beginning with the we are watching you act. what is that? >> guest: um, it is a bill that

will simply require companies to put devices in your home such as a cable box that are capable of having cameras and microphones, 3-d imaging and thermal sensors in it to be able to determine what you are doing in your home. literally watching you in your own home that people would be informed, number one, that they're there. they would have an option to get out of that, and if anything were being recorded right on the tv would scroll the words, we are watching you. it's a device that has, i actually thought was science fiction when i first heard about it. i thought, okay, what's the punchline, until i went and pulled some of the patent applications. and in the applications they are described, in my opinion, as very scary and should be scary to anybody who cares about privacy. >> host: and verizon is one of the companies that has a patent for this, right? >> guest: they didn't get a patent, they made the application. but they're not the only ones. it's come to my attention and, again, i'm not mr. technology, but i understand the xbox that's

coming out has some of these devices, one of the sony tvs has them built into the tv, and i understand the desire for them. the intent is to be able to microtarget ads. right in the application on the verizon one -- again, they're no different than anybody else, they're not the only ones -- it says if this device sees you are drinking a beer, they will target you for budweiser ads. if they see you cuddling on your couch, they may send you an ad for marriage counseling or contraception. those are not words or experiences i made up, those are directly out of the patent application by one of the most famous internationally-known corporations in the world, and i would argue that the average person should know that's happening and have a choice to get out of it. >> host: does this technology exist today? >> guest: that's -- i don't know exactly, but i think one of the reasons the at patent was denied because all the technology is relatively simple in today's world. doesn't take much to put a camera or a video camera into any device, so they could do it. it's already cable ready, so

you're already op cable. i don't see that these are technologically science fiction. it's just a matter of whether they do it, and if they do it to make sure that we, the consumer, have an option the turn it off. >> host: congressman capuano, what's -- is there a good side to this technology if we have this in our homes? >> guest: i don't have to worry about that too much. i personally wouldn't understand it, but that's your prerogative. if you want to have microtargetted ads and you want your cable company and everyone else to know exactly what you're doing every minute of the day, i can't personally understand that type of lifestyle, but if that's your choice, that's fine by me. we didn't try to prevent the technology, we simply wanted people the know what's happening to them. >> host: and specifically, what does the we are watching you act do? >> guest: it specifically requires that the consumer be clearly notified of it, have an option to get out of it, and if they choose to get out of the system, that they have the same option. so, for instance, if a cable

company said, yeah, you can get out of it, but you can only have channels 1-10, that's not acceptable. so be able to get out of it, have the same access to cable and whatever other service it might be. and when they're reporting, you know, again, these devices would probably be on 24 hours a day even when your tv wasn't on. we don't unplug our tvs, they stay plugged in all the time even when you think they're off. whenever it's on, you would have a scroll across the bottom of the screen that we say we are watching you. that's not a little catchy phrase, but it's also true. if it's happening, i certainly would want to know about it. >> host: before we ask you about your other piece of legislation, do you have a certain philosophy about all this watching and privacy issues? >> guest: i'm a very private guy, and in the sense that, look, my telephones -- i turn the gps off. i'm not doing anything wrong, it's a matter of privacy, that's all. for instance, i have one of those transponders that allows me to travel down the

massachusetts turnpike and through toll booths. that's my choice. it's sitting right on my windshield so i know what's going on. for me privacy is about the person being able to control your own life within as much reasonable expectation as we have. we've all come to understand that there are cameras on the public street. we all know that. but when it comes time to have cameras in your own bedroom or living room, i certainly think that should be your choice. >> host: the black box privacy protection act. what is that, congressman? >> guest: almost every car made in america today or, actually, anywhere in the world and soon to be every car that is made in america, sold in america today is required to have a black box device. most cars have them now. the current use of the black box device to, is what actually triggers your air bag system. so it's the thing that senses when you have a crash. the problem is that under current rules there's no limitations on the use of the information that goes into this device. this is the device that if you have an accident, the police, your insurance company, a court,

anyone, anyone can pull this device out who knows what they're doing -- obviously, not me, but a 15-year-old technologically-competition child could do it -- they could pull this device out and know exactly how fast you were going, whether your seat belt was on, whether you applied the brakes and, if so, what pressure. which in and of itself doesn't both err me because it's a safety feature. number one, most people don't know those devices are in their car, number two, you don't have a choice of turning them off, and number three, there's no limitation on who has that information, and, number four, there's nothing that limits the amount of information developed here. right now it's only a few seconds before any potential accident, but there's nothing that says they couldn't just decide to maintain every inch, every ounce of information every minute you're driving. and, again, all this does is notifies consumers, allows them an option out and clearly identifies who owns the information, in this case it would be the car. when you buy a car, it's yours. unless you get a loan, obviously, and you share it with

the bank, but it's your car. anything in that car is yours depending on what radio station you turn, and i would argue any information on that automobile should be yours. obviously, any information that's possible, first of all, you should know about, second of all could and should be subject to a warrant if that becomes necessary at a later time. but that's what this is about. again, it's more consumer information and the ability to control your own information and your own vehicle. >> host: with both pieces of legislation that we've been discussing with you, did you consider trying to outlaw the technology or outlaw the use of the black box information? >> guest: i did not. and i didn't because i'm not against technology. technology's a great thing. and, again, for me i'm not trying to tell you or anyone else how to live. if that's your choice, go right ahead. i simply want the option. i think everyone should have the option to make their own decision. it shouldn't be government, it shouldn't be a private company no matter how big they are, and no one else should know what's good for you other than you.

so that's really been my focus. it's not trying to prohibit technology. i think that's impossible to do and probably not smart in the long run because a lot of these technologies have other applications. and there are some people that don't mind this technology in their lives, and that's fine by me. >> host: now, with regard to cars, insurance companies are getting in on this act of monitoring, aren't they? >> guest: yes, they are. and i understand that. i mean, on some levels they would have some sort of an obligation from their perspective to determine who's a good driver, who's a bad driver, who's a safe driver. they have to set rates, and i understand their business needs for wanting that information. and if the information's available, i really couldn't even plame them for doing it. so, therefore, for me it should be in my control as to what information they can get from me. >> host: um, representative capuano, have you -- what kind of response have you gotten from your colleagues on capitol hill? >> guest: well, the we are watching you has garnered some support lately only because moe people look at it the exact same