>> in the book you talk about building up the credential eventually. new leader, it's different in the virtual world than it is in the physical world. >> i think we came to the conclusion, you know, it's easy to say technology will drive all of these changes. but the essence of human leadership is still very hard, very important, very person dependent end. very much dependent on the can reis ma. and excited to motivate. it will take a long time for computers to get used to. >> okay. [inaudible] >> assume you are right as opposed to plato and -- [inaudible] about -- [inaudible] anonymity. [inaudible] [laughter] anonymity is here to stay. what does it say about cyber crimes then? you have been a victim of it. it's your company and so forth. do you we have to completely

separate the networking that to be secure like -- [inaudible conversations] >> we better. >> and that sort of thing. >> i hope the nuclear power plant control room are separated from the internet. >> that's right. it's a bigger thing to celebrate all the thing that we like to be completely safe from potential attack now. is that feasible. >> again, let me tell you a little bit about this. a system most concerned about around life safety thing are called systems are command and control systems. and they are typically not connected to the internet. and unless israeli and americans actually attack one with the iranian reprocessing by essentially getting a virus to the machine. and again, we'll see if it's true or not. it took a tremendous amount of work. you're not supposed to be -- indeed in the united i can sacred call military networks command and control networkings are highly separated and highly secure and highly illegal to,

you know, move your computer from one to the other. and they have done all the right things there. i don't worry as much about those as i worry about increasing reliance of business systems that are mission critical on the public internet that are subject to trial service attack. we talk about it in the book. to net it out, the simplest thing for you do ask is remember two thing. make sure you are not using common password across all of your accounts. and make sure that the password is hard to guess. the fellow running the ap twitter account just learned that lesson. right. to the tune of some number of hundreds of billions of dollars of losses from someone. and the second is, don't download malware, soft you don't know. and make sure you are run the chrome brower is from google and free. it's the only brower is not broking. the combination of those will

give you high degree of security. if you run a company, a government, business. make sure you are run the most recent version of software. almost all of the attacks are ones where the attacker finds a -- sitting in closet not updated with the latest antisecurity patches and to forth and manages to get in and does the rest of the attack. >> right here. >> yeah. i'll go back to you next. i think there was -- [inaudible] yeah. >> agnostic. and internet operates on passion and waves. when the waves overwhelm science i.t. and information not based on fact and scientific like we see with climate change or biotechnology. it goes against testimonying that could help the world. in a world of naftion ising a noisic. -- information that is agnostic how

do you deal? >> the theme of the book is the next five million people. like at the alternative. the alternative is a world where every generation after the next is being essentially socialized and trained based on -- [inaudible] what they are memorizing is often factually inaccurate, distorted, disillusional, whatever other adjective you want to use. ultimately i i i believe in the power of critical thinking. we write it in the book. the new people connecting to the internet. think about how many are young and school age. the vast majority. the young people with mobile devices in their hands whether the teacher show up at school or not. or told to memorize thick. the mobile device is the most vehicle against world incredibly influenced by rogue themmization. it's not ideal and the perfect answer. the power of critical thinking is important. >> i agree with that. people can be fightenned by

business interests. so lest say you are busy selling that hurting people. go back to the cigarette example in the 1960. you can imagine using the profit of the corporation to spread to falsehood. it would be true today that an alternative group that would amass a big group saying it's crazy. first you see them as choices and the ranking algorithm would sort out which one. i think we have pretty good answer the more information even with sponsored and we called it biz information. business misinformation people are trying to misinform you. they sort it out -- when you see something that doesn't quite make sense, check it. [laughter] so for example, there a site called smokes.com. and every day i get a message that -- it doesn't quite look.

i check to see if it's correct. and the internet is full of this. we may be going through a period of deciding where we went from having trusted sources informing to possibly trusted sources information. one of the core conversation we have to have as a country and society to check. when you watch television and you're maybe being a little bit manipulated rather than believe it. why don't you check it? you are on a website that looks a little bit promotional. maybe you should check it. right. google is available. [laughter] >> if i wonder if you talk about a little bit -- looking in to drug trafficking. you talk about the concrete or more promising application that you have seen in the degree of corporation with u.n. and mexican government. we're going have obama going mexico and it's one of the topics i'm convinced we have really not used technology to the degree as we could.

>> let me start an observation. eric and i took a trip to -- >> it was last year. sometime in the last year. and we were start told find that all of the police officers were wearing face masks. imagine living in city that is already very dangerous. st so dangerous that the police are there to supposedly protect you don't want anyone to know their identity. t more extraordinary while the police are busy hiding themselves, the population is busy using their real identities to essentially crowd source where the violence is. they are using various microblogging platforms and social media platform and said there's a virtual courage happening as a result of people coming online. what we find interesting and write about in the book is a challenge that it's not unique to mexico. it's best illustrated by mexico. when you talk about free

expression, people talk about in the context of being iran and north korea and cuba of the world. where the state is actually doing censorship. in mexico, you know, by all accounts the mexican government is democracy. it's a censored site. it's censored because people seflt sensor out of fear. out in of the government but demonstrate actor inspect this case the various car -- how do you solve the problem of removing fear through technology? and so we look at this in the book and explore various ways to encourage anonymous reporting. considerable reporter networks and lying if i said there's a silver bullet answer. t a great example what we were say before. engineers love the kinds of problem. >> think of it as problem of anonymous reporting and responders you conduct a networking so the players can help police the situation when the police themselves are corrupt?

which is a reasonably secret location in mexico city which is underground. they build data mining system. they apprehend somebody they can figure out who they are. the immediate realabama were those of americans which is think about the possible civil liberty violence. so country under such terrible, terrible attack from in this case criminal gain might stoop to building an action which a subsequent government might then misuse again the law-abiding citizen inspect is the trade-off. it's not obvious where it will go. let me tell you that the conversation is very severe. >> the question has a mexican conversation. i agree there's no delete button the internet. companies including your own have term in community and community standards. i don't know if you saw the story that came out yesterday

about two viral video depicting decapitation. apparently in mexico. which went viral in my daughter's high school. at the beginning of the day facebook was standing by saying even though it was showinggraphic violence. it was in the public interest. yet by the end of the day, having online petition and a number weighing in decided to take them down. so how do decide what is in the public interest or not? >> youtube has a five-page document which defines precisely what it is. i haven't seen the video. i would be extreme extremely surprised if it passed our test we would allow it. >> i read in a magazine about facebook, youtube, google. each having -- [inaudible] how does it work? >> every company has a set of rules about this. for the web, google is search index.

we don't have ab ability to take them down. and if we d it would be censorship in the form of filtering which we don't do. on youtube where we host the contest we have term of rfacing. i'm assuming twitter and facebook have the policy. they may not have the same criteria or rule. it's up to the company. [inaudible] a virtual currency in the news late i and the value of the coins rises and falls based on demand and google stockpiles large numbers. what is interesting about it, though, that the problem is virtual wallet. so they have to download a digital wallet to store it. there a number where the

instances have been hacked. the canada government tried to create the own national -- they couldn't protect the virtual wallet. obviously you will see more movement to vigil currency and virtual yule goods as well. there's security risks that come with. [inaudible] all of the technology have various form of digital wallet. it's more efficient. the phone have a nfc chip which allows you to go to a pad near it. you swipe buy and velocity matters. it's going happen. >> why don't we have something very simple from google like an ease pass if i'm going around the web and i want to buys "new,

you know, something i know a wallet can get hacked. but my easy pass. >> we have google wall. >> yeah buts in to the an easy dp. >> it sounds like a simple proposal worked in this for a long time. these are complicated system. they are subject to many regulations. they are all sorts of fraud issue. paypal, of course, is the company that is faces the most that worked through them. others have as well. and so you just find a particular kind of wallet. a wallet willing to lose the money in. most people not agree with you on. they don't want a wallet. you still don't have a single -- across the site. facebook and google and others are trying to promote it. we are -- we'll get there. we'll do it in a different way.

the journalism industry if people can make quick, easy, -- >> the technology -- it's been around far lock time. so it's not a technological problem a sort of provisioning scale problem. >> yes, ma'am, and in the way back. i'm sorry. >> thank you. i think we all appreciate what you did in connecting the human trafficking data because of making it more efficient for access. there are so many -- data silo. i'm very interested in uniting our theft data base. there are too many of them and you can't search across them if you are looking for something. is google doing more in the area? >> we have groups that reach tout the close community. it's important to know it's their data. not ours. and their decision to make it available. and the largest probe of useful

data that is not available to google is that in federal state and local government. who have enormous architecture. the information should be public. it's interest many public, et. cetera. it's not going cause a huge confidential problem to make it public. the government will run more efficiently -- and see what the government was up to. and i think -- for the reason you said and so forth we're looking on it. the core message is that your job is to publish information, and you don't publish it on to the web to such a way -- google can find it. you're not really doing the job. and indeed we respect something called robot stop text which says don't call me. so if you talk to one of these firms saying, oh, okay. you have public site you are proud of yourself. do you have robot text that prevent google and the competitors from getting information. you may find they have them.

>> the electronic -- [inaudible] that's a whole hour. >> let me summarize by saying -- in under the bush administration, the government did a good job of promoting interoperatability -- a set of standard allowing them to be exchanged with each other. it's a state-of-the-art. no computer scientist would ever design the recordkeeping the way it's evolving in the medical industry. it makes no sense whatsoever. that's why it's difficult. it will vently get -- it will be very slow. way back. >> there's a pretty will i can't report coming out today from david robinson on censorship technology in china. and it's called collateral freedom. >> they are actually putting up a link right now which i'll pass

on. >> who is it from? >> harlan u and david robinson. robinson u. is the firm. they surveyed 1,175 censorship evasion technology users in china. t a one-a kind thing. they are not using them but bpn. and up ending the wack mole model. chinos where the moalg are. they are not wacking them because disrupting the technology would disrupt the business users for making lot money nearby. is it something you have seen in china or something where the wack mole is stopping right before it hits the pole. it's going screw up the economy or other part of society. >> the specific technology used to do encryptic contribution. the most notable use is the use in wick -- wikileaks. the bpn technology is the kind you are describing when you have

an intermediate proxy you can go through. so all of the ante-dotal evidence we have and people are continued to reach google services through wack mole and able to get there. g-mail is block obd -- order of halftime. for reasons we can't tell. our search efforts are blocked periodically. we can't quite tell the reason. the rough is roughly accurate. we have to take a look at it. >> the last question. >> [inaudible] can you comment on the observation about women in technology? >> anies aspect of it be it leadership, use of technology in developing countries. >> i would start by -- >> be it safety? >> i would start by saying that we and i am normally proud of this next-gen ration of women leadership in technology. we're seeing driving it to new

heights. it's exciting and it's occurring in an industry which is -- [inaudible] >> the point i would add. again, in the book we talk about 5 billion new people coming online. the majority of the 5 billion are women. and our observation, we travel around the world people do better in school. women are more entrepreneurial. and a lot of societies where women have been held back and the men sit around playing video games and working for the government. what finally starting to happen it's something certain countries 80% of the male population works with the public sector. so the combination of women who are already moving forward very fast in the society with some of the new freedom that have plus technology will be extraordinary for the worlded. >> on a very serious note, the empowerment of the technologies allows a very local nature of

horrific crimes against women hob recorded and policed. and there are so many examples we visited one which i don't think we'll ever forget. we visited in pakistan a group of women that hads acid thrown on the faces. i can't describe how horrific the crime is. they were using the internet to recover their identity. on the internet no one knew they had been so victimized. building businesses, achieving the on jettive in a society where the shame was shuch they couldn't go out of their home. they were trying to use the internet to put pressure on the acute -- accused which were inevitably known but not prosecuted for one of the worse crimes in humanitarian. i felt felt we should what we do. it's for that reason. >> we'll end by saying education around the world will be transformed and the people who least benefited and parts of the

world from education have been girls and women. i hope it will be major transmore -- tran formational. it hit the best seller list the week out.

>> mario is part of the republican majority, can give us maybe more insight, but i'm not observing a rush forward on the republican house leadership so i do think we have time to come up with a thoughtful approach. >> i agree we do have done. i think we have time and the second part of his question about those the farm bill show

that something, shows it's very difficult to get things done in house. it's a very diverse group which is why i'm convinced that when push comes to shove at the end of this long process which look is not pretty, won't be pretty. if are going to get something done it's going to have to be a bipartisan effort. >> [inaudible] seems like it could really help fix with border security and provide a nice compromise for the 11 million undocumented and the national restaurant association, other dishwashers to kind of pursue the american dream. >> again, in order to fix this issue will have to deal with all of that. it doesn't work for low-skilled ecosystem for low-skilled is not working. for high skilled, for anything frankly, and reaching a solution an enforceable, bible commonsense solution including

low-skilled is essential if you're going to be able -- you can't enforce the borders. we already talked about it, without dealing with that issue. >> i will years ago, i can when i chaired the subcommittee, we had our first hearing, a witness who was the head of the board of patrol, his testimony was if we could get a legalization program that would allow in his words than nannies and the busboys to come over legally would help them identify the human traffickers and drug smugglers on the border, which is who he wanted to focus on. that's still our challenge. >> i'm from the "huffington post." i was wondered, you mentioned judiciary has been sort of as you said picking a piecemeal bills. what's the relationship therefore she said john boehner has been working with you.

what's the relationship there with you and good lot? and also had to convince him to take up a comprehensive bill once you put forward, given that he said that peace deal is the way he wants to go? >> let me clarify. the speaker was very courteous and met with me. i wouldn't say that, working with you are an ongoing basis. he was just gracious enough to reach out. in the case of mr. goodlatte, we have a professional relationship. there are many occasions and he and i worked together on bills. immigration hasn't yet turned out to be that type of issue. i think that -- >> he said he would hold a hearing on your bill, hasn't he? >> not directly, but i do think the path forward is the decision the republican leadership needs to make. i can't make it for them. i can express my hope on what they're going to decide but it's in their lap, because the

majority decides what bills are heard and the like, and so i'm hopeful that we will have a better approach than we've had so far in the judiciary committee. i will say this, that although we have had, i think there was obviously an effort to have poisoned bills or matters that the democrats could never support because, to make every undocumented person a federal criminal, i mean, that's unwarranted. we were not screaming at each other. you know, we disagreed in a professional way, and we have an opportunity if the republican party decides to move forward to do so in a professional manner. >> i think we send for dramatic change in attitudes and rhetoric and everybody calm down. there's always going to be some have a moment of, emotional

moment, but i think you're seeing a focus on issue. if we can focus on issue and on solutions to those issues i think ultimately we'll get to a bill that we can, it will become law. >> i write about technology and technology policy for bloomberg government. i want to commend you for the work you are doing, the other five members, working with the seven. nice to see bipartisan work move forward. my question is about technology and immigration, particularly about online politics. a lot of groups are out there trying to overcome inertia. one of the most interesting is the virtual march for innovation, bipartisan group, condoleezza the group unfair and -- condoleezza rice, they've launched a 50,000 tweets and faced the post but is that making a difference? is there any advice you'd give them a have make more of a difference and how to get a message that isn't just about technology but about every

on? >> i'll hearken back to the discussion we had, i had with opponents of the stop online piracy act at the end of the last congress. i remember doing a conference call in november before the markup, and telling all these young technologically savvy people don't do these online decisions because take a look at the demographics of the house of representatives. they don't even know what's going on. what you need to do is flood phone calls into the capital. not the district offices. that gets noticed. i'm sorry to report that but we have some younger members who tweet, but it's basically invisible to most, way too many members. the way to get attention is for individuals to either e-mail or call their own representative in the house. we work for the whole country

but we are employed by the voters of our district, and we go back to a hiring decision to our voters every other year. so that is the most powerful message is when people call their own representative. >> and i mean, that's -- the other thing it's not helpful if you just call and you do so you know, i'm going, you know, if you don't do this i hate you. again, focus on specific issues or focus on, got a restaurant, talk about, focus about what your issues are without restaurant, whatsoever things would help you, what sort of things are hurting. specifics like that are very constructive that it's important comes from the members of the district. >> i cover agriculture. representative lofgren, since you spoke to postulate about the agreement that wasa that be int

you're working on? i'm wondering what mr. diaz-balart thinks about the agriculture section of the senate bill, and also the guest worker? >> we're not as as they going to reveal what's in our bill until it's introduced but let me just say that when you can have 70 farm organizations, everything from the sheepherders to the tobacco growers and a vegetable, i mean everybody, come to an agreement with united farm workers union, that's a pretty amazing thing. and i think it's worthy of great deference. in fact, the senate did give it great deference. when you try and do a better job, and then it's easy to say, well, this could be different or that could be different, but it's all put together anyway that is hard to undo. i think it's far superior to what was reported out of the g.

sherry committee that basically is not even a plan. it's completely dysfunctional. >> one of the things, you know, but i didn't until we started getting involved, all complex and how diverse these are i've agriculture. regional, by industry, byproduct, by whatever. we have met with all of those different layers and i think because of the complexity, clearly having folks in the industry and labor getting together is a very positive step but again, it doesn't mean that like every aspect of their it doesn't mean we agree with every aspect of it but we had the opportunity to meet, to talk, to discuss to see if it is workable. and i think, so i think it's been a very meritorious effort what they put together. together. >> one last question and then i will wrap it up.

congressman, there's been a lot of discussion about how there will be public pressure on congress to act. i'm wondering if you can address given that many conservatives are in district with minimal numbers of latino voters how would that pressure really be felt by them? and that being the case given the speaker been has said he won't act without a majority, if the majority, -- [inaudible] that the house will doanyth? >> the assumptions that because there's a senate bill the house will feel, individual members of the house will feel pressured to support the bill, frankly, is just not accurate. i think depression is to fix and immigration system that is broken. the real question is dealing with the fact that we've millions, estimates are we at 10 or 11 million undocumented folks

are here today. tomorrow could be 30 million. we don't control the. pressure india with a broken border security issue. with fixing a system that's frankly not only not helping our economy but hurting our economy. that's the pressure that needs to come to there. if anybody thinks that there's a senate bill that house members will feel pressure that's just not true. i think, however, in the house there are people who understand that got elected to fix what is broken. and i think it's very evident, that very few things are as broken and are as detrimental to our national security, to our economic stability and security, to our future than is broken immigration system. that's where the pressure lies, not, you're absolutely right, the majority of folks in the house, they're not going to feel pressured because there's a senate bill but i hope they feel pressure because we have a broken system that i think we

can show there are fixes, there are enforceable that make sense, that protects the rule of law, that help our economy. that's the pressure i think hopefully will come to their. >> can i just add, i know this wasn't directed to me, but this is not just a latino issue. i think that's -- it is but not just that. if you take a look at the asian-american community, take a look at the southern baptists who have really stepped up to the bat and every time i to support comprehensive immigration reform. the evangelicals who are calling in to offices, and i'm not, the conservative branch of the evangelicals have become very active in supporting reform of this. the business community has stepped up to the bat and not just the chamber of commerce that may not have, you know, on trade every office but small

businesses. so you know, we don't know where this is going to end up with there's a broad group across america saying, we've got a problem here and we need to fix it. i know because i've heard of members, very conservative members that are paying attention, and they haven't reached a conclusion yet but they have not ruled out being part of reform spill look on if you're concerned about amnesty, which is what we have today, we have to pass legislation to is concerned about a broken border system these people are here unlawfully and we don't control that, we've got to pass legislation that deals with the, fixes that. if you're concerned about the fact were exported high-tech people to compete against us, we've got to pass legislation to fix that. so that's what i think the pressure point must be. if we can focus on the problem and solutions as opposed to rhetoric i think we're halfway there. >> just to wrap up, speaker boehner said july 10, house

members -- a letter from the constituent and meet on july 10 to decide on the path forward. when he looks over to you, and says, need you to step up here and tell us what's going on with this bipartisan proposal, what is your message going to be to the elements of the congress and speaker boehner about whether you all can deliver something, and alternative by the august recess? >> yes. in the, i'm not speaking for zoe but i think she would agree we have not been fixated on deadlines that we've been fixated on getting a bill that we think and get bipartisan support, that is real, that helps the economy, all the things we've already talked about, do it right. that's a we've been focused on. what i keep hearing is total discontent within a broken immigration system. there are disagreements as to how to fix it. it's our challenge i think and it's our challenge to be able to present your colleagues an approach that is reasonable,

that fixes what's broken, that helps our economy that protects the rule of law, the forces the border. that's our challenge and i think we can get there. the important thing is to make sure that people recognize clearly that were not be perfect but recognize that it deals with major issues and fixes them in a way that is real but permanent and is enforceable. that's our challenge and that's our concern, to get it right. >> final question to both of you. is this going to come down to a decision for speaker boehner between the speaker's gavel and passing coverage of immigration reform that could also help the republican party, help the country in the future? >> well, i don't know. i mean mario may have a greater insight but i've always believed that it will be necessary to have a big chunk of republican support to pass the bill. that's why we have worked so long to try and grow a solid

bill that not only democrats but republicans could support. that's still my hope and goal, and i have to do for the rest of the question the mario. >> yeah, i don't see it that way. our challenge is to be the come up with legislation, that the majority of our colleagues will support. that the majority of our colleagues will understand is again does what we claim that it must do. and that's our challenge and i've said multiple times publicly, i think to get this done we need it to be bipartisan, not bipartisan like wink and nod bipartisan, try to pretend it is bipartisan but it has to be bipartisan. the country needs to understand it is real, it says, it's permanent, it's enforceable. i think there are a lot of people in the house that want to fix this. i know the speaker boehner wants a solution. it's our challenge to give him a proposal that meets that criteria. >> thankthanks to both of you vy

much for sharing your thoughts on this their controversial sensitive and important topic to you've given me a lot of ammunition. i'm going to go to build an interview congressman goodlatte for my sunday show. this conversation will continue this weekend. i have much more to as asking. thank you very much. [applause] >> today, live on c-span2, the federal reserve ordered governors hold an open meeting with chairman permanently to discuss capital requirements for the nation's largest financial institutions. live coverage gets underway at 9:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> up next a house homeland security subcommittee hearing on the uses of social media in

emergency situations. with examples of such recent events as hurricanes and the and the boston marathon bombings. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> chairman brooks, ranking member payne, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and for your interest in the importance of internet-based technology and disaster preparedness, response, and disr preparedness, response, and recovery. minus matthew stepka, i'm vice president of social impact. we have learned people turn to the internet when there's an emergency. we want help to ensure the right information is there when people need. millions of people around the world are affected by natural disasters. just two weeks ago we witnessed the devastating power of tornadoes raging across oklahoma but our hearts go out to all these individuals affected by these disasters. our goal is to make issued to give people the information they need when they need it most.

we do this by organizing emergency alert news updates and missing person information, open tools to enable better collaboration among responders and those affected by crisis. providing updated satellite imagery and donating to charitable organizations that are on the ground helping provide direct relief. as a result of her work we've learned a number of lessons about this. the first is people want to find critical information through from and technology. we collect relevant information and make it available on google tools were its most effective. we add phone numbers and links on the homepage. we create maps special information from authorities and committee and provide tools to help people connect with loved ones. we are able to do this through technology all around us and more and more things with mobile devices. smart phones we consider uses critical notifications that are relevant to them in the real-time based on their location and the conditions around them. one of our services compiled the

information across google properties based on users location or search query. before this anti-semiti anti-set coast users typed in complex and become hurricane, i went into google search and stars in an official national weather service warning, link to more information including maps, news and how to stay safe. recently through a partisan -- artisanship with national missing and exploited children, when you see the message i thought about child who went missing in your neighborhood, the first thing you do is search for more information that we can help you find. crisis maps which compile information from multiple sources into one single map so people no longer have to search across many websites. following the oklahoma tornadoes our team launched a crisis now

concluded red cross shelters, traffic alerts, storm reports, and other information. a second lesson is that crowd sourcing can enhance both quality and tone is of critical information. anyone can use google mapping service to great their own maps and host the continent and david. because it opens with anyone can deploy the update and improve our tools. we have learned during some disastrous authoritative sources may not have as much of mission centers on the ground to the for example, the stations of gasoline? a group of volunteers called the weather they were available. within a few days the data from more than 1000 given stations to set interest in the crisis now automatically. the department of energy the department of energy's call-center it ended up referencing this information to a third lesson is critical information to bill it should be open and online formats to open and secure formats which are open, before disaster. this is critical.

in the past google had to gather emergency information from websites in unstructured and difficult to automate formats such as text and pdf and translate them into open standards. when data is not an open forum is many steps are required to share in each axis step can keep critical information from getting to people. this is why we advocate using an open secure and common standards for ever and has a consistent way to receive and share alerting information and create visualizations of the content. data providers that follow these practices can update their information automatically making it live online securely within seconds. the government can help by ensuring that important emergency information is available in open interoperable formats. we commend the white house with recent ticket would require the federal government's data to be available in open formats by default. were also welcome steps congress has taken to increase access to government data. we hope that agency with emergency information begin adopting these standards and licensing terms as soon as possible. it's the open data we are able

to develop alerts and other new products with more open integrated we could display more consistent and more actionable alerts like power outages and road closures or floods. weakens and pacific evacuation instructions to different people based on their location. we still have a long way to go. we look forward to working alongside organizations and governments do people find the information they're looking for during disasters. thank you very much for done. i'm happy to answer any questions you may have. >> thank you, mr. stepka. the chair now recognizes mr. payne for five minutes when opening statement. >> chairman brooks, ranking member payne, and members of the subcommittee, you for the opportune to speak with you today. my nana's jason payne and alito collective ingenuity and at palantir technologies. palantir technologies is a silicon valley software country. we build data integration and analysis software for the government to private and public sectors. in the context of emergency preparedness response and recovery our technology on

laptops and smart phones leverages one of the most scarce resources during disaster. information. developer partners get the right physical resources to the right places as soon as possible. above here's a screenshot of our technology displayed on the 10th of an emergency operation center in oklahoma city. this fusion your senior of public data, of governmental data also show did and mobile data allows users to build the common picture to improve the efficacy of response efforts. one of our partners in oklahoma city direct relief is a nonprofit the donates over $300 million of medicine every year. they use palantir with social data, public data from fina, dhs, cdc, and even google to. >> host: conduct mr. latta, social of the, supply chain and health risk analyses of committees throughout this nation. in the context of restraint was

a relief this knowledge -- at federally qualified health center's before storms hit, and less real-time weather data during the storm and donate additional medical supplies where they are needed most in the wake of the storm. another palantir partner is a group of veterans aviation disaster relief. they use palantir to tactically understand the operational environment during disaster response. after hurricane sandy, team rubicon used palantir mobile to cleanup over 1000 structures in the rockaways. fusing surveys collected with palantir mobile on with public 311 data and even handwritten requests for help collect in a church parking lot several hundred senior the comments were able to officially harness over 14,000 spontaneous committee volunteers. which is a tremendous resource that is often bit of utilize in disaster scenarios.

keeping people in their homes. that large-scale success was possible because of social media, the veteran leadership of team rubicon and the knowledge management for palantir management facility. as a result of our successes, palantir has made a commitment to usher with the clinton global initiative to scale our cutting edge technology capability more disaster focus organizations. part of this commitment or deployment that you see in oklahoma city with direct relief and team rubicon till people get back on the feet after the devastating tornadoes. most importantly it's using all this data to build a common nature that allows organizations to better communicate to efficiently and more effectively help those on the ground that needed most. we have learned a few important lessons that i would like to share. first, ope opened it is more important than formal exchange models. in the context of emergency response, we believe that

holding out for perfect hits in way of good enough. we encourage governmental organizations to adopt a silicon valley approach come to put it out in a publicly available robust standardized, secure, well document interface and that other organization come up with innovative ways to leverage the data. we applaud noaa and others for taking this approach. second can internet and clout to acknowledge such as social media are useless without power and connectivity. we encourage the subcommittee to export innovative solutions to provide deployable three and 4g mobile networks as well as mobile device charging stations to the public during large-scale emergencies. lastly would like to highlight the need for more robust conversation about data access, sharing and retention to ensure that the privacy and civil liberties of those affected by emergencies and disasters are respected at all times. we believe sensitive information such as names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers and

certain medical information should be shared with only those with need to know that information, even within an organization. when a large-scale emergency strikes, thousands and thousands of folks that seek to help those most vulnerable. there are also a few bad actors out there that seek to profit from those that are vulnerable. technology can make a radical difference to help those with good intentions but it can also empower those with ill. so we highly recommend we look closely at how data is shared, leveraged and utilized to ensure that it is used for proper purposes. new technology enables a new era, a whole new era of disaster response. we are humbled to be a part of the transformation and look for do more work in the future to help those affected by disaster get back on their feet. this completes my prepared statement. thank you again for the opportunity to join you all here today. >> thank you, mr. pink that you're not recognizes mr. beckerman for five minutes when opening statement. >> chairman brooks, ranking member payne, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for

calling this time hearing. is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss how the internet and social media are transforming how americans prepare, respond and recover when disaster risk struck. minus michael beckerman, i'm president and ceo of the internet association, a trade organization comprised of the world leading internet compass to our members have been on the forefront of efforts to leverage new technology, indication platforms to inform the public before, during and after a disaster. today i'll just highlight a few examples of my written test and isolated for the record. as you can see on the screen, the rise of social media, crowd sourcing and the sharing economy have revolutionize how we interact with you our friends, family, fellow citizens and government. to meet him during a disaster is now an interactive conversation. millions of minds converged to solve problems, seek out answers and disseminate vital information. the convergence of social networks and mobile has thrown the old responsibly bookout went to the earthquake that rocked haiti in january 2010 serve as

an example of the opportunity social media mobile technology provide to support the great work of our disaster response professionals. a few hours after the earthquake, a man who was trapped with 20 other people under a collapsed building in port-au-prince managed to send photographs of the wreckage from his own to a cousin in chicago. the cousin then tweak the photographs the @redcross and first responders in haiti were able to rescue them. in previous disasters these victims of another been rescued in time. applying the lessons learned from haiti, a protocol is begun to emerge. facebook's disaster relief page which is great during the haiti earthquake is now used anytime a disaster strikes. and the american red cross is this the pages over a chord among people following them to learn about disasters, how they can donate both blood and money and get information in real-time. beyond the dissemination of disaster information and donations from the red cross has

established a social media command center at this allows them to better serve those who need help, spot trends in real-time and that is that the public's needs. it not only connects people with food, water, shelter but also helps provide emotional support when they need it most. when a tornado devastated tuscaloosa in 2011, a local school system went online and posted a request for volunteers to help clean up their schools. amazingly, 80 people showed up in less than 30 minutes. this response typifies the unmatched power of social media. you'd be hard-pressed to make these phone calls in 30 minutes, let alone have an outpouring of 80 people show up that quickly. and just last fall when hurricane sandy ravaged the coastline of my home state of new jersey, people took to the it to document their experience. in fact, fema encourage people to quote let loved ones know you're okay by sunni a text message or updating your social network. and a truly miraculous story coming out of hurricane sandy, a

woman noticed a facebook post showing the badly hit south seaside park, and she knew in a field grandmother was there trapped and she said the message to this page, and as result of grandmother was evacuated and save. one of the internet association megacompanies airbnb, spring to action following the hurricane as well. as you may know go, airbnb is an online marketers that helps find housing accommodations. which more than 100,000 people still homeless a week after city, airbnb partner with the city of new york to connect those without shelter to people who have extra space to as you can see on the screen, nearly 1500 airbnb members opened their homes for free to provide shelter to people in need. and, finally, just last month in oklahoma, so schmidt supplemented the traditional means of spreading the message to take shelter. in the immediate aftermath of the committee, fema encourage survivors to update their social networks to let loved ones know

their whereabouts so families could be reconnected. social media is also change the way american citizens respond to tragedy. the city of moore, oklahoma, as you see on the screen uses its facebook page to inform citizens on ways they can help. social media platforms like flickr and instagram allow people from all of the country and over the world see both wreckage and hope in real-time. seeing these unfiltered images in real-time help tell the story in ways that traditional media never could. and allows people to feel connected giving them an even greater desire to help. the imminent hazard as remarkable told to save lives, facilitate the drop relief efforts, and to prove disaster responsiveness. but there's always work to be done. responding to this challenge will require a collaborative effort, among government agencies, first responders, technology companies, and the general public it is our pledge that the internet association will do our part would with our companies to facility these conversations between government

and technology companies to help harness the power of social media and strengthen our nation's emergency preparedness to the 21st century. thank you. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes mr. cardenas for five minutes for an opening statement. >> chairman brooks, ranking member payne, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. my name is george guardian is. on vice president of asset management and centralized services for public service electric and gas company, which is new jersey's largest utility, best known as bse in sheep to be a cng service territory includes all of new jersey's major urban areas. we serve some 2.2 million electric customers and 1.8 million gas customers. these really is come together to give about 70% of the population of new jersey. superstorm sandy it new jersey hard, and our service territory it took them 48,000 trees which

impacted our dissertation system. it destroyed 2400 utility poles. many of them were snapped like toothpicks. drove walls full of water into to women of our switching and substations and damaged our gas lines and muted. over 40,000 of our gas customers were impacted and almost 2 million of our electric customers lost power. restoration efforts were indeed it by a forceful nor'easter that it a weekly big impact of the destruction the complexity of the work to restore service make communications of all kinds a key component of the standard recovery effort. before discuss our social media experience let me also note the importance of smart grid technology which enables utilities to obtain critical information that can help pin point problems and automate restoration to smart grid technology and it is our ability to communicate with our own system. it can dramatically shorten the time it takes to restore service in the aftermath of the storm

and can prevent outages from becoming widespread. that's why in new jersey we proposed 450 millions in smart grid did not as part of our energy strong proposal. which will harden our system against these types of extraordinary weather events, those with experience over the recent past. turning to social media, we use e-mail and what are the days before the storm taking to get about safety and help people prepare. and after the storm passed we use them to explain the historic amount of damage and the huge effort it would take to rebuild. we used twitter to advise on a daily location of our giant tents and generates which allowed customers to charge electronic equipment, get free ice, water and food. we spent importance of reporting outages and damaged equipment, and the correct method to do so so we can take action. we educated the public about efners, hospitals, schools,ow

businesses and homes. why we have historically your social media, only during business hours and with a small group of employees, we quickly staffed up for 17 days operator are twitter feeds, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. we sent more than 9000 messages and saw some 90,000 directed at us. at one point during the storm we send so many tweets that we exceeded our daily allowances. to our utility contacts we reach the leadership of twitter expand our capacity. that's a lesson learned for the next storm. ultimately, we added over 47,000 followers during the time of the storm. when we exited the storm we had the largest following of any utility in the united states. our innovative use of social media has been noticed outside the company. in a recent report, jd power and

associates cited our industry-leading communication success. following sandy, the utility customer service nonprofit cs week gave pse&g and award for our use of social media during the storm. here are some of our key takeaways, lessons learned. mobile technology is a game changer. more than half of americans have a smart phone, and more and more people in almost every age demographic are active on social media. people have been increasing and insatiable need to be connected. even more so in times of emergency. they want to be heard, they want to be validated come they want to have an influence us. the number of people on social media spikes in times of disaster. people flock to twitter and facebook and the like because they are searching for immediate information that they can't get via traditional broadcast channels. engaging influence is critical. it's just as important to grow the influence o of the online community as it is to grow the

size. connecting with people of credibility and the local communities is critical to an organization's ability to spread its message. the public respect and rewards consistent, transparent interaction and cooperation between the private sector and community leaders. during sandy, we used twitter to amplify messages from municipal and state officials, police departments, office of emergency management, and social service agencies, helping get travel information right away to those who needed it. tone matters. it does matter a lot. people respect a social media effort that is continuously and pathetic, authentic and helpful. public note of appreciation matter, too, especially to the fiercely proud people who work in the utility industry. we regard ourselves as first responders, and supportive messages can go a long way with a weary employee base in need of a boost. in closing, sandy hit home how

important it is to continue to improve our ability to communicate in an increasingly 24/7, connected and cyber savvy world. to that end i want to thank congressman dan for working with us on our natural research panel study that will help our indices use digital information to improve reliability and resiliency and help us understand our vulnerabilities to cyberattack to thank you again for the opportunity to share our experience. >> thank you, mr. cardenas. before i begin to ask questions and for the rest of the panel because as questions, i would like to mention that in the spirit of this hearing last week, i as was sometimes of my team and staff from homeland security participated in last friday's weekly essay many, our social media emergency management chat on twitter.

and solicited questions from those participants on a weekly basis, folks bertus smit investment the an end of persial the wonderful insights. i'm not sure if this is been done in congress before to solicit these types of questions but since this is the people's house i'm happy to be submitting some of these questions that came from this chat last friday. i should also note that during that chat i was asked to express their appreciation for the work that your companies and your association are doing to support emergency manager to they truly appreciate it and he wanted to make sure that we think the private sector for all of the work they're doing to support their work. i would love -- i would like to start out, first of all, mr. stepka, think it was big with us today. and certainly i would come you've shared with us on the positive things that google is doing to assist survivors and responders during hurricane sandy, in particular, but i'm very curious what kind of feedback you've received particularly from the users of

your products? whether it's crisis maps, people find, public alerts, and what kind of changes have you made because this is obviously an evolving process and i'm curious what you've heard from the users. >> sure. one thing we look at for feedback is just how much things are being used and definitely our products have been used a lot. we had over 15 million unique visits to the same the pages alone. had millions of people over the years using our products. i think one of the key areas we looked at, mentioned about outsourcing have that became important thing to add to our crisis maps. we realized that information is necessary because sometimes the authoritative sources are not good at everything you need to know. that's one piece of feedback. >> can you just explain to us, and for the audience, what crowd sourcing is because sure. the notion of crowd sourcing is

taking data from authoritative cases sources like from fema or other organizations that have information from their sources which are authoritative. we also have the id of crowd sourcing is collecting data from our users directly and find a way to put that onto our properties, on our products. so with that amount to an example i gave was around fuel stations in new jersey. that information came from users and then put on our website and on our maps to people could see where the stations were that had fueled. the advantage of crowd sourcing is that let lots of people on the temperatures the and provided information on and we have a way to do that, there's feedback and people can correct the data if you find errors. it is a crowd effort to make sure data is accurate. >> thank you. just to follow up with respect to your maps i know you receive information data feeds from multiple sources like you've said, fema, red cross and others but have you experienced, and you mentioned it in your

testament have you experience interoperability issues with important information onto your maps, how does that work and what are you doing to address those issues are what you groups like fema and red cross and we hope to be talking to in the next panel discussion what you would be sharing with them. yes. over the years we have spent on some early on doing a lot of massaging of data to get on the map. is a lot of work, very ad hoc because we just want information to be blessed with less possible. it did slow things down quite a bit of we are working a lot to get data on machine readable formats and that's the most important thing, ways we can integrate it. we think the open stance is the best way to do. not just a google but anybody who can use that information in a secure way on whatever product or service the habit of the most important thing we're doing what i would suggest is we have these standards, organizations get behind like, for example, for a large we have common alert

protocol which is being adopted by a lot of organizations. i know in particular usgs is doing earthquakes were simple to as much as possible getting information in a standard format so the street easy for us to integrate. once it's in the format is not a problem for us. issues with their not machine-readable requires a lot of handholding and manual work, frankly. >> how might you suggest that we educate everyone about the need for the open format? >> it will, probably in terms of funding, our resources for make sure those resources are focusing on writing standards but it does require that organizations, government organizations take the data they have and take the effort to changes will be made available to the secure protocols. i think that does require some resources. >> thank you. very briefly, mr. payne, the work you're doing of course at china to support the disaster relief efforts is to impress.

i'd like to ask a similar question. as result of lessons learned from her consent, what are some of those lessons? i know you should some of those with us but with respect to the users of your technology. >> i think that one of the first and most important lessons learned is the valley of connectivity. what we saw in hurricane sandy is if you look at open 311 data which is a great example of governments embracing open david and pushing out non-urgent request for help from the community to make the data publicly available. before hurricane sandy you saw something that reflected the heat map of the population density of new york city by and large. then afterwards, there were discrete areas were completely gone from request for help because they've lost connectivity. and so the first lesson is the absolute importance of empowering people who have ways to sure that message to communicate directly with individuals.

at the end of the day a car battery will power an iphone and android phone 150 times. but how do you make that link up such that device stays hot or acted in days after a storm? so that's one lesson. that being said, technology can be used in build two working areas where there's not that connectivity. the second lesson is that the more data that you confuse, the better cohesive picture you can build. and hear one of the great things that happened after hurricane sandy is noaa release very good high resolution overhead imagery of the affected area. they flew an aircraft along the coastlines and made the data publicly available. and so in tools like google maps or palantir's capabilities, we are able to look at where where there was an industry, whether broken down cars, whether destroyed buildings, et cetera, and use that to allocate resources to help those, those

people affected by that and get back on their feet. >> thank you very much. my time is now up. i now recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee, gentleman from new jersey, mr. payne, for any questions. >> thank you, madam chair. mr. cardenas, most utility companies have a presence on social media but pse&g has been a trailblazer in that regard. what differentiates public services, social media efforts from others in the utility industry? >> i think the key differentiator is that we had real people speaking with real people. our employees live in our service territory. they were expensing the same exact things our customers work. we were very transparent. our people on twitter have the latest information.

they knew about our challenges. they knew about timelines to restore certain communities. they did the best they could up front when we have individual responses. later on they turn to more geographically encompassing messages. we were in pathetic. i think we were very well-connected to each of those who send us a tweet comment and we did are very, very best to get timely, very real information out to the public. >> have government entities responsible for disaster relief reached out to pse&g to add their expertise in developing these practices? >> we have, as late as yesterday we had a meeting with a number of other utilities, other entities, to share amongst us our best practices and our successes, both in government, throughout the storm whether it be the human visible mayors, whether it be the governor's

office, said, the congressman's office as we work only with him all the time to get their messages and our messages out to ensure we reinforce each other to make sure people were well-informed. >> thank you, sir. and, mr. stepka, i represent the 10th district in new jersey, which was greatly impacted by hurricane sandy. understand your a strong presence in the area. would you elaborate on what you did with this state and for the residents of new jersey? >> sure. i think the most relevant thing we did is the crisis map gave i think a lot of people and about where the map, where the storm was moving and how it was going, shelter information. i think the issues about the gas stations as well as and was also in new jersey as well. that was partly one of the responses we did we work through our tools to provide people

information. >> okay. what can we do in the region to prepare for the next crisis? >> i think the lesson learned about getting paid in advance in these available, in these open formats i think is important to there's always more information we can get. i think it was interesting about the fuel information, the longer-term time to recover from the storm. it's important to figure out ways to get the data in advance of but i think at the same time with outsourcing we always have to find the right balance getting the right information to make sure it is accurate. >> thank you. mr. beckerman, how do you feel, how can the federal, state and local governments and first responders best leverage the social media and data integration to tools available on the internet in disaster progress and response activities moving forward? >> i think one of the most

important things is having an open intimidation between the technology committee and the government and that appears to be happening. social media and the internet can help before a storm like we've seen in the hurricanes, in tornadoes when you some advanced warning, can send messages out on social media let people know shelter in place or evacuate during a disaster as we've seen with help respond to people get real-time help. then and after disaster to make sure that relief and volunteers and money and blood and things like that are getting the communities that need it most speak they should be an ongoing conversation. >> ongoing conversation, absolutely. >> waiting for the next disaster to happen, correct? >> that's correct. >> okay. mr. paine, you've identify development of clear data retention policies as a means of preventing sensitive information. following into the wrong hands.

how do you envision these policies being developed, and should they be a directive or voluntary? >> in some cases they will be directive. obviously, personal information about some of health information or health status of the critics example that falls under hit the law. the important thing -- hipaa the information does not know what happened to the data that they are sharing. they make a decision to share that data becomes a very difficult decision to make. if it's an all or nothing far too often that the answer has to be nothing. but if there is abilities to technologically drive subsets of data remove personal identifiable information, et cetera, that can't empower the poor decisions or the individual to make a statement of yes. at the end of the day, those most vulnerable during disaster are those most formidable before

the disaster and offer an it's a systemic health concerns and that sort of thing. knowing who those people are and where they are can be very useful for first responders to ensure that have the correct medication, the great resources that they need. but redacting of information or removing that information after the disaster is something that i think would make it much more likely for the decision to be yes to share that information. >> thank you. madam chair, i yield back. >> thank you very much. the chair when i reckon its other members of the subcommittee for questions they wish to ask the witnesses and in accord with the committee roles in practice, i plan to recognize by seniority and the subcommittee and those coming in later will be recognized in the order of their arrival. and at this time the chair now recognizes the gentleman from new york, mr. king, former chair of the homeland security committee for questions. >> thank you, madam chair. let me think of holding this hearing, which is especially vital and it certainly has a

real significance coming so soon after sandy. let me join mr. payne into many, mr. cardenas for the outstanding job that transcended imagers but, unfortunately, we did not have the same experience in new york. i'm not trying to drag into a cross-border dispute year, but in my district and the disconnected when we had about $8 billion in damage. that is what could i cope with was total lack of contention between the consumers and the public utility long island power authority. it was again almost impossible to information, and get answers. again, i was almost a total breakdown in communication but from what mr. payne has said and certainly your testimony today, it's clear to pse&g was making substantial use of social media. i know you're working with the new jersey but are you making any effort to reach beyond new jersey to share your expenses with other utilities throughout the country? >> absolutely. we've met with con edison, with

members from connecticut, to share our best practices. we've shown them what we did, how we are able to in real-time ramp up, train our employees to respond, twitter. it's become a brand-new technology that grows every day, change of this we have to stay ahead, and we chose to embrace it and to be very transparent but i think that's the one thing we tel told the other utilities, please, provide information you have. and that's important, and that it be done with people who can speak with people, not to people. because everybody is kind of on the same boat here and we're all trying to help each other. so we have met with utilities in the surrounding states. >> can you tell us if they been listening to you? >> only time will tell, and i am sure there will. i think the energy industry,

utilities, and to share information. which is hope that everybody takes it on a very timely mann manner. >> thank you, mr. cardenas. once again, mr. payne is ahead of us but he gives the break -- new jersey. anyway. thanks to bring the witness today. let me ask mr. stepka, really i guess expanding on your testimony with the chairwoman, describe the partnerships that you've established with first responders and government agencies as google rolls out its crisis response efforts? and also, could you again emphasized what you did was in and out that would apply to the future? >> sure. i think the red cross is one of the key partnerships we work with very closely. especially for things like shelter information and resources for recovery. with the city of new york were very engaged as well. we created a separate crisis

matches for the city of munich. we had special day that was available for them for evacuation routes and things like that, affected areas. of course, we work with noaa for weather information big they are also working with the cab stand for alerts. that's very helpful for like when storms are coming and so within the those partnerships a lot of those were in place ovaries were able to really respond more effectively. >> do you recall if you have any relationships on long island with a state government? >> i don't recall off the top of my head. we can get back to you on the. >> iif not lebanon and i will contact account executive listening to your testimony, i think would be very vital. all of us were caught off guard with sandy. i yield back. thank you very much. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the gentlelady from new york, ms. clark spent thank you, madam chair, into our ranking member, mr. payne, to our distinguished panelists. i wanted to sort of follow

through on some of the train of thought here. because what we saw with the sandy event was a unique confluence of conditions. and one of the things, being a new yorker has concerned me is the way that the mobile phone senator degrades very rapidly in those types of environments. you couple that with the water event so that perhaps mr. payne's idea of using a car battery becomes a nonstarter, and then the going down of the grid. now, you know, we have no way of communicating. and so i would be interested in sort of getting a sense of other ways that we can perhaps tap into the technology world beyond

the affected environment to bring relief as rapidly as possible to those environments. has there been any discussions about satellite technology? and how that in some way can be of assistance it and then finally, just a description of your partnerships with new york responders and agencies around such an event, such as sand. now, i spoke about a natural disaster, but any event of a terrorist attack, which we've experienced in new york city, the same scenario plays out once everyone starts getting on their own phones at the same time. it becomes, you know, if you can get through to someone you are lucky. and it seems to go out in circles. the closer you are, the harder it is, but after a while there's

a cascading effect. so can you just sort of share with your thoughts around that? that was a major concern for many days, quite frankly, after the event in new york city. .. >> i think they're worth looking into more deeply and making investments overall, but we don't have anything now in place for that. i do think, i mean, all these tools are limited by the fact that if you don't have connectivity, you can't get

them. something we're focused on, and that is getting people more prepared beforehand. a cool thing about sandy, you can see it coming unlike a tornado. we can give people a lot more certainty and give them instructions and ideas about how to prepare for it so they don't have to deal with it as badly, either evacuating early or at least getting supplies ready, so i think that's something we could do a much better job at, and we're doing it closely. the second thing, for the most part we've been focusing on natural disasters. in a terrorist attack, we did actually help with the boston bombing. we turned on our person finder so people could find out where their loved ones were after the crisis because there was a lott of chaos -- a lot of chaos then. i think there's a lot of issues, there's a bad actor in play, and they need to understand what's the motivations and how they are engaging in this event and how

do we make sure we be very careful how we respond. >> today there exists a system for ngos, folks on response to use voice. it's called the wireless priority service. that's over a decade old, and it doesn't have any allocations for day. to change that to allow folk to use data would reduce the congestion on networks and allow people to be more effective in communicating. furthermore, the first net initiative looking long-term is something that i think can really help. it's a nationwide 500-megahertz worth of spectrum allocation for specific data transmission during emergency response. my understanding right now is that's only allocated for official government agencies. if there could be small portions of that system, of that first net system that could be

allocated for individuals at fema or red cross shelters or ngos to do quick communications to check in with their loved ones, i think that would go a long way towards empowering people to communicate in wide scale disasters. >> thank you very much, madam chair, and i thank you for your responses. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. perry, for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair. gentlemen, appreciate your testimony. i'm interested in prevention of things that we've seen happen and wondering what you see as the federal government's role. and particularly in cases if we could use the boston, the bombing at the marathon and the facebook postings in advance of that. how should, how do you see that that should -- should it be monitored in the first place? how should it be monitored? what would the triggers be?

should that information go to law enforcement? who should send it? i think there's a lot of questions here because i think there's some expectation if this stuff is open sourced that it no longer, no longer bears the same privy concerns that maybe your e-mail would once you post on facebook. is that true? and if that is available, should or should we not be using that to safeguard our communities? and i'll just, like to have a continuing dialogue. i guess, mr. stepka, anybody who'd like to answer. >> sure. i think it's a very important question to get that right, and we do take this very seriously. i think in general all this public information that's available on social media, i think, can be a source for law enforcement to look for potentially bad actors, and i think they can do that. and it's being posted publicly that can be reviewed by law enforcement without any need to get subpoenaed or even working with other testimonying

companies. they can do that -- technology companies, they can do that directly. pretty much the most important thing to think about with that, this is in a free society, we're hard balanced to figure out how to deal with these information out there. there's usually a small number of people who are bad actors, and they get lost in the noise, i think, unless you're looking for them specifically. >> from our per spect e, privacy's -- perspective, privacy's very important. our companies take the privacy of the users very seriously either every day and also during disasters, and there are a lot of tools online, but we feel that law enforcement should use the same warrants and due process that they do in the an hog world -- analog world that should apply to the digital world. >> so in that case where the, where there are, have been or were facebook postings, who would have -- whose respondent is it to monitor? how would they find in this huge universe after postings, how wh"

are, first of all, who do you see? who are the "they," is it law enforcement, department of justice, department of defense, is it the cia? who is it that would do it? is it you folks in and how would they go about finding that needle in a haystack on a continual basis if you have any thoughts on that? >> one thing we can do is, and this is related to youtube. when people would post either things that violate our terms of service either around hate speech or terrorist activity, if someone flags that information, we do take it down. so we do rely on our users to helpolicny that sense. like e mentioned before, if there's public postings, i would leave it to law enforcement to look at public. same as any other kind of subpoena process. >> so when you take -- you take it down if it falls within the criteria that you find

objectionable per your company's policies. do you then report, do you feel an obligation to report? in the instance of these facebook postings or videos in particular, should there be an obligation? was there any obligation other than just taking it down? because, of course, that doesn't help law enforcement, that tdoesn' alert citizens or the authorities to what might be impending. what is your protocol, what should the protocol be there? >> yeah. specifically on youtube i know if a user flags something as being terrorist, a terrorist activity or basically a bomb-making type thing, we do take it down. i don't know the answer to your question of whether we inform law enforcement about that. i can find out about that and get back to you. >> all right, thank you. madam chair, i yield pack. >> thank you. at this time i recognize the gentleman from mississippi, mr. palazzo, for five minutes. >> thank you, madam chair, and i thank our witnesses for their testimony and answering our questions. i represent mississippi's 4th congressional district which spans the entire mississippi

gulf coast. we got hit pretty hard or during hurricane katrina in 2005, almost eight years ago. it feels like a long time, a very long time, but the remnants of the storm are still present with us every day, and we're still recovering. but i would like to point out facebook was still in be its infancy, relatively speaking, almost nonexistent to many people. twitter was nonexistent. the first iphone wouldn't come out for almost another year. last year hurricane sandy hit the northeast, and there were millions of people on social media sharing information, watching live twitter feeds and checking up on their loved ones. so just in a few short years we've seen social media explode. and i think most of my questions have already been answered. we've talked a lot about lessons learned. but if any of you on this panel has the experience, can you kind of compare the technologies that we with had during hurricane katrina, the lessons that we learned that brought us up to

the successful information sharing that we had during hurricane sandy? ing and whoever -- mr. stepka, we'll just go left to right. >> sure. i think probably the biggest change would recollect i think, mobile phone technology is a major change where people have access to communications especially wherever they are and also if their main lines go down. i think the second, of course, is social media. no question, that's been a big difference. i think are more connected and have many outlets and ways of contacting organizations as well as each other so they can tell their family members that they're okay, that sort of thing. >> i believe one of the bigst fundamental differences social media's provided is the efficiency of the supply and demand of those that want to help and those that need help. and what we saw in hurricane sandy is we had one group of veterans, a couple hundred people in total, that harnessed over 14,000 volunteers from the community. and those volunteers by fusing a bunch of technology requests for

help, all sorts of data were efficiently tasked to muck basements, to remove sand from parking lots and playgrounds, etc. the net effect being that very quickly after the disaster folks' houses had the material removed that prevented mold from growing in those houses and those houses being destroyed. so looking ahead i believe that we'll see an ever-increased ability to harness more goodwill and more help from individuals in the surrounding areas to help people get back on their feet. and i think that's the best sort of siren of social media. >> yeah, thank you. i mean, i think you explained the differences perfectly by the fact that facebook had been only a year in existence, twitter didn't exist, there were no iphones. so during hurricane katrina in 2005 only half of internet users used online sources to find news. today that's, obviously, much higher. only 25% used online sources to

check in on loved ones and let people know they were all right and things like that and today, obviously, as we heard from the rest of the panel and from the members that number's much higher. after hurricane katrina 13 million people went on line in the united states to donate and, again, today that's higher. we've seen as the technology's grown, the benefits of the internet and social media have really helped people, and i think it could have been, obviously, a benefit during hurricane katrina as well. >> all right. well, i definitely agree with everything that you've said. i can tell you just the other day we had a severe weather event, and my phone went off. and i didn't apply for the app. i guess it was phone service just notifying us we were about to hit some weather on the mississippi gulf coast, and i was very grateful for that. i've seen, as we've seen in the tornadoes that have recently happened and tornadoes in my district and all across the country, it does allow people from all across the united states to help in some form or fashion even if it's donations or getting, having people come

out and help fill sandbags, remove mold. i think that's fantastic. and my final question would be, and this is for everyone again, what suggestions or tips do you have for americans, actually the users of the technology, the social media, during a disaster? what tips would you provide, if anybody -- >> i think the first tip i would give, i think it's good to have a plan in advance of an emergency. every family should be thinking about this in advance. they should know how to contact each other, they should have whatever means they want to do it, whether electronic or backup ways. they should do that. so i think preparation's. i think power is essential. we think about water, other kind of resources you want to have ready, but having power connectivity, i think, are really important so you have access to communications. >> for us from a utility perspective, don't take for granted that we know that you don't have power. so it's good to know that information, because, you know, maybe two blocks from you,

right, peoply power. you may get power, they don't have power. so, please, be accurate. you don't have power, let us know. because it may be that you have a problem that's only localized to your block or to your service. so provide information. the more the better. >> all right. well, thank you, madam chair. it's a very inform informative hearing. >> thank you. i have a couple of questions kind of following up on that a little bit. how can our emergency management officials monitor and validate the information that they received or the power companies, how can you -- or do you monitor and validate? we learned this in that sem chat on twitter last week. those officials shared with us how can the private sector help the emergency managers and first responders efficiently collect, validate, share this information posted by the public during the

disaster? any suggestions as to how your experiences and work can inform? and i guess i'll start with mr. car dane nas. >> during the storm and right now realtime we have people on twitter and facebook and information that is posted is shared not only with us, but back with municipal officials, state officials. and i think that's critical, to have that partnership between the pluck and the private sector. and -- the public and the private sector. it's a two-way street. they come to us with information, we go to them. and during events mr. times there's false -- many times there's false information posted, and working with that municipal official, you can correct the information. you can provide -- you're not going to be out three weeks. it may be three days. and that kind of sets people to be on the right page as to what they have to plan for. and many of these events are realtime. so that realtime information is critical. >> mr. stepka, thank you. >> yeah. i was going to say i agree, i

think that's important to look at the information as it's going to be imperfect in a crisis. you'll it rate on the information. i think collaborating among agencies and organizations is critical as well as the public. the public can help validate information. the i think the crowd sourcing idea makes a lot of sense, but we have to think about where it's appropriate and how to act on it when we need to validate the information before you act on it or corroborate that information elsewhere. >> and there truly is a risk of data obesity as we grow with significant amount of information streams coming on in the future. and i think that robust data fusion capabilities with data analysis capabilities can empower that analyst to tease through the information that is relevant to them, vetted against orr sources and use -- other sources and use social media as part of a holistic approach to make resource allocation decisions.

>> with respect to the work that you've all been doing just last week, fema released a 2013 national preparedness report which did identify the need to mature the role of the public/private partnerships as a new national area for improvement. and this was also highlighted during our twitter chat last week. and based on the incredible work that your companies are doing, what has your actual interaction been with federal, state and local governments, and has fema reached out to you all specifically, and have you worked with fema? and i'll, you know, ask mr. stepka and payne specifically initially, because i'm sure you have worked for them, many cardenas. yes. >> yes. we have worked with fema, and we've talked about how we can better work together to help support their efforts. i think every level of government we've been working on different situations.

i mentioned we worked with the city of new york as well in the crisis. we look for scaleable ways to reach out to government organizations. it's hard to reach out to all of them, so i think it's important, again, go back to standards, that if we have standards laid out, it doesn't require we have relationships with every level of government. we all can agree with interacting with secured data, they'll take care of a lot of those interactions. >> i think the relationship highlights the importance of open data. fema does a great job with certain data sources that they can publicly release, making them available so that organizations like google, ourselves and other response organizations can leverage that information. we would certainly welcome the opportunity to engage them to see on both sides how we could improve that relationship. we, during hurricane sandy, we did work with the office of executive management at new york city. i think they did a fantastic job interfacing with dozens of organizations to help as much as

possible, and i think that was a success story of a governmental social sector interaction. and it's something that we take a very strong commitment to open technologies and with all the work we've done, be it a flood, tornado or hurricane, have insured that all the data that was generated by mobile quites, integrated itself, was made relevant to authorities to make sure they had access to that information other than the personally-identifiable information that was removed. >> thank you. would ask the ranking member, gentleman from new jersey, for any further questions? >> yes, ma'am. thank you, madam chair. mr. cardenas, i've had a great deal of in smart grid technology and have had conversations with your company officials as well in reference to it. and in your testimony you explained this smart grid technologien ables utility

companies to pinpoint problems and restore service more quickly. how does the smart grid technology differ from 20th century technology? >> well, equipment in a smart network talks to the components of that system. it can reconfigure automatically the way a neighborhood is fed. it relies not on human beings doing individual steps, information between these components can automatically restore services in many cases. in addition to that, it provides efficiencies with the setting up of a circuit you're going to work on remotely so that you don't have to send people to each piece of equipment and put it in a way that people can work on it. for instance, we had 4,000 people who came to help us out. and we had to every morning send

them out to do work. it took us a long time to allow them to be able to do the work because we had to make it safe. with a smart grid, with a supervisory control and information system, we could do that remotely and gain efficiencies in the actual time in leveraging that resource to get the restoration done. so a smart grid is quantum leaps ahead of what we had ten years ago, twenty years ago. it's now the way we go, and it's where we are hoping to make very large investments in. >> so that's basically how the smart grid technology would improve responses during disasters? >> we'll do it both ways. it will do it with the efficiency of the people working to restore service as well as the automated restoration associated with reconfiguring the way the grid is fed. >> thank you. and, mr. stepka, in your

testimony you note that, you know, affordable high-speed internet access, you know, is necessary to be tech ready for disasters. nearly a hundred million americans do not have access to broadband, and one-third do not have access to internet, and, you know, i discuss that a bit yesterday when we were in my office. so from your perspective, how does the digital divide undermine disaster response efforts, and how would you address the problem? >> i think it's a very important issue. i think it's, in addition to crisis response, we also work on this issue in general trying to provide better internet access to people around the world, actually. as you know, we've launched a effort to bring high-speed internet access starting in kansas city, austin and provo. and i think the idea being in general this is very important. obviously, we need to have a way to provide internet aess to everybody as well as high-speed

access in their home. i think so everybody has access to these great tools and also sees the advantages of being connected not just in a crisis. i think it's a challenge which we're doing in general, and we're focusing our resources on. there are a couple challenges which are different, one challenge is in urban environments, especially rural environments. and rural environments are very hard to reach using fiber, for example. and usually a wireless technology is probably more efficient. so we've experimented working with the fcc on a different technology which provides potentially the ability to provide access to people using the tv white spaces which is a low bandwidth, sorry, low frequency bandwidth that can be used to reach rural parts of the world. >> thank you. madam chair, i yield back the balance and like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony. >> okay. thank you. i have a question,

mr. beckerman, start with you and others might want to chime in. but what are, in following up, what are some things that the federal government should do in forming partnerships with the private sector to take advantage of the new technologies? and i might ask whether or not you're aware, you represent a number of associations -- i'm sorry, a number of companies and incredibly innovative companies. are there any new technologies we can be anticipating that can be used that you can talk with us with respect to social media for emergency and disasters? but how can we better connect up the federal government with these new technologies? >> well, i'd say this hearing today is a great start, opening the dialogue. so, you know, thank you for having the hearing. you know, the most important thing is for private sector, our companies and the federal government to have an open dialogue and talk. the technology is evolving, and as we go through each one of

these unfortunate situations, lessons are learned, and the federal government gets better, and our companies get better, and the public gets better a as understanding the technology. crowd sourcing is a powerful tool both during a disaster to help bring volunteers and after a disaster to help bring money and volunteer asks and rebuild. and so we just ask is the federal government -- and they've been doing a great job so far -- is keep an open dialogue with our companies and share data where they can, and we'll educate the public on how they can use this technology. >> do you believe that the federal government is improving it use of social media for emergency alerts and preparedness, or what is your opinion on that? >> absolutely. it's improving every time, and as we've seen from some of the protocols from fema, they're already using social media to send out alerts telling people to get a shelter in place or evacuate, and that's a great step. >> are any others on the panel wod like to -- who'd like

comment on about how we, you know, work even better together and any emerging technologies? >> i would echo everything you said as well. i think it's helpful to work collaboratively on these ideas. the technology is still evolving. i think working together on open formats for data to be share inside a secure way that's appropriate using crowd sourcing in an appropriate way as well is an important thing in this context. i'm actually encouraged by what the white house did recently on data standards, and i think those general movements are all in the right direction. >> okay. mr. payne? >> to echo the other panelists, i concur that we are moving in the right direction. i'm heartened by many of the open data initiatives and open data standards. the white house cto has done a fantastic job pushing new standards to make computer comprehensible formats the norm. one good example i'll offer of this is nonprofit data.

today nonprofit data's publicly available, but as a scanned piece of paper that a computer cannot read very well. and it takes hundreds of thousands of man hours to rewrite the data base that exists with information that is supposed to be public data. and so in the new budget proposal is the ability for that to be electronic information and, thus, much, much easier for technological organizations to leverage that data. there are 1.4 million nonprofit organizations in america today, and having the ability to engage them in a disaster or an emergency would have a lot of benefit to those on the ground, and that open data could go a long way towards that engagement. >> thank you. mr. cardenas? any thoughts you might have? >> i'll give you one example of the collaboration and how we're going to be able to help. i don't -- in the not very distant future i can see a first

responder from are a municipality going out taking a picture with his phone, sending it to us. it'll be able to tell us what equipment was at that location the picture was taken from and then take action on that. the collaboration between the utility and the way it formats its information and its ability to speak and connect with that device will be critical as we move forward into the future where whether it be crowd sourcing or just the use of these devices to locate and identify equipment that's been damaged is going to continue to be critical. that i'm hoping i'll be able to see in the next 9-12 months. >> thank you. thank you very much. mr. payne? >> madam chair, i ask unanimous concept to submit testimony from humanity road and the business emergency operations center alliance of phenomenal to the record -- of new jersey to the record. >> pardon?

yes. oh, thank you. thank you. without objection, that will be admitted. and at this time i would hike to ask mr. payne -- like to ask mr. payne if he has anything he'd like to say before i close out. okay. thank you very much. i would very much like to thank this panel for their very valuable testimony. i think we've learned a lot. we've started a very important discussion. what i think is happening with emergency managers, with -- whether it's municipal or state or federal officials, your companies are paving the way. you have created new technologies. i'm looking at the back of this actual hearing room is a picture from 9/11. and what the technologies that you all discussed whether it was people finder, you know, whether it is the mapping capabilities that would have been so critical during that horrific time in our country's history. and so we truly have come a are long way -- a very long way. and as i talk about the energy

technologies and knowing what is coming, i think we can't even imagine, as mr. cardenas just shared with us, you know, the possibilities of what your companies and the innovators and engineers and inventers in your companies are creating. we just ask that you continue to share those with government, with the public sector, with the volunteers. it's amazing to me that 14,000 volunteers, you know, come together quickly, but that we already had a team of veterans in place to help mobilize and that were trained. and so it's a wonderful marriage of, you know, the government and the military and our veterans and that point, you know, marrying up with volunteers to really aid in recovery and save a lot of lives and save homes and save process property. but most importantly, save lives. and that's what i think your testimony or here today has also shown. i think we absolutely have some challenges that, you know, everyone needs to be mindful of,

and some of those challenges. sadly, the few bad actors that do come up, the privacy issues that we need to be mindful of. but i do think -- and the connectivity. you've talked about, you know, without power none of this works. and we do need to continue to explore and continue to advance and be partner between the public and the private sec fors. and i just want -- sectors. and i just want to thank you for your time. there may be questions submitted by others, and we look forward to working with you in the future. we plan on having another meeting with fema and red cross and others, and we look forward to trying to insure that all of the innovation you're creating and the way if which your companies want to contribute in emergency preparedness, we just thank you very much. so thank you. this meeting is adjourned.

>> today live here on c-span2, the federal reserve board of governors holds an open meeting with chairman ben bernanke to discuss capital requirements for the nation's largest financial institutions. live coverage gets under way at 9:30 be eastern here on c-span2. >> you're watching c-span2 with politics and public affairs. weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights watch key public policy events and every weekend the latest nonfiction authors and books on booktv. you can see past programs and get our schedules at our web sites, and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. >> now, the national cable and telecommunications association hosts a discussion on broadband

technology and the impact that digital media is having on the cable industry. participants include television executives from networks such as showtime, amc and disney. this is an hour. >> you are here. i can't think of a better introduction. mc hammer and duck dynasty all on the same stage. it's a true cable experience. i kind of only wish i would have worn my hunting camo gear to open up the show. >> well, i really love the duck guys. they have brought great laughter to millions of people this season. and we were really excited that their finale passed "american idol" in the ratings, another cable milestone this year. and we're just -- [applause] >> wow. >> right. cable is where it's at. and we're thrilled that they were able to join us here at the the cable show. we hope we brought some real fun to d.c. >> well, that is our overall

goal. we want to bring more fun, we want to bring a little more class here to the nation's capital. and we also want to show off everything cable has to offer. so on behalf of myself and abby as well as our stellar convention committee and the great staff here at ncta, we'd like to welcome all of you to the cable show 2013. [applause] >> and -- welcome. and you may have seen some of the industry's ads saying cable is how we connect, and i think we all plan to do a lot of connecting over the next three days. connecting with our amazing technology, with the stunning array of content we offer, with many of the great talent that appear on our screens, with key government officials and opinion leaders, and most importantly, connecting with each other. >> and, abbe, i plan on doing some of my own connecting here at the show.

i plan to immerse myself in the observatory to get a bird's eye view of our industry's contributions. i'm going to take in some of the insightful discussions among the 40 suggestses in our educational track and at imagine park, and i'm going look at a little bit of the future at cable net which displays our future and is sponsored by cable labs. and i hope to connect with some of the nearly 300 companies who are displaying on the floor. >> i as well. and a&e networks is proud to be exhibiting on the floor with so many of our programming and technology colleagues. it's really a great few days here. i'm especially looking forward to wednesday when you will be receiving your ncta vanguard award for leadership. distinguished leadership. very well deserved. thank you. let's give pat a round of applause. >> thank you. [applause] >> it's a great honor. >> thank you. >> and well deserved. and i know he'll be in great

company along with my dear friend and colleague nancy dubuque and several other unbelievably outstanding vanguard winners. >> thank you, abbe, that was very kind, thank you. and i have to say it's been a pleasure working with you and the vision you have brought to this year's cable show. it's been a fun experience, abbe. even making a few road trips. >> yep. it's been really fun. never expected to be installing capable in monroe, louisiana -- cable in monroe, louisiana. i won't be doing that again. our objective for the show, though, has been to find ways of featuring all of the things that people love about cable; the incredible entertainment and information, the power of broadband 234 transforming -- in transforming our lives and the role our industry plays in contributing to the mesh economy economy -- the american economy and enhancing the lives of all americans. >> you know, like the theme of the show, cable really is worlds ahead of our competitors and

those who are trying to emulate the success that we've had. and we're hoping that by the time your visit at this show is over, you'll be able to see why. >> and we're lucky to be kicking off the show this morning with some remarks from an industry leader, ncta's michael paul, and with two impressive segments featuring global media leaders. one panel will examine the opportunities created by our great broadband platform, and the other will take a closer look at our incredibly robust contempt. >> well, abbe, with so much to do, we better get off the stage and let this morning's programs get under way. thank you for coming this week to the cable show here in washington d.c. connect with your colleagues, soak in all the information you can and have a wonderful timement so now it's our pleasure to welcome to the stage the president and ceo of ncta, michael powell. prison. >> thank you. [applause]

>> good morning. and welcome to the cable she. it's good to be with you. television, it opens a window on our world. storytelling is the most ancient of human endeavors. it lets us learn our history, share a laugh, feel a thrill, celebrate and even mourn together. the very best stories live on cable. a medium of exceptional value, an unparalleled quality. americans spend a lot of time with our products, and they get a lot for their money. and cable is on an innovation tear, expanding the video experience to any screen you want, my time you want -- any time you want and anywhere you want. but cable is more than just

great tv. it is the conduit of our future. cable is a significant innovation in its own right, but it's also an important be contributor to another innovation on this list. the internet. the internet is heralded as the greatest invention of our time, and it is. it empowers every one of us to learn, create and publish. it has transformed industries, bolstered economies and overthrown governments. the power of the people has never been greater thanks to this amazing interconnection of networks that cable proudly delivers to millions. but not very long ago getting online required zen-like patience. it used to sound like this.

and it used to look like this. everyone, everyone wanted something better. we wanted something more powerful, something more useful. some even wanted to use the internet to practice magic. we wanted our internet faster and faster, and we wanted it always on. what we wanted was broadband. cable industry heard the cry and answered the call. we invented the cable modem. just a box to most people, but from this box the world's information doesn't just flow, it gushes. now, internet access is fast and always on. and painful dial-up has been put to rest. but our industry has never been

content to rest on its laurels. we are on an endless journey to deliver an exceptional experience for american consumers and businesses. moving forward is always good, but it takes energy and effort and money, lots of money. cable had to dig up a lot of streets and string a lot of wires across a lot of poles. cable had to invest, and we have to the tune of $200 billion since the mid 1990s. it was risky and, truthfully, not everyone was a believer. there is much to believe in now. cable now serves over 50 million broadband customers. we have worked hard to reach nearly everyone, offering service to 93% of american homes. but an engine that doesn't have the horsepower isn't worth the

effort. that is why we have increased broadband speeds over 1500% in a decade. today cable networks capable of delivering 100 megs or more are available to 85% of owl households. -- all households. this is an achievement envied around the world. and while speeds have skyrocketed, the price for consumers has not. all this has been accomplished with private investment and the government's light touch. america is an innovation powerhouse largely because of the internet we helped to build to nearly everyone. thanks to this world class broadband infrastructure, america is home to the world's very best internet companies. but despite our success, many people like to denigrate u.s. broadband by painting false comparisons to other countries.

certainly, there are some nations doing very well. but it's foolish to compare countries like france and hat via -- latvia to the united states of america. the land mass of the u.s. is 3% 3% -- 3.8 million square niles, much of it rural. our challenges are different, but our results are nonetheless impressive. if you compare u.s. states to hundreds of foreign countries, ten of the top fastest regions in the world are here in america, and we are flying up the internet speed charts. in 2009 the u.s. ranked 22nd in the world. today we rank eighth. average peak connection speeds have tripled over the past five years. but like everyone, we want to

deliver more. we want every american to have access to broadband; rich, poor, urban and rural. we don't cherry pick the most lucrative customers or the elite users. we serve everyone throughout our footprint. now, if america has one serious communication challenge, it's how to clez the adoption gap -- close the adoption gap. we still have one-quarter of americans who have access to broadband but have not yet gotten online. and we want to help fix that. cable has launched adoption programs throughout the country offering low price broadband to low income american families. programs like connect to compete and internet essentials are helping get all of americaen to line. america online. one great example is the boys and girls' clubs of central oregon has partnering with local

cable operators to close the digital divide for hundreds of families. the group's executive direct canner says of the internet, there is no way for a child to succeed anymore without it. besides education, broadband is enabling more job opportunities, better health care, closer community connections, more power to more poem. more people. to help our children and citizens succeed, we will continue to empower our customers to go where they want and do what they want using the broadband connection. the cable industry has always believed in an open to bear net, and -- open internet, and we will continue to embrace it. it's our job to manage our networks to keep the internet humming as the world's greatest engine of innovation we will continue to meet the explosive

demand for internet capacity, investing, innovating, competing aggressively but always fairly. this is the american way. we will not rest for one reason above all: we want america to soar in the information age. cable is the platform that makes our digital dreams come through. you will see it, you will feel it, you will touch it and experience it this week as cable puts on a show for you. you'll discover a world you thought you knew and find that there is much more to know. and you will leave more excited about the future yet to come. thank you so much and enjoy the show. [applause] ♪ ♪

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>> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the moderator for today's broadband innovation panel, chief washington correspondent and anchor of cnn's "the lead with jake tapper," jake tapper. [applause] >> hey, everyone. thanks so much for being here. i'm going to introduce our guest, and if you would wait and hold your applause til the very end. first, jim bankoff. then husain ramen, founder and ceo of jawbone. ali rah ghani, the chief operating officer of twitter. tom rutledge, president and ceo of charter communications and last but not least, steve

shannon, gm content services for roku. [applause] thank you, good to see you. have a seat, everyone. before i begin and we start talking to this very interesting and great panel, i would be remiss as a newsman if i did not take the opportunity to ask our friend from twitter about a story that is in the news. ali, there has been -- i'm not sure how much you've been reading "the guardian" newspaper these days -- [laughter] all of a sudden the number one paper for everybody in this town. there is a report in "the washington post" and "the guardian," about a program, a national security agency program called prism in which -- and there are debates about how much of this is voluntary and how exactly it's done -- but the government, the national security agency, is able to access files of participating internet companies. twitter, according to public

statements, is not a participant in this. what can you tell us about twitter refusing to participate, and what is your understanding of what prism exactly is? >> well, first of all, it's very nice to be here. [laughter] >> i'm sorry. i'm a newsman. go with right to the story. >> very nice to be here to meet the press. [laughter] you know, the truth of the matter is i can't really comment on any details of the matter. and we're all also at twitter, you know, sort of very interested to see how this story plays out. but i will say, you know, one of the core values we have at the company is to defend and respect the user's voice, and we believe that tweets belong to the users that create them, and we have always tried to find the right balance between abiding by the law in any jurisdiction and doing what's right by our users. and we'll continue to do that.

but as far as the specifics of prism or the issues of the nsa, i can't really comment specifically. >> okay. thank you very much. i do want to get to the real subtext of this panel which is are you guys friend or photothese guys? -- foe to these guys? so to start, what i'd like to do is just go down and very briefly explain what your company does. and we'll start with you. >> sure. jim ban couldkoff i'm with vox , and we're the fastest growing category in the technology with our brand called the verge and in gaming with polygone. each one of these gets web made of talent built on a technology platform that really enables us to grow and scale quickly. and, again, our business was enabled by broadband, so, you know, we certainly see ourselves

as a friend of the industry. we have partnerships with many of the companies in the room, particularly television programmers. but, you know, we wouldn't exist without broadband, obviously. not for the obvious reasons alone of the technology infrastructure and the fast speeds, but for the new wave of talent that has emerged, and look forward to talking about that. >> great. jim. hussein, explain to people in the audience what exactly is jawbone? >> yeah. for those of you that don't know, jawbone is -- we think of ourselves as sort of leading the way around smart-connected devices, around this whole notion of the internet of things where if you kind of apply accept to haves to any connectivity category, you can revolutionize what you're able to do with that. and in the context of the cable and broadband industry, we think of it as very complimentary. when you put ip in everything, it allows you to extend experiences in totally new ways, right? we invented a whole new category

in the speaker business, for example, where we made them connected, smart devices to go along with your phone, your ipad, extending those use cases in a much higher quality way than anyone had done before. those are now the leading devices in the market. that whole part of the segment is growing fast, and we think that it's leading to new consumption models, and it's up to you guys to figure out how you monetize and charge for that. we just want to deliver these experiences that make it retcher and more consumable, and there's everywhere from things that are on you to around you. >> ali, i'm sure most everybody in this room knows what twitter is, but how does twitter view its mission? >> well, you know, we're lumped typically into a social media category. but what's distinctive about twitter really boils down to four things. first is that we're public and not private. second, that our network and communication in our network is in realtime partly because of the short format of the 140 characters. it is conversational, and it's

distributed. tweets are everywhere all around the web. and that makes it, makes twitter an amazing complement to television and particularly live television. because millions of our users, i think the reported number is 35 million users of twitter last year, tweeted about television programs while the programs were happening. and so our audience, our user base has exhibited a pattern of using our service in connection to watching live television. and we're now really invested in building complimentary experiences between what you guys do and the audience that's on twitter. and we're, i think, just at the very beginning of doing that. to your specific question, our mission is to bring people closer to the things that they care about and allow them to participate in the dialogue about those things. and a lot of what people cares about, a lot of what people care

about is what's on television. >> tom, charter communications. >> well, some of you may wonder, but we're actually a cable television company. and what that means is that we're a two-way interactive, high-capacity digital platform, and we sell television, cable television, cnn in packages of television. we have a really high capacity broadband network that's out on the, out physically on the streets and highways of the country. hundreds of thousands of miles of physical infrastructure. we're a telephone company, and we're, essentially, a communications company. and you asked are we friends or are we enemies, how do we work together, we create the platform that allows these businesses to operate. and we actually want our platform used. so to the extent that people are using the broadband services and needing it for more and more

capacity actually helps our business grow and is in our interest. so there are times when we bump into each other in our spaces and what we, and how we look at our business plans, but essentially, we've created an ecosystem that creates a lot of value for our company and all the companies that are up here. >> and, steve, roku. >> sure. roku is a, well, it looks like a hockey puck. it's a streaming player. you connect it to your tv. just needs electricity, wi-fi and a connection to your tv to access nearly a thousand channels now of strolling content. we're leaders in the marketplace. we've sold about five million units to date, and we stream everything from the likes of netflix, we announced a deal recently with time warner cable where they feature 300 of their linear channels there, channels like hbo go, going to launch fox now soon all the way down to things like local churches and special interest contempt.

we're available here in the u.s., broadly distributed in just about every retail location where you'd expect and going gang busters. >> all right. so let's just cut to the quick. where do you think for each one of you, i'll just make it a blanket question, where do you think you and your company find yourself at odds the most with the people in this room, and what can be done to make those challenges smoothed over or perhaps they're just insurmountable, and we'll start with you suns you seem to be the most -- since you seem to be the most obvious candidate. >> the punching bag, sure. yeah, we do get painted with a cord-cutter brush from time to time. truth is, the vast majority of our users are cable subscribers as well. our big -- >> what percentage, if you don't -- >> it's roughly 70% are cable subscribers. and so we, we are putting a lot of focus into tv everywhere right now. it's a phenomenal opportunity for us.

it's been shown to really drive awe finty -- affinity for the cable package, for the pay tv package. services like hbo go, it's a wonderful way to get hbo. and you imagine hbo go multiplying across all of the programmer networks, multiplying across fox now and imagine what espn can do or what nickelodeon can do when these programmers can deliver software along with their video in the form of apps, so nickelodeon sending games down on espn allowing you to access more information about your favorite teams. all of that type of software-oriented activity is opportunity for both programmers and operators to bring new value as part of their overall pay tv subscription, and it's really working. i mean, about three-fourths of our users are ascribing new discovered value to their pay tv package because of the tv everywhere apps that they're finding on their roku settop box.

so it's been a huge hit for us, and i think it's very helpful for the entire ecosystem. >> i think the biggest issue we have is that the business we're in, the television business is the television business. it's not the internet, it's not cable tv. and you create audiences, and the issues are really around business model questions. how do you go and acquire customers if you have a video product? and how do you make those customers see your product, and where do they see the product? and whether that's a la carte or whether that's in a package or some sort of bundle, those are the kind of issues that are being challenged as the technology really has brought all the services together into a single wire onto single devices, and you can access voice data, video on the same device. and the question is, well, what's the service? and the service is the content. and when we get into conflicts

all the time about, well, no, it's the internet or, no, it's cable tv. reality is it's content, and it's sold a certain way, and people are confused by the notion of the internet, cable. and so it creates regulatory issues, it creates business model issues. but it's all television. >> well, to be honest i don't, i can't really think of any ways in which our business is at odds with the cable and tv business. we truly see ourselves as a complement to the television business, to the cable business. and i would say in three or four respects. one of them is in terms of driving discovery and tune in to tv behavior. nielsen recently came out with a study that indicated a very strong correlation between activity on twitter and tune in. secondly, in terms of creating a

complimentary content experience around programming that brings more value back to realtime viewing. thirdly in the area of measurement for programmers, measuring social engawjment around their programming -- engagement around their programming using twitter that. and finally in the area of complementary advertising models. so i think among the technology companies sort of our ilk, you're not going to find a bigger fan and supporter of the tv business than twitter. >> yeah. i think for jawbone it's the same. i haven't really seen any kind of conflicts or issues. i would say for us the thing that's been interesting, we've been working quite closely with comcast, we're sort of just used to a different pace of innovation, of rollout, how fast we want to bring products and services to market. and, you know, i think it's sor