nonfiction books all weekend every weekend right here on c-span2. >> here's a look at some of what's ahead this morning on c-span2. .. >> who discuss their recent cover story outlining their proposals for jump-starting the economy be such as restricting payments for end-of-life care

and surcharging medicare coverage for smokers and the obese. you can watch this and other q&a interviews all this week at 7 p.m. eastern here on cing span 3. c-span2. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your it's provider -- by your television provider. >> host: and this week on "the communicators," gordon smith who is president and ceo of the national association of broadcasters, our guest reporter is paul kirby of telecommunications report. senator smith, you started at nab nearly four years ago. how have the issues changed in those four years? >> guest: well, it seems like the issues just keep on coming, and they tend to be very major issues affecting both radio and television. but clearly on the radio side, the whole issue of performance rights, performance tax, whatever you want to tribe it

as, is an ongoing challenge. hopefully, the day will arrive when both the digital and the terrestrial platform can come up with a model that actually grows music and works for both. but right now one has an unsustainable business model, and the other one works for radio, but on the other hand, we need it to work for the performers too. but if you provide a rate that simply destroys local radio, that is a bad thing. we can't stand idly by for that. but a lot of contractual negotiations are going on with some of our major members like clear channel and intercom, doing deals with labels. so a market is starting to develop in that regard. on the investigation -- television side, obviously, the other big issues are spectrum which is now out of congress and into the hands of if fcc.

retransmission consent and, of course, ownership restrictions. these are all things that have of enormous consequence to television broadcasters both large and small. and we're engaged in the all of them. so i guess my biggest surprise is how many big issues keep coming. >> host: well, speaking of the fcc, it looks like there's going to be a new chairman of the fcc, want to get your views on tom wheeler and potentially moving ahead with him without a republican nominee. >> guest: well, i -- we support the confirmation of tom wheeler. i personally do not know him, believe i've met him on one occasion, but what i know of him from people whose opinions i value, they hold him in high regard. he is both politically savvy and business experienced, and he has run two trade associations, so he will certainly have an idea of the job that that nab has to do for our members. and so we respect his resumé and

look forward to engaging with him. but having served on the senate commerce committee, i can tell you he won't be confirmed until there is a republican to pair him with. that's just the way it works there. and i can't imagine that changing. so sometime this fall, hopefully before christmas, we'll have a fully-staffed fcc commission. >> one of the major issues at the fcc is the incentive auction, and i'll ask you more details about it, but first of all, the fcc wants to hold their auction next year. is that too ambitious b? is there a concern they'll rush things and not look into things carefully enough? >> guest: well, it may sound cliche, but we've said from the beginning let's do it right and not just right now. and that really has a lot of meaning to us. and we have great sympathy for the fact that this is an enormously complicated process

that they're, that they are going through. what we have asked of the fcc commissioners is more traction parent si -- transparency, more engagement. it might be conventional wisdom that if broadcasters want to stop this -- actually, i think it's in our interests to accelerate this to the degree possible while still getting it right. because this has enormous consequence to the nation that there is a dedicated and healthy broadcast band dedicated to broadcasting if we're serious about preserving video on a large scale that is free and that is local. these things are hugely important to people. in the information age, people still care about gathering around their big screens and watching sporting events or getting emergency information or staying up with the news. it comes there broadcasting in a very significant way. so we, we gave up a lott of

spectrum -- a lot of spectrum when we went from analog to digital. we're being asked for more. but i think it's important to understand the broadband community has twice as much spectrum as we do. they want more of ours. at the most, this auction will add 10% to their current holdings. but it will require roughly moving 60% of television towers in this country. that is an enormous undertaking, and you can't underestimate the potential for disruption to the american people if this is not done right. so when we ask for transparency and more engagement, we actually have at the nab some of the brightest minds in the physics of spectrum in america, and a lot of the problems we could help resolve if we were included at the ground level so the software works out right and doesn't, isn't put out and then has to go back and put out and go back, we can resolve a lot of

these things together with the can coalition we have formed with the broadband community. there's a commitment of interest here to -- a community of interest here to get it done as quickly as possible with the least amount of disruption. >> is that why nab said at a recent hearing some have described the auction as a win-win-win, and nab does not see a win for broadcasters who remain on the air? at this point you would settle for a win-win tie, why is that? >> guest: because spectrum is a finite resource. spectrum is the seed corn of anybody that has it. if you don't have it, you don't get a cob. and you want -- crop. and if you want to talk about corn and peas, we can do that. i know something about that. >> that'll be the next show. >> guest: so when we talk about spectrum be, we're actually talking about the importance to, very significant public policy. should this nation have a dedicated broadcast band? and the answer is, clearly, yes.

if we're interested in a medium that does video like no one else can. i mean, if you took all of our spectrum and you tried to do all video through broadband, candidly, there's not enough spectrum in the universe to do video one to one versus our one to everyone technology. which, again, is live, it's local, it's free, it's important. you cannot do the super bowl on a one to one basis. you have to have broadcast architecture. and so that's why we think it's important to do it right. not right now, but do it as soon as you can do it right. >> host: well, senator, from your former seat on the commerce committee and as the head of nab now what about the use of government spectrum and utilizing some of that unused spectrum for commercial purposes? >> guest: well, i mean, the

government has half the spectrum out there. it's used, obviously to, by the defense department, and we used to say on the commerce committee when we'd ask can we get some of this to put into commercial use, the answer always was jokingly, they've got guns. [laughter] and they have to give it up. and they don't want to give it up anymore than, i suppose, any of our broadband friends. you know, at the other -- but it takes the administration to tell the military to surrender some of it. and there is an effort now to get them to relinquish some. unless you think that would crowd the government, i mean, they went as we did from analog to digital which created efficiencies which enabled broadcasters already to return 108 megahertz of prime spectrum real estate. they went to digital. they got excess space. that could be dedicated to the commercial purpose as well. so we think that there is a lot

that the government could do to solve this problem for our broadband friends. >> well, the department of defense has a proposal, and that would involve giving up most of one band, the 1755-1780, but they would share with broadcasters and others the 20-25 and 2110. your reaction to that plan. >> guest: we're open to consider whatever, but i would just simply note i think it was about a year ago the defense the department said it wasn't possible to share with us. if something's changed, let us see the test. but that band is important because that's what broadcasters use particularly in emergency circumstances. that is the band that allowed president obama during the boston bombing when he was getting his news via cable but sort of second and third hand, we're told he said get me a live

broadcast feed. it was on that very band that he was able to watch live what was happening in boston. so again, when these ideas are floated, it's really important to get into the details and find out the consequence of these suggestions that are put out there. again, if something's changed and they can share, let us see the tests that say that it can work now where it couldn't have a year ago. >> now, looking at some of the complaints in the incentive auction proceeding, how is the fck not being transparent enough -- fcc not being transparent enough? they said they've met with nab folks 15 times alone. >> guest: well, they recently put out a whole bunch of information and, you know, understanding it all is really what they want us to do. we'll let you see what we're working with. what we could do with them if they wanted to get us and our broadband colleagues together in a room, we could tell them what

we think works and what doesn't, and then if we're all in the same boat in getting this right, i think we could have a lot fewer starts and stops many this process. for example, one of the major things that has to happen is these new agreements with canada and mexico. and these are very complicated international relationships. you know, spectrum airways don't know the difference between the u.s. or the canadian boarder, and if the auction is going to be successful in sufficient quantity, this has to be resolved with canada or else you will literally disenfranchise broadcast tv from all of our thorne and southern states -- northern and southern states. so let us be a part of that, you know? let us know in the beginning be part of the creation instead of responding to their best guest

at this point. be. >> gordon smith, we recently had chet key nose ya on this program, founder of air owe. we asked him about to respond to people saying that they're so-called stealing broadcaster signals. here's what he had to say f we could get your response. >> at some point you have to call it what it is, it's name calling. because when three federal courts express an opinion that it is a legal technology and it's consistent with what congress spended, it's difficult for me to sort of look at it any other way except for name calling. fact of the matter is that this content is paid for by the consumers in advertising, spectrum that the broadcasters have. >> guest: i would respond just this way, it is true the second circuit denied a preliminary

injunction against broadcasters, so the case proceeds. yesterday on the merits in the ninth circuit a case called aerio killer, a ninth circuit district court held that it was, in fact, they held that it was a violation of copyright. so that happened yesterday. ultimately, this will have to be decided, i suppose, by the supreme court. by -- but the principle is simply this: if you want to put out our stuff, you want to grab it and charge someone for it, then there's a copyright issue. if aereo just wants to provide the service and not charge for it, then i think they have a better case. but ultimately, when you take someone else's property and you resell it, you owe them for it. you should negotiate for it. that's the requirement of copyright law. and eventually, the courts will decide this, and certainly the market will. i mean, as television

broadcasting becomes more and more mobile, you know, it used to be ubiquitous broadcasting with a big tv in your living room. now it's pretty much on every device that you can have. that's going to create a real investment problem, a return on investment problem for aereo as a business be model. >> another new technology that's creating -- [inaudible] for broadcasters is the dish hopper, and broadcasters recently lost their attempt to get a preliminary injunction there. that goes forward, it allows, basically, consumers to skip commercials. some folks said perhaps broadcasters will have to figure into the retransmission fee requests if they lose that case. if you give us kind of your sense of where you the that's -- where you think i that's going? >> guest: i think if it does not violate copyright, then it probably and certainly does violate contract. so it then becomes an issue of,

you know, the hopper is just aimed at broadcast content, not at cable content, not at their content. so it's something of real concern to us. it's not for consumer, it's for them, it's for dish. because they don't allow people to block out their ads, just ours. so, you know, at the end of the day, i think all of my members when it comes to doing cop tent deals -- content deals with dish, they're going to have to either to pass action they probably have damages they can seek. but as to the future be, it means you better have a different number in mind when you want to renegotiate transmission with dish. >> another incentive auction question. nab has said they don't know broadcasters that are willing to give up broadcasters that are willing to -- but led by a former executive in the industry they say they're willing to consider it. do you know yet of any that are

willing to consider it, and do you think their just outliers? >> guest: i think they're outliers, but, you know, they're free to do this. and if that coalition wants to play, then play. we'll adjust accordingly. but, again, i think it's really important to understand how consequential this repacking will be and the size of the broadcast band. it's important to america as a matter of public policy to have a healthy broadcast industry. because what we have, our architecture cannot be replicated by broadband. >> now, the opponents say the original report on the fcc says about 11 million people watch broadcast exclusively over the air compared to 100 million who use a pay-tv service. okay, tine, maybe broadcasters should still get spectrum, but it's not as critical because

your people are using over the air. >> guest: well, we're just glad people get our content however they want to get it, but i would note there are three different once. i think gary shapiro, cea, put out that it was 7%. well, that was their own internal workings and was certainly biased against us. nielsen has it at 11. at independent, unrelated to anything that nab does, the gfk media, they did an independent study, and they said that number now has climbed to 19.3% of households in america. and that's just to as exclusive use of television over the air. most homes have either a cable or a satellite, and then they have several other tvs that are on antenna. but let's just say the number is 19.3%. who are those people? well, they tend to be the

economically underprivileged, the minority community, and now increasingly the young who are either cutting the cord or never hooking up the cord because they found that with a combination of broadcast and the internet they've got all the tv they can watch all the time they have to watch tv, that staysatisfies it. so broadcast direct over the air viewership is growing, it's not shrinking. and those constituencies of minorities, economically underprivileged and and rural and young and often elderly, they shouldn't be excluded from the world of television just because various dueling statistics are out there. >> host: so, senator smith, when you think about the future of television 5, 10, 20 years, what do you see? >> guest: it's a very exciting future. i mean, i think multicasting, for example, which digital made

possible be, one of the reasons why people are cutting the cord is they find out that unlike on cable or satellite, you can go to your channel 4, and you can get four channels off that now. there's tremendous new content coming in that you can get only through over the air. mobile is an issue that i'm very interested in and concerned in and pushing my membership to adopt. there are probably 150 cities in the country now where if it has stations lighting up a mobile transmission so that people can get broadcast signals that they're not billed for, it's just free to them on their ipads and other devices. that's the future. and one of my really exciting things that i've seen recently in a visit to tokyo with nhk labs was the coming of 4k and hk, and this is such incredible it's visually. it's better than 3-d, and you don't need glasses. and these things all take

spectrum, and they certainly take investment by broadcasters in what you would know of as a new standard. your viewers may understand the difference between the atfc and the ofdm standards. the rest of the world is on the ofdm standard which has far greater efficiency and mobility and penetration capacity for purposes of mobile. i think eventually that's where broadcasters will end up, and that will provide video anytime, anywhere on any device for all people at all times. and that's an exciting future because especially as it relates to video, no substitute for broadcast architecture. >> host: are we going to continue to see some retransmission fights or disagreements? >> guest: i think you will. obviously, we hate it when there are any disputes because

retransmission consent is hugely important to my television members. i mean, there are two ways you pay for localism, local con at no time. you pay -- content. you pay for it through advertising model which is the historic model of television broadcasting or now a growing stream is retransmission consent. now, it'll find its level like any market. right now cable pays itself far more for its content than it pays to broadcasters. and the truth of the matter is our content is the one that people watch the most. you look at the hundred talk about seas in -- talk shows in any given week, 94 of them are broadcast. it's important that we fight and win this battle on retransmission consent because, candidly, it's vital if the congress wants us to continue trying to foster localism and provide all of the things that

we do to earn our licenses every day. you've got to have way to finance it. it's advertising, it's retransmission concept. >> host: your former colleague, senator mccain, has reintroduced his a la carte cable bill. as a senator, where did you stand on that issue? do you have a dog in that fight today? >> guest: out of respect for our cable friends, we've laid off on them. i did not vote with john mccain because i felt like eventually this is handgun that the market would -- this is something the market would take care of, and the cable guys are coming up with more kinds of offerings. but if they go too hard at us, i mean, it pushes me against the wall, and be i then start arguing for, well, when there is a blackout, when we can't agree, why don't you refund to your subscribers some dollars for lost programming. because our programming is the stuff that sells their cable

subscription. >> host: paul kirby. >> we talked about tom wheeler earlier. tom was, for 11 years, the head of the ctia, which is the wireless industry group. is there a concern that his sympathies will not be with you all as much when east at the fcc because of his experience and background and knowledge of the wireless issue? >> guest: i suppose on the surface there's issue to be concerned, but from what i know of tom wheeler, a smart guy, and he understands the tooth trade associations have to -- the duty trade associations have to -- and i'm told that his wife used to work at nab. so hopefully, there's some residual allegiance there. but i'm not worried about it. i mean, if a man has run a trade association, has succeeded in business, has a pretty good understanding, apparently, of politics and processes, he will know nab very well, he'll know the heft we have in this town and, hopefully, work with us in

a way that makes him successful and leaves for the american people a vital industry called broadcasting. >> would you expect with two new commissioners coming on at some point, would you expect is that another reason the incentive auction proceeding may take a little longer, because those folks have got to get up to speed with some of the details? >> guest: i don't think that necessarily slows it down. commissioner -- chairwoman clyburn is doing a wonderful job in the absence of a full commission. their staff below the eighth floor is working very hard on this, and i think tom wheeler's certainly got the gray and the republican nominee, whoever that proves to be, i expect will be very able to get up to speed very quick. >> on the incentive auction, one more question. you mentioned software earlier. the fcc is looking at using new

software that will basically help them analyze the coverage area and population area of a station. this is important because it helps determine what's harmful interference and not harmful interference. tell us why it's bad, what they're doing with planning to introduce new software. >> guest: well, the software has to be done right because it'll effect the repacking, and the repacking will ultimately drive the success or failure of the auction, whether people are going to participate or not. one of the things we fought for in the legislation is protecting our contours. because when you start changing the contours of a broadcast reach, you're changing the economics of that broadcast station. so getting the software right is really sort of ground zero as to concern. for us. and if we're a part of the creation of that along with our broadband colleagues, then this is going to go a lot more quickly. but if they put it together, put

it out, it's wrong, it's got to go back, this could take a long, long time. i mean, when you think back on the analog to digital transition that i was a party to, that didn't affect all that much p repacking. this will affect 60%, perhaps, of the broadcast stations in this country. a huge job. big job. so it's important to get it right in the beginning. >> host: and finally, senator smith, last week on this program senator mark pryor, who's the chair of a commerce subcommittee, we asked him about whether or not the '96 telecom act needs to be updated and overhauled, and he expressed some reservations about that because it would open this can of worms, etc., etc., etc. from the nab's point of view -- >> guest: i suppose be, i never

voted for a perfect law. they were always the product of compromise and trade-offs, and there's nothing that couldn't be made better. but he is right in that once you open something up, the old pandora's box and lots of unintended consequences can come out about that. so i understand the reluctance of senator pryor to even want to open it up. but doesn't mean there aren't some things that couldn't be updated ford to, you know, fit with a dramatically changing telecom environment. >> host: senator gordon smith is president and ceo of the national association of broadcasters, and paul kirby is senior editor at "telecommunications reports." this is "the communicators" on c-span. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider.

>> coming up next, rhode island senator sheldon whitehouse hears from his constituents in pawtucket. after that, we're live from the air force association to hear from a former pentagon official addressing national security threats at a time of budget cuts. >> booktv in prime time comets this week -- continues this week. tonight after "the communicators" at 8:30 p.m. eastern, we'll hear from military historians beginning with victor davis hanson. he talks about his book which looks at five different generals from ancient greece to 21st century iraq. he'll be followed by john gaeghegan on "operation storm" which details japan's secret plan to use advanced submarines. we conclude with author max boot on the history of guerrilla warfare and his book, "invisible

armies." booktv in prime time airs the entire month of august and the first week of september at 8:30 p.m. eastern on mondays and at 8 p.m. the rest of the week here on c-span2. >> in the last few years, the left has decided that the political debate is worthless. they're not going to debate policy, they're not going to debate what is the best way to soft the nation's problems, their not going to provide evidence. they're going to label us morally deficient human beings. >> the editor at large of breitbart.com is our in depth guest x. in the months ahead, october 6th, congressman john lewis. november 3rd or from jackie o. to nancy reagan, your questions for biographer kitty kelley. and then december 1st, feminism critic and philosophy professor christina hop summer, and jan 5th, mark levin.

in depth, live the first sunday of every month at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> democratic senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island held a town hall meeting in pawtucket to talk with his constituents about a range of issues, among them central spending and the government debt, climate change, political discourse in washington and health insurance exchanges. this town hall runs about an hour. [applause] >> all right, now, this is my -- gld and have a seat, guys. this is the 115th, by our count, community dinner that i've held since i first started running for the senate back now, what, seven years ago. and we do them steadily, and we have kind of got the routine down, and that is that everybody

gets something to eat, and then we sit down, i speak very briefly, and then it's just a discussion. so if you have a question, if you have a comment, this is rhode island. we even accept rude remarks, the whole package. please feel free. but in order that everybody else has the chance to hear you, please put your hand up and give us a chance to get a microphone to you, and who's running the microphones here? the hand mics. you guys have got the hand mics? all right. these gentlemen will get the hand mics around. and one other thing that i'll say is that i know that everybody doesn't love public speaking, and whether it's because you don't love public speaking or whether it's because be what you want to talk about is more personal than that or whether we similarly -- simply

run out of time, if more some reason we don't get to you, don't worry about it. one of my rules for these community dinners is i try to be the last person to leave. so i'll stick around, and if you want to talk about something that you don't want to talk about in front of everybody, that's fine too. so thank you all very much. obviously, this is a challenging time to be in washington. the economic recovery is still very slow, and it's particularly slow here in rhode island. and we're trying to do things to get the economy moving more quickly, but we're trying to do so at a time when there's enormous conflict and dissension in washington. and the one thing that i want to tell you about that, because it's my job to report back to you on what i see and what's going on around me, is that what i see is not actually a lot of conflict between republicans and

democrats. what i see is immense conflict, bitter conflict within the republican party. you have a tea party contingent that has one set of views, you've got more moderate republicans who have a very different set of views, and they are really almost at each other's throats now. you have flat out conflict on the floor of the senate between republicans, you have fights within the caucus among republicans, you have one group raising money against the other group, and it's really very, very contentious. we're kind of bystanders to that fight, but we experience the effects of it, because when one party is that divided and there's that much anger and conflict, it's very hard for them to help with getting legislation passed. so we have had our troubles there. but we are pushing very, very

hard. senator be -- senator reid and i had dinner several months ago with president obama, and there were 12 of of us around the tab, and the president was talking about many of the difficulties. he pointed out one area where he thinks the republicans are willing to work with us, and that's on infrastructure. and that's an important opening, because if we can get that done, that's a big deal. there are so many roads that need work in rhode island, there are so many bridges that are past their appropriate life or need repair and maintenance, there is so much water work that needs to be done both sewage and clean water piping that needs to be done. nationally we've got $600 billion worth of water work that we could be doing. we've got $6 billion of it done in the stimulus,1%. so there's a lot more.

the stuff is, in fact, old and needs to be relaced. it'll help rhode island more than other states because we've been around a while, we've got a lot of old infrastructure. we need the jobs, we immediate to get after that. so i think that's an important window, and i'm working very hard with my colleagues to try to find a way to get a good infrastructure bill through the senate. we got a water infrastructure bill through, and we need to get some other ones as well for roads and bridges. the last thing i'll mention is health care. we are closing in oning with able to -- on being able to stand up the insurance exchanges that were in the affordable care act. that should be a really good deal for everybody. where they've come up, we've seen prices come down. and it's for the very obvious reason that it's like a market. you can go there, and you can find what's for sale, what the price is, and you can match things side by side because they have to match. in order to quaff.

in order to qualify. of so you can know what you're dealing with, and you can find out, okay, which gives the best price. and that makes the insurance companies have to compete on price. most of the time what insurance companies do is compete on trying to get the business of a big business. so if you're a big business, you get a really good rate for your employees. if you're a small business, maybe not so much. if you're on your own and trying to buy insurance, you pay through the nose. this brings everybody together so you don't have to be a big bids to get a -- big guess to get a good price. the market will work. and we hope it will bring prices down, and i'm very pleased with the terrific job elizabeth roberts has done moving us forward on that. there are a lot of issues, i know, that interest you. we can talk about any and all of them. i just wanted to open with those

two, and if anybody wants to lead off with a question or a comment, i will gladly do that. and as we do that, let me find ian lang who is here. ian, where are you? right in the light. ian is working actually at the health exchange. and that's now been stood up, and if there are any specific questions, i just wanted to make sure that we had ian here because with that coming on very soon, he's there to answer all technical questions and try to help. so i wanted to recognize ian as well. thank you, ian, for being here, and thanks for the great job you guys are all doing. >> hello, everybody. my name's ken, i'm a retired fire captain, and i've worked for senator since he first ran. and you have always made me proud. and i've told you that. >> thank you, ken. >> it's unfortunate that, you

know, if i was in a union and i ran for president and you defeated me, what i would do in america or the school council. if you become president, i am going to back you. it's my union. what can i do to help you? but we seem to have a thing here that i lost. we're all americans, however, i'm going to get up every morning and and think what i can possibly do to destroy the winner. what can i do to prevent jobs to make him look bad, say no to the infrastructure, what can i do to make more people unemployed so -- this is the united states. that's not the way things are supposed to work. representative of -- [inaudible] the head of the house says, you know, we're not here to pass laws because laws help people. he says we're here to repeal laws. unfortunately, he's done lousy

at that job, too, because in five years he hasn't repealed any laws. so all i'm asking you, senator, and i spoke to you a little earlier, the only thing i'm asking from you because i'm proud of everything you've done so far is do not give in to the debt ceiling terrorism. i'll call it terrorism because that is absolutely ridiculous. and i guess i was talking a little earlier, gabby -- [inaudible] at the the times, i don't know why they publish him, he finally got one right two days ago. he had a picture of the elephant, the republican there with a gun to his head. and over it said death's ceiling. so even gary -- [inaudible] after 13 be years, i told my wife, get me a glass of water, i'm going as out. [laughter] i said gary said something negative about the republican party. so anyway, that's all i'm asking you is to stand strong on the -- i can understand it's a problem, but stand strong and thank you. >> i can promise you that i

will -- [applause] i can also promise you that a lot of republicans will stand with me. this is another one of those issues where it's not all the republicans together wanting to do this. there's a group of extremists who are making this threat, and many republicans disagree with them. i know a senator from north carolina, his name is richard burr, he's a republican. he is as conservative as you can imagine. but he's also a responsible person, and he was asked about this idea of voting against the debt limit and crashing credit of the united states of america as the threat for the repeal of

obamacare which nobody actually wants. they can't win on a vote, so they want to have, operate like you would with, you know, take a hostage. and what richard said, he was actually overseas visiting the troops, and they put a microphone in front of his face and said that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard. so when a conservative republican is saying that's the dumbest idea i've ever heard, i think it's pretty safe that not only will i stand up, but so will many of them, and that's very important. thanks, ken. >> thank you. >> yes, sir. >> hi, senator, my name's ron from west with greenwich. >> congratulations on your son. >> thank you. >> and i run -- we have a family also. >> are yeah. >> when we don't have money anymore to operate our business, to pay additional people, to pay for -- [inaudible]

of in this sort, we have to let people go to avoid bankruptcy. >> yep. >> we stop sending money. we just stop spending money. the u.s. government right now isn't stopping. >> yeah. >> thai increasing debt, they're bringing -- [inaudible] yes, it helps some people, but it's also costing him and the his future. they won't be able to afford this. his children won't be able to afford -- [inaudible] and i like you people, but -- i don't like the future that my children and grandchildren will incur. >> yeah. that's a very fair comment. let me make two points about that, because it's a really good point. and if that was all that was going on, you'd want to say, yeah, jeff got -- we've got to get the debt down and the deficit down. the debt's already coming down, we have to get the long-term debt down also. there are two considerations about this that i think are

important to that discussion. one is we're still in a recession. we're still recovering. and if you look over in europe, they tried to, basically, cut their way out of the recession. and followed the so-called austerity principle. and what happened is that their economies actually got worse. and their -- our gdp, our gross domestic product isn't climbing much, but it's climbing by 1-2%. theirs are actually falling. our unemployment is higher than it should be, but it's single digits and even in rhode island it's around 9%, just under 9%. in this a lot of those countries -- greece, italy, portugal -- it's 17%, it's 27%.

so when the economy goes bad, families spend less, businesses spend less, municipalities spend less, states spend less, and that contracts the economy even further. so the federal government's job, i think, in that time is to try to cowns balance that by spending -- counterbalance that by spending to offset it. and i think our economic results are better. now, that's a short-term thing, and as soon as the economy begins to take hold, you need to be ready to dial that back, but you do have to get through the down period continuing to spend. i think if we had followed the republican prescription of all those cuts that they wanted back in the middle of the recession, we'd look a lot more like portugal than we do now economically. we'd be in the real dire straits. ..

>> and to me, the issue in health care is we have to make it way more efficient. and we can. we really can. we spend 18% of our gross domestic product in this country, 18% on health care. in europe it's about 11%, on average. why are we spending more than half as much than they did in europe when in europe it is free health care for everybody? and here we have people left uninsured, all these problems on health care system? it's a very, very inefficient.

the national institutes of medicine say that you can save $750 billion every year in health care expense. three quarters of a trillion dollars every year? and nearly half of that comes back to the federal government, to the taxpayer through medicaid, medicare and all that. so to me that's where we need to look. how do you bring that number, right now we spend $2.7 trillion every year on health care. how did you bring that number down under 2 trillion? then all the savings comes into the economy, half of that nearly goes into the federal budget. and that's the big issue on a going forward basis. the battle we have in washington, we've got all this health care expense, let's cut medicare and medicaid, and not solve the underlying problem. i think we've got to solve the underlying problem. i've been eating very hard on the obama administration to be more responsible and more accountable not trying to get

down that road further. but i'll close by saying we are actually good at this in rhode island. people like to knock rhode island, but this is an area where we're doing really cool things. go to any intensive care unit in rhode island. your likelihood of getting a hospital caught infection from the new is going in on all that, people always get infections in hospital, in an intensive care unit because of the program they kicked off, your likelihood of getting a hospital infection is not about zero. they simply don't happen any longer because they took the procedures in place to prevent. if that saves money, millions of dollars because you're not having to treat the infection. not to mention people by from some. so there's a huge human cost as well. we are paying doctors more to keep you well instead of just how many procedures they can give to you. that's changing the way people do business.

coastal medical, i don't if anyone here uses coastal medical, a doctor in charge of coastal medical is staring them in a whole new direction. their patients low to the arm or been more uzbek you get more support as a patient to keep yourself health the. there is less compelled like having medical procedures done to them, really? used a healthier, you don't have as much is that. so what's happening in rhode island. you can see the future happening and rhode island is leading the way. so i agree with you. i think we have to hold off a little bit because we want to make sure the economy is back before we start to draw federal money out of the economy. got to be a time private money is coming back and we got to keep our eye on the ball, health care, big dollar item. if we do that i think we can get back to very sensible levels of debt quickly. but you are right to be concerned, and i appreciatappreciat e that you raised that. i promise not to give such a long answers in the future, but that's a really interesting question. >> i spend everybody with that,

haven't i? sorry about that. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] >> grabbed the microphone so everybody can your. >> i just want to ask a question, do you support like elizabeth warren, like universal health care or something like that? if not, why so? do you support universal health care in rhode island? >> i think would be a good idea and i think it would be a lot more efficient a lot more, a lot fair. practically, how do you get there? that's a bit of a problem. i actually wrote, along with sherrod brown, the senator from ohio, the two of us wrote in the affordable care act what we call the public option. so people didn't want to have a public program, they didn't have to, but there was a public option that was available. we couldn't get the votes for it and so it fails, but i felt strongly enough about it, with

the two of us, we sat down and we wrote that bill together. i felt -- i still strongly believe in the public option. you mentioned vermont. there's a waiver in the affordable care act that if the state wants to go to single payer, they can do that. in vermont, they're starting decide whether they will go to a statewide single-payer system. my guess is that if vermont does that and you find that the costs come down by 25, 30%, that will be pretty interesting to a lot of of the state. people start looking around and saying why -- we i think about that. that actually seems to be working pretty well. >> thanks for your response. >> yeah, absolutely. >> yes, sir. blue shirt. >> hi, senator. steve from concord. no.a couple of questions on heah care. one with the website has been set up for the portal.

want to know how secure my data will be when i and others go to enter our data, october 1, if the feds have confirmed security on their in? >> i believe that it is secure. i don't know the details of how they secure it. if you look at the information exchange that rhode island has running, in the insurance exchange will be some information but not a lot. you basically, a product, you decide if you want it, and you go. where the data is much more personal is in the information exchange. so information exchange is the thing where if you go, let's say you get an mri or you have to go to the lab and get the blood test, the information exchange the laboratory who did the blood work or the imaging shop it to

the mri and to basically post it directly onto your own private electronic health record. so your doctors can see it right away. and know what's going on with you and a civil place things in a speech at the time. but that's really personal info, and i've been watching it for years and they've got that covered very tightly for leaks. it's a priority that needs to be secure. >> right. i'm wondering who will have access to my data, and my data, once again put into the system? >> on the information exchange, you select who has access to your data. and you can select by naming doctors or you can select by saying any doctors treating me, or you can even select wide open, anybody can see it. but it's your choice and you select when you come into the current care program. >> okay. and as far as penalties go, who

is in charge of assessing and -- we've already assessed the penalties listed in 2014. it was going to collect those penalties? >> there's a statute that requires releases of public information to be disclosed. and once they are disclosed, there's both a private cause of action where you can go to court and say wait a minute, you release my information, and the regulatory agency over whatever it is, if it's a telephone company or hospital or whomever, whoever is regulating them has authority to sanction him for having released the information an unauthorized fashion. >> okay, but i'm talking about if i choose or if somebody chooses not to sign up for health care, there's a penalty i

believe the first year is $95, or 1% of your income. >> i think the irs collects that. ya. >> the irs? spent they are the ones who do the collecting. >> that doesn't leave me warm and fuzzy. [laughter] >> it usually doesn't leave you warm and fuzzy. >> they will get access to my data because they will, collecting the money. >> they don't need access to your data to collect the money. >> okay. well i guess they will find me somehow. and i had one final question on health care. oh, i noticed that illegal aliens do not have to participate in this program. can they participate in this program? >> that's a good question. i don't know off the top of my

head. i think at the moment the answer is no. because if you are an alien who is here undocumented or illegal fashion from your not and how to any federal health benefits. and so you wouldn't be entitled to the benefit of the payment that you get, makes the insurance affordable under this plan. when that changes, if we pass immigration reform, and at what point people on the path to citizenship can start the claim that benefit is the point, not certain because the house has in past the bill yet, but it could happen that after that passes, there's a point which undocumented folks get the chance to coming. >> and finally wendy the federal subsidies and? >> -- when do the federal subsidies in? subsidies for health care. i know they start in 2014, right

in? >> they are intended to be continuous. >> and that is taxpayer money that puts the bill for the? >> ultimately, you. >> thank you. >> thank you. thanks for the question, and thanks for coming out. who else have we got? grab a microphone. >> [inaudible] the role of states and, in the study of interest groups. that was overturned, that was the case until a certain point that it no longer became the case. it's my understanding, you cosponsored legislation with elizabeth warren that would try to -- >> reverse that, yes. >> and if that's the case, if you could elaborate on the

status of that. >> i would be happy to. obviously, this is not something that makes me very popular with the big banks, but many of you will remember a time when, if a bank or somebody else charged interest rates that were too high, it was called usery, and it was actually an offense, and it was a matter referred to the police. and rhode island have laws that limited the amount of interest that banks can charge, which is a long, long, long, long tradition back to the bible that is where there were limitations. back to the early codes in both religious and legal codes of justice. there's always been this ability to put a limit on the amount of folks could charge. and in america it was always a

state decision. and so they would be a state law that said, 12% is the max, 17% is the max, whatever it is, you could decide. so about 40 years ago now, a bank sued and said, look, i've got, i'm in nebraska and this customer is in minnesota, and i need to straighten out who's law applies to my transactions with the customer. it's my customer is at my nebraska law or is it their minnesota law? so the supreme court said no, you're the bank, it's your nebraska law. we will define it that way. no big deal, it seemed, by then the banks got smart and he did a little thinking about that and they said, hey, wait a minute, if it's the state where i'm

incorporated that sets the law, maybe we can find some states that will get rid of all their banking consumer protection laws for us. and then we can move there, and set up shop. so bingo. delaware did it and north dakota did you ever wonder why your credit card is from north dakota? is because in north dakota they got rid of so many other consumer protections. so now if rhode island passed and interest gap, wouldn't make a darn bit of difference. because of that ruling and because the bank just had moved to north dakota and then they can charge whatever the heck they please. that's a get interest rates of 30%. who. has had a credit card with 30% interest?

it happens. you fall into a trap, miss a payment, something the front and suddenly a credit card of yours, uma, up goes the interest rate, 20% from 30%. in the day that would've been illegal in rhode island. we have usery law -- we had a usery law. so what i propose is a law that would say no. it's the law of the consumer. so if you want to live in a state where you get consumer protection and you get low interest rates, that's your choice. and if that limits the amount of banks to come and do business in that state, that's your choice, too. but it's based on the person, not based on the bank because they have gained that system in order to take advantage of it. so as to got to vote on it. i think i got 38, other senators to vote with me. not even all the democrats. the banks are pretty powerful.

so i resubmitted, reviled at this year, elizabeth warren decided she would join it, ma as you said. so elizabeth is my cosponsor and we're going to keep working at it. one of the things about congress is just because you and i didn't you think is a good idea, you don't get it passed right away. you have to sometimes be patient, wait for the right moment, wait for the right season, wait for the right congress and then you can make a move. so i'm going to keep steadily at that, and with any luck, sir, the time will come when we get it done and we can get rid of abusive, unjustifiable 30% plus interest rate, and we can have control in the different states of how much consumer protection our people get. so i think that's the right way to go. and by the way, all the republicans who talk about states' rights, he would be a good chance to show what good state rights that rose they really are there but so far we

are not getting a lot of traction yet. [applause] >> thank you. yes. >> we have a long way to go on wall street reform. >> we sure do. >> there some transparency in the market and these interactions but we still of a very unstable invited. what's happening? >> well, we got a pretty good distance with dodd-frank, the bank reform bill. some of the big issues, like severing investment bank some regular checking accounts, main street banks, we couldn't actually get the glass-steagall it was called, the law that separated them. but what we did get was a series

of others for the different baking agencies to build this out deregulatory level, try to separate those functions. now, they've had years to do it your they have been harassed constantly by the big banks. they have made varying degrees of progress, and in some cases we gave them some authority and they didn't use it all or they didn't use as much as we would like. so i think we need to begin revisiting those questions. i think the most significant one is the business of separating the speculating banks, investment banks, the regular main street it's my checking account, it's my savings account been. we had the rule in effect for decades. and it really protected the banking system. and if a bank that was speculating, was dealing in derivatives and all this weird stuff went bust, that was their funeral. you could let them go bust. they weren't going to take the

economy down with them because they didn't have millions and millions and millions of americans with their day-to-day savings tied up in their gambling, basically. so getting that separation back i think is very, very important, and i constantly support those bills that i constantly vote for them. i'm a cosponsor of the new revised glass-steagall act. one thing i will say about, i'm very fortunate i think we're all fortune in rhode island to have jack reed as our senior senator. i feel articulate fortunate -- [applause] because i get to work with him every day. now, jack doesn't toot his own horn very much i'm going to get one quick to in front of everybody here. and that is to point out that at the end of this election, in 2014, if jack gets reelected, he is the number two right now on the armed services committee, and he is the number two on the

banking committee of the senate. and both chairmen, chairman levin on armed services and chairman johnson on banking have announced their retirement. so jack reed, if and when we reelect them come is going to be able to choose to be either the chairman of the senate armed services committee or chairman of the senate banking committee. >> [inaudible] >> unfortunately he only gets one, not to. too. you got to leave some scraps for the others. but that will be a terrific opportunity. >> [inaudible] >> that's going to be a great opportunity for our whole state of jack in that kind of a position. yes, sir. >> i'm a science teacher. i tried to keep up on the

current understanding of climate change. i'm one of those people who has come to the conclusion that it's really happening and it's our fault, and we are in real trouble. this is, i know this will be a longer-term problem than financial or medical problems, but i was wondering, do you, what do you see when you talk privately to our senators and representatives? do you see any motions towards an understanding of how serious this problem is? because what i hear on the airwaves is people saying oh, no, it's controversy. the science committee doesn't leave it's controversy. >> people talk about it don't believe it's a controversy.

the controversy is manufactured. and guess who was behind manufacturing a controversy? the polluters. the old companies, the coal companies. they put out lots of propaganda about this, and what they figured out, which is very clever, is they don't have to convince you that it's not happening. all they have to do is put a little question mark in your mind so you think, i think that's controversial. they just tried to solve the debate that this is controversial, people are uncertain. this is a level of certainty that anybody would act on in their personal life. al franken is a friend of mine in the senate and we were talking about climate change one day on the senate floor. 97% of the scientists who know about climate stuff to look, this is happening, this is real, this will change the way with it. we've got to do something about it. so franken has a good sense of humor. he said, okay, how many people,

just take our own senators, how many people, if their child was sick, would go to the doctor and the doctor said, you know, you need this treatment for this child? so you think i'm it's expensive, i'm not sure what to do. maybe there's side effects. let me get a second opinion. so you go in future second opinion. let's say you went and got 100 opinions. you went to 100 doctors to ask them, is much else take an detainee treatment? and 97 of the doctors said yes, your child needs to treatment. three of them said no. who do you go with? 97 to three. who did go with? it's obvious. it's obvious. and what's important about this is it's not just theoretical any longer. for a while it was kind of theoretical. how much garbage can you put up? what does it do to the the atmosphere? how does a great that blanketing thing? how one doesn't get?

well, we are already seeing it. go down to newport, go to the tide gauge that has been there for decades. the tides on average in rhode island are 10 inches higher than they were back when we had the hurricane in 38, back in the '30s. so you get another big hurricane hurricane of 38. you know we could. we already did. and it's now throwing 10 inches more of the ocean, and actually that stacks up with the storm surge. that's going to be a very bad day for rhode island when that happens. it is four degrees warmer in the winter than it used to be. that affects a lot of things but it affects the winter flounder. when my wife was a scientist she was studying the winter flounder because it was so valuable for our freshman. they trolled up and down the day catching winter flounder. our winter flounder catches down more than 90%.

it's four degrees warmer, flounder don't like it as much. they would rather be offshore. the thing that each them, the shrimp when they're little, the shrimp comes in more good some of them would grow, the shrimp wouldn't be too many long and that's how they got to survive. that's all changed. the people who own the orchards in the northern part of the state grow apples and peaches and other fruit. they are seeing their trees bloom in the middle pashtun in the middle of the winter. they've never seen that before. it's a change around and it's affecting us, and it's going to be very, very serious. so we've got to get on top of it. and i think it's going to be a very tough lesson when we have to explain to these young people scouts, and to their kids, why women do all that science, how is it that the american system of government allows people to ignore what all the scientists were saying? and how could the polluters have pulled off such a stunt on the

american people? and that, i will tell you, that question haunts me. i don't have grandchildren yet, but i've got a 24 euros and a 20 year old, and 20, 30 years from now this is going to be really coming on strong. they will be my age again and they'll be looking around and saying, bad, what the hell? you knew this. the scientists on the this. all this stuff is going on right now in our world and you didn't do anything about it? how could you? i don't want to have to answer that question. that's why i gave that speech every single week on the senate floor. that's what i started the senate oceans caucus to try to get people to work together on notions. that's what i've passed now twice the national damage for the oceans to try to get more information that is really clobbering indices.

-- the seized. this one, this one haunts me. yes, ma'am. >> what you were saying made me think that world war i may have -- [inaudible] so is there anything out there, different kind of energy to use, moving our coal plants to mexico and china? >> if we just move the coal plants to mexico or china, that doesn't do any good at all. what we need to do is to develop new technology. some of the are basically already here, and it's question of bringing the price down. solar, the price is coming up constantly. we are about to do wind farms offshore. very excited about that. we could drill down and you geothermal, even if you don't have, you know, hot, like in iceland it's hot when you drill down so they can engage

geothermal. but we can still do geothermal houses here in rhode island. moving to natural gas is a very good first step but there's so much less damage than coal and oil. and then there's terrific technologies that are emerging, including one company i visited out on the west coast, i think it has the way to take the nuclear waste that's around all the power plants in the country. we don't have any place to put our nuclear waste. no place. so with it is they leave it at the power plant and try to bury it someplace old way safe and guarded. and there it is, poisonous as all get a bigger be poisonous for generations. what do you do with it? this guy thinks he has figured out a way to actually read burn it as a new fuel and great power carpet guesstimates where $2 trillion worth of power in the nuclear waste. if we could crack a scientific problem of how you get the power

out. not only is that essentially free power, you are avoiding the cost of having to get how you can get rid of the darn nuclear waste. so technology ultimately is the solution. and if you think of two things, when it's a natural resource, the more you use it, the more the price goes up. we've got to dig farther to get it, you've got to drill farther to get it, you've got to go further out in the ocean to find a, you've got to go further out in the arctic to find that it gets more expensive and the price always goes a. that's the nature of the beast. but when it's technology, this stuff gets cheaper every minute. i can remember win if you wanted to buy a simple calculator, it was like $59.99, for a little dumb tackler but didn't hardly do a thing. now you go to the opening of an insurance agent or of a new bank branch, they're giving them away for free.

they cost a buck. so you want to be on the side of technology, not on the side of resources, in terms of this. and we can do it. and if we're good at it, we will only those technologies and we will export those technologies, and we will be part of, that would be part of our economic growth in the years to come, instead of importing oil from saudi arabia and tossing up dictators in countries that don't like us, we'll be inventing which is what we're good at, innovating which is what we're good at, exporting that inhabit our energy future also be our economic future. that's my goal anyway. to left, tony, thanks. yes, sir. >> my name is george mitchell. my question is, the last few years property tax have been going up and up and it seems

like there's no limit. people have again heard, so what's the solution? >> well, the property taxes are mostly a municipal problem. so new poor, providence, they set their property taxes. that's not a complete dodge, because they set it but they set the property taxes in part dependent on how much money the state can provide to support the different municipalities. and as the budget is dried up for the state, there's been less money for the municipalities, and so they've had to depend more on property taxes and so that's been, it's been hard on property tax owners. and the states, in turn, have taken a beating because there's last federal money coming in -- there's less federal money coming in because of the cutting we've done. i think we need to do two

things. one is be very careful about what we are cutting because sometimes when you cut, you cut off your nose to despite your face and is not a wise cut. and i think supporting the state and supporting ms. sebelius beth municipality issued a good way to support that. block grants are very felt hopeful and allow a lot of flexibility for local communities. i think that's really important. the other thing is that as the economy picks up and taxes coming from other sources, then you can be less dependent on the property taxes. the property taxes, like the last tax standing, when people are coming to hotels, hotel tax, people are not buying things, what do you do? there's the property tax. they are the property owner. you have to kind of stick with it. so the more we can get the economy going again, the better off we are and to me, the big jump start for that is

infrastructure. that is something that we need to spend money on. and you know, people often say, if your family is short of money, you have to cut expenses. so that you balanced your family budget. and that's where the government should work. not quite right, because of that, what we talked earlier where you've got to offset what everybody is doing so the economy doesn't crash and you don't have another, create another portugal here. infrastructure, that's not just spending money. in your own life, that's like fixing the roof on the house that you own with your credit card. yeah, it might be a big expense to fix the roof, but you've got to fix the roof. and when it's fixed your house is worth more. and you get that value. it's not like taking a credit card and everybody go to walt disney world.

you fix something that you own, and adds to the value of your home. and it's the same with infrastructure. when you fix our american roads, when you fix our american bridges, when you fix our american water pipes and water treatment plants, that is wealth in this country. and if it's spent wisely it makes more wealth. because roads and water and utilities allow for development, allow for commerce. you can't let that stuff go to and we've let it go. we have a huge infrastructure deficit, and it's just crazy. so i can do anything directly about the property taxes, but if i can help make sure that money keeps coming to the state the what used to, so they still get supported and basic and -- and they can support a ms. sebelius

and the economy is cruising and lifting all boats, that's the best that i can do and that's my target. >> [inaudible] >> everyday ghostlike 20% or 30%. so how long -- >> [inaudible] that goes to the -- what i can do is influence their choice by trying to make sure that we've got an economy that is rolling again and that we are supporting the states and municipalities so they don't have to hit the local taxpayer so hard. because it's the local property owner who is the person us to take up the tab when everything else is dried up. that kind of gets very expensive. you're absolutely right. >> license plate number bb 796 has got to move their car.

you're in a filing. bb 796. i'm not sure that is. if you could please know your vehicle, we just need to clear the fire lane. thank you. >> yes, ma'am. >> and gone. we will get to the microphone. tony, do want to get it over here to lynn? right here. >> i'm from the docket. i just had two questions for you. are you for or against the obama plan, and why? >> the health care plan? >> right. >> i am very forward. i helped write it before it got called the obama health care plan. it started and was called the health committee of the senate. and i had a temporary assignment for the health committee to work on that bell and jim -- on of that bill. i'm four for three big reason. one is a lot of people didn't have insurance in this country.

and if you don't have health insurance, it really affect your life, it really affects they care you get when you get sick, and it actually can make a difference between getting well and not getting well. it even makes a difference in some extreme cases between whether you live or whether you die. so getting people, more people of health insurance i felt was a really, really good goal come and a really good achievement. the second thing is that the insurance marketplace wasn't all that fair. as i said earlier, if you work for a big company come you got it pretty be great because the big compass ca could negotiate e crazy. if you're in a little company, forget it but you were paying top dollar on your own and you're stuck. plus, they politics into the policy that said things like okay, now you're sick, so by the way, there's a gap and you're not going to win a going to cover you passed the cap. actually it looks like a disease that you have, you had it before

you signed up for the policy, and you didn't tell us about so we will take you off the policy because you didn't disclose. if it's a preexisting condition, then you're stuck for life with no insurance company will ever covered, and that's a terrible position to be in because people want to build move on. i talk to rhode islanders was a great trap in their jobs because they could never get another job because they could never get a new health care policy that covered their sickness, because it was now a preexisting condition. they got it on one job and are trapped with the company for the rest of their life, until they got to medicare and they were safe at last in medicare. so ethically, all of the problems that we can think of with the insurance industry, i think we are fixing. it's a really good job with it. and the last thing is about it set off a whole array, there were 40 different programs to

help innovate, help figure out ways to deliver better health care cheaper, to figure out ways to pay a doctor in a different way so you stay healthier. right now the only way a doctor gets paid is when you get sick and when they order stuff for you. guess what happens to a system in which the only way that doctors get paid is when you get sick and the order stuff for you. they wait until you get sick, and then the order a lot of stuff for you. that's an expensive system. what we want is a system that keeps you well, and i can answer your question before you have to go to the emergency room, that keeps track of whether you're taking your medication so you stay out of the hospital. those sorts of things. no doctor ever got paid for doing any of that. that's all changing. if you get a hospital inquired infection or we're starting to

stop paying hospitals for the. if you take your car to the shop and they dropped it off the lift, where they come to you and say oh, by the, we fixed your car but also we dropped it off the left, so here's your bill for all the bodywork we have to do because we dropped your car off the lift. but if you're a hospital, we give you hospital acquired infection hoosier bill for $30,000 for during the hospital acquired infection. that's not. so we cut that off. if you're leaving the hospital and you go back for the same condition within 30 days, you don't get paid. because what they were doing, it's called a discharge order. when you leave the hospital, you are a discharge order and get a discharge plan. the discharge plan stunk. nobody bothered to call your doctor and say they had released you. there was no follow-up except

somebody would do fine and they wouldn't take the medication and they would do this, wouldn't do that, and boom, there back in the hospital. no, no. you've got to follow. you put the discharge plan out, make it a good one. and stick to it. you don't do that, you don't get paid. that changes the behavior. and those kind of changes are what's going to change the way we do health care in this country but and that's how we are going to get the costs down, at that same time had and would have better expense and better outcome. so those were the three big chunks of the bill. covering people, making the insurance industry more fair, and trying to move this innovation thing forward. and i think we did pretty well on all three. no bill is perfect, and it was a big bill so i'm sure there are bugs in it, but i'm pretty happy with it. i'm standing by it. >> i had a quick question. my understanding was that

congress has up until october 1 -- [inaudible] am i correct or misunderstanding that? >> the exchanges that market where they got to be able to go there and say okay, i want to buy insurance, what are my choices, and some is got to be the and say here are your choices, that starts october 1. and i think if you don't get it done they've got a year for the federal government to back them. but that starts october 1. now, the people who want to get rid of the bill would like to get rid of it before then. i think largely because once the exchanges go up, it will look pretty sensible. and in the same way that people were happy that their 26 year-old could stay on their policy, and were happy that they

could still get coverage for pre-existing conditions and were happy to seniors didn't have to fall all the way and the donut hole, there was some come you know, i think people see this as i separate to do. it's a markets solution. that's what october 1 that is all about, and there's been a big push to repeal obamacare. well, you know, good luck. they have tried 40 sometimes in house but it will never pass the senate t the whole thing is a bg waste of time, that they want to keep doing it. >> they are now saying that unless you work so many hours or full-time, -- [inaudible]. i'm on 20 medications a day. i have health insurance. now they're saying you have to be full-time. they will give you two or three hours less just make sure you will not be one of health insurance.

>> which means -- good for you. good for you. >> because i'm able to work. >> so if that happens to you, you now have a choice you didn't have before. which is that you can go to the insurance exchange, you can even go over and talk to ian about a writeup and what they'll do is they'll say here's your list of options. there are like three levels, gold, silver, bronze of coverage. i want great coverage, okay coverage, medium coverage. and then you choose which one you like. and then they will say okay, what do you make? and depending on what you make, there will be a subsidy so that you don't have to pay more than eight -- >> [inaudible] >> no more than 10% of your income for health care. so whatever you're making, 90% or 10% goes health care and the rest it's made up through the subsidy. so you get covered that way.

>> okay. >> now you've got a choice. if the employer doesn't stick with your coverage, you can go to the exchange and you can not only get the coverage but get, make sure it's affordable so it is affordable. >> [inaudible] >> they should actually, this should actually make it easier. not only easier but you're more flexible now because you can go to the exchange and get that insurance coverage from you can work where you want. you are not stuck with your employer because of health care. >> exactly. that's a good thing, yes. >> well, i'm going -- >> sorry to interrupt. i work for the mayor here in pawtucket. the mayor had a community meeting tonight and he apologizes it ran over. they have some great questions just like we had tonight. he asked me to thank you on his behalf for all the work you and your staff do throughout the

years, and, obviously, tonight as well coming out and doing things for the public. so thank you very much. >> please thank the mayor force. he is always made me feel very welcome in pawtucket, and i appreciate very, very much. >> thank you, everybody, and could die. as i promise, i will be the last person to leave and but instead read and talk if you want to chat or there. -- chat further. [inaudible conversations] >> here on c-span2 all this week it's on core two and a. today, editors at large by "fortune" magazine will discuss

a recent cover story outlining the proposal to jumpstart u.s. economy. that will be today at 7 p.m. eastern. tonight on booktv, military history. >> that's all tonight starting at 8 p.m. here on c-span2. >> retransmission is important to my television members. i mean, there are two ways you pay for localism. local content. you pay come you pay for it through advertising model which is the historic model of television broadcasting, or now, a growing strain is retransmission consent. now, it will find it slow. like any market right now cable

pays itself far more for its content than it pays to broadcasters. and the truth of the matter is our content is the one that people watch the moche. you look at the 100 top shows any given week, 94 of them are broadcast content. so it's worth something. and it's important that we win this battle on retransmission consent, because candidly, it's vital if congress wants us to continue trying to foster localism and provide all of the things that we do to earn our license every day. you got to have a way to finance it. it's advertising him is retransmission. >> ahead of the nab, gordon smith, on issues facing the broadcast industry tonight on the communicate there's on c-span2.

>> the aspen institute hosted its annual security form back in july. coming up next to a discussion about intelligence and counterterrorism with current and former director of the national counterterrorism center. >> we are probably at that point of the day where everything has been said that everyone has said it. so hopefully we will try and move on to the topics that we haven't covered and mix it up a little bit. very excited to moderate this discussion, two of the best in the business here your matt olson is the current director of the nctc. he had the full gamut of national security jobs. he's been general counsel for the nsa, advisor to eric holder,

acting assistant attorney general for national security come and special counsel to the fbi director. his predecessor at the nctc is mike leiter. mike was the second director of the national counterterrorism center from 2007-2011. and he is now senior counselor to the ceo of the data analytic company, and is also a national security analyst for nbc news. so why don't we begin with a very broad question? and that is, what is the current state of the threat from terrorism? >> where does it emanate from and how serious is it? matt, why don't we start with you? >> thanks a lot, ryan. and it's great to be. it's always daunting to talk like us anlike you said we talka lot of these subjects today and follow john mclaughlin, but

i'll give it a shot under over to you, mike. i would say right off the top the thread is very different now from a counterterrorism perspective from what it was 10 years ago certain and really even four years ago. speaking of in a couple of different levels. first, as has been noted, the threat from core al qaeda in pakistan and afghanistan is releasing a vaguely degraded. we really don't face the same threat of the type of attack like we experienced on 9/1 nine1 in any measure. the group is really struggling to survive, recruit, train and operate. but it still is can remain sort of at the vanguard of the movement, and it still is a look to for leadership and guidance from the affiliated groups. and just imagine by the one that concerns all the most, and that's aqap, because that group in yemen has the ability and intent to carry out an attack. having tried three times to take

down airliners over the last few years. beyond that, beyond the affiliated groups, the prior panel talked about this, the whole day of unrest and turmoil in north africa and parts of the middle east have led to the rise of sort of loose networks and temporary groups like sharia and benghazi that carry out part of the group that carried out part of the individual to get the attack against our facility in benghazi last year. those types of groups definitely pose a threat to us in the region. they are less of a threat to us here at home. and then the final group is, to mention in this very quick and to come is the threat from homegrown extremist to the attack on boston is most clear example. and really the challenge for us as invaders like them and others who carried out this attack don't tend to really hit

r-rated. they don't travel pakistan a topic they don't commute in the same way. they learn what they need to know on the internet and become radicalized -- radicalized and it. from the perspective puts a real challenge to us from a counterterrorism perspective. so as we -- i think overall i would say it remains persistent. it is, but it's increasingly complex and diverse and that's what it is so challenging. >> first of all, always good to be here. thank you for another great event but i also want to honestly commend matt for the fantastic job he's done. but also, i think people should understand in government, it is a big deal for a current and a former to sit next to each other. it says a lot about matt's confidence and the building, sit next to the guy who can do anything to healthy ones. >> always good to keep them in .

[laughter] >> exactly. i agree with matt assessment of the threat and are the i would add a couple of very small items. first come we've actually done them we been talk about the threat and all the places that are horrible in the world. we really have to remember how unbelievably successful a counterterrorism efforts have been over the past 12 years. i do this a lot, but if i had asked a group like this on september 12, 2001, how many americans you think i'm a people be killed in the united states by al qaeda over the next 10 years, my guess i would get some answers of 1000, 10,000. i'm almost certain no one would say 18, which is the total number of americans, people in the united states who have been killed by al qaeda and inspired terrace in u.s. the past 12 this. we've done remarkably well. the threat met described i think is accurate, but nothing will stop to look at this, understand that we're never going to see

any of these threats entirely, produce likely that a catastrophic attack and we're always going to be accessible to some of the tragic as they are, the smaller scale attacks that we see in a place like boston. the only final piece i would add is we're always focus most on al qaeda sunni extremism. i think certainly over the past two, three years people start to become slightly more aware of the threat of shia inspired extremism, mainly from the iran could force, hezbollah. and certainly if we approach a greater complex with iran or the west approach greater conflict in iran over the next year, we will undoubtedly face a renewed and invigorated shia inspired terror threat. we have seen some of that already. the plotting against the saudi ambassador in washington and other attacks overseas. so this is something for the counterterrorism community, especially during our declining

resources, we have to make sure we keep our eye on. on. >> if i could use it in addition, i think it encapsulates the complexity of the challenge, and that is to focus on syria for a second. so in syria, obviously we have the opposition to the assad regime but it was within the opposition we have a growing extremist group that is seeking to become an official affiliate of al qaeda. and it is probably the most capable fighting force within the opposition to and on the other side, as mike mitchell we have a shia extremist group, hezbollah, joining forces with assad, and then within that middle we have chemical weapons. then on top of that coming from a perspective, the biggest concern is the flow of foreign fighters to see. city has become the predominant jihadists battlefield in the world. so we see foreign fighters from

western europe and in some cases and a small number of cases from the united states to syria to fight as part of the opposition. so the concern going forward from in front perspective is these individuals tried to -- travel industry, becoming radicalized, trained and returning as part of a global jihadists movement to western europe, and potentially to the united states. so really so many other ways in which the threat is obligated and i can persistent. >> i want to ask you both about president obama's may speech on terrorism. in the speech he said we're at a crossroads. yet we need to ask ourselves hard questions of the threat and how we should confront them. what specifically did that speech change, what did it mean for the nctc? how does it change your mission, if at all? >> well, i think it was, i think was an important speech and i

was lucky to be there. we were there -- >> did you talk to obama before the speech? >> yes, sure. not at all. say we were at a crossroads but i think the president, this isn't nctc specific. this is a counterterrorism, some of all of us in this room. really challenged us to do two things. to think hard about the threat and to be really precise and rigorous in how we define the threat. ..

>> he challenged, i think everybody in this room who's part of this conversation. >> how important was that speech as a policy statement, and what is the counterterrorism world post that speech? >> i think it's a critical speech, and i generally align heist with almost -- myself with almost everything the president said. and i think it was really valuable 12 years later, probably the most comprehensive statement -- certainly by this president and, arguably, even going back to a time after 9/11 about how the u.s. government and our allies should have approached terrorism. i can do this now because i'm no longer in the administration, and i really mean this as an apolitical counterterrorism critique, i think there were some things which weren't in the

speech in part because it's the president, and he's not going to get into detail, but i think the questions for nctc and the national security community that are still key, i think there was a dearth of discussion of home grown extremism. i think this is probably the threat which is most relevant to a lot of americans' lives, and it may not be the greatest threat in ways, but it's the most frequent threat, and i think we still have a long way to go. we've really sharpened our spear on the overseas piece more than the domestic piece. the second thing is i was disappointed not to mention -- i mean, talk about a game changer, terrorists' use of any of these tools would be really significant, and we have to keep our eye on that s. the last piece which matt now has to deal with that i think is incredibly

important is now that you've changed the way we look at this threat and how we address it, what does that mean for programs and budgets and government organization? ash carter did a brilliant job this morning of talking about those concrete choices you have to make when you face strategic choices. well, we have now had the strategic playing field aptly described by the president. when you look at 10%, 20%, 30% budget cuts ors how are you -- how are you going to allocate those resources many a sensible way across the -- in a sensible way across the counterterrorism community? it is not one that the u.s. government has proved particularly effective at doing yet. >> and be i don't necessarily disagree with anything mike said about these other issues. i think at the the end of the day, it was an hourlong speech -- >> reporter: hour and 15 minutes. >> but i think it was a speech for serious people thinking about these questions. but on the one question, the wmd

issue, i would reiterate what mike said that for us at nctc, of course, the likelihood of a wmd issue right now is low, but the consequences are, you know, extraordinarily high. so by that, for that reason we are, we keep our eye on wmd threats quite closely. >> i want to ask you about counterterrorism partnerships. last few years we've been told regularly that two developments would damage our partnerships abroad. one, the leaking of classified data, the wikileaks was supposed to be extremely damaging, now the revelations from edward snowden. and then, two, the arab awakening which has led to the weakening or overthrow of regimes that have been very cooperative with us. from are where you sit at nctc, what is the fallout from both of those developments in terms of intelligence sharing and cooperation? >> let me take the second part first and the arab spring or

arab awakening. al-qaeda didn't have anything to do with -- >> yeah. >> but they are trying to take advantage of what's happening in these countries. and i think it's important also to say it's not one dynamic in every country. in other words, if you look at tunisia, libya, egypt, yemen, mali, even one is -- each one is quite different many how the turmoil is affecting those countries. the primary way, i think, for us that it's affecting our counterterrorism efforts are, it's basically placing a greater degree of importance on developing our relationships with these emerging regimes. so in libya which really has, we really are seeing a decrease in its capabilities to carry out any sort of counterterrorism efforts, we immediate to try to figure out -- we need to try to figure out how we're going to work with the emerging government there, and the capabilities are really wanting in large part. in yemen, you know, we've gotten -- we have a good

relationship and an improving relationship with president hadi. and so each case, each country we need to stay engaged and work with the, you know, the legitimately-selected government in those countries, but that is hard, and it's, you know, benghazi really shows why it's hard. because these are dangerous places. and having our diplomats and our military and our intelligence officials in these locations carries with it inherent risk. >> but is it, on the leaks, is will anything, is there any demonstrated reduction of intelligence sharing because people say, oh, the united states just can't be trusted with secrets anymore? everything leaks out in. >> i think it remains to be seep on snowed p. i'm worried about that. i'm worried when i see coming out of particularly with respect to europe and our european allies how they may be reacting to this. but i think it just actually remains to be seen on that. [inaudible conversations] >> because matt, again can, has

to be a diplomat, and i don't have to anymore. first of all, i will be shocked if there are not be indications within intelligence that al-qaeda and al-qaeda-affiliated groups do not change the way they operate based on these leaks. we've seen it in every other leak situation. it happens. it makes matt's job harder. second, i was still director immediately after wikileaks, and i can tell you that every place i went overseas for the hourlong meeting we easily had half an hour of that with me having my head bitten off and getting yelled at by our foreign service colleagues saying how could you be so sloppy, why can't you control information. we will not share information with you. >> those just idle threats, or -- >> no, they're real. it's not that the brits are going to stop cooperating with us. and it's not that if the french get the tip about a bomber is coming to the u.s. tomorrow, they're not going to tell us.

but they are going to be much, much closer hold on information that they collect in the runup to understand the environment. it absolutely undermines those relationships. and last but not least, the quietly understood relationship of partnership at times between the u.s. government and very, very patriotic american companies has been really important in national security matters since going back to world war ii. and if i'm a multi-national ceo or ceo of a pulte national and -- multi-national and i've been cooperating with the u.s. government because the courts tell me to do it this way and now suddenly my market is getting killed because everyone is holding up the fact you don't want to work with x, because if you work with x, the nsa gets everything, that makes cooperation with the u.s. government in accordance with the law much more difficult. so in my view, all three of those have serious impacts on our national security.

>> and i would put stock on what he said and our adversaries are doing. we have seen in response to the snowden leaks the al-qaeda-affiliated groups seeking to change their tactics. looking to see what they can learn from what's in the press and seek to change how they communicate to avoid detection and avoid our surveillance. >> i think there's a lot of mystery about what nctc does and its role in the larger counterterrorism world. i want to talk about a few, about some of the value roles that it has. one of the changes that happened on your watch, mike, was the calling of names for targeted killing moved from the national security council and the pentagon to really being be centralized at nctc. this is obviously been a -- there's obviously been a lot of controversy about that.

can you, either of you, what is nctc's role in developing and be culling the targeted killing, the list of names for targeted killings? and is that accurate, the way i explained that history? >> not entirely, but, you know, i'll narrow it a bit. fundamentally, this is a criticism that we heard from congress and elsewhere, i see eric schmidt out there, eric and others wrote about this, that you had and others in theory the cia had a, quote-unquote, kill list and the lists didn't match up and all this confusion. that's not entirely true either. but you also had the possibility that you had the people who are responsible for operations making intelligence calls about how bad someone is or is not. and that can lead to some, it can lead to -- i'm not saying it will, but it can lead to

perverse incentives about how you draw these analytic judgments about who is an imminent threat to u.s. national security because they are plotting in x country. so what nctc's role became, and it's appropriate, because they're made up of analysts from fbi, and cia and dod that we could work with the entire community and say, yes, it turns out that we see mr. smith is, in fact, plotting, he is an imminent threat, and as long as there are legal authorities which you believe he falls into that category, this is where we would prioritize him to be, you know, detained, targeted and the like. and i think that was a very important role for nctc. the other piece i would say is nctc in the policy role worked hard to help develop options, and there's a lot of people now say, well, you know, the u.s. government isn't capturing

people, it's just killing them instead. at least in my experience, the idea that anyone didn't want to capture anyone you could was thereatly crazy. flatly crazy. if you could capture someone, you captured them. in a lot of circumstances, you couldn't. dhs, dod and others developed the options of what you could do with someone if they were captured, if they were arrested, things hike that. so i thought that was a valuable role, to make sure there was an interagency flavor to that decision making that ultimately led to decisions at the national security council and the white house. >> let me answer the question this way. we're approaching ten years in existence, next year, 2014, and really building op the work -- when i came to this position, building on the work that mike did and before him scott redd and before him brennan, both on the analytic side and on the planning side. and just taking analysis for a

second as an example, so the white house now looks to nctc to take a look at what is the threat going to look like after 2014. very strategic. it also looks to nctc to describe who is this guy, who is this operative and what's his role, what is the intelligence on him, and one of the benefits that we bring, i think, to doing that is that everything we do in that regard is a coordinated effort. so we bring together the information, john mclaughlin talked about the critical role of fusing information. that's really the bold idea that animated the creation of nctc. it's also people. so, you know, analysts and officers from around the country work together and produce a product whether it's about the threat looking strategically or an individual looking tactically that represents the view of the entire intelligence community. so when that's presented to policymakers, senior policymakers, it reflects that, you know, that entire

coordinated view. and i think that's really valuable. >> another issue that's come up in the last year with nctc is the data that you don't have access to and want. and last year you changed the guidelines, the federal guidelines from the 2008 guidelines and now to basically get, tell me be i'm wrong, to get access to any government database. when this debate happened in the administration, the dhs objected to one database that nctc wanted. you got the rule changed. one, just take me through that debate, what was the thinking behind changing those rules which a lot of privacy advocates are not comfortable with, and what government database does nctc now have and collect that it couldn't collect under the 2008 rules? how are you using these databases, and why shouldn't i be completely terrified by this? >> you shouldn't be terrified by

be it, ryan, at all. this effort was started under mike -- >> spread the blame here. >> i'm going to put my arm around mike here. so a couple things right off the to be, and this could get very wonky very quick. we don't collect information ourselves. we get information from other government agencies that themselves collect whether that's nsa, cia, fbi, dhs. so we're not collecting it, this has been lawfully collected by other agencies. the key, really, the key insight, and i know mike can speak to this more firsthand than i, came after christmas day 2009 that we did not have access to some of types of information that would help us stop the next underwear bomber. we had great access to threat information coming from the reports that are provided to us by cia, what we didn't have was the type of access we needed to non, you know, terrorism databases. so information about individuals

who are applying to receive status in the united states or individuals applying for visas or to travel to the united states. what we need to do is have that information and not just have it for a minute, day or a week, but to have it for a long enough period of time so that when we got threat information from the be cia, there a source overseas saying this guy is a bad guy, all we have is a name or a first name, what can we do to compare that information to the other information that we've also lawfully collected, that the government has about people who are traveling here or seeking asylum here and marry that up so that we can then take that information and provide it to those agencies, fbi in particular, that can act on it. and it was my perspective that this was something, actually, the american people felt we were already doing and would have been somewhat surprised to learn that we were having trouble doing. so we worked very hard over the last few years to work with the civil liberties and privacy community as well as dns and other -- dhs and other agencies

involved -- >> what was the reaction for that original database? she said this would be a sea change in the way the government interacts with the general public. >> well, you know, i just think it was there's a concern, and i understand the concern about a aggregating data. and so we work closely with dhs and with privacy groups to design rules that would protect the data so that, you know, all the usual things you'd want and expect -- audit, training, oversight -- to make sure that we were doing this as carefully as possible. and we worked with the department of justice, ultimately, to have new guidelines that are approved by the attorney general. so they are appropriately protective of u.s. persons. >> i'm going to weigh in here. this is a beautifully, carefully-leaked statement by one individual at dhs about how they felt about this being a sea change. frankly, there were many other parts of dhs that absolutely

wanted this to be done. and matt's absolutely right, of course there are civil liberties issues here. matt and i are both lawyers. we actually do get these issues. but you have to understand the whip saw that people this matt's position, when i had my position can find themselves in. matt's had this. a few months before christmas day i was up arguing for the extension of the patriot act, certain aspects of the patriot act. and i had congress han after congressman, senator after senator say why do you need to spy on americans? be what is going on? and i had people celling at me -- yelling at me saying why is my con stitch watch listed? -- constituent watch listed? fast forward to christmas day, and it was why respect there more people on the no-fly list? fast forward to boston, why aren't you spying on more americans? why can't you collect more data? so these issues about u.s. persons, they are real issue, but we've got to, in my view,

stop flying the pendulum back and forth be trying to grab it the right time and get somewhere in the mid. and the perfect example be for this on dhs is someone, you know, bill smith comes into the united states on january 1st, and all you have is bill smith and his phone number. under the old guidelines, 91 days later that information had to be flushed from nctc's system. and if on day 91 if you got a tip from the cia that this phone number was associated with al-qaeda and that was bill smith's phone number, nctc wouldn't know it. imagine that hearing, when the attack occurs. so the issue here was how long should nctc be able to keep this done fully in conjunction with the people who collected the information in the first place. as matt said, the auditing, the review, trust and verify. and, frankly, the old system wasn't calibrated post-9/11, and

it wasn't calibrated post-2005. they were fundamentally guidelines from 2000, and the world had changed and expectations had changed. >> and just on the point, we adopted new guidelines and put them on our web site. and then on the, you know, the whip saw, i still have a crick in my neck because a last week we had this great forum with civil liberties and privacy representatives from aclu, epic, eff, a number of different groups on a wednesday. very, very concerned about our aggregation of data as well as some of our watch listing practices as well as nsa leaks. one day, less than 24 hours later, i was in a congressional hearing where the focus was on boston and our failure to do more on tamerlan tsarnaev given the information we'd received from the russians, so it was a complete 180. and maybe that's about right, we're going to have that, but it's actually very -- you know, i am concerned when that happens for the intelligence community

and intelligence professionals who need predictability, you know, and need to be able to know where the line is in order to do our jobs. and that kind of swinging of the pendulum is very problematic. >> it seems like this is an issue you going to be dealing with a lot more going forward, because it seems like the first decade of nctc you built up a hot of capabilities with overseas intelligence agencies, have strong partnerships, but increasingly are looking for both data sets that the u.s. government has, but also intelligence from state and local officials, and it just seems like that penetration into the domestic sphere gets people a little bit more concerned. talk to me, one, about that but then, two, about the going forward the relationships you would like to build with state and local officials and the intelligence that they have. >> so i think that's a really good part of this conversation, and this has come up a couple

times today, some of the challenges we face in the domestic sphere. and for understandable and appropriate reasons. but i do think for the last several years and particularly under mike we made real gains in sort of how we interact at nctc and how the community as a whole interacts looking overseas, making sure that information is shared properly, making sure that we have an all-of-government effort when we're looking at threats emanating from overseas. it's much more difficult and challenging when you start to look at the picture inside the united states. to we have, there's a much more complicated structure of fbi and dhs at the federal level and then, you know, the thousands and thousands of state and local police departments, and then you throw in fire departments. because really the challenge for us and, really, tsarnaev brothers are examples, how do we make sure that our local police departments and our firefighters who may be the first responders who may see something that's suspicious, how do we make sure

that that information gets put into the national intelligence picture to that we can marry up what's being seen at that very, very local level and how that -- not -- [inaudible] there are. [laughter] >> how do we make sure that's getting married up with national threats. so i think for us in nctc, that's going to be a challenge going forward working with the fbi and dhs to design that domestic architecture in a way that really starts to replicate what we've been able to achieve overseas. >> mike, just to be specific on this, what is, what does the kind of intelligence that you wish you had when you were the director that going forward you'd like to have from state and local officials? >> perfect. [laughter] perfect as this everything. >> no. no, i actually don't want everything both because it's a cross of civil liberties, and then you have to go through everything. you just want the report and stuff. and what anyone who's working

this field knows is you don't know what's important until after you've gotten it and compared it to other stuff and after circumstances begin to evolve. so how do you get what's a reasonable amount recollected in certain ways and then compared in ways to try to figure out -- i mean, the whole connect the dots thing so 2001. it's really, it's utterly simplistic because you don't know what dots you're looking at. you don't know what dot is meaningful physical you're comparing it to other dots. so what would i want? i do think we've come a very long way. the fbi has evolved tremendously. joint terrorism task forces which are these state and local, they investigate things very well. but what we did simultaneously was we invested lots and lots and lots of money in useful state and local fusion centers that get information from state and local police, goes up, and they try to correlate it. and the problem is that these two pieces are semi-independent.

not completely independent, but semi-independent. and what we saw in boston, i think, is we've got to merge these two together more effectively. and once you have that, you can actually have the fbi working with dhs in the way of saying i can't cover tamerlan tsarnaev. we've closed the days, but if you guys want to look at it with your resources, go for it. and then for nctc, what nctc can bring to that edition, i think, is taking that information about things that maybe look significant or don't look significant and comparing that, again, in an audible, civil liberties way, comparing that with hot and lots t of data that fbi and dhs didn't have. if tsarnaev had called somebody in yemen and once the fbi closes that lead on him, nctc can play a really valuable role in continuing to look at data to see if that's the case, hand that back to the operators in

the u.s. and have them look at it. i can't, i can't say all that without saying one last thing though. it's a harder problem, i think you're right, because it requires greater domestic work. we haven't really since 2001 had a great national conversation in terms of domestic surveillance. it's not particularly well understood by many in congress. but even if we do all these things, we can't expect to stop all of these. these are very, very hard plots to stop. and we're going to stop them in a variety of ways. we're going to stop them by not letting people get the right fertilizer so the bomb doesn't go off, faisal shahzad in times square, josh pistol's -- john pistole's guys are going to keep them from using a good explosive device, and sometimes we're going to stop the bleeding by having a really, really effective response to an incident like boston. but some things are going to get through, and what we can't do is then, you know, put matt up against the wall and throw darts

at him. we have to make sure that matt's done his best, that matt is going to learn from the experience. but we can't simply crucify matt and the counterterrorism professionals because then everybody leaves like me, and nobody's there to defend us at all. >> i spent tuesday at the, in denver visiting with the jttf, the fbi joint terrorism task force there, and then i went and visited the fusion center, the colorado fusion center and and asked a lot of these questions about how they would work together. sort of looking at, in addition, boston. how would that have played out here. and, you know, it's actually -- obviously, we can always do better, but there's a pretty good lash up there, and i think you can go back, actually, to a case that, you know, arose here in colorado in a way, and that's najibullah zazi, the plot to carry out the attack on the subway in new york, and the fbi started here in the investigation here in aurora,

colorado. and it's probably not a good idea to sort of bring up the nsa program since you haven't asked about it, but we could talk about how zazi is an example of that. but just in terms of local police departments working with fusion centers working with the fbi, it's -- the zazi case was a really good example in colorado of a very effective investigation that then ended up moving by car across the country from colorado to new york. >> we'll get to the nsa stuff in a second, but let's talk about oversight of counterterrorism and the intelligence agencies. mike, you recently summarized oversight of counterterrorism this way: the executive branch oversight, it operates in secret, congressional committees that operate mostly behind closed doors and a foreign intelligence surveillance court that is largely invisible to the public. so i have to say as a journalist when you sort of put it that pointedly, none of this inspires much confidence.

at the same time, these institutions couldn't operate wholly transparently. but the intelligence community if, you know, the stories today in the paper are any indication, seem to be losing the confidence of some folks in congress. why should the public trust such a secretive oversight regime, and how can we improve it? >> well, two things i'd say. first, i hope events like this when you see people like matt olsen, when you see raj day, the general counsel from nsa, that inspires a little bit of confidence because they're not a bunch of ogres. i mean, these are pretty thoughtful people who are tackling very hard jobs. ash carter, the list goes on and on of i think the officials we've had up here today. second, i like to think of it as oversight serving two purposes. one is to make sure the government's actually doing things right and, two, is to

give the public confidence that the government is doing things right. >> yeah. >> in my experience, oversight on the first piece works really well. if you do something wrong, there's going to be a congressman, there's going to be a senator, there's going to be a pice saw court, there's going to be an inspector general -- fisa court. it is possible that all of them could get snowed in -- sorry. [laughter] that all of them can be, you know, you can snow them all, and none of them will figure out something's going wrong. but my experience, it's far from the case. so i think the oversight is working in terms of making sure people are following rules. your question is oversight working in terms of giving the public faith that the government is following rules, i do think that's where we have, we have a tailing. and that's not independent, it's not an independent problem of government. look at polls of how much people congress. not especially high. so there's a lack of faith if people doing things -- in people doing things right. i think you can increase

transparency. if you go to full transparency like in other areas, we will have -- >> this is where i want to get, what what can you do? [inaudible conversations] >> the obama administration should have embraced the president's civil liberties oversight board earlier than they did. they shouldn't have just held hearings now. it should have been a more robust oversight board which is selected in a bipartisan way doing lick hearings three, four, five, six years ago. inspectors general can give more generic reports without disclosing sources and methods. congressional oversight committees, the intelligence committees can talk about the subjects they're looking at without disclosing sources and methods. john noted, we do public intelligence oversight hearings. that's good. and i think even on the fisa court, i would disagree, respectfully, with some of the prior panelists. the fisa court can release how many cases they get, how many are denied, how many are sent

back for review, the types, the general types of issues they look at. you can have periodic review by other bipartisan commissions that have credibility looking at these things. so you can do it incrementally, but it is going to be difficult to swim against the general tide of distrust of government. and i would also be remiss if i didn't say i personally could not disagree with anthony romero more that snowden did us a service. i think he did this country an incredible disservice. that we are now going to have slightly more transparency and better oversight is a good thing, but i refuse to give mr. snowden credit for that. >> give snowden any credit? >> no, no. but, i mean, on the, on the oversight piece, i think the 2008 changes to fisa and the 702 procedures that we've talked about much of today and are so much in the news are a real example of -- and it's hard to imagine an oversight regime that

could exceed what has been done with fisa where, and in particular with 702 where there was a public debate when the law was changed where the fisa court reviewed the nsa's procedures, where congress was directly involved in making those changes to fisa. and probably a lot of folks in the room don't realize that in 2008 fisa court of review issued an opinion that upheld all of the way in which the nsa does this program under the prior statute, the protect america act which was the predecessor to the fisa act, but looked at this exact mechanism of targeting non-u.s. persons overseas and upheld it against a constitutional and statutory challenge. that probably hasn't really been reported very much, but that's a declassified opinion of the fisa court review, article iii according to judges that are looked at this program and said it's lawful. and so then you have ongoing oversight, so it's really hard for me to imagine an oversight

regime that would exceed that. now, the problem -- >> i don't think you're using enough imagination. as a lawyer, you have to look at the fisa court, and what's the adversarial process? >> there's no adversarial process when a prosecutor, mike and i were both prosecutors, goes and seeks to get a search warrant. it is that you go to the judge, it's ex parte, and you present the facts. it's not adversarial. and i'm not aware of any other country in the world that has anything like a fisa court. so, sure, you could make it adversarial. you would slow it down. you would risk, i think -- unless you really did it very carefully, and it's hard to imagine how to do this -- you would risk disclosure. but the problem, i think, is mike said there is just a lack of confidence, and that's a problem we have in trying to maintain these tools in our government. you wrote in one of your pieces that congress' stature was below headlights and above be ebola. [laughter] >> my favorite poll. >> that's hard for us.

we depend on our relationship in particular with the intelligence committees to provide the legitimacy that we need for our programs to carry them forward. >> and, ryan, can i say quickly -- [inaudible] >> where is the abuse? now, i completely understand that some people think that collection itself is the abuse. but the fact is the collection in that program has gone think our democratic process of government and the systems we set up. so then the question is the collect, if collection is not te abuse was that's been improved, where has the collection and analysis of the information been abusedsome where are the results where people have been, you know, arrested, persecuted, whatever it is? and so far i have not seen that. so it's not that we don't have to have oversight to protect against this, but we do, we can't just rush to the darkest corner of the room and assume that there's abuse going on when right now we seem to have a total absence of such

circumstances. >> you have some people arguing that authority has been exceeded or it's not what they intended. >> that's right. >> and my argument would be they have repeatedly extended the fisa act. it's been subject to the fisa court review. honestly, if there were senators, we -- i don't really like the image of the senator who just sits up there and can't do thinking. there are plenty of senators and congressmen who knew about this program. if they wanted to stop it, there's this little thing called the power of the purse, there's authorization acts. there are whole lots of ways that you can stop programs. and the fact is the majority didn't win those cases. >> yeah. >> let's, let's open this great conversation to questions. we have about 15 minutes left. first hand go up there. >> mike, representative hank -- [inaudible] i'm a member of the state legislature in mass, i'm

chairman of the homeland security committee, so the tsarnaevs, i have probably about 50 questions, but i'll try to limit it to one and whatever you can put in there. i believe i heard you say, and correct me if i'm wrong, that with the limited information that the fbi had previously what was passed on from the russians, etc., that they, some mechanism should have been designed that if they weren't going to pursue it, they should have passed it on to someone else, and that should have been boston police, mass state police. could you expand on that, and if so, just i ask you to understand, you know, the complexities there of, you know, the cross-jurisdictional and who's going to do what. >> sure. >> you know, i have an aide in my office what always says to me everyone's job is no one's job, and it seems like the possibility could exist there. >> i don't know any of the classified information about tsarnaev, so i can seek about in an unencumbered way and not specific to boston, as important

as boston is. this is how i think you could design a system. jttf gets a tip, could be from the russians, could be domestic saying bill smith's a bad guy. fb be i dose and investigates bill smith, interviews him, they say turns out bill smith's not a bad guy. closes the case. that's what happened in tsarnaev, as i understand it from public reports. you could have a system where that information the fbi then turns to the state and local constitution center wherever it is and says we had this case on bill smith, we didn't find anything. state and local authorities, you have different authorities as a local police officer. you can go knock on the doors, you can check with friends. if you want to do that, fine. we'll continue to do our search using data from other sources, but this is now yours if you want to do something with it. in reality, most state and local officials aren't going to do anything with that because they have other priorities. but that is a way of creating a safety net below kind of the federal investigative limits.

now, let me just say this is not without real civil liberties implications. and i use this example with the congress two weeks ago. this sounds great if you're dealing with someone named tamerlan tsarnaev. now let's make it bob smith who lives in amarillo, texas, and he's reported to be, you know, an anti-government guy who's stockpiling weapons. fbi goes and interviews him says, no way, i'm a loyal american, i just like my guns. fbi closes the investigations, hands it off to the amarillo police and says you might want to keep your eye on old bubba smith out there, because he's got a lot of guns. do you think a few people in congress might have a problem with that? so we have to realize that we can increase the safety net we have, but it has implications for what state and local authorities do and how that potentially impinges upon civil liberties and how we want to live our life independent of

official investigations. >> and i completely agree with mike on this. and, you know, the problem is and the observation's been made that we have this advantage of hindsight. and i think one lesson is that our collection capability as, the way we are able to collect information has increased the amount of information we have so that almost inevitably when manager happens, when we have something like a boston marathon attack, we're going to be able to look back and find points of opportunity where we had an opportunity to engawj or to do more -- engage or to do more. the difficult lesson is, one, the fbi bases what it can do on the amount of information it has. so they predicate what they do based on how much information, and that's a tried and true way of conducting an investigation. how sprucive you're -- how intrusive depends on how much information you have to show the person is violating the law. and that's exactly, i think, what we want the fbi to do.

the other aspect of, generally speaking, the opportunity within the jttf structure, the whole idea so that information can be shared with state and local representatives who serve on the joint terrorism it is task forcd if they think it warrants, as a general matter, can share that information with their d.. >> right there. >> i'm adam, i'm the fire chief in alexandria, virginia, and i appreciate the conversation about state and local intelligence sharing and information sharing. hi, mike. i know it struck me earlier as we were having a conversation about connecting the dots that that's certainly the first thing, but not the only thing. there's still this matter of communicating the picture to the people who need to know at the right time and place. and certainly, that includes my people. and i think if you think of all of the iconic images of these events that we've had, firefighters are front and center in that along with our colleagues in law enforcement. so what do you think we still need to be able to do to not

just collect the dots, but communicate that information effectively to those people that, essentially, are zero dark thirty. >> i will take the opportunity to answer in this way with respect to very much in nctc program that we do with fbi and dhs and jay, if you're still here, was really one of the architects of this. mike had it when he was there. it was an organization within nctc where we had a small number of state and local representatives there fire departments and police departments come and serve on detail for a year or two where they have access to all of the intelligence, always clearance, they can look at all of the reporting and take that and turn it into what woulduseful -- would be useful for my department? and then we write reports, what to look for. precursor chemicals. and when you happen to respond to someone's house and you see something in a garage. so a very helpful way for state and local firefighters and police officers to engage at the federal level and then be be

advocates on behalf of their, you know, their own departments and the overall firefighter and police community. and this is a program we've continued going forward in coordination with fbi and dhs where we have people at nctc who represent fire departments and police departments. >> a huge part of this is getting beyond law enforcement both for detection, response and prevention in the first instance. the fbi was doing engagement with the mosque that tsarnaev belonged to and got in fights with people with. that's great. but you need lots of people other than ones carrying badges and guns doing that same engagement to try and reduce the attractiveness of al-qaeda's message. you've got to engage in the muslim community as a real partner and not as an add adver. exactly your point, too, something that nctc started right after the mumbai attacks that i'm sure a lot of people remember back in 2008, thank you.

nctc partnered with dhs, fbi, fema to go out and do training exercises across the country about how cities should respond to multi, you know, multi-casualty attacks and multi-shooter attacks. well, about a year before boston nctc with fbi, fema, dhs ran exactly that scenario with a hundred plus, i think 150 plus representatives from are across boston, the private sector, hotels, business, fire, health, hospitals going through those scenarios and discovering things like we're going to have to have a process for processing the video from camera stores, from cameras in stores. we're going to have to think about communications via cell phones if they go down during an attack. so, again, you're not going to stop everything; but what you can do is help communities prepare for these horrible situations and really reduce the casualties that you might otherwise see. and accelerate the

investigation. >> anyone else out there? yeah. right over here. >> while you're getting the microphone, in further response to your question, i think it's important to think about the fact that we have about 12,000, 13,000, i think, fbi agents around the country. we have two million first responders. over a million filebe firefighters, almost that many police officers. that is how we're going to stop the next boston-type attack. that's how we're going to find that next home grown extremist who's on the course from being radicalized to being mobilized to violence. >> p.j. crowley from george washington university. i know my friend mike will chime in. eight days after benghazi in a congressional hearing you said benghazi was an act of terror. we've had, obviously, a significant political and bureaucratic debate about talking points and what happened, you know, prior to that point. what goes into the formal

determination that something is an act of terror? because depending on the political agenda, it could just be be an act of thuggery, an act or war or an act of terror. and for those who have been inside the system, eight days for government's not necessarily bad. [laughter] >> yeah. you know, i think the important point there, this is right after bicep ghazi -- benghazi, i was asked that question. i mean, in the intelligence commitment, and i think i can speak for all of the analyst that were working on this, we proceeded on the assumption it was a terrorist attack from the beginning. i mean, you had a mortar attack, a pretty proficient mortar attack that killed americans at a government facility be in benghazi. and so they clearly were targeting our presence there. it was violet, it resulted in death. there are a number of legal definitions of terrorism, but really the practical, common

sense view that i think we all proceeded on was this was a terrorist attack. what that doesn't answer is a whole bunch of other questions that were more complicated; how coordinated was it, who was behind it? and those were questions that a we were still struggling with and to a certain extent we're still struggling with to this day because that picture was unclear as it is in some ways now. it wasn't particularly coordinated, it hadn't been planned for very long if more than a few hours, we think, and it was carried out by a whole range of individuals, some extremists but some sort of looters and thugs. but that doesn't take away from the bottom line that it was, that it was a terrorist attack. but those were still important questions that really, i think, the debate sort of on secured, it was more of a political debate that on sured our -- obscured our efforts to focus on who was responsible and what could we do about it. >> the great thick about nctc,

frankly, it's one of the great success stories post 9/11. i'm obviously biased, but i think that's the case. one of the great things about it is regardless of how politically heated these discussions get whether it's benghazi or going back to fort hood, was that workplace violence or terrorism, you know, i think joran brennan and -- john brennan and scott redd and me and matt have really tried to keep it a completely apolitical location. and be it doesn't mean you don't have breuer accuratic fights -- bureaucratic fights, but we called fort hood an act of terrorism a day after. we want to inform the policy process in a way i that, you know, we're giving the best efforts. and i'm sure that i honestly couldn't tell you the politics of almost anyone at nctc. it simply wasn't an issue. people came will to stop terrorists from killing americans. pretty straightforward be and not a lot of politics involved. >> i think we're running out of

time, so we probably have time for one more question. right here. >> advantage of being in the front. >> kim dozier, ap. just to follow up on one of the things matt said and, mike, you can chime in, you had seen al-qaeda and affiliate groups changing their ways. did you mean specifically because of the snowden leaks? can you describe? and, mike, you said that you'd also seen evolutions. can you give us some specific examples since your hands aren't tied? >> the way i would say it, i would put it this way, what we're seeing is terrorists, individuals and groups, looking at this and seeking ways to circumvent our surveillance based on what they're learning. >> [inaudible] >> from these recent leaks, yes, from the snowden leaks. we have a strategic problem, and our strategic problem is we can't keep our national secrets

secret. it's not to say everything that is classified should be secret, but those things that we should be protecting we're not effectively protecting. that hurts our partners whether they're corporate partners, foreign partners, and it helps our enemies. we've got to fix that. and i think one of the ways we fix that is somehow reinstituting some faith in oversight so people say if matt has been working with the congress, the house, the fisa court, that's good enough. and if not, somebody in congress is going to change the law, somebody's going to arrest matt -- sorry. or a court's going to tell him we're doing it wrong. and be until we reinstitute that level of faith, i fear that snowden will be, we'll have a continuing rub of snowed maniens. -- run of snowdens. >> and we need to find ways to be transparent, but there are limits. and some of the arguments for transparency in some ways is a little bit of a trojan horse by

people who just don't agree with what we're doing and knowing full well how it work. but i think, again, taking more of a strategic view for a second, the challenge for us, everybody who dose to work at nctc is there to protect the country. so to use mike hayden's metaphor of chalk marks on the cleats, ultimately, i want to know where the line is. i want to know where the predictable way how far we can go, and my job, mike's job before, protect the country from terrorism. so i want my folks to go as close to that law of legality and do everything we can to stay in fair territory, but to go up to that line. i think that's what we owe the american people. so as we move forward, we need to be more transparent, but i i do hope that the oversight regime can gain the credibility that will allow us to continue to do our job. >> we have to leave it there. thank you both for a great conversation. [applause] thanks a lot.

[inaudible conversations] >> looking at the white house this morning where president obama and the first family returned last night after their nine-day vacation to martha's vineyard. the president will be meeting with a group of financial regulators later today including fed chair ben bernanke. they'll be discussing the ongoing implementation of the dodd-frank financial overhaul. and josh earnest will brief reporters set for air on c-span. suspected militants killed 24 police in an ambush in northern sinai, and egyptian officials also are indicating former president hosni mubarak could be freed this week. questions likely will come up during today's white house briefing, news also that

european union foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting this week to forge a joint response to the recent violence in egypt that has killed nearly 1,000 people. a european committee official said diplomats agreed that meeting would be held wednesday in brussels. well, here on -- >> we're standing inside hard scrabble which is a two-story log cabin in 1856. julia in her memoirs lets us know that she does not like it one bit. she's found it crude and homely. but true to her nature, she will make the best of it. as a young married woman, she would want to be the mistress of her own home. she just thought that he could have built something as nice as white haven and was, like i said, a little perturbed that a her father had talked grant into building a log structure. julia would have brought with

her minor things because as a privileged child, she would have had fine china, fine furniture that would have been comfortable, chairs and a broad table because you had, um, at this point she would have had five people eating in this dining room. what is important about hard scrabble for them and even though they do not live in it very long is that this represents their very first home together. julia will gain a great deal of confidence as a wife and a mother, and it starts here at hard scrabble. >> the this week the encore presentation of our original series "first ladies: influence and image" looking at the public and private lives of our nation's first ladies. this week julia grant to caroline harrison. first ladies, weeknights all this week at 9 eastern on c-span. >> and here on c-span2 all this week encore q&a. told jeff calledden and alan sloan, both editors at large

with fortune magazine, will discuss a cover story outlining their proposals to jump-start the u.s. economy, and that is today at 7 p.m. eastern. also tonight on booktv, military history. at 8:30 be p.m., victor davis hanson discusses "the savior generals." on "after words." and then at 9:25, john geoghegan on "operation storm." at 10:15 max boot discusses "invisible armies: an epic history of guerrilla warfare from ancient times to present day." tonight starting at 8 eastern here on c-span2. well, the association for unmanned vehicle systems international recently held its annual convention here in washington looking at drones, new technology this unmanned systems and the impact on privacy. speakers including experts in the law, aviation and privacy.

it's an organization dedicated to supporting the unmanned systems and the robotics industry. >> and this great panel that we have. before i introduce our moderator here, just a little bit about us, auvsi, we are the international trade association that represents the unmanned systems industry. we have over 7,000 members from 60 countries, and this is our big event here in washington d.c. as our general counsel, i have been kind of at the forefront of auvsi's response to a lot of the privacy issues that have been raised about unmanned aircraft systems, and i believe we'll get a little more in depth into some of these issues at this panel, but wanted all of our members to know that we have been dealing with this issue in a very proactive way, and we encourage you to visit our web site to see how we have been responding to this. so it's my great pleasure to introduce al frazier. al is a professor at the university of north dakota in

the aviation school. prior to joining north dakota, he was a law enforcement officer with numerous years of experience in the airborne -- [inaudible] police department. >> dwhren dale police department -- glendale police department. and now at north dakota, a lot of their aus research efforts, and he is one of the experts on how law enforcement can, in fact, use and fly unmanned aircraft, and al actually works with the grand forks' sheriff's office with their uas operations. please join me in welcoming al. [applause] >> thank all of you for coming. i've got the tell you, i'm a little bit relieved, because when we did this session in las vegas last year, the room was packed. so it tells me maybe this issue is going to the back bunker a little bit -- burner a little bit, and that's heartening to

me. just to set the tone just a little bit, what we're here to discuss today is something that's very, very important, and that's the respect for citizens that we serve, that law enforcement agencies should have when utilizing any new type of technology. respect for the fourth amendment and, unfortunately, i've had some experiences in my background where i've seen that even though a particular law enforcement agency doesn't abuse a technology or abuse the freedoms of the public that they serve, another agency doing something that can be perceived like that puts a black mark on all of us. and two instances that come to mind, i did most of my law enforcement in the southern california area with the glendale california police department, and i'm sure all of you remember the arrest of rodney king in 1991 and two subsequent trials, a tate and a federal trial that -- a state and a federal trial that followed that where several of the police officers and the supervisor on scene were charged with violation of rodney king's rights.

and throughout that trial and the riots that follow it after the first acquittals in state court on numerous occasions i would be called to assist officers on basically complaints that the citizens had of those officers' behaviors. and i can't tell you the number of times that something similar to this was told to me by citizens, and that is what are you going to do, are you going to beat me like you did rodney king? we're a completely different agency, we have nothing to do with the los angeles police department. but yet our actions were painted with a broad brush as a result of the actions they took in california that evening. later in 1995 after the trial of o.j. simpson and the revelations about lapd detective mark purrman and some racially-insensitive comments that he made, the same thing occurred. we were broad-brushed, as were probably many agencies in the country, with being racist cops. and that's a great fear that i have. you know, the most sacred thing that we have in this country,

you know, other than god is the maintenance and respect for our u.s. constitution and the bill of rights. and so we want to protect that. but even if that doesn't hit close to your heart, just as an industry and as a group of users in law enforcement that want to use this technology, if we don't get the public to agree to its use, then we're going to be unsuccessful. we're going to fail before we ever leave the starting gate. so from, if you will, a purely selfish standpoint of being be able to utilize the this technology effectively, we have to win the public over. anyone that thinks that police departments rule by a higher fist has never been a police officer because we police be threw acquiescence and consent of the public. and if the public does not acquiesce to us in our role as law enforcement officers, we're going to fail. so with that, i just want to go through a couple of housekeeping issues. if there was an emergency, the

closest egress is out the doors at the back of the room can and to the right and out to the main thoroughfare in front of the convention center. you have surveys in the front of you. i would really encourage you to fill those out. i know it's difficult ask you want to move on to another session, but it's a simple five questions. it's very valuable to auvsi in determining whether or not they should repeat sessions, podfy sessions and so forth if you could provide that input. so if you could, please, take a couple of moments towards the end of the presentation to fill that out, you can leave them on a chair at the back of the room, and i will make sure they get to the auvsi representative. we're hoping to have at least half of the session dedicated the audience-directed questions. i would ask that you hold those questions until the end of the session, and when you want to pose one of those, that you come to one of the microphones. that way everyone else will hear your question, and this is also being recorded for distribution, and that will make sure that the audience who's watching those recordings is able to hear your

question as well. i would also and having worked with all these panelists, i though that they would comply with this, and i would ask you the same thing: you treat the issue with respect and pose your questions in a respectful manner. not like "saturday night live" and jane curtin, you know, you ig market, misguided -- i'll let you figure out the rest of it. i'd like to introduce our panelists. jay stanley is a policy analyst with the aclu based here in the d.c. area. he has written extensively on the issues of privacy and the use of technology and very, what i think is a very informative paper that he wrote with a co-author which has to do with the imelementation of uas technology by law enforcement. if you haven't read that paper, i would strongly encourage you to read that. to jay's right is doug marshall. doug is a division manager for

uas regulations and standards development at new mexico state university. very influential in uas, has been involved in it for many years, sits on numerous panels and is generally recognized as one of the experts in the implementation of uas testimony in this country and worldwide -- technology in this country and worldwide. to the doug's right is greg mcneal,over of law at pepperdine university in california. those of you that haven't been there, one of the most beautiful campuses in the world although the law school doesn't share that campus, but the main campus is wonderful out in malibu. >> oh, we do. >> you do you? i thought the campus was could . i take that back. i'm jealous now. >> [inaudible] >> there you go, perfect. greg's research focuses on interaction of law, security, public policy and emerging technologies. he has been interviewed and written extensively on the subject of the use of technology

and how it interfaces with law with such renowned publications as "the new york times," the washington times, the baltimore sun, the national review online. so quite a well-spoken expert in the area of the intersection of technology and law. and then finally, you've bet ben gielow. ben is a government relations manager and counsel. among other things he serves as somewhat of a lobbyist, if you will, for auvsi, and in that role stays very much on top of what is a very pivotal issue in the implementation of this technology which is privacy concerns and respect for the fourth amendment. the format that we're going to use is we have some prearranged questions that i'm going to be asking each of the panelists to give full disclosure, they were given these questions before the panel, and they had time to prepare their responses to them. but we're also going to open it up to the other possible siss if

they want -- panelists if they want to counterpoint that particular response or segway on to it or add something to it, they would be welcome to do that. as we work through those questions, once we have made it through those questions i would ask you to hold your questions, responses until the end of the presentation, and then we'll invite you up to one of the moans. you can -- microphones. you can either address one of the areas we've already been be discussing or suggest a completely new topic. you can pose your question to an individual panelist or pose it to the entire panel as a whole, and i'll open up to the entire panel to answer that question. so we're going to start off with jay. jay, from the aclu's viewpoint, what are the privacy concerns with the use of unmanned aircraft systems? >> well, i mean, there are a number of concerns in terms of how they're deployed and implemented, but the overarching, biggest concern that we have is that auvs, drones if you will, not be used

for pervasive surveillance. the technology now exists to have aerial surveillance using gigapixel cameras watch vast areas, you know, 25 square miles, track all the vehicles and pedestrians that move within that area, log those movements into a database, store the databases, data mine them. and that is our big best concern, that we don't want, you know, we don't want to live in an america where from the minute you walk out your front door, you have to wonder if there's some invisible eye in the sky that's tracking your every move. now, that might seem a ways away from where we are now both with, maybe with the technology, but especially with the regulatory environment which because of safety concerns has really held back that kind of deployment, but those issues will get worked out, and there is a lot of demand, pent-up demand by police agencies around the country and other government agencies to use

this technology. you know, we have police helicopters, but police helicopters are very expensive, they require maintenance crews, they cost millions of dollars, so there's sort of a built-in, natural restraint on how much aerial surveillance those copters are used for. when we're looking at a future where even a small police department can deploy dozens or even hundreds of very small, cheap, inexpensive flying robotic video cameras, we are going to see police agencies in this country want to put these cameras up over our neighborhoods and track everybody always time. and we just -- all the time. and we just need to put in place some good, common sense privacy protections to, you know, to establish the rules of the game and what we as a country want to allow this technology to be used for and not to be used for. and once those privacy protections are in place, we can all rest easy they're not going to be used for this big brother type use, that will be good for the drone industry. then we can see a lot of innovation, cool new uses for

this technology without people having to worry about, you know, being watched every minute. >> very good. when you talk about that pervasive surveillance, is the aclu, are you personally aware of any law enforcement agencies that have utilized the technology in that manner, something that you would categorize as abusive? >> well, we did see the hay your offing den, utah, proposed fielding a blimp over certain neighborhoods in that city that would have cameras on it. he was turned down by the faa, and we did see the city of dayton, ohio, work with a private company to carry out pervasive surveillance and tracking within a rather large area using manned aircraft. and, you know, manned aircraft circling over and like sort of videotaping everything and tracking everything as sort of a test. so the technology is here. the only thing that's holding it back is the faa really. and the faa, you know, this

particular deployment got around that issue by using manned aircraft which is very expensive and not something we're going to see over every city. but if you could have a cheap flying robot, there's very few limits on that kind of activity. >> i see. let's drill down just a little bit. when we talk about surveillance, that almost has a negative connotation to it, yet anytime we're observing something, we could liberally say we're surveilling it. let's drill down into two major categories of public safety mission, specifically law enforcement. so the first type of mission would be let's say things like disaster reconnaissance, searching for lost persons, that type of thing. versus a pervasive, let's say, anti-terrorist, counternarcotic surveillance. so if i could, to have you focus for just a moment on the question of public safety-related use of uas. so, and think hazardous material spills, searches for lost

children, that type of thing. does the aclu have concerns about those type of applications of small uas? >> in this general, we do not. we are perfectly happy to see drones used for specific, particular operations whether it's, you know, search and rescue, disaster response, you know, police use in particular operations. if the police have a warrant to storm an estate and they want to use a drone as part of that operation, we have no problem with that. we hi that, you know, those are -- we think there are probably a lot of good uses for drones in those kinds of areas. there might be particular, you know, rules that need to be worked out around, you know, if a drone is being united used toh for somebody and it happens to, you know, fly over some private people's houses and observe their backyard, you know, we think there should be rules that govern sort of how those images are handled, the retention and sharing of them so the people whose houses just happen to be flown over, their privacy isn't

invaded. but generally we're focused on mass, suspicionless surveillance. watching everybody always time. we think that drones is a technology that does have a lot of potential to do good, and i think really it's in everybody's interest to pin down the privacy questions, put in place some good, common sense protections, and then we don't have to worry about the privacy, and that will free public safety agencies to use these technologies in the ways you're talking about without the cloud of big brother hanging over it. >> greg, did you have something you wanted to say on that topic? >> i just have a question to understand the aclu's position on this. so in this year the boston police department would like to use an unmanned system over the marathon to monitor what's going on, to use it for security purposes. there's no suspicioning that would warrant getting a warrant in that circumstance. would the aclu consider that mass generalized sauer vail lance or a particularized law

enforcement use? >> i haven't thought about that particular, um, use, but in general we would probably say that that would be, you know, something that would be, you know, towards the masseur vail lance -- mass surveillance end of the spectrum. i'm not sure what the purpose of a a drone would be in that situation. there is a long record of law enforcement wanting to videotape political rallies and keep track of who's politically active both on the conservative side of the spectrum and the liberal side of the spectrum. and create databases for that kind of an effect. >> what would be the privacy concern that the aclu would find in aerial surveillance of a marathon? >> well, i think the issue here would be establishing the principle of not using drones for things outside of very particular, you know, situations. um, you know, we don't want our

drones flying over our cities all the time watching everything that's going on. now, maybe -- again, it's an issue i haven't really thought about in depth, but, i mean, it's possible if it was very limited in time for a certain public safety, you know, situation where there is a worldwide event going on, you know, maybe that would be an exception that could be carved out without raising the danger of pervasive surveillance. >> jay, let's switch gears just a little bit. we've been talking about law enforcement and public safety. what is the aclu's position on the use of uas for commercial and noncommercial applications? those applications would not bring in the protections of the fourth amendment unless people that were utilizing the uas were operating as agents of law enforcement. so this is your next door neighbor utilizing a uas for commercial or noncommercial purposes. >> yeah, you know, it's really interesting. the sort of private sector uses of drones also raise privacy

questions, but they're really a different set of privacy issues, and we have not called for sort of regulations at this time to cover private use of drones. for one thing, there are an existing set of laws in states such as evening tom laws -- peeping tom laws which may cover a lot of the things people are worried about. the teenager next door peeping in your bedroom window or what have you, that's already covered by peeping tom laws, although those laws are inconsistent from state to state, and maybe they should be made more consistent. there is also an enormous potential for innovation in the private sector area once the safety issues are taken care of, and we would hate for that inknow ration to be stumped by -- innovation to be stumped by laws where it's not clear exactly yet what the private problems will be. i don't think it's nearly as clear as it is in the government law enforcement context where we already see clear desires to use

them in certain ways. and be also there's a countervailing constitutional issue here which is the first amendment. you know, we at aclu have defended the right to photography around the country. we've seen police officers harassing, sometimes arresting individuals for taking photographs, sometimes for taking photographs of trains or bridges, sometimes for taking photographs of the police themselves. it's very clear in the courts that you have a first amendment right to take photographs of police in public carrying out their public duties, and yet we've seen them harassed, so we've worked to protect the first amendment rights of photographers. and those rights are implicated by drones. drones have been used by, you know, by groups to watch japanese whalers, environmental groups and by, you know, there was some of the occupy wall street activists created a drone which they were going to use to watch over what they regarded as abusive arrests by the police.

although i don't think it was legal for them to fly it, and i don't know that they did fly it. but we think that photography is something that individuals should use to watch over the government. we don't think that the government should be watching over the people unless it has specific evidence that you were involved this wrong doing. it shouldn't be watching everybody all the time. >> i see. well, thank you. doug, let's move to you. just in a very broad sense, are there any legal protections out there now in place that would protect the privacy of the public in relation to uas? >> well, jay pretty much covered that topic just now, but other than local legislation on peeping tom and the abuse of the sort of device to intrude upon the privacy of your next door neighbor, probably not. certainly not at the federal level. ..

>> so the simple answer to question is no, there are no legal profession that a federal level i'm aware of for privacy protection for the use of the systems. >> how about civil repercussions? i'm just tired of the odd guy two doors down from me putting his uas up and watching my teenage daughters in the backyard. is there any civil action i can't initiate against that individual? >> that raises the specter again on civil tort, intrusion on

privacy. and misdemeaned would be committed by using one of these systems to go over your neighbor's fence and keep into the bedroom window or invade their privacy of some fashion. but using an unmanned station them where the data is generated from that to disseminate private information, take a picture of somebody and put on the internet to defame them in some way by disseminating false information about them, to expose some activities they don't want exposed to the public. those are all potentially result in civil litigation, call it toward more civil toward your that would be damages to, compensatory damages for pain and suffering for humiliation, or intruding on privacy here in the right circumstances it would be, if the offense was egregious enough, the injured party can obtain an award of punitive damages against someone using a system for some purpose like

that. punitive damages being intended to convince the actor, the wrongdoer, not to do that again, or to provide a negative ramifications those who might want to do something similar in the future. there are several remedies available. i haven't seen that happen yet. but it's certainly possible. >> i see. let's step back a little bit too statutory law again. some 30 plus states are either considering or have considered or are in one level of review of laws. that would control unmanned aircraft systems in those individual states. the first question is, in your opinion, is the state legislature the creation of state laws and appropriate way of controlling or trying to control uas? >> my personal opinion is no, because you run the risk of 50

different sets of laws and regulations that would be impossible for a legitimate operator or a commercial operator to be able to fully understand the ramifications moving from one state to another, or even an operation that might cross state lines or state borders. you have the issue of the right of local government, municipal governments, county government, state governments to exercise their police power over activities within a state, and that's something that is retained by the states by the constitution. the same time you have this federal aviation policy and regulation that come from a federal oversight role. and those lost in to preempt conflicting state laws. i think from the last count, there's a stick states have enacted some sort of law dealing with uas. i think they been introduced in 41 other states. i think the danger to that is a

smorgasbord or a jigsaw puzzle, if you will, of conflicting and inconsistent regulations nationwide. so i think there needs to be a harmonized effort nationally to do something am not only about the privacy concerns, but just the overall regulation and measure of unmanned systems. >> from a uas developer standpoint of sounds like a heavy pretty significant chilling effect on the deployment of the technology. >> i think it certainly could. it's not just local in years. it's a global issue. there are ongoing attempts or efforts to harmonize the regulatory environment in the standards environment for unmanned systems around the world, and it's a major effort. if you were here yesterday, the presentation across all the talk about what they are doing and rca's newest model, and those efforts have been going on for years and they are likely to go on for another decade or two before they are sorted out. the problem is the conflicting and overlapping regulatory

apartment that makes it impossible for the developer or the commercial enterprise or the manufacture or even the researcher to understand what the rules are, depending on what you're trying to operate. something we try to avoid. >> thank you. greg, we're going to move to you. what should the uas industry and associated industries be doing to address the real and imagined issues associated with privacy? >> so, i'm shocked when i walked the trade floor show here by the lack of attention to this issue. mostly because it's a business opportunity, get out your notebook and write this down. the first company that has a phone board set up a says our software catalogs to the operator was, blogs where the camera was pointed and where the uav was when it was pointing the

camera, date and time stansted and logs off on a separate system and stores it somewhere so that only authorized piso can access that data is going to be someone who is two or three years ahead of this privacy curve come is going to be able to sell this to the states where legislators are clamoring to legislation to assist law-enforcement, what are you doing with this data and how are you using it? jay has conceptualized for us the privacy concerns of an entire group of organized, i call them the privacy lobby which i know is probably either should jay, but a group whose organizer of privacy interest, and is tapping into a vein of paranoia that the general public has. that's getting reflected on city counsel. to go to seattle to see if they are buying unmanned systems anytime soon. it's getting reflected in state legislatures. the answer, if you're an industry that is innovative and look at our product that addresses the concerns that these people are raising. i have some personal believes about some of the concerns. i think some of them are a bit

overwrought. i think jay and i disagree about what pervasive surveillance might be. i will put at a much lengthier period of time than just a couple of hours that it takes for the boston marathon to happen. but that fights could happen in the legislature where they're going to define what these privacy concerns are. what your systems offer to address some of those concerns? my argument would be, if i were sitting in your shoes, in your chair, not sitting in your shoes, if i was in your shoes, singing in your chair, my argument would be unmanned systems to me more accountable than manned systems. let's take a voyeurism is when the concerns the aclu has. if i have someone who is an officer who is a voyeuristic, if they decide they're going to drive to the state college campus and they're going to park their car outside of the sorority house and observe what's going on inside, if someone sees them though, ask a question and he will give some answer and be able to go along

his way and covered his tracks. if he tries to do that with an unmanned system that is accountable, tracking used it in wind, the flight logs or blogs or whether subject to a separate audit, the person is going to get caught. people will raise questions why was this system always been offered in a way that was pointing in a certain direction and oh, that direction was the sorority house and was always that night. what's going on? that system would be more accountable. it would be subject to audit. if you wanted to store the data for some reason you would be able to store it but they would be destroyed after a period of time or perhaps only accessible with a warrant. the other issue i sort of have with industry is that the only person pushing back against, that i've written, trying to track this, pushing back against the legislation that is cropping up in different states and also in the congress is auvsi. i don't see a lot of effort from businesses themselves. this is really going to hurt your bottom line. if your local government or your

state decides to pass a bill that says, any evidence derived from an unmanned system without a warrant cannot be used in a trial, after the first time you fly this thing out there looking for the lost tiger, and as you're flying looking for the loss tiger, you don't have a warrant, you witness someone in the woods being stabbed to death. under the aclu's proposals and under the current bill in congress, protecting american privacy act, that evidence of the person being stabbed to death would have to be suppressed because it was gathered without a warrant. these bills are poorly drafted to address the privacy concerns that are being i think a bit, they're just being blown out of proportion by rand paul and others and they're going to hurt your bottom line but do not be able to sell systems if law enforcement can't use evidence of crime when gathered from these systems. so it's important for you to track it and be part of it, and also offer solutions from a technology standpoint.

>> i would just like to chime in on that. any evidence that happens to be incidentally collected that contains evidence of a crime must be suppressed. >> okay. i'm glad -- >> that maybe doesn't the position in some the state legislation that is being passed around. that's not what we called for in our white paper. >> a representative of the california aclu at one of the police town all said that this exception for inadvertent discovery or inadvertent collection is such a big exception the you could drive a truck through it and, therefore, we are opposed to even inadvertent discovery usage of that evidence. and so i'm glad to hear that that's not the position of the aclu. >> and just, you know, somewhat of an independent voice. i would hope that no legislation is so restrictive that it would incorporate that type of language. because frequently when law enforcement agencies are conducting searches and falls within the plain view doctrine,

even in the service of a search warrant if we find something that is an associate with a search warrant but it's a place where the right to look at based upon the four corners description of the search warrant, then that would be a legal seizure spent you will be disappointed then because -- >> i would be terribly disappointed if that type of -- >> the privacy act of 2013 came up through the house judiciary committee. ted poe out of texas was the sponsor of the bill. they got the most co-signatories of any of the bills working their way through congress. it's going, if it passes, this is your federal legislation that's harmonized across the border, and in my testimony before the house judiciary committee on this, i identify all the problems with this particular bill and it's the bill that's most likely to get past and most likely to blow all in your bottom line, most likely to prevent law enforcement in using these things in circumstances where we want to use them. it's the most popular bill in

congress. >> well, if, in fact, it does have the languages you just explain to us, then not only would i be disappointed but i characterize it as draconian and unprecedented, because it will hurt law enforcement if it includes that type of language. >> just to characterize it, basically senator paul stood up and said i want to know if the fbi is getting a warrant before they fly under and over my house. because he is concerned i guess the camera is going to capture the roof of his house. does he want a warrant before the police drive a patrol car down the street? and capture video o of the stret in front of his house. isn't just the privacy of his roof? this is the tenor of the debate and we're getting bills written in this debate that are really poorly drafted another thing people should be paying attention to. >> one thing we're seeing our police video cameras on the streets installed pointed out the front door of people's houses. would you like that in front of your house? >> no, i would not. >> i think most americans would

not. what we're talking about with persistent drone surveillance, then a flyover. >> i agree with that definition. but the problem with that definition is there are places, and we will see the technology get to the point where drones will be capable of, technologically and they're already there. that kind of 24/7/365 aerial surveillance of neighborhoods, backyards, houses, et cetera. that's exactly why we need good, strong protections. >> in my testimony, my proposal was to define what is persistent and as you move up over a certain period of time, once you get to six hours, we could debate about whatever the length of time is, then you need reasonable suspicion to continue the surveillance. one day get to 24 hours you need a warrant. than 40 hours, need a warrant. let's put this in perspective but if you're driving down the street, the police can't stop you based on recent suspicion.

they can ask you to step out of your vehicle basin regional suspicion. they can pat you down. and that probable cause to believe you committed a crime, they can arrest you without a warrant. they can search you. they can search your vehicle. they can bring to the police station all without a warrant. and all that to be documented by the patrol cars camera, by law enforcement officers and on the street with the camera. but if you has to drone overhead, i use the word drone, and videotape that come all of that evidence would be suppressed because it was gathered without a warrant. that seems excessive to me. it wouldn't be suppressed under current law as it stands but the proposals regarding a warrant it would be suppressed and that seems out of touch that if a police officer could arrest me,, stopping, frist to me, searching, search my vehicle all without a warrant. but if they want to flood my house and take pictures it will require a warrant. i agree with you on the

persistence thing and that's where we need to define what persistence means rather than just to say, they -- >> they can't stop and search anybody they want. they do have kept recent suspicion. recent suspicion has been badly abused in many areas, for example, new york with a stop and frisk policy was just stopped by a judge. the police if they want to use of drones they have to have some reason to think it's going to gather evidence of wrongdoing. not just throwing them up all the time. for no reason. because that's the temptation we're going to sit and they will be flying over our neighborhoods all the time spent one that takes of the table is the boston bombing situation. return to my initial question. so if i'm concerned with public safety, one of the things i want to do is i want to have aerial surveillance over a massive crowd. it could be "the new york times" new year's eve celebration, or could be the boston marathon. because i want to be able to

look down. and i could do this under current precedents from anand helicopter, look in and see what's going on. so i can see if someone is placing ids behind three year old. i want to see that i want to be able to reconstruct the scene afterwards but if those cameras are on buildings, it's okay. they don't require a warrant but if those cameras on a helicopter it's okay. but the position of the aclu itself like if i put that on an unmanned system, then everything has fallen apart from a privacy perspective. but if i take the same camera and glue it to the building, everything is okay. >> well, we don't like pervasive sense of our public space, whether it's aerial or from fixed cameras or from license plate readers which are tracking america's cars by the millions with any kind of suspicion or warrant. they are going into government databases. you know, it's a principal in a country that the government has a look over your shoulder literally or fatally unless it has reason to think you're

involved in wrongdoing but it doesn't watch everybody all the time just in case you happen to do something wrong. that changes the relationship between -- >> a police officer gets in a car and he tries. they let any reason to think i'm doing anything wrong but they pull behind me and watch what i'm doing for a little bit. maybe they raided and my license plate or maybe the license plate reader reads. if i'm a fellow with a worn out for my arrest the license plate reader beeps and they pull me over and they arrest me so i don't go abduct someone kill someone. >> we don't have a problem with that but if you're a regular citizen it takes you -- many police agencies indefinitely and they build a track star everybody goes. we don't have a problem with them looking for stolen cars are amber alert. why are they taking data on innocent people? the same issue with the drones. >> so to say that we don't want police looking at people unless we think that they're doing something wrong, the police

never lose -- leave their desk. >> that would be silly, right. please circulate to our society. there are two things. number one, there are only so many police. if you had a personal police officers apology 24/7, i think most americans would kind of freak out. number two, when a police officer is in your present you know when a police officer is in your present. you know who is watching you and who isn't. that technologies are that we have the virtual equivalents of everyone of us having our own police officer watching everything we do. that's why we need to put in place good commonplace, commonsense regulations around some of the technology to preserve the privacy that americans for hundreds of years have always enjoyed, that we're going to lose the privacy to allow these technologies to be put in place en masse without putting things in protection. >> not to interrupt, but let's cut to take a look at a macro view. jay has indicated that to his

knowledge and the aclu's knowledge come and i'm sure you're doing what you should be doing, which is monitoring this important issue, is there has been no documented cases of a missed use of an unmanned systems in this country. so that seems kind of important to me not that it won't occur tomorrow or tonight but it hasn't occurred to the aclu's knowledge to date. so where did this fewer come from? was the aclu generated? wasn't press generated? is it legitimate concern of the public? is it technology generated? is it a fear of technology? in your opinion why did this become such a good issue? or large issue. it seems odd to me that usually when we focus as a society on a particular problem or issue, it's because it is a prevalent issue. it is something that has occurred repeatedly, or the single occurrence of it was so shocking to the consciousness that we focus on as a society, but i see the absence of this

witwould uas in this country and i'm just curious why this became such a prevalent issue? >> i think you hit on all the things. i just want to be clear that the privacy concerns that jay has articulated, i'm concerned with them as well. i disagree about the scope of the concern and the fact that in the rhetoric and oftentimes seems like an unmanned systems are being treated differently than other technologies. so that's to chart of some the territory. let's take what you said. cameras have been around forever. go in community, live back pack on the ground as you long it takes for a police officer to catch a. nypd has helicopter they can see people from miles away, better than any camera on any unmanned system because the payload that helicopter can carry it so much heavier than the payload on an unmanned system. but drones, i'll use the word, have this sort of fear. there a catalyst for concerns

people have for pervasive electronic robocop following each of us cataloguing everything that we're doing. and so that contemporary sort of utopian fear, combined with advances in technology, the fact cell phones can we understand how the technology works, has raised i think legitimate privacy concerns, but they are privacy concerns for which the unmanned systems industry has taken the blood of -- the blood of the hit. as opposed to having a way of legislating about privacy and pervasive surveillance and data retention procedures that cuts across all technology. if we're concerned about always being watched and we should be concerned about always being watched from a camera on every telephone pole as well as a camera on the unmanned system. answered go after the unmanned systems industry as the easy target that captures people's attention. i think makes for bad legislation when he just single

out one industry without focusing on all the other ways that privacy might be obligated. i think that's part of my biggest concern was part of the privacy lobby's approach is that they don't take a technology neutral stance in much of their legislation. a lot of the deals we see are focused just on drums. the texas bill is absurd. it's almost humorous and now it goes just after drones and it has all these carveouts for realtors and cattlemen and oilmen, and it's just, it's legislation gone bad. it doesn't do anything for privacy from aerial surveillance from helicopters or from fixed positions and whatnot. those are the big problems i have with the, but the trigger here is the dystopian fears of robotics and unmanned systems and that's why we're seeing so much emphasis on drums rather than on the rest of the ways that privacy may be implicated. >> understood. ben? >> just to give a little bit of historical context for the audience, so really a lot of

these issues running privacy and unmanned aircraft started about a year or so ago, after congress passed the faa authorization bill, which had been stalled for a number of years. and when congress finally passed not go there was a section in therefore calling for the faa to write this a few rules to allow unmanned aircraft to fly in national airspace. that language had been in that them the long stalled faa bill for a number of years. in fact, privacy issues were never raised in the preachers although up until when faa bill was actually sign and pass. the uas sections of the bill was the most popular provisions of the entire bill. specifically the creation of fixed unmanned test aircraft. they recognize the future of aviation, the future of airspace is an unmanned and they recognize the jobs that we associate with the. but it wasn't until there was actually in agriculture group that had some concerns that the

epa was overflying their properties using cameras to look for clean water act violations. i don't member if uzbek element of it was, someone in the midwest, they wrote the congressman, the congressman got on the floor of the house and railed against the epa's ability to surveil. somewhere when that news reporting event floor speech, the word drone was inserted and as soon as they inserted that word, then it went viral on medium, you know, numerous stations were picking it up but the problem is no one -- the epa does not have any unmanned aircraft. they do have manned aircraft and effect they have been using manned assessors t overfly farms fields for decades looking for clean water act violations. but it was the word drone that got things going and sensationalize. and from that moment forward things have really tumbled.

i think we would agree with greg's exception, is that people are not truly talking about privacy issues. they are attacking this entity, this unmanned aircraft industry, which is easy to do right now because the faa has not yet written the safety rules. so right now it is illegal for commercial entities to fly an unmanned aircraft in national airspace which is why there are not a whole lot of good news stories about how farmers are using these aircraft to monitor the crops and increase their yield, or hell firefighters are using them to monitor wildfires or help save children in burning bellies. and the list goes on and on of all these great applications. so our concern is a lot of these privacy issues could, in fact, stifle the faa's progress on safety rules and the impact the industry in the long run. thanks to the puts it in historical precedent it, where that came from or that fear.

spent to be fair to jacob he did write his article i think a couple months before the faa bill was passed into law. >> they go. greg, let me come back to you. i think i know the answer and i think the audience suspects the answer but i want to ask the question in a. we started off with the pivotal question of what can the industry due to address this very important concern of privacy. on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate the over all uas industry's performance in this important area? >> i was separate out auvsi. like, you know -- >> very diplomatic. >> ivc the industry association is on top of particular policy issues. so based on my very informal survey at last year's auvsi and this year's subsequent follow-on conversations through my writing for forbes, if 10 is the best and one is the worst, i would

give the industry a zero. i mean, have you come if you have a senator you have a senator or congressman who are sponsored or signed onto a piece of legislation like the protecting americans privacy act, there has to be someone in this room whose congressperson has signed on to it, i'm almost certain of it, have you brought that -- have you brought in to your facilities to two or your facilities to us and how many jobs can be created? to talk to them about what are the concerns they view, continent that prompted you to sign on and had asked him about those concerned and ask them what they're doing, hearing from the constituency can go back to your development team and say, there's this concerned about data retention and who can access the logs. don't have a computer guy that requires a password and logs who accesses what and who accesses what and is subject to to auditing? if you haven't done those things, then you'r you're at the stupidity done those things and you start to move up on my

scale, closer to five. if you're implementing them and selling them next year at the 2014 show, you're going to be at 10, and i'll single you out for attention if we have the panel again. that's my scale on privacy. actually doing something to address this privacy concern. and oh, by the way, to ecosystems can equal cost them if you're selling it with a software package that has them, with all the audit controls, i bet your system gets sold to the local town counsel, more readily than a competing system that doesn't have those concerned. although those elected officials are paying attention to that and so are the chiefs who have to listen to the town councils and have to listen to their legislations. >> just outstanding segue to ben. as a representative of the largest organization representing the uas industry, what is auvsi done to deal with privacy and to encourage the membership of auvsi to deal with this issue speaks well, thank

you, alan, and thank you for moderating this panel. so, we as the industry trade association recognized that the issues with privacy are serious and they need to be addressed, in a responsible manner and a thoughtful manner. and so we have been trying to do that. in fact, we know jay and aclu and his other, i'll use greg stern, the privacy lobby groups, to talk to them come and say water your concerns with this industry. how are we different than other types of electronic commune of, communication devices or anything else. ..

you have to do it in a technology neutral way and i did that of greg used that term and that's important because if you are always legislating the newest technology there will be the new thing and so on and so forth, so really what this boils down to -- and this is what you have concerns with the government usage. it does the government have a right to take a picture of you and use that against you in the court of law? that is what this boils down to, and also who cares how you take that picture if the fact the picture was taken whether it is from a satellite, manned aircraft, unmanned aircraft, st camera, but ever. those are the issues that need to be addressed, the picture taking and the data and to

implement protection. the fact the international association of chiefs of police, the largest organization came out with guidelines how they recommend the police adopt this new technology and put policies in place to make sure the data is retained properly and that it is not used and discarded and that there are audits and everything else. we support those and i think that a lot does come down to education. we have to do a better job educating the public, educating decision makers and others about what is this technology, how is it going to be used? a lot of folks when they hear the word drone they think about what the - military system and that is just not what we are talking about for domestic applications. what we are talking about are small things that look more akin to tollways. things that way a few pounds will enforcement can put in the back of their trunk and deploy e where needed. that way they can use the system for that individual situation.

i know jay and the aclu and others say what about the future when they are so cheap and pervasive? the reality is the faa right now doesn't allow us to fly hardly at all and when the dewey is under tight rules and construction. not to mention the fact technology isn't really there yet to make it affordable or realistic. the large systems are expensive and the police department has millions of dollars they are going to spend it on a helicopter, not an unmanned aircraft. >> can i jump in here and make a comment about what you're saying? i can understand about how the industry feels beleaguered by the policy concerns around this technology. you said you were concerned about policy broadly. we worry about cell phone tracking, license plate tracking, pervasive cameras and public spaces and how that can change the nature of american life and we worry about drones and propose solutions for all of these. the aclu is not all-powerful here.

there is a wave of concern in the country about drones and we can talk to sociologists about why that is. but the fact is that's one area we have concerns and that's one area there is a lot of interest on the part of state legislatures around the country. and so we are happy to see them act on drones. we would like to see privacy walz that are broad and that cover many challenges. we are not seeing those so we aren't going to oppose the drones laws because i understand why you feel that perhaps the drones are singled out. they are a very powerful surveillance technology and the need to be regulated. but we also think that there are lots of other technologies that also need to be regulated and that fact is not a reason to regulate drones. >> i appreciate that. what we have been seeing is tracking a lot of these state proposals in fact the state chapters are loosely affiliated with headquarters and what we are seeing that the state level

is the state chapter in fact supporting these bills the would require a search warrant before you can fly the unmanned aircraft, which has greg talked about earlier is fundamentally different how the police use the aircraft today. what they are usually giving and the reason why so many of the sponsors are republican is usually the aclu is going too often tea party along the republicans and those are oftentimes the sponsors of a lot of the legislation. you have the civil libertarian groups joining forces here and i understand where you are coming from on this at the state level. >> i would like to come back with a couple of questions so that we have plenty of time to entertain audience questions. i would like to invite the audience to approach any of the microphones that you see in the center aisle. and you can pose a question to the individual panelists or as a whole to the panel whoever feels

comfortable approaching that will answer your question. can i ask you to go to one of the microphones for a number of reasons but not the least of which we are recording this so we would like to hear your question. >> thank you. this has been an educational panel. i have a quick question and it has to do with if you have standards for the police and law enforcement, privacy concerns on the fourth amendment but not for the private sector for individual citizens i'm curious if that creates an opportunity for a third party if you can conduct the ongoing surveillance with one commercial overflight and then as is needed to sell the data collection or video footage or sensor received a gut the law enforcement as needed. it just occurs to me as you were talking but her work around for the partner and help bridge that

divide. >> anyone want to take a bat at that? >> i think that he already alluded to it and the fact there are already companies that do just that. they will fly some other platform over the city and they will record the city and the town or whatever if there was a crime and they would look at that specific area and run the tape backward to see me be where the bad guy got off to or whatever. but i think the only do it for those specific calls. and that's a fee-for-service activity that will enforcement does all ready for the manned platforms. >> keep in mind as well any time you are utilizing the civilian contract or civilian force the search and seizure laws kick in because those contractors are now a functionary law enforcement to become law enforcement agents. >> i will clarify. i'm talking about persistent surveillance. the analogy would be overhead.

but let's assume instead of it coming from overhead satellite collection of whether it was cell phone cameras or uaf stationed were fixed point canada or any other data that is collected, would that address the privacy concerns if it was a trusted third-party provider from the persistent collections, not passed out as necessary? but i think in many ways a mall security camera is always collecting. is that going to address the aclu concerns? >> i think we do not want to see american public life subject to 24/7 aerial surveillance on less afraid that these movements and comings and goings are recorded whether it is a government agency or by googled. a lie of st. you would raise a lot of questions and we are not now calling for the regulations on the private sector use of drones. but if that kind of thing starts

to emerge, i think we would call for the limits on that. it would change the nature of american life and create a chilling effect and to give everybody the feeling they are being watched once they leave their house. the americans that we represent don't want that kind of a country. >> thank you for the question. >> good afternoon. thanks for the participation. very informative and provocative. free comments and a question. first comment i would disagree about the lack of attendance today. this is a very important issue. we all know that. it's just a bad time i guess. second, wondering why we are all being picked on. it's because it is aviation. we are always pick on an aviation. so that would be my second comment. the third comment i would say this is somewhat analogous to the malaise issue with the airports where if we are not on top of it, it's going to

actually impress the market as some of you have pointed out, and of course there was a response to that with stage triet stage for malays type of standards that helped to be a so if someone talked about -- i believe it was you, greg -- the way to get on top of this is to be proactive. i agree with that. and then my question for you all. you heard the staff today, 40 something state legislatures. >> 41. >> that's a lot. i look at the traditional role of the c-17 managing the aerospace and i say wait a minute, there is a huge disconnect. how are we going to make those parallel? can we make those parallel? and my final comment is, before you answer the question, or maybe a follow-on question to that, to what level might this issue ultimately retard the deployment of these defenses? >> let me paraphrase your question.

how will this issue will ultimately affect the development of uaf? >> i'm going to have a response saying it's really going to depress it. >> okay. which one of you would like to take a swing at that one? >> i would like to address the faa portion which is from the industry standpoint we actually do not think that they should be responsible for the unmanned aircraft privacy issue. it's the last federal agency you would want responsible for privacy issues. they are easy to organization and should stay focused on the mission. it to be perfectly honest there are legitimate safety issues from degrading the manned aircraft with unmanned aircraft. but right now the faa is set against a public perception so they are being told from a higher power you know, they don't roll the move will making forward so fast. maybe hold on to something so you are right. the industry is jeopardized by the issue of privacy because it is holding up the rulemaking to allow for the commercial

nativity which is why we need to focus on this issue to other folks that are more adequate to handle these issues like the department of justice, homeland security, other agencies that are suited for the privacy issues. >> i don't want to harmonize this at all. i think federal legislation for privacy is a horrible idea. i think federal legislation to address the concerns that we talked about before so the you know how to develop the system to fly in a safe way that is a rule to the faa. but it's a local issue. think about it you go to new york city, take off your clothes and run down the street. if you think anybody is going to take a picture of that? they might. do the same thing on a ranch in texas. you don't believe anybody is going to be snapping a photograph of you. your conception changes based on where you are at. i also think of the people somewhere in utah want to suggest themselves to surveys surveillance so they can have a

crime for each utopian society then it's their right to choose to do that. and if massachusetts wants to ban the unmanned systems let them do it and things will work themselves out. as an industry, you can develop the places of want to buy your product and want to let the hikers by mountains. they will die in the mountains until clich is time to realize the legislation is a bit overprotective and start selling to them when they change their legislation. if you have a one-size-fits-all privacy bill at the federal level, i don't think you're going to like the results especially when we take a look of the types of bills that are making their way through the congress right now. the best way to develop this is to let it crop up in different states and see what types of technology develops, what kind of industries to the list, see what types of good ideas crop up in the state. that's the best way for this to develop, not in d.c.. >> we would like to see good, strong federal privacy legislation triet [inaudible]

[laughter] >> the would be the first race. the second would be let it stay in the state and local level. and you will see a broad spectrum of different bills. it's important to remember this date -- the faa and federal government does of course have president over the federal a airspace. what these local bills are regulating is not the air space. they are regulating local law enforcement. and so -- >> [inaudible] >> you know -- there are better on the panel than me but certainly there is a question of what is the navigable airspace? the supreme court has already defined that it's okay for the police to use manned helicopters at a certain altitude because the rationale is anyone can fly at those altitudes and whenever people see is admissible without a warrant. but an unmanned aircraft can fly pleases the manned aircraft

can't because safety issues. they can fly between buildings and down power lines and close the mountains or in the foliage. so those issues do need to be at rest, and it's i'm doubtful that the courts will address this issue. to be honest we think the courts are in a better situation. the courts historically defined the fourth amendment is and how it's governed. so that's what we would like to see play out. >> would you like to pose your question? >> thanks for having the discussion on privacy issues. you've been talking about fourth amendment issues. jay touched on it a little and i would like to hear this response from each of you. how do you see the uav being used in to terms of news gathering and first amendment issues and how that is going to, you know, the compound with the privacy issue again but against first amendment concerns? >> can you start with that and we will go right on the panel.

>> i'm curious to see what jay has to say. news gathering is one of the great economic potential of this industry. when in fact the faa does offer commercial activities. news gathering has always had a special place. some people argue it's the fourth branch of government and that in fact, you know, the freedom of the press needs to be upheld on this. the media would love to have access to these things especially situations they might not be able to afford the mant asset or they might be too dangerous like a tornado or after a flood or something like that, where the images are extremely newsworthy that very difficult if not dangerous to get so there is a great value and the news media will be a big user of the technology when it is allowed to be a >> so this is the point i really don't envy jay's position because he has to thread the needle between protecting first amendment rights for individuals to document, whether they are

legitimate journalists or citizen journalists. the first amendment right versus privacy. so we see -- i'm from california and we have the proper not see legislation in california that tries to deal with these types of issues. and how do you fred the legitimate rights for selling to take photographs of a public figure verses that public figures's privacy? it is super challenging. so what may end up happening as we start to think about this and develop legislation in the state where we will be able to experiment, we will find different ways of dealing with the issue, the use restrictions, commercial sales of persons and then we will start to get into the whole area of the tort law that was referenced before. this was a really challenging balancing act and if you have to think about writing the legislation on this, i teach legislation in the spring and this is going to be one of the

topics i'm going to try to have my students work with. it's almost impossible to write legislation that will make everyone happy. >> interestingly that ties into what you said about individual state rights and maybe the concept of don't fix something that's not broken. in california we see that, you know, copper nazi concern. we don't have that in north dakota. so maybe it is appropriate for california to address that type of use of this technology. or any type of as technology that would potentially be utilized by the copper choxy. in north dakota that is a minor concern for us. >> i would agree with what ben said that for the same reason it is for the law enforcement to consider this technology as a supplement and substitute for the 6 million-dollar helicopter the news media is candidacy the same and there is a potential here. sometimes it is two to three

years there will be a case before the u.s. supreme court dealing with the technology and the privacy issue and that is a scary thing for all of us to have this industry in front of the court that may not understand or want to understand all the implications of what we are talking about here. so it may not will be a fourth amendment issue that and said there were a regulatory oversight or preemption issue on the first amendment issue. the media's right to use or deploy the system and the outside of what is generally considered to collect news and is being told by the faa or some local law enforcement agency that they cannot do it. that is going to be the case we will see in court. >> i welcome that so i have a different opinion. i would like to see a case go before the supreme court and i would like to see organizations like auvsi to be invited to secure the briefs and educate the court on that because i think there's a big debate now

about whether we can take cases like florida verses riley which is a search and seizure dearborn case and apply them to the unmanned aircraft, so it'll be interesting to see the supreme court and the appellate courts weigh in on this and whether they connect the dots between the manned aircraft searches and the on -- unmanned. >> greg is right. it's a difficult balancing act in some cases and a complicated thing. the aclu is a first amendment free-speech organization. we have been for 90 years. we were founded in world war i when people were being thrown in prison for writing letters to the editor opposing the entry into the war. and you know, we think there are significant first amendment implications of drones photography. i think it's exciting that the drones can be used by not only by formal media organizations but by individuals acting in that capacity. you know, watching over what

their government is doing. watching the news and so forth. that's the sort of distinction between the formal media and individuals today. there are -- you can imagine scenarios in the future where you come up with some very difficult conflict between the first amendment and privacy. we hope we won't see those, but our prejudice is towards allowing individuals the right to take photographs which is one of the reasons we haven't called for any legislation when it comes to the private use of drones. we think that if some of these difficult problems emerge maybe we can have a difficult, you know, soul-searching conversation within the aclu. but for now we would like to see individuals with the ability to watch the government, not the government watching individuals unless it has reason to believe there is an involvement in wrongdoing. >> one additional point. i know the aclu has sponsored

legislation on this but i had an opportunity to consult with a senator and i won't say who the senator was on a bill to regulate private collection of information from a drone and after three weeks of the back-and-forth how they were trying to define what a private space was i think they gave up because i didn't see it introduced anywhere. but it's so hard. private used to document what's going on in the stadium. do i have an expectation of privacy that i won't be documented? until it comes it is so hard to figure out how to define that spaces where we have reasonable expectations privacy should be protected from private interest or from government surveillance. >> this is something we as a society are grappling with because it always used to be easy to know who was watching you. whoever is in the room with you or whoever is seeing you and now we have these technologies that

you are in public but you are being tracked everywhere you go for your entire life. that is an invasion of privacy the was never possible until recently and how do we conduct that in the fourth amendment and the supreme court has begun to grapple with that with the u.s. c. jones' decision last year in which they ruled we need a warrant to the gps tracking device on your car even though it is in public and is valuable for an entire month. >> interestingly while back we were doing a training with the unit and we had some members of the press and this was a member of the foreign press that wanted to interview one of the pilots. i said pick out any pilot you want. we went to a grand force police officer who was one of our pilots and was focus on the privacy issue and said this is earth shattering. this is so different. and kind of a young police officers or out of the mouths of babes he said i just don't see that. nothing has changed. there's still the fourth amendment and there's still case

law and the search and seizure and respect for the public that we have as respect for police officers. i don't think anything has changed. sometimes i think that was one of the clear answers i've ever heard on this issue is that we still have all those checks and balances. we are just applying them to be different technology. >> again, just his opinion and i think there is some validity that is worth thinking about any how to use >> greg it seems as though you are steering now all of you about the external regulation and external control over what's being done with the unmanned aircraft systems. i think you said everybody right now is about a zero but you would like to see some people sort of percolate to the top. professor frazier, do you know a situation there is internal checks and balances on the operation of the unmanned aircraft systems whether it be academic or private situation?

>> yes. i can speak to our project in north dakota. we have an independent committee of 15 members sponsored by the university that represents public safety, represents the community as a whole, represents the faculty and administrators at the university and looks at every mission set that we do and they are there with a set of checks and balances and to apply community standards. the community standards in the city of new york media different than in north dakota and may be different than los angeles. so this particular committee was charged with responsibility of applying the grand forks north dakota community standards to the use of uas. i have to tell you why wasn't the biggest fan of that process when i was introduced to it but it's been very productive and they've made some recommendations we've implemented in our uas unit that i think has made it more acceptable to the public but

also a more credible unit in supporting what we were trying to do and protecting the privacy of the public. so in our particular case it has been very successful. >> you write about the zero level -- >> sure. there are some internal police standards, too. so what we learned from the most recent, senator paul said the fbi is internal guidelines from the use of unmanned systems in the period of six years to use unmanned systems ten times always in an investigation. if you don't know anything about the fbi guidelines for investigation it starts as an assessment. a very limited things you can do. there are increasing levels of suspicion that are required to continue the investigation and its required i think in a predicated or perhaps a full investigation before the unmanned system can be used for the appendix of the fbi

guidelines for investigation. and so those internal guidelines are in place. if it were me and i want to go from one to ten let's say that you are from a manufacturer i would say what system can i have for the law enforcement so they don't even have to think of the accountability checks and all the things the aclu is concerned with. you can talk to me to figure out those things with me but let's say i want a system who identifies the operator is that swipes and on the cart before the copter goes up in the air and identifying where the cameras pointed, the duration and images captured and maintained off site with certain access controls with a software program in place. now when i go to the police department the don't have to ask who am i going to put in charge of this and who's going to control the key and how to buy track what a big pain it is going to be? i hope they don't pass a legislation requirement to do it. instead the police department by

noisette and says look at the privacy controls it has built into it and we are happy to create a town council civil liberties review board that will audit their record on a semiannual basis and they can sit on the board and some things will be redacted in the law enforcement and after a period of time we will delete all of the information. >> [inaudible] >> you would need all of that but currently the system would be one where the officer with his other duties he has been tasked with now has the duty of maintaining the exfil database for all this information and the word document saving it without losing the flem drive and all this other stuff that we know the police are already tasked with. that's going to follow the lowest total impulse when the new sergeant has to do that. so why not employ a system where i'm sure you can get an intern from a computer science department to write this program over the next couple weeks and now you are selling the package

with all the protections worked in to it be if it becomes a marketing feature as well as protecting privacy and creating some transparency from auditing. that's what i've been waiting to see every year. maybe next year. i just gave you the business plan and i will give you the powerpoint. >> we are seeing the auditing becoming a very standard feature of things and there are technologies can put around auditing that makes sure it can't be tampered with and so forth and that is becoming the standard best practice in many other technological areas. >> greg, i think it is a double edged sword so i want to hear from you and the other panelists on this pity on the one hand there is a benefit for the footage to come off of the uas to be archived, but part of me says that is a slippery slope because now we are establishing this robust archives of things that potential we do not have as a dingy very value and that there's some danger there. on the other hand, what you said just about being able to go back and say investigated citizens

complained about the misuse of the technology would be enabled by the archive of that. how do we reconcile that? how do we archives but not me get an interest in the archives of data that would be i'm sure honored to the aclu and frankly would be honorous as citizens? i don't want footage of there being stored by law enforcement agencies that doesn't have an evidentiary value. >> i struggle with this and the best solution of can come up with is the immediate collection perhaps subject some analysis that needs to be removed from the hands of put off site somehow and accessible you need a statute or internal procedure that this is only accessible with a supervisors' permission or perhaps with a warrant. ..

>> just like surveillance cameras in stores or at government facilities, override the tapes after a period of time. i don't think you need to log all of that information forever because someone might say that their car was keyed three years ago, and we need to go back into the day -- database. everything i just said, though, is really hard to reduce to a politician's sound bite and expect it to get into

legislation somewhere. and so the way it needs to percolate up, i think, would be smart ideas from industry that end up working and then maybe they get codified at the state and local level. >> jay, protecting our rights, archive or don't archive? >> well, i mean, i think that you can archive, but it should be be, you know, the period should be measured in days and weeks, not months and years. and what you do is you -- if somebody flags, you know, images either the authorities because they believe it has evidentiary value or an individual because they believe there's been some sort of abuse, then the data is retained, and otherwise it's flushed out. i think -- and the kinds of schemes that you're talking about, i think, you know, are what we need to see. >> thank you. yes, sir. >> my name is john, i'm with an organization called m a aps, and we're an association of firms in the aerial photography satellite map-making business. and the american people have

benefited from the capture of photography from a variety of platforms for decades. you dial 911 and expect an ambulance to come to your home or where you are, it's because the emergency response department has an accurate map that began with an aerial photograph. so there are a lot of things that american, the american people use every day that is a benefit from the acquisition of aerial photography. be -- my question is, goes to the point that was made about being technology-specific and the legislation going after uavs or drones. given that using other platforms the american people have been beneficiaries of imagery and data collection for a long time. so, number one, i wanted to make a point to greg that we have been involved in pointing out

the benefits that the members of our profession bring to the public and our anticipation to be able to continue to operate using an unmanned system just as we have with satellites and manned systems. >> [inaudible] >> for example, senator udall from colorado in his bill does make that acknowledgment and is recognition for our profession. but what i, the question i wanted to ask of the panel is your familiarity with the -- [inaudible] versus the united states case back in the 1980s where, basically, the use of manned aerial imagery within certain parameters the court said is not an unwarranted search, and do you think that sets a standard or is a relevant precedent that if and when the court subsequently looks at this issue with regard to unmanned systems they'll say, well, this is already decided law, we've said

if the platform is you big wit outsly -- you big biously available to the public as in 1986, that it's not an illegal search or unwarranted action using a manned system. >> doug, i know you're intimately familiar with the dow chemical case, could you address that, please? >> i think it does set the standard and is likely to be followed unless something significant changes in the technology. the technology doesn't support that aircraft, it was a commercially-available camera that was no different than anything else that's currently available now. so i don't see that case being overruled by what i know now. >> but that -- you've highlighted the key debate. so for the non-lawyers in the room, what the gentleman was talking about was one of really three supreme court cases, california v. cerallo and florida v. reilly, these places where police basically took photographs from manned aircraft. it was challenged, actually, it

was challenged by the aclu. in their briefs they made all -- and this was the late '80s -- made all the same agents they're making right now -- arguments they're making right now. went to the supreme court, and they lost. the supreme court said you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that which you expose to the public including that which you expose to aerial surveillance. so if everything stayed static right now -- >> and i offer one -- >> yeah, go ahead. >> just to be clear, the supreme court ruled if you are in your backyard surrounded by a 10-foot-tall fence where nobody can possibly see you and you wish to lie nude in your bathe l suit in your backyard, the police can take a photograph without a warrant, and that was the argument that we were involved in. and that is a precedent that is set for -- it's not clear how it will apply to drones, but because of the existence of that precedent, it's one of the reasons we think the existing law is not enough.

i apologize. >> no, no, you're fine. so that's -- so that brings me to the next point. the if that precedent applies to unmanned systems which that's what this whole fight is about, then aerial documentation for mapping purposes would be okay. so into the fray runs all of these groups that want to propose legislation to stop people from are documenting someone in their backyard if in their bikini. now, bear in mind if you were in the third floor of the house next door and you looked into the backyard, you could see that person, and if that person were in the backyard stabbing someone to death, you could call the police and say don't over the fence, come up to my third floor, and you'll see what's going on, and that person would not have an expectation of privacy. that's basically what the supreme court realized, you've exposed it, and it's out there. now, the problem that you're facing is that into that fray

comes legislation that has -- this is the language from i think it is the income bill, but i'm not sure. it says taking a picture of a person without a warrant, law enforcement or government taking a picture without a warrant is an unlawful use of an unmanned system, and private parties, civilians, may not take pictures of people without warrants, okay? so let's just stop there. that's the basic text of the legislation. you are out of business. because you're going to fly over, and we're going to look down, we're going to see little dots of people. and the way that language is written, those little dots of people -- you didn't get permission from each of them. fly over a festival while doing your mapping and see 500 people down there. you should have run around and got a signature from everyone. therefore, that would be, that would be unlawful and there are civil damages in some of these bills say for each instance of a privacy violation you're able to be sued for that. thousands of dollars of damage

for you not getting this. and if you destroy -- one of the really bad ones is the north carolina one. be you destroy the imagery, you've destroyed evidence in a civil or criminal case. but if you retain the imagery, you're violating the person's rights by continuing to retain it. the only person who could like that is a plaintiff's lawyer. i mean, it's the most absurd legislation you've ever seen. i wrote about it at "forbes" if you're wondering, north carolina's drone-killing privacy be bill is how i described it. but that made sense to someone when they wrote it because they're not lawyers. so they look and they say, oh, taking a picture of someone without their permission should be a violation of the law, and i should be able to sue for that. and you think that's a great piece of legislation until you realize from a thousand feet up where i just see a speck, how could i possibly do anything about that? well, that's not what the bill with meant. it's not defined in a way to mean what you think, it's twined to basically prevent your -- it's defined to basically prevent a mapping company. no privacy implications there,

just if you do it from an unmanned system. and this is the problem. that's the north carolina bill. i could go pick another one at random and fly speck it and find be a thousand other problems that are going to kill your system in one of 40 states. >> that wrings us to closing, but i have a couple of important things i want to leave you with. the first is a very, very sincere thanks to our very august panelists about a lively debate about important issues, so thank you very much for traveling here and doing that. [applause] and in our last five seconds, i want to leave you with something just to think about as you depart the conference hall here. i began with, you know, a short opening about how important i thought this topic was, and i do. i think it's vitally important to citizenry, law enforcement and the uas industry. but i would suggest to you that there were two brothers on a sand hill in kill devil hills in 1903, and if two gentlemen in

suits walked up to them and one of them said, uh, i'm with the civil aviation board, and i'm sorry, you're not going to be able to fly that flying machine here because we've got some regulations that we have put in place that you're going to get, have to get a certificate of authorization to fly that wright flier here at kill devil hills, and the other gentleman said and, by the way, i'm a law enforcement officer from the state of north dakota or from north carolina, and i don't know if you know it, but we passed some legislation that says that we have privacy concerns about the use of flying machines because it will be able to observe people on their property here in the state of north carolina. so i'm afraid i have to tell you that you can't fly that flying machine as well. i just want to leave you with the thought that, you know, along with many of my colleagues here i think this is an important issue. i think there's a place for government in it. i just wonder out loud whether we're not being a little bit premature in trying to legislate technology that hasn't even

begun to mature. you know, i think we're at the wright brothers state and the application of uas to domestic missions, and i'm a little concerned, i'm fearful that we may be chilling the development of this technology by the premature enactment of both state and federal legislation. so with that, i would encourage you to, please, fill out the is survey. at the very top it says session number. you can leave that blank, but if you would, please, take just a moment to answer those five questions, and on your way out the door, you can just leave it on one of the chairs there at the back of the conference hall. thank you very much for attending. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> president obama and the first family returned to the white house last night after a nine-day vacation in martha's vineyard. today the president's scheduled to meet with financial regulators including central reserve chairman ben bernanke to discuss the implementation of the dodd-frank financial law. later this week the president will begin a two-day bus trip through upstate new york and pennsylvania to outline his plans for making college education affordable for the middle class. that's a topic that may come up during today's white house briefing, and we'll have the briefing live at 12:45 eastern time on our companion network, c-span. here on c-span2 all this week you can catch encore presentations of "q and a." told jeff colvin and allan sloan

talk about their recent cover story on jump-starting the u.s. economy. that's at 7 eastern. and tonight on booktv military history, at 8:30 victor davis hanson discusses his book, "the savior generals: how five commanders saved wars that were lost from ancient greece to iraq." that's on "after words." at 9:25, "operation storm." and at 10:15 p.m., max boot discusses "invisible armies: an epic history of guerrilla warfare from ancient times to the present." tonight all starting at 8 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. ♪ ♪ >> if we turn away from the needs of others, we align ourselves with those forces

which are bringing about this suffering. >> the white house is a bully pulpit, and you ought to take advantage of it. >> obesity in this country is nothing short of a public health crisis. >> i think i just had little antennas that just went up and told me when somebody had their own agenda. >> there's so much influence in that office, it'd be just a shame to waste it. >> i think they serve as a window on the past to what was going on with american women. >> she becomes the chief confidant. she's really n a way, the only one in the world he can trust. >> many of the women who were first lady, they were writers, a lot of them were writers, journalists, they wrote books. >> they are, in cases, quite frankly, more interesting as human beings than their husbands. if if only because they are not, first and foremost, defined and consequently limited by political ambition. >> edith roosevelt is one of the

unsung heroes. when you go to the white house today, it's really edith roosevelt's white house. >> during the statement you were a little breathless, and it was too much looking down, and i think it was a little too fast. minor change of pace. >> yes, ma'am. >> i think in every case the first lady has really done whatever fit her personality and her interests. >> she later wrote in her memoir that she said i myself never made any decision. i only decided what was important and when to present it to my husband. now, you stop and think about how much power that is, it's a lot of power. >> part of the battle against cancer is to fight the fear that accompanies the disease.

>> she transformed the way we look at these bugaboos and made it possible for countless people to survive and to flourish as a result. i don't know how many presidents realistically have that kind of impact on the way we live our lives. >> just walking around the white house grounds, i am constantly reminded about all of the people who have lived there before and particularly all of the women. >> first ladies: influence and image, a c-span original series produced in cooperation with the white house historical association. season two premieres september 9th as we explore the modern era and first ladies from edith roosevelt to michelle obama. >> last week the center for strategic and international studies hosted a discussion with iraq's foreign minister who

talked about u.s./iraq relations, iran's nuclear program and counterterrorism efforts in fighting al-qaeda. the foreign myster met with secretary of state john kerry during his visit as part of the joint coordination committee. this is just over an hour. [applause] >> thank you. thank you so much for your great introduction and thank you, john, also for inviting us to the csis and with this distinguished crowd. i know many of you in person, i work with some of you, we've dealt with you in the past, and i'm really honored to be among

you today on this friday. i'm honored also this could be the last lecture here in this building, so i have the honor to speak to the csis before it moves to its new building. this is another honor, i think. thank you. i'm here to offer a view from iraq and the region. and being honest and frank with you, really i'll devote most of my time to the question to q&a rather than giving you a ready-made piece of what you want to hear from me. i know many of you have many, many questions, serious questions about iraq, its future, its interaction in the region and whether iraq has succeeded in the challenges or it has not. but let me start that much of

what is happening today now in the middle east in cairo, in the southern district of beirut or in syria and or in baghdad in terms of terrorist attacks, really they are in ways interrelated. and the challenges and the opportunities that that triumph and the tragedies have been taking place in iraq for the past decades. and iraq was the first country in our region to make the transition from dictatorship to democracy. we know that the road is long and hard and has been very, very arduous, torturous for us to make that transformation. but still worth taking. as the arab spring has shown,

countries that are going through transition are at risk of foreign intervention and domestic violation. violence. in iraq we are cop fronting all these -- confronting all these challenges and more. but we are also making progress toward stabilization, stabilizing our society, growing our economy, building our democracy and developing good relations with all our neighbors. ten years after the overthrow of saddam hussein, the better future that we seek is still a goal. not a given. but some conclusions are as clear as anything can be in our region and in this time. for all the suffering we have endured, the people of iraq and our neighbors are much better off now that saddam is gone.

iraqis are forever grateful to the sacrifices that the americans have made in time and treasure and in blood. iraqis, of course, have endured even greater losses, and as the recent attacks of terrorism have reminded us, our ordeal is not over. the iraqi people are now a government intent to redeem these losses by building a future worthy of our sacrifices. after decades of dictatorship, three disastrous wars, international isolation, economic sanctions, the displacement of more than a million iraqis and the deaths of tens of thousands more including the latest victims of terrorism, iraq is embarking on building

its economic future, democratic tush and building bridges -- future and building bridges with our society and with our neighbors. as iraqis, we -- as we build our country, iraq and the united states will benefit by building a long-term partnership together. we can and must develop what president obama has described, and i quote, as a normal relationship between sovereign nations and equal partnership based on mutual interest and mutual respect. with our political progress, our economic roll and our diplomatic progress, iraq is taking its place as a partner state for our neighbors and for the family of nations. on the political front, we are building a multiethnic,

multi-party democracy with respect to the rule of law. our democratic process is moving forward at a strong and steady pace. our local elections took place in april of this year, and iraqi kurdistan there would be regional elections in september in this year, and our legislative and general elections will take place next spring, 2014. which will determine our national leadership, and that would be a very, very important day to watch. we have a government of national unity. now all the commitments participate in the workings -- now all the communities participate in the working of the government and of the parliament. yes, we have differences of opinion as all democracies do, but we are working together and slowly but surely our efforts

are achieving results. we are promoting human rights. will has been violations -- there has been violations which we admit, but there are constant efforts to improve on that and to be responsive to all. and also the freedom of expression and the advancements of -- [inaudible] there has been demonstrations and sit-ins in iraq in provinces in western part of iraq and some sunni provinces in iraq for the last eight months. and they have -- [inaudible] they have obstructions, but the government has not resorted to the same methods the egyptian recently used or deployed. to disperse the demonstrators. all the political parties have accepted election as a method of power sharing and peaceful

change. iraqis want to decide their own future with voting, not violence. on the economic front, we are growing and diversifying. we have the world's fastest growing economy, exanding by 9-- expanding by 9.6% in 2011 and 10.5% in 2012. according to bank of america, merrill lynch. we will grow by 8.2% this year beating china for the third straight year. on the energy front, our oil production has increased by 50% since 2005. iraq expects to increase oil production to 4.5 million barrels by the end of 2014 and 9 million barrels a day by 2020.

as international energy agency has reported, iraq is poised to double our output of oil by the decade of 2030s. we will emerge as the world's second largest energy exporter, and we will ease a stripped global oil market -- a strained global oil market. in spite of this progress, we have challenges that we are working to address. 90% of our economy depends on oil. our employment rate is 11%, our poverty rate is -- [inaudible] significant progress over few years in meeting the development millennium goals set by the united nations. in order to diversify our economy beyond energy, iraq is investing oil revenues in education and crucial

development projects including restoration of electricity power and rebuilding our transportation system. our economy will benefit from our progress on the diplomatic front as well. last month the united nations security council removed iraq literally from chapter seven saks -- sanction regime which imposed economic and other sanctions on iraq after saddam hussein invaded kuwait 22 years ago this month. we are working with the international monetary fund as well as the world bank and the arab league and the oic and many other regional and international organizations as a fully responsible member again of the international community. now we are moving towards a market economy friendly to foreign investment.

americans can provide that, what our nations need through investment and trade, not charity and aid. we need the expertise on energy technologies, engineering, design constructions and financial services. iraq offers americans tremendous investment opportunities for american developing and servicing schools, bridges and highways, health care, water treatment, telecommunications and much more. and this is what our agreement for the strategic framework agreement covers between iraq and the united states. but make no mistake, nothing that will, that we built together will endure unless we win our war against terrorism and the war to stabilize the country and insure security for

all the people of iraq. we see the violence in iraq and the terrible toll that it has taken daily. and we have heard about the threat that compelled your own country to close your missions, 22 missions in the middle east and north africa recently. al-qaeda is behind the terrorist attacks against america and iraq. at a time when the united states is seeking allies against terrorism, we want to work with you against our common enemy. we understand was at stake in this struggle. it is our fight for survival, and it is the core of our national and regional policy. we consider terrorism a threat toward peace, to regional peace

and to the security of our people. we are working in close cooperation with the international community and our neighboring cups to fight -- countries to fight all sorts and every manifestation of terrorism, wherever its sources, whatever its intention and wherever we find it. these terrorists are seeking to destabilize iraq because they see our political, economic and diplomatic progress as a threat to the desperation on which they feed. if americans attempted to conclude that our concerns with terrorism is only a justification for our failure and it is extreme, then think to yourself how would you respond if a terrorist organization were operating on your soil as al-qaeda or its affiliates is operating on ours.

together with the threat against american embassies, the violence on our soil is an example of why al-qaeda is still a threat to all of us. just yesterday they bombed fife fife -- five hospitals. not police stations, not government buildings. no, five hospitals and deliberately. we've also seen the attacks on the last day of eads which cost the life of many, many people. if america takes its eye, if america takes its eyes off the middle east, then there will be a resurgence of al-qaeda and all its affiliates and more menacing than ever we have seen. our concerns with the consequences of terrorists have,

that having terrorists next door shape our views about syria. for americans, syria is more than 5,000 miles away. for us, syria is right on our doorstep. our border with syria is long and, therefore, we are deeply concerned about the ability of terrorists to use and to cross these borders. and just that is why we are participating in the surge of a political solution in syria that will reduce the violence and diminish the rule of the extremists. it's not easy, these political solutions, as we see the balance of forces moving this way and

another. but that is one of the viable options for the people of syria. and only the syrian people can decide and determine their future. iraq was at the table during geneva i talks and, in fact, the final communique that was produced by the meeting had strong iraqi input in even the language that was adopted by all the participants. now there are new talks about resuming geneva ii, but according to what we have heard here in washington and in new york, this could only happen maybe in october or maybe later. there are no fixed dates yet about that possibility. we in iraq do support the legitimate aspirations of the syrian peopleor freedom, democracy and self-determination. and iraq has tried to adopt an

independent, neutral position; not to side with one side against the other, but to seek and to support a peaceful, democratic solution in syria. there is no sympathy whatsoever with the baathists in syria at all or the baasist regimes -- baathist regimes. in fact, at one time when we called the international community to hold the syrian government responsible for terrorist acts in iraq, we were the only voice. all our allies and friends abandoned us in that call. unfortunately, there are some who have called for iraqis to volunteer on both sides in syria and have used religious

justifications on the basis of a sectarian confrontation. but let me be clear, the iraqi volunteers who are fighting on either side in syria do not represent the policy of the iraqi government in any way. we are also opposed to the smuggling of arms from iran to syria. the government of iraq is committed to implementing u.n. security council resolutions, promoting peace in syria and keeping with our position against the militarizations of the conflict, we are doing our utmost to prevent the shipments of arms across our borders or air space by whoever. but we cannot do this without the capabilities and the sophisticated, integrated defense system that we lack.

and this is what we have been asking from our friends to help us. this is one more reason why the united states and iraq need to deep p our partnership and to combat terrorism. we need to continue to fully implement the strategic framework agreement that our cups signed before the withdrawal of the american forces in 2011. that means expedited delivery of promised military cells as well as assistance in counterterrorism and enhancing the capacity and the capacity of our security forces. short of reintroducing american troops in iraq, nobody is calling for the redeployment of american forces. but under the strategic framework agreement, there is a great deal of room, of space for

security cooperations to have our common fight against terrorism. iraq is also in the process of purchasing ten billion worth of military equipment from, mainly from the united states and other countries. we're paying for it with our own revenues. and we want to buy this hardware from the american allies. our recent purchases of 30 poke planes for our -- boeing planes for our national carriers testifies to our potential as a market for american companies, american products and american services. the view from iraq and the region also include opportunities as well as challenges as we have outlined. over the past two years, relations between iraq and kuwait have improved enormously. in fact, there have been mutual visits between the two countries

at the highest level. the problems of the past are being resolved through the joint ministerial committee and the u.n. security council resolution number 2105 on june 27 of this year. this included iraq's compliance with our obligations toward kuwait. the only remaining issues, which is not a controversial issue because there has been mutual agreement and payment, is the compensation which iraq is doing. but my country is literally, the tactically out of chapter seven, and the sanction regime. now we are focusing on the future relationship between our countries so that together we can promote peace, stability and security in the region. considering how much has changed between iraq and kuwait, there is a new hope for our neighbors

through our regions. we do not object to iran a having peaceful nuclear power program. but we would be one of the first countries to object to iran pezing nuclear weapons -- possessing nuclear weapons because of the past and because of the history. in fact, we favor the universalization of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and strict adherence to all of its obligations, particularly in the tinderbox of the middle east. definitely, iran needs to convince the international community that their program is only for peaceful purposes, and the world community needs to engage with iran to address the issues that have isolated it. we are encouraged by the election in iran and the victory

of president rouhani and the selection of his new team. and iraq has been trying to be useful or to be helpful in reaching an understanding on this very important issue. in order to reach diplomatic solutions to the crisis of the nuclear program, iraq has worked in cooperation and coordination with the islamic republic of iran and the european union to host the meeting of the 5+1 group in baghdad last may. iraq will continue its effort in the area of coordination and cooperation with the countries concerned. as the first nation in our neighborhood to abandon weapons of mass destruction, iraq

recently chaired an international conference in disarmament. just imagine 20 year ago where we were. we seek a middle east free of nuclear weapons. towards that goal we support efforts to convene a u.n. conference in helsinki. iraqis seek to forge friendships with our neighbors and a strategic partnership with the united states. be -- together we can build a future of peace, prosperity and democracy worthy of the struggles and sacrifices of iraqis and americans in our time. and the whops and dreams of generations -- and the hopes and dreams of generations yet to come. i thank you very much. [applause]

>> mr. minister, thank you very much for that statement. i think it's a sign both of the complexity of your agenda and the skill with which you handle it. the minister has agreed to take questions. what i'll ask is that you wait for a microphone and that you identify yourself. and that we only ask one question until everybody has had a chance so that we can work our way around this rather full room. so we'll start right here, if we may. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. my name's -- [inaudible] i'm a palestinian journalist in town, but i also served in iraq as the united nations spokesman for five year, so i got to know it. your excellency, tell us what are the safeguards that you are implementing now to insure that iraq does not slide back to the old days of 2005-2007 especially

in light of the merging of -- [inaudible] and how would that figure into a new scrut agreement, so to speak, without introducing boots on the ground. thank you. >> first, i'm a believer, and as a practice decisioner the of iraqi -- practitioner of iraqi politics, not as a diplomat, i personally don't believe iraq is sliding into sectarian or civil war for a number of reasons. first, with all these attacks you have seen, the people have not responded, have not been influenced at all by these deliberate attacks to ignite sectarian or civil war. you've all seen the reports last spring of troops massing up in the fronts of kurdistan or the

dispute between the federal government and the regional government. but nothing happened, and the problems were resolved peacefully. you've seen many people abandon their government in iraq, the kurds, the sunnis and others, but then through dialogue, through interact i think now everybody has rejoined the government to work together. so is secondly, we've been there before in 2005, '6, '7, and and we've seen how terrible that situation was when we were counting 100, 150 bodies in the streets of baghdad and so on. really there is self-restraint by all the communities not to be dragged again into that. although civil wars and others phenomenon actually does not happen by decisions by an

incident or another incident, but we all followed how the surge worked in iraq and how successfully. and still, actually, there is a great deal of expertise and benefit we are drawing from this effort. secondly, we -- politics has taken over in iraq. i mean, most of the iraqis even who were opposed to the new iraq or the new regime are embracing democracy. they're all waiting for the next election to change their future. we have seen the recent local election, how the people have soak been everywhere -- spoken everywhere. they're waiting for the next elections in 2014. as i said before, really when we have demonstrations, sit-ins in parts of the country for the past eight months, and the government never resorted to the

kind of violence except in one or two instances. and i'm not here to justify these violations whatsoever. but really generally, the government has tolerated this so far to go on without any intimidations. and the dialogue is continuing. the other element on restraint is the religious establishment, the shias' religious establishment in karbala have stood very strongly against any engagement and retaliations or responses. there are militia as, there are forces actually, extreme forces on both sides, but really they have not reached the level of seeing the country drug into a new civil or sectarian war. so can security wise it may not be with stable, but it would be manageable until the next year.

now, there is no plan, actually, to have a new s.o.f.a.. we have concluded the s.o.f.a., it's done, it's over. we have another agreement, it is a strategic framework agreement that's long term that defines iraq/united states relations for many years to come. and under this there are joint commissions on security, on diplomatic/political issues, on services, on energy, on cultural things. i have attended the fifth meeting of the joint coordination committee on political and diplomatic with secretary kerry yesterday at the state department. so there is an indication that this is going on the. but under the ssi, i think there is more room for security cooperation between iraq and the united states. >> thank you.

>> david mack, middle east institute and old happened at u.s./iraqi diplomacy. i want to salute what you've done in terms of reintegrating iraq into the international community. i think future historians are going to rate you right there with the great french foreign minister rand in terms of what you've accomplished. but my hard question for you is what is the outlook for improving iraq's somewhat troubled relations with two of your larger neighbors, both turkey and saudi arabia? >> thank you, david. i appreciate. one of the first american diplomats in my career before becoming the foreign minister of iraq was to meet david manage at the state -- davidk a the state department, and i remember that meeting very well in 1991 immediately after the uprising

and the exodus. so it's good to see you, david, and a friend whom i have a great deal of respect. what you, your question is very important. we in the iraqi government will be discussing this really very closely. be let's be, let's be honest about this, although there are two countries that have an influence over iraqi/sunni communities; sabia and turkey for -- saudi arabia and turkey for different reasons. we have good relations with iran, we have good relations with jordan, we egypt, with the arab countries. and for your information in iraq we have 92 or 93 diplomatic mission including 15 arab embassies. so those i dos of boycott of -- those days of boycott of iraq, of not accepting this alien body are gone. even the saudis have diplomatic

representation. of with turkey we've experienced many, many problems, primarily because of the lack of respect by the turkish politicians or officials for dictating on an elected iraqi government what to do and what not to do. i think now they realize and recognize there is another way to follow, although turkey is our largest trading partner. actually now we have between 12, 14 billion of trade with turkey, and they are a after the closer -- they are after the closure of syria for their own goods and transit and so on, iraq is the only viable route for them to the gcc and to the gulf. i am landing to meet with the turkish official soon. maybe in ankara or geneva nor

talks in order to improve that. with the saudis, also, we have not broken relations. we have communications and contact. there are a number of things we can do to improve relations or to introduce some confidence-building measures. one of them we have a treaty to exchange the prisoners. we have iraqi prisoners in saudi arabia, the saudis have some prisoners in iraqi jails. almost we are at final stages of concluding that. we are also considering some business relations with saudi arabia through reopening the border point between iraq and saudi arabia. david, for your information i was in riyadh a few months ago, and i discovered really that the saudi trade with iraq not directly, but through jordan and kuwait, is nearly $34 billion

u.s. and also we need to lower the rhetoric, sectarian rhetoric really on both sides. in ways in order to seek a viable, healthy, good relations. our resolving of our problems with kuwait have helped with the saudis and with the other gcc members. but i take your point, it is an important challenge for us, in fact, to work on that very seriously. >> barbara slavin from the atlantic council. minister zebari, always a pleasure to see you wherever, in washington or in the region. i wanted to get a little more detail about your views on the new iranian government and what iraq is prepared to do to try to facilitate the nuclear talks.

were you in tehran for the inauguration of president rouhani? can you tell us something about your discussions with them and what your sense is of how the u.s. is receiving the overtures from the new iranian government. thank you. >> thank you, barbara. i believe that the elections of president rouhani was a statement by iran and the islamic republic of iran to the international community, to the world that it mean serious business. otherwise there are many ways his success or his election could have been scuttled from the first round. to force it into a second round. but pressures were enormous on the establishment to go along with this article. and also he has drawn a great

deal of support from the reform be u.s. movement. rouhani's a credible leader who is a member of the regime. he's not weak. he has very strong relations with all the key leaders this iran, khamenei included, rafsanjani, so he's a member of the revolution. his credential could not be challenged. also the statement we have heard calling for moderations, calling for ending of iran's isolations and the suffering the iranian people are going through by the imposition of sanctions, political isolations i think were made very clear and loud. i wasn't in iran, actually, during the inauguration, but the vice president was there, the

prime minister was there also, so the feedback we have had that there would be a change. but this change could not come immediately as many people expect. the key elements everybody would be watching is the 5+1 meeting in september and whether the iranians will come to present any new approach. i personally doubt that it will happen that soon, but the pressures are mounting definitely on them to seek a solution. my message has been really nod to underestimate this change in iran, but we have to bait -- to wait and see because the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. but it is a positive change though, i see it. >> mr. minister, if i could just pick up on one part of barbara's question, she also asked about

whether iraq sees any role helping to facilitate some change in the world's relations with iran. is that one of your ambitions? >> yes. i believe iraq could serve as a bridge between the united states, the security council member and iran. and we have played that role in the past. and as i indicated in my speech, the hosting of the nuclear talks in baghdad last year was an indication that we have an interest here to help, to facilitate. not to be a bridge that we fall under the pressure, let's say, on both sides, but to communicate fairly and honestly. and we will continue to do that because we have a vested interest there. >> all the way in the back.

>> [inaudible] mr. minister, in the kurdish areas of syria you have now a tight between the kurds and al-qaeda, and the president of the krg has said that he might use force to protect the kurds. so what i'd like to know is what is the position of the iraqi government to -- [inaudible] a segment sending forces across the worder into syria -- border into syria? would that be part of your policy, and also what do you think should happen with the syrian kurds? thank you. >> thank you. good to see you. thank you. this is a good question again. in fact, there has been fighting, tough fighting between al-nusra and some other qatari, i don't know, many of the extremist groups with the kurdish or the pyd party there

which is in charge. there has been some massacres reported by the killing of hundreds of civilians on ethnic base or on -- and this has raised alarms really in the kurdish community throughout the region, but also in the krg to do something to defend or to protect the kurds and syria. but these decisions really need to be coordinated. we've discussed it in baghdad, and the iraqi government, prime minister maliki and the government, are fully aware of the tension in syria and the danger of al-nusra, al-qaeda nexus taking place across the border in syria or to control

out of space areas that say, to declare an islamic state. but i believe what president b barzani said, really he will ask the newly-formed congressional committee to investigate this before making any decision. so it's not sending anyone across the tigris to fight another war. still there has been discussions, i think, between the syrian opposition recently to resolve this conflict, but any decisions, i think, will be coordinated with the government of iraq. it will not be unilateral by the krg. ..

>> that is why we are here, basically, to get more help and support because, really, al-qaeda and the network and affiliates is as real a challenge to the stability of iraq and to the region. we see the merging between al-qaeda, iraq, syria, and other affiliate groups. they are flourishing in this kind of circumstances. that said, they have experience

in combating al-qaeda, iraq, and its intelligence on al-qaeda, their network, on fighting them. i think the counterterrorism technique, we have to benefit from this to better relations with the united states' security forces to enhance our abilities and capabilities, really in terms of technology, weapons because it's not -- it's not going to stop them, i think, al-qaeda, as such. we have our own failure. with the government, we have admitted them, we could do a better job, but, really, the challenge is beyond our capabilities.

>> thank you. >> good to see you, again. i'd like to follow up on this issue -- >> introduce yourself. >> mark, sorry. on the issue of counterterrorism. you identified it as probably the key issue inside iraq now bringing you here to washington, d.c., yet you preemptively taken off any option of u.s. military support, what you referred to as boots on the ground, is that an iraqi decision not to ask for american troop support to provide expertise, or is that an american political decision placed upon you or a combination of both? >> really, we are not sure of boots on the ground. we have nearly one million under arms, and thanks to you and the u.s. for helping to raise and train this. it's not the number of boots on

the ground or american soldiers in iraq. no, this is not the request for my government or to reintroduce u.s. troops in iraq. in fact, i have the numbers, but as you know, the -- we have security cooperation with you, within the security office attached to the embassy in baghdad, and the strategic frame work agreement with room to support and enhance iraqi democracy and support on the efforts when we drafted, actually, or reagreed on that agreement that with conscious in the future we may need future assistance and help. there are many ways you as a military commander, you know that, there are many ways that military could do to provide health short of that. of sending troops into iraq.

it's not the request of my government, actually, and i don't think there's any advertising or willingness here also to send troops abroad or to engage into another conflict, to. >> thank you very much. i'm josh with news week and daily beast. thank you for your time today. as you know, as we discussed increased security cooperations, one of the main requests of the iraqi government is for new u.s. arm sales to iraq. lawmakers here in washington are concerned about those sales for two reasons believing that iraq is still allowing iran to use iraqi air space to promote the flow of arms to the assad regime, and also there's concerns that the iraqi government may use u.s. weapons to have the opposition as we've seen in the past. what assurances can you give us on this specific front?

what steps are you taking to stop the flow to assad, and what assurances do you have as we approach next that u.s. weapons will not be used for domestic political purposes? thank you. >> definitely my government will abide by all the rules, the regulations, you here in the united states or congress will impose on all this -- not on iraq, to many other countries in the world, so we'll abide by that, definitely, for this weapons, not to be used for domestic use or improperly. used for the defense of the country. know, on the flight of -- the over flight of iranian using iraqi air space, let me give you that reality. sometimes we're talking theoretically about the situation as if iraq has dozens

of fighters or aircrafts. for your information, u.s. doesn't have a single fighter plane. up until now. it has a couple helicopters from training, let's say, planes, small plane, but it doesn't have a single aircraft to protect its -- iraq, up until now, does not have an integrated self-defense to protect its skies. we have requested. we are waiting for the delivery. that is the situation when we talk about iraq's capability and deterrence capabilities from others using its air space and so on. we have made the marchs to iranians. we don't want, we don't report

you or any other to use our air space because it runs against our policy of taking an independent mutual position here, not to militarize the conflict in any way, and we have done a number of inspections. these inspections could not be be -- i mean, endorsed by some here in the united states that this could choose only those with legitimate equipment or material, but we have raised the possibility, really, we will continue to live up to our commitments here, but there are security council resolutions banning this from leaving iran. i mean, under charter seven whether it's weapons, import, export, we don't have the capabilities of enforcing this.

yes, as politically, we've made these, but who is going to reenforce that? is it the security council or who? we've taken note actually that there's serious concerns about the flight. i can tell you know they have gone down. they may have not stopped, but believe me, we have no ways of making sure, weapons, equipment, not only iran that is providing syria by arms ammunitions, russia, other sources, it's very clear that it's seen daily, and how much weapon has gone into syria. here we don't want to see -- to take or view iraq as a whipping ball for failing to hold others

to their commitment. you live up to your commitment. i think we'll do more, let's say, to live up to our commitment, to stop, to prevent any further legitimate flights. again, that's an international locate here for the agreement and arrangements between countries and so on, but we have taken note. >> mr. minister, i'd like to -- sadie mar, independent scholar on iraq for a long time. i want to add a word of welcome, and please, come visit us more often. i do have a question. i'd like to get back to oil. one of the things that you know is inhibting investment is lack

of the core. how close is iraq, really, to achieving a hydrocarbon law, and give us sense of all the pipeline proposals we hear about to take place. the independent one from kurdistan to turkey. the new one from baghdad through cur key -- turkey, potential through jordan. what do you make of those, and how realistic are any of them? >> good to see you, phoebe, in the same spirit. the hydrocarbon law is one of the key political challenges for iraq or for the new iraq. on the basis of the iraqi institution, that desolves power among the region and people and only recently the iraq parliament passed legislation to

enhance the powers of the government, of the local authorities in each threat in iran. it has been a political issue wean the krg and the baghdad, really, this hydrocarbon law. we had a version we agreed in 2007. that was sevenned by both sides, but it didn't materialize. still, it is the key reference point. because of the deteriorations of the relations of the krg and baghdad, there's been a separation of thinking, of planning, of using the oil resources, and approaches with turkey, and iran also for your information, most of turkey, but, really, i'm not pessimistic and hopeless that for finding,

benefits the country, benefits everybody, and enhances the iraqi oil industry, the issue of ownership, the issue of reliability for other investors to work in iran on this very, very important subject, and it is a top issue in all the political meetings between the -- but whether it could be an act as of soon, really, i don't want to give you any false impression. i believe this issue is one of the existential issues in the new iraq. it has to be resolved with partnership, with participation, with genuine resolutions of the key political issues with

hindering iraq. i personally believe there's better atmosphere now, better communication, and recently, after the exchange of visits from the prime minister, there's been to baghdad, agreed to address the issue promptly and to form a serious technical commitment to look at the issues, and that's also related to the hydrocarbon law, the revenue sharing and country as a whole there related. these two issues, i think they are do baling, but depends a great deal on the political understanding between the leaders, yes, the krg is trying to enhance its position in opening up to turkey, and relations with baghdad are not in the best stage which is something we are trying to

normalize relations between baghdad to benefit all including the krg, and this pipeline is -- they are also controversial issues to be honest with you. i mean, there's no agreement on them, and we agreed that soon, very soon, and baghdad would be a meeting of this commission to address the issue of the pipelines and to see whether we can do timize the hydrocarbon law before the end of this year or be left until next year's elections, which most lickly. >> back on the left. the last question, yeah. >> hi, wallace hayes, independent consultant, and i wanted to give you the opportunity -- a lot of people

here feel like there's been a lack of political reconciliation in iraq, and that it was -- it's been u.s. policy to support the agreement which has not been implemented in iraq, and thing following up on mr. rogan's question, why -- i'd like to give you the opportunity to explain why should the united states sell arms to iraq when, in fact, many people believe the lack of political reconciliation is contributing to some of the violence today. thanks. >> thank you. political reconciliation is the key issue, really, for iraq, for the stability of iraq, and i think all the key leaders believe that this is the way forward with the hydrocarbon law, with normalizing relations with saudi arabia, with turkey, i mean, all questions have been appointed questions about the core issue in iraq so the

political reconciliation is moving, it's not stagnant, really. i mean, look at the representatives of the community or from the parliamentary block. they are now presented in the parliament, presented in government. they may feel they are under represented or marginalized. this is a fair -- i mean, we could do more about that, definitely, but, really, the lesson that came out of this local election was very, very close. many people believe they could do with the majority democracy or political majority government, that the one sector or one group can win all over and run by themselves. it's true, they couldn't.

they could win, but they could not govern. i think everybody realized and recognized that there has to be an inclusive democracy, a sectarian democracy in iraq for this country to have any future. >> mr. minister, i heard a lot of foreign ministers speak. i don't think any has a more complex agenda or handles it as well as you've demonstrated you handled it today. i'm humbled by the fact that i think you have more friends in washington than i do, and i live here. [laughter] so thank you very much for honoring us today. we look forward to welcoming you in our new building. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> turning to egypt now, the associated press reports former egyptian president mubarak could be released from custody this week according to egyptian officials tried for killing hundreds of protesters in the 2011 uprising that led to his ousting. officials say a two-year legal limit for holding an individual in custody has expired. european union foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting this week to work on a joint response to the recent violence in egypt. about a thousand people killed there, and an official with the

european commission says diplomats from the e.u.'s member nation agreed the meeting would be held wednesday in brussels with the announcement expected today. this comes after top european union officials said they would review e.u. relations with egypt. sol call for aid to be suspended. again, that news from the associated press. coming up here on c-span2, all this week, encore presentations of q&a. today, jeff and allen sloan, editors at large for "fortune" magazine talk about jump starting the u.s. economy at 7 p.m. eastern. tonight on booktv, military history. at 8:30, victor happenson discusses "how five commanders saved wars lost from greece to iraq," at 9:25, john talks about "operation storm: japan's top secret submarines and maps to change the course of world war ii," and at 10:15, max boot

discusses "invisible armies: epic history of guerrilla warfare from ancient times to the present" tonight at 8:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span2. >> retransmission is important to the television members. i mean, there's two ways you pay for localism, local content. you pay for it through advertising models, which is the historic model of television broadcast r or now, a growing stream, retransmission consent. now, this -- it'll find its level, like any market. right now, cable pays itself far more for its content than it pays to broadcasters, and the truth of the matter is our content is the one that people watch the most. look at the hundred top shows in any given week, any four of them are broadcast content. it's worth something, and it's important that we fight and win

this battle on retransition concept because candidly, it's vital that the congress wants us to continue trying to foster localism and provide all of the things that we do to earn our licenses every day. you got to have a way to finance it. advertising, retransmission. >> head of the nab, gordon smith, on issues facing the broadcast industry tonight on "the communicators" at 8 eastern on c-span2. >> in the last few years, the left decided that the political debate is worthless. they are not going to debate policy. they are not going to debate what is the best way to solve the nation's problems. they are not going to provide evidence. they are going to haibl us morally deficient human beings unworthy of debate. >> editor at large, ben shapiro, september's "in-depth" guest taking comments for three hours live, noon, sunday the 1st. ahead, october 6th, civil rights

leader, congressman john lewis, and november 3, oprah to sinatra, your questions for kit di kelly. december 1st, christina, and january 5, radio talk show host and judicial activist mark levin "in-depth" live first sunday of every month at noon eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> now a look at the health care law, maryland democratic senator cardin talked about the problems states have of implementing the health care law because of sequestering and without federal budget agreement not letting congress repeal the health care law despite house republicans' efforts to do so more than 30 times remarking at the town hall meeting in baltimore during a discussion with health care professionals held at the baltimore's medical system new highland healthy living center. >> thank you for joining us.

this week is national community health centers' week so all over the country there are events like this and other types of events happening at community health centers. they are organizing to make sure that the country knows about our special brand of medicine, what we do, how we are doing our a-game to the table every day to serve america's communities that have many times too little access to health care, and we make it a point to bridge that gap for them. i wanted to welcome you all to the room, and i wanted to welcome senator ben cardin to the room who is no stranger to baltimore medical system, has been around knowing the baltimore medical system, assisting baltimore medical systems since i got here which was, like, 33 -- 300 years ago. [laughter] the senator was at the very beginning a great assist to the

medical system when we had the waiver. we had a medicare demonstration project through cms through many, many year, and every time it looked like it was going to end or expire, the center could be counted on to not only assure it would be continued, but to lead the effort and work with the number of other legislators around the country to make sure that that happenedded. when we wanted to build a brand new building here in highland town, he was the first one i came to see. in fact, we started the conversation when he was on one side of the hill, and we ended the conversation on the other side of the hill because it took that long for us to get the job done, but the senator was responsible for the first public money coming into this venture that eventually grew into the building you're all sitting in now. senator's been here before for the grand opening, but but we'll have a tour what it looks like

in operation in full. i wanted to thank the senator for stopping by again and helping us work through national health center week. i want to introduce for a moment to talk about the community health centers around the country. dan hawkins is, just to let you know what is happening, legislatively, at the federal level, and how senator cardin's appearance today assists that effort. >> i will do that. >> i think, probably, and it is a pleasure and honor, senator, to sit next to you. i am not sure -- i think many around the table snow senator cardin is one of the chairs, the spearhead behind the caucus and led it in a visionary way, kept us all moving forward, a

tremendous help, and it's ensuring that we continue to support biseparate san support and we believe in that a program like this deserves and should have. i'm only going to say this. there are, this week alone, there's over 1 # -- 1100 events across the country, with a hundred members of congress going on celebrating the work of the 150,000 people who work in health centers providing care to 22 million americans in more than 9,000 communities across the country, and that is a legacy for you. you've helped build this system, and it continues to carry on providing care to those, who, as jay said, otherwise would be forgotten or left behind, and that's critically important. here's a beautiful facility providing care to so many people, and this is what it's all about, and as the sort of proud organizer and sponsor of health center week, it's just an hop nor to be here. >> thank you, well, first, this

is national health center week, and i am very proud what we have done here in the community. jay and i do go back a long time, and i do remember visiting him in store fronts that were not exactly as facilitating as -- [laughter] we are here today, but, you know, it was interesting. the people who received the services in the very small crammed quarters loved the facility and loved the health care they get in the community. they were getting access to quality affordable health care, the model that you really developed here with locally, and i congratulate baltimore medical systems and jay for figuring out creative ways to keep that model alive during extremely challenging times. it's true. we did have a medicare demonstration that lasted for many years. the reason is lasted so long is because it was working. the problem is, we couldn't

figure out a model, nationally, so that you could get the type of funding you needed in order to maintain that type of service. we have timely caught up to you, we have. [laughter] we finally caught up to what you're doing here, and the affordable care act -- i think it's the right model. we want everybody in the system, but to have everybody in the system, you have to have facilities. that's what the community health centers are all about, making sure, particularly in areas that are traditionally underserved. we have modest income people, rural, minorities, areas that traditionally have been underserved so where we have large concentrations of elderly, low income people, minorities, rural parts of the country, the health centers really filled the void, but they are going to have to do a lot more, i mean, a lot more because we're anticipating numbers increase dramatically with 800,000 in maryland that are not insured today that have fallen through the cracks. within the next couple months,

expect a couple hundred thousand of those people to come within the system, and some come through the work you're doing, and i know you were able to get some funding to help us enroll people in the health system, and that's contribute comply important to get people in the system to drive down costs. there's been positive signs, and my purpose here is to let you know where we are and to get your input how to implement the bill. ..

>> have received hundreds of dollars of additional coverage for their prescription medicines. they're very happy about that, that so-called doughnut hole coverage gap is, we're getting rid of it. it's going to take couple more years, but they're already seeing the tangible benefits of that. they're getting free preventive health care under the medicare program. and no one's talking today about the solvency of medicare, because we've extended the solvency of medicare for a considerable period of time. for young people we've already eliminated the pre-existing conditions, and we now can stay on your parents' policy to age 26. that's already implemented. these are changes in the law that have already taken place. we talked a long time about

patients' bill of rights, and we were never able to get it passed. well, in the affordable care act, we've now passed a patient's bill of rights, so you have the right to choose your own primary care doctor, standards for receiving emergency care. these are changes that have already taken place. the minority health initiative which i'm particularly proud about. our office initiated this program to elevate the national institute of minority health and health disparities to a full institute at nih and develop minority health offices in all of our health departments to look at ways that we can provide and gap the coverage and services that we provide to all seem in our community. that's been implemented. and it's been implemented well. so we've already implemented a large part of the affordable care act. no lifetime limits on insurance policies. that's done. but the next critical date, well, it's actually january 1st, but it really starts on october 1st. and that's when the exchanges

are up and running. now, maryland is a state that has stepped forward from day one, and thank you, governor o'malley, thank you for what you did to recognize what you could to to help the people of our state, our congressional delegation has worked very closely with the state officials. let me thank my colleague in the united states senate, warren rah mikulski. you know her because she chairs the senate appropriations committee, but she's also a key, key member of the health, education, labor and pensions committee that is very much involved in the creation of health policy in our state. and then our congressional delegation, john sarbanes with, who holds the seat i used to hold in the house when we first started working on these issues has been a real champion on the energy committee -- on the commerce committee to help us deal with the health care issues, and elijiah cummings and dutch rumors berger, we have a real team that are moving forward to make this implementation as smooth as possible.

now, here's the challenge. there's been some difficulty in implementing this bill in washington because we haven't had the resources made available through the budget process so that it could be be done as seamless as possible. there's been no real effort in the congress to take a look at the affordable care act and to make minor changes where you need to make minor changes in order to make it easier. that has not been done because of the partisan division. we have not been able to do that. so we are up against some deadlines that are going to be difficult for us to meet, but we need your help in meeting those deadlines. the first, as i said, is october 1 when the public will have a chance to enroll in the exchanges. now, here's what the opportunity is all about. we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people in maryland who don't have health coverage today who will have the opportunity to have affordable health coverage. when i say affordable, 75, we

estimate, will be -- 75, we estimate, will be eligible for subsidies. for a fam will have oi -- family of four in our state, they're going to be el gym for some -- el gym for some help if they don't have health provided benefits. we need your help in getting that information out. we're going to also see some additional help come through the expansion of medicaid which will also provide some additional coverage that we can get people enrolled. so there's a lot of exciting things. and, of course, come january 1st the pre-existing condition exclusions are over with, and we have been able to implement a lot of new changes in the law. we've already provided small businesses with credits to help them provide insurance for their employees. now they'll also be able to get insurance through the exchanges if they meet certain standards. for companies under 50, there's no new requirements under the affordable care act. i always like to say that because we are mindful of the

impact that the affordable care act has on small businesses. i serve on the small business committee in the congress, and we wanted to make sure that this was work with bl for all wizs -- workable for all businesses. so there's no new requirement. there's a lot of opportunity. they can get credits to help pay for the cost of their employees. they can get competitive rates x they have a lot of different plans they can choose from under the exchanges that they couldn't before. so it's more opportunity out there. the question is, how do we implement this? how do we get this done right? that's where you come in. you're the community people. you know the target group we're trying to get enrolled. at this very moment, it's very difficult yet to see how you are going to work your way through the different plans that are offered. that a information is just now becoming available. so we need people to help us translate that in a way that's most effective for the people we're trying to reach. now, there are a lot of young people out there who don't have

coverage. we know that. they want, they're going to want a policy that works for them, and most young people who have not experienced a difficult health issue think they're invincible, so they don't look at why they need health insurance. we need your help, because we know how many young people get into a medical situation, and they either don't seek health care, or they're responsible sometimes for their own personal bankruptcies. a lot of people have to go through bankruptcies because of health care costs. we're trying to avoid that. so what i would like to get from you is how we can help, what tools do you need from us, what can we do to make it easier for people to get the information they need. we want people to make the right decisions about their health care needs. we know there's a lot of partisan politics played in washington these days. i am really trying to stay above

that. i mean that. i want people to make the right decisions for what is best for them. this bill is not going to be repealed. you would think the republicans in the house would have gotten the message after the 30 beth time they tried to repeal it, and it's still here. the public wouldn't let us repeal this bill. they don't want to lose the benefits they've gotten from the affordable care act. our seniors don't want to go back to higher cost of prescription drugs. families don't want to see their young 25-year-olds kicked off their health insurance policies. people like getting a check from their insurance companies that have been charging more than what we think is an acceptable rate for their health insurance. and quite frankly, americans are tired of paying the cost of other people who should be responsible for their own health care needs. that's what this is all about. so how do we implement it in a way that makes the most sense for the american people. about two weeks ago, i was in southern maryland with steny

hoyer. we had a group like this, and we got into a great discussion of some of the things we can do to help. tomorrow i'm going to be in prince george's county talking with the health care community there. so the people of baltimore, what can we do to help? what changes do you think need to be made in the law, if you think changes need to be made, what tools do you need, how can we get people information they need to make the right decisions for themselves and their families. what would you like to see the congress do, what would you like to see your senators do or your congressmen do, or what would you like to see the local health people do? we're in this together in maryland. we have the state and local working with the federal to implement this bill as easily as we can. so let me, let me pick it up, and then we'll open it up for the rest of the table. >> so medical system among all the other health centers in baltimore and many maryland are

fully engaged in the process of opening up access. one other thing that you didn't mention that the aca did was give out capital grants to organizations like us, and we are expanding and rebuilding our center at st. agnes hospital which is going to be enlarged by 9 or 10,000 square feet to allow us to grow our services on that side of town, on the west side of town to allow access. you used the word translate, the information for the patients who might need assistance. literally, we are translating a lot of services here because we have such a large non-english-speaking population. so we are going to be very much involved in the navigator program. we have nine, nine full-time equivalents that are going to be involved in outreach and in enrolling people into the program. so we're going to be everywhere in this community and around town to try to bring people in to make sure that they are getting access to the information that they need and

that they can sign up for the plans that they're eligible for. so we're going to be doing a lot of that together. i have a colleague here from the community health center movement to my left, kevin, you might want to say a couple of words about what's going, things that are going at your center, and i have sally who represents a network of community health centers down at the end of the row down there and might want to say a couple of words, and then we'll open to it up for everybody else. >> sure. and before you all start, thanks for reminding me that we -- one of the reasons there was a delay of several years before we required people to get insurance and the go into the exchanges was to develop facilities in the community so that we could handle the numbers. we just couldn't handle the numbers. we didn't have enough people trained to primary health care, we didn't have enough physical facilities to handle the anticipated numbers. we were at the same time asking the community health centers to expand their coverage as far as handling oral health care or dealing with mental health

services, counseling services as well as increasing the number of people that were coming through the community health centers. so we wanted to give time for the structures to be in place. there was $11 billion provided in the affordable care act to community health centers. i was part of the movement that made sure that money was included early in the process so that you would have some help. i'm interested as you call on the people from the community health centers whether some of that money has, in fact, been used in the -- and how is it working? i'm obviously interested in the entire country, but very interested in maryland. we found that in some of our rural areas we still don't have enough facilities in place. now, quite frankly, we're not going to roll all of the uninsured in one year. it's going to take us several years to get this up to the numbers that we expect ultimately will be in the system. so, kevin, how -- are you

getting the money? is it helping? are facilities increasing in size? is. >> we certainly are. health care for the homeless received a grant to establish a mobile program, and so we have also a new facility that opened around the same time as this one about three years ago, about three and a half miles from here. and we began to realize at the time that we were serving those that were coming to us for care very well, but there were a lot of very vulnerable populations experiencing homelessness, living under the bridge, living on park benches, and we needed to go do more to go out into encampments to engage people into care to get them off the streets and back into the mainstream. for us one of the main benefits of health reform, and we appreciate your leadership, is medicaid expansion. currently, 23% of the 6,000 different baltimoreans has medicaid. the large majority are uninsured. after 2014 as many as 85% will be eligible for medicaid, and in cases for the very first time.

eligible for additional specialty services in the community. for an organization like ours, it's making a transition from primarily a grant-funded organization to an organization that bills insurance companies. that's a fundamental business transformation for us, and the time that you referenced over the last couple of years has really allowed us to dig into our billing systems and overhaul them and change them such that we feel quite ready if advance of 2014 -- in advance of 2014 to go out onto the streets and end roll more people into care. we'll be receiving as many as six new staff members who will go out to the streets, to shelters, to soup kitchens and very actively enroll individuals and families into care, in cases as i said for the very first time. so we appreciate your leadership and look forward to this transformation. a question i would have for you, we also participate through the national health care for the homeless council, and on our

policy calls we have some individuals who are very excited about medicaid expansion and what it means for organizations, and then we have about half the call that live in states who are not expanding medicaid. and it's going to be the same old same old for the vulnerable populations that they're serving. what's your perspective from capitol hill? it's my hope, medicaid itself is an optional program, and yet every state participates. it's my hope that once the political rancor dies down, more and more states are come over and meet some pressing needs in their communities. am i being pollyannaish? >> no, i think that's exactly what's going to happen. we're finding more and more governors in states that resisted the obamacare now applying for funds to implement obamacare. we're finding more and more examples where communities are seeing services many other area,

other states saying why aren't we having that here in our own state. so i think you're absolutely right. as the affordable care act gets fully implemented, as states expand their medicaid population as maryland will be doing and as more of the uninsured come into the system, i think the states that have been resistant will say how can we deny that to the people of our state? we're turning -- we're losing money, and we're losing services. that doesn't make sense. plus, it's working. it's a lot more efficient to provide services to people on a reimbursement structure than it is to rely on third party grants that may or may not be there the following year. i mean, it's wonderful that we have programs at the national level that help our veterans, help homeless, help target groups, help minorities, but that funding source hasn't been very steady. look at what happened with sequestration. so it'd be much safer and smarter and less expensive if we

had third party reimbursement for these types of -- i think more and more states will realize that. the last thing is that states pride themselves in wanting to regulate their own hiss in their own states -- businesses in their own states, particularly insurance businesses. and with the exchanges now will be up in states operated by the federal government because the states have not stepped forward, there's going to be a real challenge as to how the states can regulate a federal exchange. and i think more and more states are going to realize that they're compromising their own capacity to protect their own citizens without taking over the exchanges. so i think more and more states will start to take over the exchanges. so i agree with you, i think it's just going to be a matter of time when this will be implemented in a seamless way and that we will have a uniform policy. part of why we expanded medicaid was to make sure that we didn't have people falling through the cracks. and we did it as a seamless

model. now, with the supreme court decision it validated the constitutional authority of congress to pass the affordable care act, but it did provide some gaps in what we originally intended because of the expansion of medicaid. we think states will recognize that and want to come forward and let federalism work in its best way. >> we're thankful for maryland's leadership. >> oh, yes. governor o'malley has been great. it's not just the expansion of medicaid, it's not just how early he got involved in working on the exchanges, but the fact he gave confidence to insurance companies, gave confidence to health care providers that the state would be a full partner in this so that there was much more willingness of providers and insurers and companies to step forward and say, well, how can we make this work. so we've had a real partnership in our state thanks to governor o'malley's leadership. >> do you want to talk about some of the community health centers? let me take a moment to

recognize dr. alan bennett who just walked into the room. >> sure. we know each other. >> thank you, and good afternoon, senator. good to see you again. >> yes. >> yeah. i mean, there's a lot going on in every one of our 16 health centers in large part not only to what the state's doing because the state's been a real partner. medicaid has a program going on through dmhmh, department of health and mental hygiene as early as now trying to enroll as many people in our pac program so that they automatically convert in january as well as working with health care for all, an organization here in baltimore city, to, again, identify people who potentially could be enrolled in pac. so we have a real ground game going on. and then, of course, the exchange and medicaid have a partnership in which they're going to be partnering with the

health centers in order to get the word out through various kinds of social and other forms of media so that we can reach as many people as possible. so i think the money, the $150 million is very helpful because it's helped our health centers to add additional staff so that they can do inreach and make sure that our uninsured patients get converted to medicaid or get channeled to the exchange if that's appropriate as well as going on into the community and, again, trying to reach people and bring them in not only for care, but also to get enrolled in medicaid or, if they qualify, you know, again channel to the exchange. so i think we have a lot going on. the health centers have been very busy with the hursa funding over the last two or three years trying to recruit providers, renovate facilities, enlarge

facilities, build new facilities. we just opened one on thursday at franklin park in prince georges county which is very exciting. and so i think we've had a lot going on. i think what concerns me is, and you mentioned it, this is not a one-year, just a few months activity. i think that we're going to see the continuation of enrolling people in medicaid, getting them into exchanges, identifying new populations for the next actually, i think, the next three, four, five years. and so i'm very concerned that we continue to have the level funding that we've had over the last few years in the subsequent years. we have more building to do. you know, we've tried to make projections. we've done all kinds of reports and calculations. we really don't know what the volume is going to be, because every day our health centers identify somebody new for

medicaid eligibility. so i think, you know, we're going to continue to need to recruit providers to expand our facilities, to identify areas of the state, you know, where services are needed to develop new partnerships as we try to integrate somatic and behavioral health care. so that's probably my question and my challenge to you, similar to kevin, is what can we also do to insure that we continue to get the level of funding we've had under the aca a through 2014? >> no, the funding authorizations are pretty stable. we have a federal appropriation process, we have two problems there. one is that we're operating without a budget agreement, and we desperately need a budget agreement. sequestration is really hurting this country badly. be and it's unnecessary. it's mindless across-the-board cuts. so we have to replace

sequestration. no one's talking about just eliminates it without comparable savings. we can get savings. part of the savings we can get is in health care by bringing everyone into the system, delivery system reforms. er time the joint -- every time the joint tax committee congressional budget office has scored the health savings, we've always been very conservative. we're going to get better savings. we've got to get it implementedded. so we need the funding in order to get it implemented properly. we need a budget agreement that makes sense, gets rid of sequestration and allows for the proper funding of government. the second is that we have to get over the political hurdle we've talked about before. and i just want to raise a point here because there's been a sharp difference in how the opponents of affordable care act have handled the policy of health care than previous problems we've had in health care expansion. under george w. bush we expanded

the prescription drug part d. i opposed that. i opposed it because there was not a governmental plan available. i thought we should -- there was not universal pricing which i thought would bring down the costs dramatically. i think i'm right about both of those points, by the way. but the day after it was passed, i worked to make sure it was implemented as best we could. we worked together to make it work. and we're not seeing that on the affordable care act. we're seeing almost just a political isolation of this issue just calling it politics rather than trying to make it work the best that you can and seeking changes that you think should be changed. so i'm hoping that we can get to that point, and we can get the resources necessary to make sure this law is implemented fairly. because you're absolutely correct. it's not going to be a one-year implementation of the personal mandate. it's going to take a long time. it's going to take years. we know that. we also don't know what type of

group will enroll in the first year. it might surprise people and be very much typical of the unrest which will alleviate a lot of the concerns of the private insurance companies that are participating. it may, in fact, as we think, bring down the rates, and you might have more choice and may implement a little bit faster than we anticipated. it might be just the reverse. we don't know. but we're going to need your active help throughout this process to keep on target so that we can get by the end of a couple years, we hope it's three years, four years, we can get the overwhelming majority of people in the system whether they're in medicaid or in the exchanges, that we can get them into the system. and we think we can within a short period of time. but we do need your participation which means we need to make sure those programs are adequately funded. >> so i'm going to take the prerogative one more time, and then i'm going to let the room open to up.

[laughter] of being the host here. so at the ground level, at the patient level, it's really important that this program continue, that this program be implemented well and that we have the means to do all the various things that we've talked about here, provide the care, enroll the population, meet the needs of folks who need an integrated model, a patient-centered type of model. dr. emily sipple is down at the end of the table here, she's a family physician who has been working here for a number of years and who, i think, can give really a patient-side view and provider-side view of what it means to deliver care in this setting and what access to additional insurance might mean for the populations that we serve here. >> absolutely. one of the biggest frustrations, honestly, is that while i'm very thankful for the existence of the pac program, i have so many patients show up expecting full

services. and i'm, i'm the one that has to tell them, i'm sorry, you need this ultra sound, you need this stress test, but you're going to have to pay for it. so i'm so excited that through the affordable care act that those patients will finally be able to get the full care that they need, and i won't have to worry that he might have a heart attack on his way out the door because he can't have that stress test. i will add, also, that while i'm excited we'll be able to finally service the entire community, i am worried we don't have enough clinicians to actually provide those services. so i'm hopeful that there's some foresight there as far as making sure that we have the clinicians that we need. honestly, this is going to sound a little bit cynical, but money talks, and until primary care is reimbursed at rates comparable to the specialties, it's going to be a losing battle. just a few insights from my side. >> no, we agree with you. as i said, we tried to put some

of that policy into the affordable care act. we did. there's areas to help deal with the cost of training for those that go into primary care. there was an emphasis to get more people trained in primary care. one of the issues we have not dealt with yet which could be dealt with as early as this year is what do we do with the physician reimbursement structure under the medicare system which is the huge issue, the sustainable growth rate, sgr. and there's general agreement that we've got to fix it, that the current system doesn't work, and we have to start with the current reimbursement as the base. and the good news is that we can do it this year for a lot less cost than last year. the reason is that health care costs are down. costs are down. physician -- we can do that. but now what do we replace it with moving forward? and you really put your finger on the challenge. we want to, we want to do two

things when the replacement that would answer your question. one is we want to reward what you do here. that is, we want to reward taking care of the patients rather than taking care of one of the symptoms of the patient, one of the diseases. so that if you can understand that that in taking care of a person's diabetes you're also dealing with their heart, you're also dealing with the other -- the blood pressure. so much of this is interrelated, and you're managing the full services rather than just taking a piecemeal and billing separately. that's a particular problem, by the way, with hospital care this our country. in our country. how do we manage a person in a way that can reduce hospital admission rates and can reduce the unnecessary duplication of tests that take place and also better care of the patient itself? so that's one of the issues that we're trying to deal with on the