come, that we may be able using 2014 to try to think about how can we look at the decisions we are making about india, which have largely had different actors and players than the issues we've been dealing with that we can try and come up with priorities that has something to do with all three were all for. about these regions. there is no drive to do this. there will be less drive, impulse to play close attention when a certain number of troops -- there will will be very strong reasons why most american policymakers will say that is so yesterday. i want to work on crimea, i want to think about -- not that we

get so tired of thinking about -- the danger and the let thesey of let's guys solve it on their own, and what all three of us have said is they can do that. it may not be the way we like. i think for the past 10 years, 15 ars,ven the past ten years, 15 years, maybe even more, the u.s. government has made policies towards pakistan basically out of fear of the bad things that could have been if things go bad very at the policy towards india is made out of hope that good things would have been if we got things right. now there are good reasons for both of these attitudes. neither is a sufficient basis for the policy but you still have to deal with those, that basic structure.

since we establish the bureaucratic structure pakistan has been joined at the hip in terms of afghanistan. and although it is in my judgment of the more important country for the united states in the long term though we may not want to argue with that although it is my view anyway is the junior partner bureaucratic leave this up. in spite of the reasons that we articulated, we need to start cultivating some aspects of the relationship with pakistan that are not derivative of afghanistan. we have done that kind of a

transition in india in the sense that one of the most successful areas of the changing relationship with india is the way that we both look at east asia where india is trying to expand its role and the interests of line pretty well. so that is the de- asian part of it. i think this is harder to do. i think there are some ... road may lend themselves to this kind of treatment. i am not sure that we are there yet. afghan security should be more of them but i don't think that india and pakistan are there for reasons that have already been mentioned.

they are united in their opposition to some of the things the united states would like to do. there may be a blow for unity but it's not likely to be a lead item in u.s. policy towards the region. i think that we have our work cut out for us on this. i would like to see enough improvement on the relations that we could in fact build on the opening and i still think that the best candidate for that is the trade openings that these countries have been working on them consistently for a while. but if they were actually able to complete the first round of actions that they've supposedly in principle agreed on.

at least for the comment of consultations on issues where we really do have common concerns. i'm not quite sure they are ready for afghanistan to be part of that but that would be my favorite candidate. >> it doesn't need to be seen as only government to government -- spinet i agree. it's something quite attractive to that sort of the business we have academics very engaged and one of the reasons i like best about pakistan as it is an enormous subtopics factor and it is a great partner for the american philanthropic interest that is you need not have the tt kind of legislation for the kind

of bureaucratic structure to be able to engage in the country that underscores. we can do this and we don't just have to do it through the state. >> kathy robinson and my question is for doctor brown. when it played a term in this role and coming out for the vote and what does the future look like and how will web into play this role in the government going forward and how will that shape outcomes in afghanistan? and if there are thoughts on how

the leaders and provide adults where can play a role in helping promote further governance in afghanistan that would be great to know. >> i am a researcher at the brookings institution. and i was curious regarding the future ultraliberal relationship between india, afghanistan and iran regarding the port. i was curious. i was curious to know the opinions on whether regarding the limitations or prospects in terms of india and afghanistan regarding this port.

hispanic i'm going to take one more from the panelist right behind you. >> my question i was wondering what you think will be the biggest implications for the u.s. india relations under the government and do you think there will be significant changes in the relationship or things will mostly stay the sa same. >> the understanding of the make or break a win for the immediate future of afghanistan and in the old spontaneously much of it has to do with the work that the afghan civil society had performed in the mobilization and engaged over the past two years and the women's groups played an important role for the

electoral reforms that are being passed from 5% to 20% but because of the activity and the response in the women's group and the society group it is completely flashed. both of the candidates have the sense that women would be accorded from a greater role and a genuine embrace in the karzai administration as a reformer class and when he embraced as the base in the world bank or the women's rights and very much responsiveness to the

traditional sectors in society that have not been used in the opening for women. they will be even under the new president and it will continue to be a very tough engagement for afghan women. it is quiet on the traditional sectors about the rights that women have acquired and many of these rights are flimsy through such women it's still a function of whether they have a father or husband and for women to have independent social roles is close to impossible without the approval.

it will be a function of a long-term process of renegotiations of the relationships in society. what will enable that is a thriving economy. the worse the economy gets the greater the reason they are having access to the jobs. the other important factor is what happens in the security stability. the more unstable the country is the more disintegration to words the women's issues in afghanistan and at the first there is the focus of the international community which has been the principal supporter of the women's groups.

everyone is tired and we will see significant impacts on the women's groups and civil society but what you highlighted is something important in the civil society that expands the odd looking at the west and that the united states and the signs into the places with pakistan. some of the issues are very much analogous to say they have to be decided by the lion in the same difficult complicated ways that the two countries are divided. the alliances can affect beyond the economic engagement. >> there are of course other aspects into civil society.

there are other groups like pakistan that are trying to cultivate into the future is sometimes simplistically penned. the people would bring to washington are a fraction of much larger youth up for grabs which can go in a really good direction and it can go in a really interesting direction were very troubled corrections. >> mr. ambassador. >> i'm juggling to pass.

>> they value the relations with iran hugely for a lot of reasons but one of them is that iran has been willing to work with them to provide land access through the ports. actually, i think the more relevant point is the access to central asia because it is a backdoor that continues to be an impossible and that will become an attractive future. but none of us talked about and it is too late to introduce the discussion now is the future role in afghanistan and i think that is going to be a big question having to do with afghanistan's future. if i could backtrack to what was said about women's groups and talking about other places that the groups might find useful to talk to and think about, don't

forget about the bangladesh and afghanistan and there is an amazingly lively scene in bangladesh that decided on the houshouse rules that were not different than that which they described that have carved out for themselves and also achieved acceptance on the scale of the people wouldn't have expected so that is an interesting thing to look at. u.s. relations. the focus on economics and is a feature of foreign policy will be very welcome in washington. it will be somewhat worrisome.

it may be a problem for him. the technical term for this is that the inadmissibility would be waived. that makes it sound nice and grow credi -- bureaucratic. i think that it would be a regional coalition it looks like actually the easier one to deal with. they have been making some position with the figure.

when we call on the business leaders about a year ago, and they were all breathless about how wonderful he was, the second talking point was always that there were 27 muslim legislative assembly members who got themselves elected on a ticket. i will let you interpret that as you well but with an indication that even before they were going out hot and heavy during the campaign he was trying a bit to reinvent itself. the other interesting fact. it was on carrying hindu pilgrims. the bomb went off in a hindu temple bought a dog barked. no riots or nothing.

that brings yo points you to cos one is the chief minister had to get control of the law-enforcement apparatus. the other is that he had concluded that the rioting wasn't working for him anymore. that may not be morally optimistic that if the logic still holds then maybe it would've saved india from further horrible troubles like the ones they went through at the time. >> we thank you for being here. please join me in thinking that panel. o-osca [applause]

>> host: the bipartisan policy center, does america have a savings problem fixed >> guest: a very serious one. i think most people underestimate how little americans are saving. if you take a look at the savings rate, the one trend that you recognize off the bat is a downward trend not just because of the recession but it has been a trend of the last 40 years in this country even though people are getting older at a faster rate people take medicare everyday, the savings rate has

gone down. at the same time that big social programs, social security, disability insurance are running out of money. baby b. they have a trust fund with their name added as an accounting treasury which isn't true but right now social security is actually paying more in benefits every month than it takes in the new taxes. about two years from now it will become insolvent and congress is going to have to do something about that so between personal savings declining and real problems with the federal programs is pretty much an emergency. >> host: why has this great been going down and first of all can you explain the charge? there is a green line and then there is the red line going down. >> guest: there are variations that go up and down and what the

red line does is try to track the trend in the variation vario you can see that it's definitely downward. >> host: i noticed that the upward line seems to happen during the down economic times. >> guest: we saw the savings rate increase because people were afraid to spend and make new commitments. it's kind of a hard problem. you want people to save money, invest and at the same time 70% of our economy is based on consumption so it is a very tough situation and when good times come back which i think they slowly are people tend to want to buy things. >> host: why has that trajectory gone down? is very cultural reason? are we dependent on the government, do we think that money is there for us?

>> guest: i was named to something called the federal retirement investment board by president ronald reagan and we just started this new plan. you can also kind of go over to what is called a defined contribution plan you put in a certain amount of money and you don't know how much it is going to be 50 years from now as opposed to a defined benefit plan to a certain amount of money and they promised retirement. the treasury department had a very low participation rate in the new program. but the people at the department of defense had a very high presentation rate and one of the reasons that we approved this was that in the military they said sign this form. okay we will take 3% or

something like that and it was a much more pleasant prospect in the treasury tha but we were surprised at the difference in the people participating in the plan that if you gave 5% it would automatically double your money. the education, part of it is habit and part of it is the kids in their 20s are in mortal and by the time they are in their 40s they say now i have a child, i have a mortgage, i have college loans and all of a sudden they find that they cannot save. >> host: we are talking with the character at the bipartisan policy center used to work for senator pete domenici who ran the budget committee over in the senate and worked on the board as he said the point about president ronald reagan. we are going to talk about the savings rates and the bipartisan policy center savings initiative

that we have done the phone lines a little differently this morning for the segment so we want to get you active and involved in this as well. we've divided them by age so if you are 50 years or under the number to call his (202)585-3880 we thought this might add to the conversation when it comes to savings etc.. the next is 51 to 64 about the mid-level range where you start to hopefully think about retirement and things like that. those of you that are 65 and older you can call 3882. what is the new initiative put out by the policy center collects >> what we announced to the day beforthe daybefore yesterday isn of about 20 men and women representing all of the stakeholders in the retirement question. the former chairman kent conrad and the former corporation

guaranteed corporation had jim lockhart are the cochairs and if you take a look at what we have put together, we have everyone from people who believe everything out to be federalized to people who believe that that is a part of the problem. our job is to bring together these people. we have two members of the board of trustees of social security try to come up with some solutions and recommendations. the question is why your you doing it because the congress here is why we think that it will be useful. we think in 2015 with the disability trust fund nearing insolvency and probably going to become insolvent in the late 16th and early 17th.

the congress has to act they will have to act on the question they might in fact a site take on the question of the private savings, public savings like social security, yet we might be able to get some reforms. so, part of this is rolling the dice by 2017. they are going to have to be federal legislation. >> host: do you have a specific legislation you would like to see past? esko there are big plans for the members of congress. david kamp and the chair of the ways and means. mr. thomas harkin who is retiring. paul ryan has a combination of anti-poverty and retirement ideas and so you have both sides left and right and we are trying

to bring them together. >> host: more households at risk in retirement. in 2010 this big red bar goes up to 50%. what does this mean? >> guest: part of it is from the recession even though the savings rate went up and part of it is that people simply are not taking advantage of the federal programs and programs that work. it is so complex and there are variations of those tax incentives that really and truly most people come and i'm not talking about people who don't care about this. i'm talking about people nearing

retirement age only about 46% of people who've access to this take advantage of it. human beings was strange creatures but hope for the future. if you're seeing retirement -- >> host: when you say they are in danger at risk of retirement what does this mean? the average person moves to be 85. 80 to 85 on medical advances retires at 67. you have almost 20 years of retirement ahead. there may be a couple other things you get in light of the pension from somewhere but if you wish to keep your same standard of living that you have now you won't buy as many clothes, and you want to keep

your basic standard of living as it is going to be in the future, that is what we mean by rrw at risk of running out of money and about risk is that many americans are at risk of running out of money and retirement. >> host: they didn't save enough in 2013. this rid of our household with the account that says 100,000 right there. and all households interpreted this for us. >> guest: we talked up a four o. one k. and ira and most of these people are not saving enough because $100,000 isn't way to get you through 16 years at least in america. you are going to have to have social security with it. but even when the social security has $22,000 a month, you are going to find you are

running out of money and the people that have no retirement accounts, $12,000 depending on where you live will get you through half a year even in the cheapest part of the united states. >> host: it take some calls. we are going to begin with rick. can you give a snapshot how old are you and what is your savings rate? >> caller: i was smart enough or stupid enough to work a full-time job, plus three or four part-time jobs as a hospital pharmacist and i see whatever i could. i paid off my house in the early to mid 40s. so i was brought up pretty well for the future.

i've been hit with some arthritis, so it's a little disturbing to hear that there's only two years left on the disabilities. but i think the main reason why they are going down on the family savings is that people whether they are college-educated or sixth-grade educated realized that the money isn't worth what it is next year or the year after that. and that's why they haven't been putting it away. it's not i feel a lot of social programs are that aspect. it's just an offense where they may see the boxes of sued they look the same on the side of it when they look at a deeper it's not 16 ounces anymore is 14 ounces and they've kept the price about the same but it's still a form of information.

they didn't join the programs because they knew what was happening. >> host: thank you sir. >> guest: this erosion in the currency that he describes is a very serious issue. it's great that he saves the way that he does and very few people do that anymore. but we are in a very difficult economic times. we have to be honest about that. we have not had a good recovery and this is one of the slowest recovery is in our history. and we are doing it only because the federal reserve board is really buying a centrally is a the buyer of last resort for things like mortgage-backed securities into treasury instruments. so that there is this erosion. it is then decide the economic theory. the dollar has been growing

consistently for a long time. i used to work for a man named warren buffett when he took over a new dork and one thing he's always said is that he worked better on a weak dollar and he has been right now for about 25 years. so, this erosion means more pressure is put on people in retirement because if the dollar value goes down with a half a percentage or something like that and inflation is let's say 2% you have to make 2.5% return on where you put your investment so you get the treasury note and it's really hard for people to find things they can't believe in. if there is a little bit of, you know, this is a losing game i'm not going to participate. because lord knows what is going

to be around the corner 30 or 40 years from now so that is what people are familiar with. that is a serious problem that you version of the currency. >> is there any correlation between income and savings. >> guest: that is absolutely right. the problem isn't that rich people are not saving enough money. that isn't the problem. the problem is the working middle and lower middle class in the country isn't saving enough money because in large part they are not making enough. we talked about the currency getting a road it as the dollar value is going down. if you take a look at the last 25 years, the median income in this country after inflation has barely moved up so we took about 25 years of the new cost and

inflation and 25 years of people buying homes and putting their kids through college and get after inflation, they have seen very little increase in their income and that's a very important part. >> host: how old are you? >> caller: 948. >> host: how would you describe your savings right now for the retirement? >> caller: we have 10,000 because i came here when i was 27-years-old from jamaica. i want to ask you this [inaudible] before the social security trust fund from the social security? and the other, when i wor work a bigger thousanat abig thousand e government takes 200 out. $140 goes to the federal government and the rest goes to

social security medicaid and medicare. why $170 on my check and they give me the rest. i much money the government holds into the social security trust fund. >> guest: it is $26 trillion in the social security trust fund. that is a little bit misleading because what we did in 1983 is we set up a system where we ask people for the social security trust fund that we had before and we change the retirement age so that we could find people in the 80s, 90s and 2,000. so your point is right.

it's the most disturbing thing. for most americans who earn a paycheck they pay more in taxes the important thing to remember is this. the taxes for social security and medicare are paying the present beneficiaries. it's not like you put $100,000 into a trust fund for social security and it goes up by 3%. i'm getting a reasonably good return on the social security. reasonably good.

the next generation after me my kids and my grandkids will not make nearly as much money. they won't make as much money as they put into social security. why? because honestly, working people right now are paying my social security. so, this cannot go on forever. some people have called it a different names. different names. i don't think calling it derogatory names is good. social security pays more every to ban it take takes and because two-point takes him because that's two points eventually it would run out about 2036. that sounds like a long way away but if you are 35 )-right-paren that feeds you are going to be 57. and you are going to be looking at retirement within the next ten years and say what you mean social security isn't going to pay me? i contributed to it.

of this question is really very serious because so many people are affected because it comes right out of your paycheck. >> host: here is a chart put out by the bipartisan policy center. could you come up with $2,000 in 30 days? 56% of americans said yes, 25% said no. another 19% said only by selling possessions or. >> guest: that really summarizes the problem. what about those 50% in this case who would either have to say i couldn't or have to sell some possessions they have or go to a payday loan. it's difficult for those people to save. one of the things we hope to do in this bipartisan policy center initiative is figure out how we can help people in lower income brackets to save more so that in

fact it goes up. but i wonder if people realize i made a joke recently it wasn't a joke i was in new york talking to some people to whom ar do now going to depend on social security for their retirement and the guy next to me said nobody can live on $46,000 a year. $46,000 a year is a good salary. they kind of looked at me and it made me realize. they do not make a great deal of money into the home savings. it's not the first thing that comes to mind is a how to be changed the law to encourage the savings especially when you get

out of the median and the lower income classes. >> caller: good morning gentlemen. i don't mean to be insulting to you, but the song that you just saying it's the most popular going around all of the talk shows in this day in time and that is you are only going to draw 75% of your social security. well, in 1968, president johnson rated of the trust fund to pay for the vietnam war which you do is futile. in 1983 you put a fix on it and they still have their hands in the cookie jar. and my question is why isn't

someone making these people in washington pay this money back now? a week ago i picked up the newspaper and i read an article where one of the agencies of the federal government is missing $6 billion that they can't account for it if they reported this to the administration. why isn't someone doing something about this? >> guest: >> host: we are going to leave it there. >> guest: the main reason we cannot pay back the money to people who in fact have given it to the social security trust fund goes back to what i said earlier. there is no trust fund except only what you are doing when you pay your taxes were social security and medicare taxes you are funding people like me, present beneficiaries. i am not getting back the money

that i did i paid in is securit. you are in fact giving me money so that i can maintain my social security. so that is one reason that we can't even take the $2.7 trillion back and give it to the people. we then can have no social security payments. as far as the waste i think that we all know about the internal revenue service is into that oh back taxes last week the $6 billion being lost and accounted for. people tried i've got to tell you that the oversight in congress on these kind of issues is much less than it used to be 25 or 30 years ago. the demands of the campaigning and fund raising really have made the committees that are supposed to look at this. they have little time to perform

the oversight function. that is the sad thing. and it's also a bad thing. >> host: what is your savings retirement situation. >> caller: i hate to say that i'm actually doing pretty well because i have been saving since i was in my 20s and i've always lived very frugal in a house that is half the size of a house but a realtor would try to sell me into the joke i make is i don't save or live like an american. i said above 20% of my income if not more since i was 20. so a lot more money than i thought i ever would. i don't know what you can do for

poor people but the one thing the government does do is it incentivizes consumption and housing and all of the related expenses but it doesn't do nearly as much to support savings. in other words, when i retire i can't take a quarter million dollars of my savings and save it tax-free. but it is tax-free, right? and that is my big problem. there's a lot of what you could do to incentivize the savings. can i add one other thing. i listen to economists quite a bit and the one thing that they always talk about is the united states if you put all of this indebtedness attention, federal pensions, that indebtedness is everywhere in this country. that type of indebtedness beyond

the means to pay the state cut federal, local government throughout the united states has pension liabilities they are never going to be able to pay. >> guest: we don't have to look at detroit, we don't have to look at the towns in california that have literally declared bankruptcy above if they have. and the reason they have is because they have made commitments in the form of the future benefits, pensions and healthcare that they could not afford to make. but it's easy now to give something and perhaps reach an agreement with those of and it is to say 20 years from now we are not going to be able to afford this. a member, 20 years from now, most of the folks in office this is our indebtedness and our gross indebtedness is a serious problem we are very lucky we have the reserve currency that

is called in the world my father's family from west virginia saved they weren't many more close i'm not saying i want you to look like my father's family in west virginia. they kept their needs and someone starts right now 15% of the payroll in the savings into 25-years-old you are going to do it for the next 30 years you are not going to have a problem you are going to go into what we used to call the get rich slowly and that is in a sense what you are finding out you are doing. they raised catholic raise the cap.

they raise the medicare pact david kocab if that's done a fair amount of medicare even though it comes right out of the paycheck of people. and we are going to have to admit at some point some form of means testing and make over a certain level if someone is a millionaire and lives in palm beach florida they were up to receive as much social security regardless how much he or she put in and lives in new mexico and is barely scraping by. i don't know if the commission is going to recommend that. but the interplay between the private savings plans and that social security is one of the

most important interactions for people in retirement, and right now we know where social security is. we have got to do something about improving the incentives to stay and there are a few incentives to stay. if you look on tv you are not seeing a lot of people say don't buy a new car. save that money to keep it for 15 years. i had a 55 oldsmobile. they sold it for $90 that is absurd right now. the stuff like that it still gets you around. the whole object of the advertising of course is it

safe. you don't have the right radio in it. it's old. all in the pickup truck. what happens? the guy next to me driving a very expensive car looks at me and thinks poor guy and i say why did you waste all of that money. >> caller: i'm 32. >> host: are you saving it? >> caller: i'm a disabled veteran and i just got out of the military that i wanted to make a comment. this is the greatest country in the world. we should start with high-speed rail. we need to create more jobs in this country so that we can pay

into the system. so to have social security when i'm 62 for other people, and i think that we should just work hard to do things like that instead of coming you know, wasting time. i think that we could create a whole lot more jobs and to do better so people can put more money into the economy is to start creating more jobs. >> host: thank you sir. >> guest: that is the most important point unless we have economic growth than of these programs are going to work while. we speak about the railroads and bridges to our infrastructure is in terrible shape for a country with our wealth. we have more than 60,000 bridges that don't meet the code for example, we have the railroads that sometimes are not as good as they should be. we have taken a chance on the

roads. we have a highway bill coming in but we have to find some time this year or next. we don't have the money right now to fund this bill at any level that begins to meet the needs and you are right when we they start building them into fixing bridges we hire people for the underlining problem here is very simple area for th laste sessions as we come out of them, each one has been slower in recovery, and the growth rate has been slower after the recession ends. we are at 1.8% gdp growth after this recession. but after some point, we need to improve the infrastructure and we keep talking about it but everyone says how are you going to pay for it.

>> host: last call from st. charles missouri. what is your situation? >> caller: i have two homes one of them is on the part of the beach of new mexico during our savings was the 401 equivalent and the match that her employer gave that basically our entire savings real estate. put the kids through college with my money. if my wife divorces me i'm in big trouble. i worked in healthcare and i've seen a lot of poor people and how they live and i can't help

but think god for my situation and have no problems helping those that god was not as kind to as myself. i have a few issues you touched on some of them, inflation for seniors is an issue because they have revised how they populate the consumer price index and they always revise it down it would a proposal into the turn it on again. they're viable income goes down as down into social security cost of living in the pension cost do not keep up with inflation that needs to be fix fixed. our economy is driven by consumerism, it's not manufacturing. even the service jobs went

overseas. and credit was easy. we got ourselves in trouble economically and when you see i cannot buy that tv on credit something that puts a limit on your credit card for a sliding scale based on your taxable income it might be a good idea. >> guest: notice what he said. he said his wife's speedy love and it sounds like they've taken

full advantage of the match for the past 20 years, they paid off their debt, they put a couple kids through college, and they have done is in large part because they have saved. that's what we need to encourage. you just heard a very good story about what a working family can do. one of the questions we have iss that it is a conditionally set up house to look at this should be offered for the sake of discussion we would automatically in the n. roll

them but we get very high participation rates sometimes double bed we have i -- double what we have in america. we will give you a match unless you choose to opt out in the future you will see a lot more people with a 401k or the equivalent and more money saved >> host: less than half of americans have access to retirement. >> guest: no, this is people that have access 46%, 54 percent don't. that's correct and even among those as the chart shows you even those that in fact have access within the majority -- >> host: is it like a government-sponsored plan

>> guest: you take 5% of your income and put it away and the magic that is called doubling your money. that is a very good deal. you could put in the more but let's say you do the match. every single time you do that you've doubled your contribution in overtime as anyone will tell you there is a great power of compound interest in your favor. >> host: to buy bipartisan center hosts tutorials on what people should do to catch up on the savings in managing their money in retirement. >> guest: that is a great idea. i'm going to take it back with me because it could be useful. our website is very accessible and sometimes it has a lot of material people might find boring but sometimes it's useful.

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>> we also recognize the sharp division of opinions about the source of the documents that form the basis of our coverage for edward snowden the

controversy at times we will explore that today. the board embrace the idea that provoked a reaction of its own. the magazine enthusiastically endorsing go for all -- a war that this is the final stages doing what it is supposed to do. he had to answer questions you would rather not and will unsatisfied public or just plain false administration told the of policies. private companies had to rethink their obligation to their customers and law enforcement. people had a conversation

just about every where what they would be willing to let the nsa do. with the law, a constitution, readers even with the practice of reporting the services they might expose but on the other hand, representative peter king declared awarding the pullets your -- pulitzer is a disgrace and to the enablers to suggest that it should be prosecuted under the espionage act. leader of powers'' he was both served the papers should be praised for publishing classified information that is a lessening of the security at all think the post should be able to wrap itself in the first amendment to give itself the immunity bath at the cost zero security. let's talk about that a hell we will talk about how the

story came to be and why we decided to publish and how we think of issues of national security. certainly it should be no surprise that to make words to interrogate, prosecute, inca rcerate the powers of all if we are the federal government. >> host: activities we can ignore or in my view simply defer to the government's wishes on what we've report or how we report. would never cover it involves national security or whenever the basis of coverage is classified material. on the grounds of national security the government secretly implemented sweeping policies with profound implications for individual rights at the

experienced staff the organization relies heavily on the expertise and history of navigating the subjects imaginable. we take national security concerns seriously. it is a dangerous world. as a result of reporters communicate regularly with the pentagon and the white house and private companies. on that nsa documents being with detailed conversations on medications we withheld information that might disclose specific sources and methods. we did not agree to every request. had we done so there would been no stories whatsoever. intelligence agencies were opposed to publishing anything at all. what we saw was something that went beyond the specific methods on the

grounds of national security would reveal the nsa was engaging with surveillance and data collection of breathtaking scope and intrusiveness. when that transpired with a dramatic shift to state power and individual rights including privacy with no public knowledge and no public debate to. so now the public knows and the debate is underway now on the low turnover. cecilia is a national technology reporter for -- for "the washington post" focusing on privacy and the social impact on families. she joined the post eight years ago from russia was the tech reporter. she began her career as the bureau chief of the souls of three office and financial markets reporter in new york. it is all yours. thanks for coming.

[applause] >> fakes for your support and what was quite an endeavor from the remarks people whose names who worked here and also of the from behind the scenes to designers and editors and other reporters but i am very pleased to announce the panel that worked on this story. of pulitzer prize-winning reporter and author senior fellow at the century foundation one of three journalists who receive classified archives from madrid snowden. is currently writing a book on the industrial revolution he is humble with his submission.

alan is a national security reporter for "the post" covering government surveillance and civil liberties and has written about the nsa and the cyberpolicy and has served as the southeast correspondent between 2002 and 2006 it reported on the islamic militant net works in the indian ocean tsunami. she also cover the white house and virginia state politics in group in hawaii attending the university of california berkeley. ashkan soltani is an independent researcher focused on privacy and security and behavioral economics help stakeholders' understand the technical nature and capabilities of commercial and government surveillance and with the

division of policy at the federal trade commission and worked for.i "the wall street journal" series what they know the investigative series ian currently working with "the washington post" with the nsa. craig timberg national technology reporter also covers privacy security and surveillance. he came to the post in 1988 and has done stints as a political reporter and as the informed correspondent covering africa also the author of the book tinderbox. fate you for joining us. bible just like to start off to talk about the response is a miss long ago actually.

>> there are serious ones to be made but no more than anybody else in the number of commentators who have said that there are others who are very happy primarily for the validation that the fundamental sounds like it that can do to a democratic society for what the government is working for.

and although very clearly not operating out in the open by any stranger of the imagination these rules are subject to debate. >> anything i don't have much more to add that the reaction because of civil liberties suze intelligence committee but overall the public is appreciative. >> my favorite response has been from the tech community

because the response is the value of understanding technology to explain things more open the. answer digital media, the phone, the response how those things work to bring them to public debate how technology is no different from years ago how it impacts their lives that has been a viable response. >> for me it has been humbling and inspiring but it has also been a reminder ally was supposed to coach my son's baseball game tonight i had to say this came up that work.

what kind it? so they do we as coach craig but they did not know me to understand and how it is different for the rest of your life simic thank you coach. [laughter] there will be plenty of time for questions after the discussion. we will have almost 40 minutes. we should have received the card in your packet. we will continue to a answer questions after this event online. after the panel discussion there will be to people with microphones please stand up when you pose your question.

>> you have ben away from the post for a few years when you received the documents. with that time in your absence appointed executive edgar you did not know each other about? what about the acceptance of the postman the decision to carry forward? >> it is not obvious that i am now on contract after working there 21 years. over the course of 2014 i developed a correspondence with the man i later learned to be edward snowden. there is only one place for me it would require resources with the mutual

trust but fundamentally it would be big and hard risky decisions to be made. he was the one guy i did not know at all. but he is the managing editor he said to take on the risk to put his trust and has never laid eyes on. but the story of this magnitude would need a lot of lawyers and how to balance the risks of disclosure with the big policy decisions it is

purely journalistic. it is dead but it is the nsa documents. how do you know, ? even if it is authentic it is accurate? they have been accurate documents. and then i was asking the paper to take on all of that with the security measures that they have not had before. andrew c. answers that i got to be very thoughtful about the big decisions they have to carry them out and we embraced it. >> it was of revelation

describing in your speech in the newsroom to be on the '90s side can you talk about that? >> a little bit there are things i would not talk about but we took very seriously the responsibility to protect material we did not think that should be disclosed. that we're holding back certain elements. you do that because having consulted with the government we decided that we should withhold that stuff if you leave it to on the network or the hard drive for a hacker can come take it. so they stepped up the game. and then i don't get into the details.

>> what was your role in the coverage? talk about when you came in and what was the mission to report on the story? and how this coverage has affected change in government. >> disclosure of the policies and process with public awareness is how the landscape has changed the reporter who'd did not receive the documents directly at least. and that is unprecedented and that would not have happened if there were not for the disclosures to the

unauthorized by edward snowden but the lawmakers said journalists and others from a 2006 senator biden was warning publicly about the assistance of secret law under the patriot act the counterterrorism law passed after 9/11. but he was bound by rules from going any further and it is showing his discomfort with the interpretation and other lawmakers continued to warn about the secret log but journalists including myself tried to pry from officials some insight into what that secret lot under section 215 could be. but they were bound by

classification rules they have families, jobs, they did not want to risk. then also liberties groups the aclu which tried to force the government to be more transparent. then edward snowden came along. i remember june 5th, last year i remember the date well. a court order to verizon for directing the company's turnover the records of all customers to the nsa. now we know that is not the content but it was apparent this was a program of fast

scope in did did stunned americans. that as a they have been worried about for so many years of the other surveillance programs from the nsa and significantly doing overseas with the data centers. so from my perspective, i start to see this debate they also forced a degree of transparency from the government.

they asked them to declassify in the thousands of pages of court documents reports those that months earlier officials have been telling me is difficult to read because of the classified material. and i guess is we fallin transparent say a permanent solution behavior other in response to the disclosure one of the smartest observations from the former inspector general at the nsa and i paraphrase, with the

existence of the medicaid program the government may have avoided the short-term tactical benefits but it was an opportunity to cure the long term strategic goal with the intelligence community still make you are a technology expert brought on to help with the slides than they were cryptic to say the least and almost amateur and it was interesting to see these slides. really? isn't really part of the nsa slide? apply tupolev one.

>> is a drawing with a smiley face. >> and i see a lot of government power points one of the things that convinced me it maybe authentic is with the design. [laughter] >> can you walk us through decoding some of these? how does us slide indeed to october 30th title the link to the data worldwide? i will just quickly reid he

has sequent the broken in from around the world and interviews with other officials by collecting from at will many belonging to americans. to engineers with close ties to google's yelled with profanity and hope you publish this one of them said. talk about this about this story. >> one thing that was difficult the nsa was extremely cryptic with the secret program names the security or obscurity and go

to great planks to hide. on the other hand, it is somewhat attacking technology that we all use like the network architecture or cellphone with these underlying pathologies it will draw the not but the of the things that is interesting is i definitely got the since i know these guys. these are not the brass management the hacker community that hangs out in the on-line forum. but basically makes and

funny drawings will usually tasteless computer jokes. what of the first documents that we revered and end from that perspective is essentially how the club works or for any other major cloud providers there is a point the data between the user to say ising corrected then the internal process behind the scenes that they handle that is not anchored did with the assumption it is private so reason to in cryptic. looking at the architecture

diagram san documentation and what is publicly available and we clicked and finally the private cables between data centers in its and the cloud. and while that was interesting again thinking from the hacker never can engineer perspective to give legal constraints with targets they find interesting. with the property of the cloud architecture is you are connecting to the data center but because of the way they network looking at

all those with the power outage they're able to collect the same data that is available to use them domestically. led essentially to find ways that it is insecure on the back end and redundant immediately replicated to cross the data. that is the fun to a bowl and what was most surprising is not the secret terms but the definitions for the words you and i use every day. . .

i think that many of the late people, not involved in this world. when you come across that cartoon you say, there has to be of little story here. as smiley face. and encryption. the encryption is added and removed year. there is definitely something going on. a reason why the engineers we talked to erupted into profanity it's because of the smiley face, the declaration of victory. it was the spiking the football in the face of the company

engineers. we beat you. found a way around your security and, i mean, i would say it was either five or six weeks to figure out what that meant. it was in a lustration taken from a document called a google cloud exploitation. there are lots of times when there will be as light and power point debt taken from some other thing which will clearly answer all the questions you have, but you don't have that. you are trying to put this together. they are removing encryption, stealing from the companies? and the figured out how to break encryption, ciphers that the world thinks are secured? are they spoofing them, pretending to be google? we tried and discarded a bunch of different theories. we were not going to get the

answer. they're is a combination of documents. we get evidence of the world and to, report not only the documents, but the different sources in the world. and so we interviewed people who are intimately the lay with the architecture of the systems. run that through our computers. we figured of what was happening. >> you know, this is a moment for the tech industry as well. the response that they had to this particular story. can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the tech industry response? you and i were talking in the beginning. what are you talking about? a real roller coaster. >> my role was of little different. i covered -- i did some sort of reporting, but my main responsibility, arguably, was

keeping an eye on google and facebook and yahoo and what they do. i was the recipient of some very unhappy phone calls the day after the first prism story ran fifth. it made clear that the government had access to all of this private data that the companies were collecting for other purposes. and the company was really, really mad. it took a while to figure out exactly where this juncture was. what i watched happen over the course, frankly, of months was that the industry gradually realized they had been had. they knew about some of the information being transferred. think it is now clear that a lot of it was happening to court procedures that were secret to us but not as sacred to them. i can remember exactly the story there were just talking about, that google and yahoo data links

being tapped into. suddenly everyone in the tech industry did not know that intelligence services had wired into their brains. and they were -- they start off being mad us and eventually were mad at the u.s. government, both because they felt -- they felt as though their place in the world have been jeopardized. so it hurts them economically from an industry point of view to be seen as somehow a conduit to the u.s. intelligence services, but it gave us this visual quality. they felt betrayed on a personal level. they had built the systems that were supposed to resist hackers, and yet you have these guber hackers in the u.s. government who were breaking into it and finding every way possible and, and in ways that were, frankly,

awfully imaginative. they are good at this. companies, by the time we got to the end of the year the companies were thinking yes. we are glad we know this. we put in a bunch of new encryption measures. we may never know if they are sufficient, but it is clear that the fences are stronger. >> tell me about some of the biggest american companies, not only technology companies, but american companies that are spending a lot of money and engineering talent in a deliberate effort to airport the efforts of their own governments to spy on their users. on the one hand you can say their philosophy is no one gets the spine our users, but this is the big moment. they are not trying to stop the government from doing any kind of targeted surveillance.

if even if what they are doing is perfectly effective by in correcting their internal, the government can still go and get information about any individual target. the nsa will still be able to spy on anyone, but not everyone. >> one of the big differences, they did not know that codename prison -- prison, but the companies or -- were aware of the program because there were under court order to comply. with that datacenter story they were completely taken by surprise.

there was no fisa debate about whether nsa should or could be given access. that has taken place entirely outside the domestic surveillance laws that we have under presidential authority exclusively. i mean, that is actually something that i think deserves a lot more explanation because, what we are seeing, one of the big benefits of the snowden disclosures over the past year is there is a heightened awareness of the nature of government surveillance. so sense 9/11, and as a result of advances in technology, we have seen a fundamental shift in approach moving from protections at the front-end to a vast collection with limits on use at

the back end. at the same time there is this -- you know, because of a global nature of the networks, the communications of people like you and i are mixed in with communications of terrorists and legitimate foreign targets. so as the former deputy director of the nsa said, today there is no home game, no way game. there is just one game which raises questions of whether or not the back and protection sufficiently protect our privacy >> and of course they have much to lose reputation only as people are concerned. >> that is actually a key point. one additional thing the disclosures kind of help is investment and security on the back and front end. security experts have been warning about the ability to collect data that is not

anchored to for years and trying to urge young who, for example, to encrypt their communications. and an earlier story we did prior to this was about how the nsa is using the public internet connections. one company, statistics. i think it is like 7,000 a day. i woke up and it was ten times -- ten times more kind of correct than the others. so in our conversation how we being targeted. the obvious answer was that you guys have forgone that security tools. this is why. and that -- the disclosures have

made that clear. in fact, rather than give us a response, a statement, it was how we are going to began encouraging our yahoo mail starting the beginning of this year and end of last year. >> in one line. the front row here. kind of a large campaign of activism technologist. tried to give to yahoo to scramble its connections for years. this was to protect among other things against ordinary hackers. when you don't in a crypt and your credit card data, e-mail, all of this, anybody can read it . for four plus years, no, i don't think so. on of the day that the story ran . >> that's good.

but the question clearly that we hear the most and got through messages ahead of this event was, how did u.s. editor wayne national security with the public service of uncovering the sweeping government surveillance programs? what gives the oppose the right to publish classified government materials? the guardian received and said, the press coverage and whether it deserves recognition, i sort of have complicated use. i am and the owners by the fact that they really did benefit from what i think is a propellant, and pitch your attic act. a question submitted to the post by tiny, you are here. can you please explain why this

important work of journalism does not negatively impact the national security? what is your response? >> there are a lot of pieces. ask it again last politely and tried to get different pieces at different times. a lot of people have of this role reaction. that is the end of the discussion. well, there is now -- you have to understand what that would mean. there is now more classified information, classified by a u.s. government and the entire contents of the library of congress and all other open libraries in the world. more classified and unclassified data in the world. i have a classified navy laundry manuel on how you wash clothes. i'm not making this the. there is nobody -- even the

strongest defenders of national security for my have never met anyone who would not say there is massive over classification. that is one thing. second is that diplomacy and military affairs and intelligence matters. i can tell you, it is only a little bit exaggerating to say in almost everything i want to know in almost every story could be classified somewhere. and seen documents that have my stories as an appendix with classified stands on them. also not making that up. when you are working in a secret world you have this mechanism. almost everything that has to do with our relations with the world face or intelligence matters, even policy that is not

testified in congress, and a press release is classified. we simply cannot cover of some of the biggest expenditures, the hardest decisions the take the biggest risk and allow barley years to be held responsible. you have to cut out blank spots in the paper. i mean, we have had stories, thousands of stories from the time i worked at the "washington post" that touched on something classified. we cannot let the stances of be the sole the fighter -- decider. there are stories we have killed over the years. lots of stuff in the archives that we did not even consider publishing. my first conversation with the director of national intelligence office was to see

how everything between the ages 17 and 24 were not even considered. it is operational, revealing targets, success, specific techniques, the publication of which in this. it would no longer be useful. you want to talk about the stories that describe big public policy decisions like the one we talked about before. for example, is it okay -- do we think as a society it is a good idea to allow u.s. intelligence services to collect overseas where no statutory law applies pimentos secret court, no fisa court overseas it, congress does not it reports or supervise the activities. break into google data centers are the links between them. although they are not targeting americans, their use of the

ordinary language. incidently they are collecting substantially all of our -- how they pass through their collection system, almost all of the contents. what i was trying to respond before, google and young who have these giant, fortress-like facilities all over the world. biometric locks and cards and walls and sensors and look like giant factories filled with computer servers. and there is one in ireland, hong kong, singapore. and they are synchronized. if you sit on the cable this synchronizes these two data centers. the same thing is if you reached in to the data center itself in terms of what you did. is it okay to say that the nsa will collect at will from all of our creations.

that is a big public policy question that needs to be debated. >> ashkan soltani, the one to add? >> from a public policy perspective they're is a disconnect between definitions. what the public would believe to be implied when you say collect, what the government means when they say collect a two different things. we did this story on collection of entire countries phone calls, recording of entire countries phone calls for 30 days. and one of the core attributes of that story was that it is not collected until it is actually processed and listen to. it would be like mike record our conversations, but it is not recorded or collected -- >> surveillance.

>> until you listen to it. so those are the things that we want -- i think if the public realizes that that is the definition, i think a lot of people would push back and say, no, that is not actually what we thought we were proving. we saw this with a number of the comments from senators and policymakers that approve these programs. a lot of the comments and commentary was completed not realize we were proving that. and the end run was around definitions or technical capability at the nsa, loopholes that the nsa would use to engage in a particular practice the people were not aware of which is the value and reporting it, covering it. >> the story, ashkan soltani, that you are referring to was published last month. that was just last month. why are we still seeing stories today? and the reason i ask is, there

is the impression and a question, actually, as to how the documents were received. is snowden still involved? is he still releasing information? and the question and many people have is, is he calling the shots on some of the releases and the editorial decisions? >> i should be the one to address that. snowden gave me the documents late last spring. he has not handed over any documents to anyone since approximately that time and did not carry them with him when he left hong kong what he thought he was transiting russia, but it has been all along transit. he has not tried to direct what should be written and win. he gave a general -- the general agreement i made with him, which

did not require an agreement because it is what i would have done anyway, is to look through the material and weighed carefully, not dump high volumes of it out there. consider what the balance ought to be. we at the "washington post" on not sitting in an armchair making of thoughts about what would be harmful for security and would not. in fact, we are usually pretty good. we consult with the government on every single story and fact in the story. so this might look innocuous to you, but it is not sometimes they will tell us things that we don't know in order to help explain to us why they believe that we should not publish something that we do know. those conversations by and large are successful. the -- there is a good enough out, on both sides where they

will say, this whole thing, you should not mention it. actually, huge public policy questions, but i don't need to do this or that if that is the thing -- that is not especially relevant to the point. the point is, we don't just get what would be a security harm. we hear directly in exactly what they think would be security harm. the number of times when we publish something after getting those kind of concrete arguments is tiny. but to finish your question, snowden is not to continue to dribble out documents or control the pace. we are not casual about putting in on the public record. for sure we could go through the material a lot faster if i said

that's just dump the whole thing on the internet. that is clearly faster if i would say, let's take the 50 people in the newsroom and of the most about this kind of stuff and give them all free access to the archive and put our heads together. because there is so much sensitive material, much more controlled. >> and is there much left? >> there is more. >> much more? well, this is certainly the tip of the iceberg in terms of how these regulations affect government as well as the discovery of more consumer surveillance efforts which is something you worked on. talk a little bit about how this has expanded our thinking about private sector for profit surveillance efforts and what you have covered. >> a good question. i had covered surveillance on and off for a year or so. i used to debate with other

people. should we really care more about the nsa or justice department. and pretty soon after all of this came to light it dominated. the distinction was meaningful. the nsa is certainly getting their hands on it. the consumer stuff and government's tough really blessed the a to a degree that i don't think any of us fully appreciated until these documents can mount. it is interesting what we have seen. such a focus of the past 11 months on the collection because of these amazing stories. a little less focus on consumer connection. there is this whole host of issues. should you post pictures of your kids on facebook? but i feel like a more prominent

part of the conversation and what i was doing and we have been shifting over to try to make sense of what we have learned about the nsa and with the u.s. government is doing. i do think that the time is approaching when we will have to wrestle with these questions about where we all voluntarily given permission up to these companies al qaeda free services that we want. how much data is on our smart phone. every once in awhile i sit down and think about it. it is scary. the precision about me and my life and my family and my friends that are encoded in the location data, e-mails, and facebook posting, its really stunning.

>> the nsa, u.s. government, what are you exploring and what other areas should we be looking at in terms of government surveillance? >> there is always the debate and disclosures over the past year. we have heard that bill collection extends beyond the nsa. the cia has also engaged in bill collection of money transfers. unfortunately, we don't have a lot of disclosure about the protections and rules for that. under section 215. you asked earlier about what changed. wanted to said it is not just of the last year.

wendy section 215 telethon mandated program was first revealed engine president obama, you may recall, came out and extended the program and said it was legal, effective, subject to rigorous oversight. and, you know, intelligence insiders i spoke to said that they felt confident. then the debate just took off. we started this your opinion move. in july of last year the house was 12 votes shy of ending the program. in the fall a federal judge in d.c. ruled that the program was probably unconstitutional. in december the president surveillance review board concluded that the program or

not -- ordering his subordinates to come up with a weighted in the program that is the concrete results of the policy change. there have been others. >> can each of you just briefly talk a little bit about how every person, every consumer, everybody in this room, how does this affect you? out of these revelations affect you? despite from reading the stories and invoking some kind of emotion, what have you, what should they be thinking about and take away from this coverage ? >> i truly don't want to tell people what they should think. some of the things that we put on the table, we are vaguely aware as a society that there is

lot of information about us out there that we just leave this digital exhaust. we think of ourselves as, on the one hand, normal and an interesting or, you know, basically people who don't have anything special to hide. so what if someone sees my child's birthday party picture. i think the more you learn about how much is known about us, how closely we are tracked, the more most people i talked to start to feel a little bit squeamish. i will give you a quick example. they're is a guide -- i believe he worked primarily in new york who thought he did not care about digital privacy to all the things i just said to you.

he uses twitter a lot. he has locations turned on. he has a little tool called creepy. i downloaded it and pointed it at is twitter account. i got three months of date and time stamped locations for this guy. i up loaded it to google map. and i said about one hour playing around with it and looking at it. i went to him and said, okay. we know you worked here. here is where you live. there are your in-laws from california. like you were up late that night . he went straight to his twitter account and deleted all of the allocations which twitter fortunately allows you to do. i said, that's great, but

twitter still knows. they can sell and monetize that data to lionesses 1% of 1 percent of with these companies know about you. >> that is a great case for being much more discreet online. i will speak a little bit to the institution. i covered the nsa. it has taken a beating of a bill last year. it is -- i was struck by a post written by jeff stone who is a card-carrying member of the aclu and is one of the members of the presidential white house advisor is surveillance review panel. the same one that said t