companies, and he questions what it means for our privacy. as a case study, he uses caesars entertainment which mr. tanner says has perfected the practice of gathering personal data from its customers. he spoke at the fordham university school of law in new york city. ..

and at the time the city that was still partially in ruin. some of the famous monuments were in rubble. during that day, i was followed by the secret police. i just want to give you a quick indication what the times were like back then. here's a bread store in east berlin in 1988. a long line of people trying to get bread. still more damage on the building. a lot of better things that extra workers could have done with their time. they thought it was good idea to follow me around on this august day in 1988, and this is me taking notes on the streets. they took secret photos of me and they followed me around, minute-by-minute, trying to assess what i was up to during the day. if you go forward a little bit, this year is the schedule -- the outline of a 60-page file just for that day, and here's what it says, for example. at 8:00, the observation has begun. 8:53. i left the hotel and pkw, an

automobile, with the -- i was traveling in style. 8:55 i arrived at the opera. then going to the antic quits store and so on and so on. so they make a log of the day, and if you read the file in greater detail, you see what i was up to in a lot of detail. some is comical because i'm wondering around. it says 10:57, looking at a map. 11:01, still looking at a map. 11:03, asking a passer are by for directions. now, you may say, what has aroused the interest of the secret police in one of the most efficient states states states e communist world in i was writing a travel guide book, and yugoslavia and eastern europe on $25 a day. the interesting thing is that even though i had secret police following me during that time they knew very little about me compared to what corporate

interests know about most people in the united states today. because profession gathering in the -- information gathering in the electronic era is much more efficient and easier to gather and accumulated to one place and a more detailed profile. so, i began to wonder, who collects data about us today, what do these people look like? and that's one of the motivations of my book. "what stays in vegas." i want to shed the light on who is gathering data, what impact does it have. i was surprised by the breadth of how many people gather data, and who they are. here's a little test case example. this is someone who gathers data, person that is perhaps the most surprising data gathererrer i have come across in any research. can anyone guess who this is? this usually stumps the audience. a clue is it's a seven-year-old man who was once considered a god. and here is the answer.

this is jimmy page led send lynn. if you go to this site, jimmy pain.com, just to use the site to go beyond the splash page he asks forrure first name, last name, e-mail address, and your date of birth. and along with the story is if jimmy page, a wild rock 'n' roller, is gathering data about you, there's few companies that are not. now, another story that he was referencing before i wanted to tell is a way i came to the realization about how everyone is affected in different ways. no one is really exempt from the collection of data about them in today's dossier world. this is president gerald ford. he died when i was working as a correspondent and san francisco. he had been very old and it had been expected he would die. the obituary ran that evening because he died late in the day california time. the next day, i thought, how can

i get something else to say about gerald ford this, man who has been out of the public eye for such a long time. i thought the interesting way to do it would be to try to find this man, chevy chase, who as an actor, 40 years ago, on the very first episodes episodes episodey night live," portrayed the president as a bumbler and would stumble over the desk and create a humorous routine. now, typically when you want to find a celebrity you call an agent or lawyer or publicity person of some kind and usually takes days or weeks to set up an interview. when you're looking for a wire service, speed of the essence. so i looked into a dossier file, a company that specialized in gathering information about people. i looked up his name. i cooperate find him. but i found a name for a number -- a number for his wife. i called up that number, and i said, i would like to reach chevy chase. here's what i'm doing, and she said, oh, i'm not mrs. chase,

i'm actually his daughter. he is with me right now, but we're on the top of a mountain in colorado. we're skiing. so he'll call you back when we get to the bottom of the mountain. so 30 minutes later the phone rings-it's chevy chase. he gives me an interesting interview how he met girl -- gerald ford and he was very gracious. so i run the story and that evening the phone rings again and chevy chase calls again and says, listen, i was thinking about this. how did you goal my daughter's cell phone number? and then he said the following. look, i'm just some guy who made fun of gerald ford in 18976 and i prefer to be left alone, really. at that point i realized, wow, celebrities, politicians, sports heroes, ordinary people, everybody is -- are in the databases that dat brokers collect and companies collect and you cannot be exempt very easily. so, i thought of an interesting

way to explore this was the world of las vegas. and the reason for this is severalfold. firstly because las vegas has such a huge amount of money. the other reason why las vegas is interesting is that very many public records are gathered there. public records are the base of what data brokers use about people. they gather wedding documents, birth, deaths and other documents so more people are married in las vegas than anywhere else. so you can think of elvis presley and many other people over time who have been married in las vegas. those documents become public record that anyone can look up and find the address and contact information for people. also, there's more surveillance cameras in private spaces, in las vegas and other places, and some of the most sophisticated loyalty programs in terms of gathering data on customers that exists now and we'll go into that in a little bit. also, leaves is an iconic police around the world.

just as when i was traveling in istanbul and i came across an unusual sight. a woman in full dress covered from head to foot in traditional muslim style, and man, in a t-shirt, that said, nevada, las vegas. and so even in the kind of different parts of -- all different cultures, las vegas is an emblematic sign of this wild word. so my way to get into that was to look at caesar's and caesar's palace, the flagship property of the worldest biggest casino company. now, the man behind caesar's is the ceo today, gary loveman issue is an especially interesting figure in the history of kinds, and i you think another bugsy seeingle and others you may have seen in movies, lefty rosenthal, portrayed by robert deniro, this is a different breed nowdays. gary loveman got his ph.d at

m.i.t. and then became a junior professor at harvard business school. and at harvard business school, typically you work for four days a week. on the philadelphia day you're allowed to be a consultant to outside companies. he drew attention for the following issue. which this article called putting the service profit chain to work. translated, that means how do you get someone to be a loyal customer over time? because if you come to my -- you buy one slays of pizza, that's worth a dollar but if i can get you to come year after year over a lifetime that may be worth seven or eight thousand dollars, and you see the stream can be $800. so his idea was how to do this in the casino world, and the problem with casinos is that the games are in essence exactly the same. the odds are the same in each place. i can play craps or slot

machines or roulette in other casinos. some eave dancing fountains and other things so the property looks defendant but his concept was to build a program that was going to keep you coming back by knowing more about you, by gathering more data about you. now, back in the olden days, in the twilight zone, the only place where the machine could actually know anything about you, and there's a 1960s episode called, "the fever." in which a player called franklin gibbs is called by the slot machine and becomes obsessed, and the slot machine calls out his name, franklin, franklin, and beck cons him. in today's world the slot machine does know who you enterknows a huge amount of information about you thanks to the loyalty program. so i wanted to step back for a moment now and tell you about the history of modern loyalty programs which are the heart of a lot of consumer data flex today's world. so, the image in the background here, you see loyalty stamps

from green stamps, which in decades before were given out when you would buy things at super marble, for example, and might get 100 stamp ifs you bought $100 worth of grocery, and then you could get enough to get a toaster or other prize or reward. the problem with those old-style loyalty programs they didn't know who you are until the day you showed up and put down your coupon book and said i'd like my toaster. but the company really wanted to know more. who are my valuable customers among you and all how do i cater to your best? so the next evolution in that was the modern-day airline loyalty program. so, american airlines in 1981 introduces the modern loyalty program. they had tried to track passengers surreptitiously to figure out, there's john smith, going every week to london. let's try to make him special offers so he flies only us rather than other airlines. the problem in that method, though, was people were using different phone numbers and

different addresses, they weren't able to properly track people to figure out who their best customers were. so what they decided is, let us offer some reward, these points that can be translated into free flights so we can track our best customers, and from this, idea spread very rapidly, almost instantly after american airlines did this other, airlines followed, united, and then it spread, as you know well, to hotels, rental cars and also other companies. now, in the casino context, this is the world that you know exists either the slot machines -- and it's interesting how the evolution of brains came to slot machines, in the traditional old style there was just a lever, things were spinning inside, they didn't know anything. it wasn't an intelligent machine. then came along this guy. john acre, who is a casino entrepreneur, still living in las vegas today, and is standing in front of some of his current innovations. what he realized he was opening

a present for his -- he was packing presents for children's for christmas, and amongst them was this speak and spell game, which is a primitive early electronic game where you see a word and spell and it hear and it so on. he was startled this game was only $50 or $60 but was sophisticated at the time in terms of electronics. had been trying to build brains that could track people on the slot machine, but you have to build for each different machine so there's a lot of hardware be installed and it was expensive. >> may i have your attention, please, testing is concluded. please disregard. testing has been concluded of the safety system. thank you, and sorry for anien convenience. >> so, john akerr was packing

the presents and was fascinated, it's costing me $300 or $400 to build a tracking machine on the side of the slot machine. he got out his screwdriver, opened up the back of this and he was quite inspired by what he saw. his children got one less gift that it year but he helped innovate this modern system of intelligence where each slot machine is able to track who is doing what gambling. so the way the system works today, when you arrive at a casino you step up to the counter, register your name, address, other personal details about you. again, this is a voluntary thing. if you don't want to join the loyalty program you don't have, to but if you want the free byes that come with, the free meals, free rooms other, benefits, then you'll join the program, and the overwhelming bulk of people at caesar's and many other casinos do choose to join the loyalty program. then wherever you go, you're going to stick your card into the machine or hand it to the

croupier. i of you go to restaurant at caesars are you hand the in the card and me a save a dollar on the entree, if you go to see jerry seinfeld you'll hand in the card and they'll register these purchases. so, they're going to know everything that you do in the public spaces of caesar's if you're using the card. the tracking electronically extended behind the scenes as well. so here are who employees working in casino in cincinnati so they come in and swipe their card, may by swiping other stations. so they're following in front of the room where the customers are and in the back of the house as well. now, the reason you want to join the program, as i mentioned, you want better service or better goods than others are getting. so here's a pick fewer, for example, of the famous buffet in caesar's palace in las vegas. a busy holiday weekend, and as you can see, this is quite a long line to get the all you can eat buffet.

if you had joined the loyalty program and moved up in the tiers you could go to this line this elite line to get services, you'd be whisked to the front eve lines and get better service. that's why people join these programs. now, when you do join, though, they will know an incredible amount of intimate detail at the time -- the very instant you're playing. so here's an example of what a casino manager will know as you're playing. he'll have on his cell phone exact details and he'll walk up to you -- this says, for example, location, so, this slot machine, ub01, player john smith is playing right now. and here's his level of -- the tier he is in the loyalty program. he is a seven-star member, which is the top level. a very important client to go say hello to. he now has 98,000 points, just a few shy of being at the very top level for the next year as well.

and dominant property is north kansas city, he typically spends $212 per night, and theoretically, today he should have lost $145 because he spent $1,450 in the machine, which keeps about 10% on average, and thus he should lose 145. so, he is actually lost $59 today. so he is actually having a pretty good night, given the odds. the amount of information the casino host or manager knows is even more extensive as the second screen here. here's the last time he visited the casino up here. the last trip he should have lost $563, but he had a quite poor evening, he lost $772. again, this is all determined by the statistical odds of what the slot machine, keeping 10% of every gamble, says. can we use his e-mail? yes, he has extra credits and so on. so, knowing all this incredible amount of information allows the

host to step up and say, good evening, mr. jones, very glad you're here, they talk a little bit. interestingly when i wander erred around why the manager players were not completely clear about how much money they were losing. they'd say i'm down a 100, one guy down 50500. didn't know. but they were -- the other thing that can happen is that they can see this guy is down 772 the last time, he shouldn't have lost that much. this more than he usually plays. in the previous screen i showed you he typically play $200 per evening. you may come up to him and say, oh, i'd like to give you a free stake dinner. here's two tickets or tickets to the comes show tonight so this person feels good about the experience despite having had an especially poor evening at the gambling table. now, what else does the casino know? they know what drinks that customers prefer. drinks are not always served in this manner las vegas.

this is a special occasion. now, there are some things that the casino does not know, and so as i mentioned the casino knows pretty much what is happening in the public spaces, but it does not know in the private spaces. so here's an annual door that i photographed during my research in las vegas. and this is what it says: a little hard to see: the dress code for this party is naked. if you don't leak to party naked, please check out the parties upstairs. thank you. so, this is the kind of activity that the wild activity of vegas that is indeed staying in vegas. it's not being surveilled because it's not useful for the casino's marketing purposes. of course, there is video surveillance in vast tracts of the casino. a typical large casino in las vegas might have 300 cameras, some have even 4,000 or 5,000. and they're monitoring not only the customers who are coming but also the back of the house, as i

mentioned, the reason for that is there's lots of opportunity for self-enrichment. take a few chip is of you work in the casino, could be counseling the money wrongly, steak goes missing, not charge for drinks in hopes of increased tips. so a lot of surveillance on both sides of the camera. even if you have 300 cameras you don't have 3,000 people watching them. you have a room like this, this is a las vegas strip security guard, one of five or circumstance on duty, and they have vast banks of monitors that show them different points of the casinos. card tables, various hallways, entrances, here's some entrance points, people coming and going down hallways and so on. and in many cases like a lot of the technology, it can be very good or it can be negative, depending on how you use it. for example, if you have gone down, been playing the slot machine you left your handing bag there then you left and

can't find which machine you were sitting at, maybe you had a drink or two, clouding the experience. they can go back on the tape, maybe someone picked up the bag. they can follow that person to where the bag and is then rougher the bag for you, or if you left your ipod or in eye device. so often times this kind of surveillance can be used to good but also can be used for different kinds of purposes beyond casinos. it's also interesting how widespread a lot of this technology has become worldwide. so, for example, this is a street in and a town in sicily. you see up here there's a little sign that says, we're watching you, video surveillance, and then there's a camera looking this way and that way. here's another example of that. this is a church, also in sicily, and it says, the area is under video surveillance. this could be great because it allows the church to be open at different hours without someone being there all the time, but if they were to use this technology to say, joe,ow have not been coming to church much lately,

that might be something that is a little more intrusive. the technology is also not new. this is a cave that was used by an ancient tyrant, also in sicily, and he used to put prisoners into the cave, and at the very top the emperor would put his ear behind this outlet, and the acoustics were such he could hear the talking of the prisoners. so the sense of wanting to hear or observe what people are doing is not new to our era, just more sophisticated and easier to gather the dat in one place. i wanted to take you a little into the state of mind to explain what are some of the details that a typical dossier or typical commercial folder about someone might look like. this here is one example. you'll see things such as genealogy and family tree, court records, education and class

made information. work information. photos, home information, telephones, e-mails, and professional licenses. all of this is put into a commercial dossier. you can get access to these on numerous web sites that are people look-up sites and more sophisticated ones that lawyers look for when they're looking for people. so there's all sorts of variants of this. at the same time, there are other companies that specialize in gathering information that would be seen to be more intimate or maybe more troublesome to some people. so, i want to explain to you some of the lists i have come across. this is a list of baby-boomers with erectile dysfunction. so this list advertise they have 1.7 million men suffering from this, which they sell for $85 per thousand. now, i came across the list at a convention of data brokers at the direct marketing association's annual convention,

also held in las vegas a few years back. and i was quite surprised to find this document, and i said, well, how is it you have a list like this? they said, these men volunteer this information to us. and i said, oh, that's quite interesting. would it be possible for me to buy 100 or even 1,000 name? i was thinking i find it hard to believe that even one man would von, let alone 1.8 million, or whatever the number was. and what i proposed the following e-mail or letter i would write to them. i would say issue understand you're on this list. i wanted to ask you whether you received commercial offers that you find useful and also did you know that you were on this mailing list? and they said, no, no, no, to send an e-mail like that would be an immoral use of our data. so, this is a kind of example that many data brokers or many who deal in our personal data are themselves quite secretive about how they handle data. now, this -- the erectile

dysfunction is one of many different categories this company has. so on this long list. this is t-5 healthy living. they have hypertension, and incontinence, and insomnia, and schizophrenia and so on. if you want to buy a list of women who are schizophrenic or men who are such and such you can buy this list. you may think, this sounds like it's out there. maybe mainstream companies don't deal in that kind of data. they neil different kinds of dat tamp according to the web site of this company, t5 healthy living, these are some of their clients. procter & gamble, comcast, toyota, and so on. the pillars of the american economy. this is widespread that this kind of data could be used throughout the economy. data like this can also be used in ways that could be to embarrassment or other kinds of harm so this subsection i want to talk now about the business of criminal data and

humiliation. now, if you visit las vegas today, one of the new sites that have opened in recent years the museum of the mob, which celebrates the rich criminal history of the las vegas has, and it's quite an interesting museum, and if you go to las vegas, it is certainly worthwhile to visit. this is how the museum begins. there's a room where you can line up and have -- pretend to be on the criminal lineup, and it says, one of you has a long rap sheet. and people think it's hilarious, relatives and friends are taking photos, a lot of laughter. now, it's not so funny when this actually happens in real life and in a typical year there may be 12 million or 14 million americans who are arrested, only some of whom actually face criminal charges. in recent years, some entrepreneurs have found a business or made a business of publicizing these mug shots. mug shots are public record documents, but for most people, the overwhelming number of

people, these mug shots were in court records and so on, hidden from the general public. if you were a celebrity it might be different. you land in the newspaper. so one chapter of my book, and what stays in vegas, talks be in mug shot business, and here is the chapter looks at a company called, busted mug shots.com. so, his innovation was to print up a little magazine, busted in austin in texas, and he would put funny photos of people and sell it at convenience stores and gas stations and so on. and after he got into this business, he then expanded on to the internet and sort of putting up people's photos on the internet. the little twist of the company and some of its rival companies was, they would code them in a way that for a typical when when you look at site you would you fine -- look up john something i and because there's not much about you on the internet this mug shot would come up prominently on the seasons. here's one woman impacted.

this is paula roy. a citizen of south florida. one day a friend called her and said, why don't you join me for lunch, and she said, i've already eaten, it's mid-afternoon but i'll join you to keep you company. when she arrived the ordered the small portion of lentils just to have something. when the bill came, the owner charged her for the large portion and she got into a dispute, and she said i brought you the large one, and she refused to pay the difference which is $3.68. she laid down the exact money on the table, she left the restaurant. the owner said if you don't pay the exact amount i'm going to call the police hitch called the police, and the police arrested paula roy and took her to jail where she pent four or five hours. now, the case was ultimately dropped. again, only 3.68. years pass. i was a forgotten episode she was then looking for a job, and someone said,-a friend, have you looked up your name on the internet? because when you look up your name, that old mug shot of you

is coming up. so bested mug shots has been posting it, and millions of other pictures. the twist of the only business concept of these mug shot companies was when you're horrified this could hurt my chanced to get a job, you can click the photo and say, oh, we have a convenient fee of $100 for which you can then remove this photo. so, in terms of classic -- it was allowed under the law, although there are now lawsuit asks deal disputes about it. so, it was a case where the law was kind of hazy what you can do. wasn't blackmail in the sense they never said, unless you do this, unless you pay us now $100, we'll put up the photo and then allow you to take it down. snares interesting things about the company and that includes the man behind it. what kind of person would go into this substance? there's a whole chapter about the man behind it, a man called

kyle prowl. his six mug shots i unearthed from police files myself, he lived a bit of an unruly youth. he was his high school's drug dealer and he had a few other scrapes with the law. his father was jacques, -- was a judge, interestingly, and a smart guy that went into various financial businesses after college. but always found them a bit dull and then eventually ended up in the mug shot business. here's what carl looks like today. living in austin, texas. now, there's some other variance of this kind of business. here's another one called, my ex-.com. so, you can put photos of your former girlfriend, or former boyfriend, and the photos can be of all different natures, they can be comprimising, naked photos, whatever you want to put up there and offer a convene fee. for $499 if your photo i up

there they'll remove it so others have taken this concept of the take-down fee and removed it. as i mentioned, a lot of people look up companies have emerged in recent years. here's one that is successful thanks to clever marketing and successful marketing campaigns. that's instant checkmate.com. you look up a name, as i messengered in some cases a mug shot photo was coming up, also you'll generate google ads that say, look up this person, check out the arrest record and so on. and they really ham it up if you actually go to the site. here's if you go to instant checkmate. they say, please use caution when conducting a search to ensure all the information is accurate. learning the history of your friended and family can be shocking so please be cautious when using this tool. you're like, i'll pay $20 to see the shocking inflammation or whatever -- information and this is a whole series of companies that make public information

from these dose a's, whether it's where you live and your phone number or whether there's a criminal record and so on. but like many companies, this company in particular was not especially forth coming about who was behind it and the staff on it and so on. and the objective of what "stays in vegas" was to shine some light on these okays, and i was looking in particular for a woman that appeared in this company's press releases. or statements or blog postings from a woman called christin. when i called her up they would say we don't know here. i would e-mail her. over a period of weeks. nothing happened. so i began to suspect there was something odd about kristin bright. so, i began to search for a mystery woman. i became convinced over time that perhaps this woman was not a real person, but was just a fictitious creation. now, i did find one clue that was interesting and it turned

out to be a whole chapter in the book. there was a yelp pain with the single picture of this woman the side of a 'stamp. he said i love aning customer mail. i thought if if can find the woman in the thumbnail i could say, do you work for this company or is this a fictitious person created? and from that little photo, i was able to find -- a little head shot of woman. front that i found on google image search a picture of a woman with a bikini and other photos. this woman had a fake surname. it wasn't a real name. an unusual last name. her first name was ann, and by digging around in various document is was able to find that she -- there was another web page that said i'm married to a guy called tom. so i think, there's a tom and ann itch kept looking through various documents. ultimately i came across a bankruptcy petition that had a

sliver of this fake last name, related to a word in the document, and this is again using databases, and looking at the bankruptcy petition i saw that she had a big debt -- some kind of debt at victoria's secret. a lot of the photos had negligees or whatever. home photos. some just a family and some of them were like erotic style photographs. i thought, this debt has piqued my interest, and then i looked more into the document, and it gave clues where this couple lived, where she worked and so on. i was able to ultimately track her done. and so -- track her down. this is an episode from a thumbnail size photo how much information i was able to learn and there's a very interesting side story how this woman came -- who was a legitimate woman, not involved in any modeling, how she came to post some saucy photos on the internet and because our conversation was being recorded i'll let you read in the book rather than tell it outloud.

prance an r-rated episode. finally, when i called them up, wanted to say,s do you work for this company? what can you tell me? tom, the husband, answered the phone and here's what he said. back before, ten years ago when you put up pictures on the enter threat there was total anonymity. enough it's like that there him in. you put up a picture on the internet and you get a guy from harvard calling you on your cell phone. the littlest, smallest piece of information can lead to a lot of stuff. and this is incidentally what ann looks like today. but as i say, a little piece of information like a mosaic, is hard to see anything from, about if you add a few more pieces and a few more pieces and more over time, the full picture comes into view. and that is the importance of why you should give thought to how you share your data. ultimately, i'm not one who says you must do this and you must follow these prescriptions. i'm just advocating that people

give thought to this world of data collection that now exists, and then share their data accordingly, because different people will have different tastes and how it all works but i encourage you to look into how it all works before you decide. now, here's a cartoon that sums up some of the sentiments. it says here: your call may be monitored, your enter sunset searches mayber rode erred recorded. your e-mail mayble scanned, your whereabouts may be tracked you credit card purchases may be analyzed and your your most permit details may be accumulated to serve you better. when i was in istanbul i saw this following counter turkish airline. here's -- you see the agent is behind the desk, a customer here and there's a sign here and there's this little thing off to the side. so, if you look at that a little more closely, that's actually a recording device. so when you're speaking there,

it's recording the conversation, and the sign above the desk says, indeed, just like in the cartoon in order to improve our quality of service your conversations are being recorded. so, the point of this is that it's not just something common to our country in the united states. it's something increasingly common throughout the world that when data is being gathered. again, it can be done in a way that great for service and appealing to customers because they got the product they want, or can be done in ways that cause embarrassment or difficulties for people down the line. now, one question to think about is behind the fog of commerce that we're engaged in now, how do you know what companies do with your data? think about this. here's the sign of lincoln's gettysburg address. it's 272 words and a lot of it remains -- echos through the time we know and it remember it today. here by contrast is lincoln's gettysburg address looks against

the privacy policy. 6,269 words. now, if you really want to find out what this company does with your data, it takes a lot of reading and of course there are sections to go to a little more quickly. do they accumulate the data elsewhere and combine it with what you're giving them? do they sell it to other people? here's all questions you should be thinking about when you look at personal data. now, back to the casino example. one very interesting thing about the world of casinos is they hold their data very carefully, and very tightly because it's valuable asset. they do not share it beyond the walls of caesar's. they don't want competitor to know what their customeres dooring. so if grew there and join that program, you know, they're keeping it do i trust this company, aim happy with the rewards in then join the program. a lot of transactions today is obscure exactly what happens with our data, who is gathering it, what happens over time. so, i think something pretty

straightforward and pretty easy to do that has not yet been done is something like a nutrition label for personal information. you can quickly say we have -- we do share data with outside companies or say something simple like, facebook, you can say, we're glad you love our service, we're a free service and in order to make money, we gather information about you to target information -- target advertising as pest we can. companies today often are quite obscure and opaque what they do with our data and something like this would be a straightforward way to give a little more insight for out outsiders. there's a little bit more of this in fortunately statements. i if you receive a report from a credit card company, they may say what they do and it is a little more clear, thanks to some regulation there. my conclusions are that personal data lives forever. so any information you give up now never disappears in essence.

so, may have been in years past you told the storekeep something and that was it now. the dat tased a ed to multip pel files, accumulated by data broker candidate thatow don't know about but are gathering data on hundreds of millions of americans, many who have hundreds of thousands of data opinions about us all. for companies personal data does not always predict reality. there's a lot of wrong data about us out there. axiom, big data broker, had an initiative called, about the data.com. and you can look up what information they have about you as a consumer. your consumer profile. so, if you're interested you good there, put your social security number and other information but it doesn't cost anything, and then you'll see whether they list you as being married or not, whether you like sports or not, what they think you are as a consumer. people i talked to said they've often got little details wrong so people who have two children

are listed as having one or people interested in -- not interested in hunting are listed as gun buffs and so on. so they can certainly get things wrong but there's a lot of data that is correct. another issue that i think will come into the forein -- nene in frore companies who are good with data will prosper. that's the casino model. we gather a lot of data, but we're giving you all these benefits and we're clear, maybe not about all the individual mechanics houston i work's but clear about the equation. i think that's a model that is worth emulating in other aspects of the economy in the opposite of that is that businesses that are dishonest about data practices will end up in ruin, and i think you can trick people to distract data and information about them but over time, if there's data breach or something happens, there may be steps that

will lead to damages for corporations that have all this information that weren't especially open about how they gathered the information and what they do with it. so that's something worth keeping in mind. that was the general outline of the book mitchell book, again, is an attempt to bring to life through narrative examples of the stories of the world of permanent data, taking las vegas and other places, going there, and ultimately with the message of, decide for yourself, be informed about what you do, and then decide, and if you do want to take more strenuous protections for yourself, there's an appendix that says do this and this. and with that i'm glad to answer any questions. [applause] >> thank you. right here. [inaudible question] technology will change and always be -- always be ways to use data been put online in the

past, and there are always doing this to discover more data about people. so, more about how data is used by different organizations, by researchers, businesses, governments, versus how much information, what information individuals are putting up about themselves jacques. >> should the onus be on individuals or more broadly on other entities entities and howe it. a very good question. the problem is that legislation and laws are often fall behind the quick advance of technology, and so we're here at a law school right now. many of you could go into the field and come um with new guidelines and regulations and standards that could guide this in the future. right now, given the situation that we have, i tried to encourage the consumer to empower themselves. certainly there could be more provisions in law or standards that would help out in that regard, and so you think of issues such as use of medical data, our current standards sufficient to protect our

medical data? given that there's such a wide sale of medical dale a that is largely unseen, even if -- or data related to religion or other sensitive information. things that are worthy of consideration mitchell point now is largely to still the stories and say, given what we have now, you're reading the book today, or tomorrow, or a month from now, the laws may take cheers to change so that's i think if you're cautious or thoughtful in the way you share what data, that may be to your advantage, our you may have a multiveried approach. for example, we saw a few weeks ago the case in which jennifer lawrence's intimate photos and other celebrities were leaked from the cloud. now, if you're putting up images or documentses into the cloud, you may have two different cloud services, one is the easy convenient one such as drop box. very easy to use.

the other might be an encrypted server which is more of a pain, takes more effort but that's where you put the more intimate photos or tax returns or documents. that's what it would say. any other questions? over there. >> doing your rae -- research. what surprisedded you the moe about the data gathering. >> i think it wasn't any individual practice but it was the vast scale of the practice, and as i pointed out, jimmy page and this little company and this -- the vast array of different sellers. one day i got a solicitation from the aclu, with my new home address, and so i called them up and said, can you uncover this mystery? how exactly do you have my current home address? it's just recently changed. and they dug it up and found ute that a magazine that i had been subscribing to sold it to them. and then i called up one day are

adam and eve, which makes adult products. they say we sell information. so it's like from the magazine that are not very sensitive to sensitive -- just this vast amount of data that is sold because the aclu is -- my magazine was making ten and a half cents by selling my name. if you multibuy that by tens of thousands of customers it's revenue that is tracted to them hospital. how it goss across the sphere of the economy, that's something i found especially interesting. >> i've always found that if you want to get people to do something that you want them to do, you try to make it easy for them to do it. so you were describing scrolling through a policy that is 6,000 words, or then you have different web sites where people want to join because others belong, like facebook or something, and then unraveling the choices and they're all done

with language that is just completely inaccessible to people. they don't know -- even if they read it they don't know what they're agreeing to and not agreeing to. so what dot you think we could do to make it easier for people actually make intelligent choices? i feel like i'm a reasonably intelligent consumer, but i feel like it's all over my head. from a matter of time and also matter of even understanding what it means to share information in this way and not that way. >> this could be an amusing experiment forked ham lam to gather a classroom only students, have a privacy policy and have everyone interpret it. does everyone get it or is it so complex that even people studying the law cannot exactly understand. have you done that experiment? >> does exactly that. we had three groups, privacy

experts, graduate students, including some fordham graduate students and carnegie mellen in pittsburgh, and then crowd workers, the internet person on the street. none of them agreed on what the terms met. >> that face nateing. shows that it's basically a fundamental failure if they want to be clear. if you wanted to obfuscate what you're doing with the data, if you can confuse the vast array of people, maybe that's your goal. is a mentioned before there's nothing wrong with saying we collect data. it's near. here's the kind of data we gary gather here's other data about you. that's no so the bad if you're honest. you can have abbreviated knew nutrition facts and maybe there's a longer version below. is a mentioned, credit cards and

some financial statements you -- some of mutual fund statements have simplified what they do with fees. i don't -- i think that honesty should be rewarded by customers itch think there's a lot of customers who are frustrated by the deliberate obfuscation of what the companies are doing, and they're crying out for something simpler and your study you just mentioned is an example of that. please, over here. >> block planning to write something understandable, i think it's the way to make you just skip to the end and say, i agree, and then whatever you need to do, whether it's to buy something on amazon or whatever, then you're just agreeing to -- first of all you know that you will not understand it, unless you are a ph.d, and then i guess the -- exactly not to make it understandable, so that people just skip and go to the end. or maybe i'm cynical.

i don't know. i think it's the way it's supposed to be. it's like an insurance contract, insurance policy. do you understand everything? i don't. >> you're certainly right. i guess my point is that it doesn't have to be that way. and this whole data aggregation is part of great advancements that have made our lives better but it's like the car. at certain point, without seatbelts, without airbags, bad things were happening relating to injuries and deaths. so certain measures had to be taken to up security. where in industrialization related to environmental safety and so on. so a lot of great progress bus thing wes need to look at. so, this is just a small aspect of privacy policies and what they're doing with the dat how a lot of the data aggregation allow governors marketing and targeting and things that are great on the internet and social

networks but the side impact potential of what happens with this massive aggregation of personal data is something i think we should think about. some of your graduates here may go on to be writing these privacy policies for companies, and a lot of the language is written in a way that it will say something like, we care deeply about your privacy. and we follow the law in protecting your privacy. now, of course, they don't tell you that the law is weak and they can pretty much do whatever they want. on the knew craigs label you can sale we follow the law in putting food together, which means you can put fat, sugar, or salt into it but you should have the choice as a consumer, i'm not going to eat this one or that one in limited quantities. any other comments or thoughts, different approaches to how -- >> who do you see as being the create you'res of the

category -- [inaudible] a board or government agency or nutritional label. >> each country would be your equivalent of the privacy commission that would oversea the broad categories and might say something like, you have to say, how you collect the data, what you collect, what you do with the information, do you share it with affiliates, share with outside companies. there would be a number of categories relatively digestible for somebody who mad studied the law and then companies have to comply by giving a clear answer, yes, we share with affiliates, outsiders, or what the deal was. i don think this is such a revolutionary idea. pretty straightforward and easy but has not yet happened in most aspects of data gathering.

>> i wonder if you actually really need to put your finger on the scale much more heavily, and basically at this point really say that you need to ask people, you know, for information that you're going to use for marketing purposes, period. and that they don't need to provide it, that it would actually be illegal, if you will to require people to do that to go to a public web site. now, thens forcibility of that i are -- the enforceability understand but something along those lines putses the burden on the toy basically say, i'm asking you to do something that really is not intended to benefit you. it's here to benefit me. and it might benefit you in some very kind of long-term way, but let them try to explain it. so, when i go to click the one thing, the answer is, no.

and then they have to sort of persuade me to say yes, rather than clicking on one thing and have it say -- and have it say yes. >> that's more of the european mod'll you can opt in rather than opt out. i think that certainly merit to that kind of -- to have that debate certainly where there's more choice, and you think about the kind after new products emerging now for health and fitness, where you wear a do is and so on -- a device and so on. i talked to an entrepreneur the other day who said if i make agent device that measures health attributes, if i sell the data i can make it more cheaply but if i don't sell it i'med a a disadvantage. raises the question you can have one where are you sell the date and it's cheap are or one where are you don't. would that senator he was torn by the issue because he sees competitors that deal in the kind of health fitness category sell the data without the

customer having a say simple think there's certainly merit -- especially stuff like that. why should the maker of the halve product measuring fairly swim signs -- intimate signs about your medical health be gathering data as a defall. why shouldn't you be able to say -- they could ask for medical science we think this information would be useful. would you concede to sharing it? but many people would if afraid that way. i agree with what you're saying but the debate is not taking place on national scale in the way it should be. i think telling more tales from what i call behind the data curtain is the way to do that. in any case, i thank you all for coming out to hear the talk. it's been nice talking to you. i'm glad to answer any questions after as well. thank you again. [applause]

>> there was a time i had five -- i learned -- in the course of writing the book, had five families on television, and i had one on moon crest drive. the one on moon crest drive, the kid got up and went to school. i think i drove them to school but they didn't me to drive. they were able to get to school. the ones on television needed me to breathe. they needed me to be alive. and that is where i paid more attention. now, i don't think that is peculiar to the work i was doing. i think there are doctors and lawyers and people in all kinds of work whose work dominates their lives and defines who they

are for the time they're doing it. and i was defined more by what i was doing than what i was -- on the air than what was doing on moon crest drive. >> yet, you begin, this is full of details of your childhood, and having written a memoir myself, like many successful people, there's a fascination with, this is not a childhood without significant challenges and you begin right away by talking about your father, herman k. lear, and he says the k stands for king lear. i love that. i know it becomes the prototype for a couple people in television shows but let's stay with him for a while. tell us about king lear, your king lear.

>> he served time when i was nine years old. he announced he was going to oklahoma to finish some deal. do something there, and was -- a couple of men my mother had met who said, i don't like those men, herman, don't go with those men. >> you're living on the east coast so oklahoma is really -- >> yes, we were living living in connecticut. and his reply was, finally, when they were arguing about it, jeanette, stifle yourself. and that, of course, is where archie got the word. and he left and he was arrested the day he got back. he was going to bring me a ten gallon hat from oklahoma. and the day he was arrested, there was a picture in the paper

with his holding the hat -- a hat over his face, man -- manacled to a detective, and -- but he was away 0 for three years at a crucial time for a kid. and he persisted following that, in getting into trouble one way or the other. and the thing that defined him for me i could not not love him. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> this week, booktv takes a look at books on the reading list. all of the authors are contributors to the magazine:

...