they seem to be legitimately outraged. there was a lot of covert stuff going on. they were complying with the secret court orders on the front end but they were unaware that the stuff was going on in the back end. >> does the current supreme court understand enough about technology to make effective privacy rulings? [laughter] she has the most tech-savvy justice and she remembers playing pond as a kid. >> i have to say i went to hear the usb coe-jones or argument and there was this great moment where chief justice roberts said wade you mean they can track my car with a gps? so i think they are starting to wake up to this. how can you live in today's world and not be aware that this is transmitting all the time? >> they are reading briefs and they are understanding the subject. do you have to be tech-savvy or basically the principles are broad enough you can understanding -- understand

them? >> the level of tech letters a and this country should increase. people are still a little bit too confused about the level of tracking what happens behind the scenes on web sites. there has been so much press about it that you would have to be living under a rock not to know which is maybe where the supreme court is located. >> the jones decision was mine-0 mine-0. not a single justice accepted the obama administration's position that we have no expectation of privacy in public. >> i will also point out there does seem to be an incredible movement across the country against drones. many states, almost a dozen have laws limiting drones so i think we are coming to the conclusion that just because you can fly an airplane doesn't mean we have given privacy. >> to care about privacy people have to be able to relate to their own lives because we can imagine what it would be like to be followed by a drunk?

>> these are completely great questions. asiana seneca from make an extra effort to get privacy information about reporters? >> i wish i knew that since i'm a reporter. the evidence is unfortunately leaning towards the answer being asked because there was an inspector general report about the fbi's use of national security letters and targeting journalists and obtaining information about their phonecall records. we have seen in the gem rise in case "the new york times" reporter who said his phone records were obtained for a case. i think we have to say reporters are probably in it difficult situation right now. see including the question about whether or not publishers themselves could be charged. >> if you don't care about privacy that's fine but i think it's worth thinking about the challenge to journalists as an

issue for our democracy. journalist are supposed to be the watchdogs of democracy. if we can't have any contact confidential because everything is surveilled and we can only rely on sources and mr. breccia like snowdon we won't have the ability to be a watchdog on our government. it's a question for society to grapple with. >> have there have been many or any legal cases where all my data has been used against defendants or job applicant's? >> i'm not sure if there have been explicitly. one of the problems with this information is that oftentimes you would know why but it's pretty difficult for an employer i would imagine to get the on line password. >> based on first amendment

issues and surveillance concerns why should we discuss this issue on twitter with the constitution center? [laughter] >> that's great. you know that's a good question. people ask me all the time why i am on twitter. i quit facebook. it didn't quite quit. i left a little page that says i'm not here. i'm on twitter. i think twitter is a little more clear about its issues. his public broadcast like publishing in the newspaper. i put in there what i would write for consumption by the whole world. but i don't like about facebook and linked in is that your associations and lists of friends and contacts are public. we all think we are incredibly incredibly -- that would basically like the same movies and music. our associations can be very revealing. >> and twitter facebook and google have different standards for free speech. twitter is the most speech

protected and will only take down speech that threatens and is intended to provoke the muslims -- limitless limitless action where facebook and google have more speech -- if it offends a religious standard. >> twitter has been aggressive on defense and its users rights. c on that point would have been a world where google and facebook have more power over who is private than any king or president or supreme court justice and yet the first and fourth amendments apply to the government and not to google. do we need a constitutional amendment to protect free speech against google and facebook and privacy in the digital age? >> wow i haven't thought about that before. that's an interesting question. i do think we have to sort of evaluate when we go on to facebook and google we think of our choice as being in the public square and a town hall in

any way we are kind of the north korea like the totalitarian dictatorship where, where were they decide is the rule for free speech. we have to think about -- personally my decision as let's not have the speech there. i'm opting out to a different way but you could also force them to try to have free speech. there is a precedent for telecom companies having to abide by some standards. that's a possibility. >> we unfortunately -- i could continue this all afternoon. you and your book talks about reform treaty were skeptical about the consent model because you think people might sell their privacy in exchange for a toaster. you like transparency as louis brandeis didn't you like the fair credit reporting act which tells people how much is being

collected and you have five questions that should be asked of every digital dragnet to decide whether or not it's fair or legal. should i read them? does the dragnet provide individuals with legal rights to access -- as the dragnet is too intrusive for his purpose does it benefit society doesn't fall into the ugly abyss of racism or other prejudice? cannot withstand public scrutiny? these are questions that i think jurors at the time of the framing of the fourth amendment would have passed. tell us more about these principles. >> i wish it was more optimistic but i think i feel i'm asking for not that much. i just feel that i wouldn't mind trading my data for services if i could have some assurances that if it was used against me i would have some rights. i could challenge the data and i could see it that i could sue over it and it was being used as

a public benefit. it wasn't to be used against me. i came up with these standards is my own thoughts about what would i want to trade my data and feel confident. i feel we are in the information economy and it's going to be although i've tried to opt out it's not actually practical. what i would rather do is participate freely and have some assurances that i won't be packed. we have assurances that safety measures are taken and we have redress if something goes wrong and i want a similar standard for treatment of my data. >> wonderful. ladies and gentlemen and her c-span audience as well first of all come downstairs dumpsters and by julius wonderful book and c-span go to amazon and use an anonymous user. please join me in thanking julia angwin. [applause]

my dad had an eighth grade education and my mom and fifth-grade education and yet they believed in the promise of this country and they were seeking better opportunities for their children. so they worked really hard and sacrificed as so many latinos and hispanics have done in this country because they wanted that better future for their children and they believed in the promise of this country. they really taught us important values that have been our guide

for our lives for me and my six brothers and sisters but they taught us the importance of family of faith, of community hard work, sacrifice honesty integrity. all of those were important values that they shared with us.

coming up adam tanner talks about the collection of private data by companies and what it means for privacy. he uses caesars entertainment which mr. tanner says has perfected the practice of gathering personal data from its customers. he spoke at the florida university school of law in new york city. >> i'm glad to be with you here. i thought it would start to talk this afternoon going back in time a quarter-century to an episode that was briefly mentioned and that was in the final years of communism in eastern europe, 1988 in east berlin. now at the time this was one of the strictest countries, one of the most communist countries and the economist block like moscow. i had the opportunity to visit their number of times.

in 1988 in particular something quite interesting happened. i visited dresden which is the cultural capital of germany they of germany is a well-known as being bombed during world war ii and at the time a city that was famous monuments were still in rubble. during that day i was followed by the secret police. i just want to give you a quick indication of what the times looked like back then. here's a picture of a store in east berlin in 1988. you see a long line of people trying to get bread. there is war damage on the building. there were better things in extra workers could have done with their time but they thought it was a good idea to follow me around on this august day in 1988. 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. as you go forward a little bit of this year is the outline of the 60 page file just for that

day. here's what it says for example. at 8:00 it has become. i've left the hotel npk w. which is on the mobile. i was traveling in style back then. at 8:55 i arrived at the opera and so on and so on. they make a lot of data and if you read the file in greater detail you see what i was up to a lot of detail. some of it is comical because i'm wandering around in wandering around at one point it says 10:57 he is looking at a map and 11:01 still looking at a map and 11:03 asking a passerby for directions. you may say well what has aroused the interest of the secret police and one of the most efficient states of the continental world at that time lexus is what i was up to. i was writing a travel guidebook of eastern europe and yugoslavia on $25 a day. the interesting thing about that

is even though i had efficient secret police following me during that time they knew little about me compared to what corporate interests know about most people in the united states today. information gathering in the electronic era and the internet era is much easier to gather and accumulated to one place over time investigating a much more detailed profile. so i began to wonder who collected data about us today and what do these people look like? that's one of the motivations of my book "what stays in vegas." i wanted to reflect on his gathering data and what impact does it have? i was surprised by how many people gather data and in fact who they are. here's a little test case example. this is someone who gathers data and perhaps the person who is the most surprising data

gatherer that i have come across in my research. can anyone gas? it's a 70-year-old man who was once considered a god. this is jimmy page of led zeppelin. if you go to the site jimmy page.com use the site to be go -- to go down the page. psu for your first name, your last name your e-mail address on a date of birth. he wants all the information just jesse can go into jimmy page.com. the story is the jimmy page with wild rock 'n roll or his gathering information about you. another story he was referencing before that i wanted to tell was the 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 in san francisco. he was old and it was expected he would die. the obituary ran that evening california time in the next day i thought how can i get something else to say about gerald ford this man who was in the public eye for such a long time. i thought interesting way to do it would be to try to find this man chevy chase who as an actor 40 years ago in the first episodes of saturday night live portrayed the president as a bumbler. he would come in and stumble over the desk falling over and so when creating humorous routine. typically when you want to find a celebrity you call an agent or lawyer or publicity person and it usually takes days or weeks to setup set up an interview. but when you're working for a wire service speed as though the essence. i looked into a dossier file of the company to specialize in gathering information about people. i looked up his name and i couldn't find him but i found the name and number for his

wife. i called the number and i said i would like to reach chevy chase, here's what i'm doing. she said i'm not mrs. chase, i am his daughter. he is with me right now but we are on top of mountain in colorado skiing so he will call you back when we get to the bottom of the mountain. 30 minutes of phone rings and it's chevy chase. i ran the article on the wire and everything is fine and that evening the phone rings again and chevy chase calls again and he says listen i was thinking about this. how "the hill" did you get my daughter's cell phone number? binnie said the following. i knew some guy who'd make fun of gerald ford in 1976 and i prefer to be left alone. at that point i realized celebrities politicians and sports heroes ordinary people everyone earn the databases for

data brokers collecting companies collect and he cannot be exempt very easily. so i thought of an interesting way to explore this with the world of las vegas. the reason for this is several fold. first of course las vegas has such a huge amount of money. the other reason why las vegas is interesting as public records are gathered there. public records at the base of what data brokers use about people. they gather wedding documents so more people are married in las vegas than anywhere else. so you can think of elvis presley and many people over time who have been married in las vegas. those documents become public record that anyone can look up and find out contact details from people. also there are more surveillance cameras in private spaces in las vegas than other places and they have some of the most sophisticated programs in gathering data on customers that

exist now and we will go into that and a little bit of time. vegas is an iconic place around the world. i was traveling in istanbul and wandering through the streets and i came across an unusual sight. it was a woman in full dress covered from head to foot in traditional muslim style and there was a man in a t-shirt that said nevada las vegas. even in the different parts of all different cultures las vegas is an emblematic -- of this wild world. my way to get into that was to look at caesars and caesar's palace the flagship property of the world's biggest casino company. now the man behind caesars is the ceo today is an especially interesting figure in the history of casino bosses. if you think of siegel and some of the others you may have seen in movies lefty rosenthal

portrayed by robert de niro in casino this is a different breed nowadays. he is someone he got his ph.d. at m.i.t. and then went on to become a junior professor at harvard business school. and at harvard business school typically you work four days a week and on the fifth day you are a consultant to an outside company. this article called the service profit change. translated that means how do you get someone to be a loyal customer over time because if you come to my pizzeria today and you buy one slice of pizza that's worth 1 dollar but if i can get it to come year after year over a lifetime that may be worth seven or $8000. the lifetime revenue stream can be a thousand dollars and a cadillac owner 232,000 a corporate purchaser of aircraft to literally billions of dollars. his idea was how do we do this in the casino world?

the problem with casinos is the games are in essence exactly the same. the odds are the same in each place. i can play or the slot machine or the roulette wheel in any of these casinos. of course they don't have gondoliers and dancing fountains but his concept was to try to build a program that was going to keep you coming back by knowing more about you in gathering more data about you. back in the olden days in the twilight zone the only place the machine could actually know anything about you. this is a 1960s episode called the fever in which a player calls franklin gibbs is called by the slot machine. he becomes obsessed that the slot machine calls out his name. franklin, franklin and it beckoned him over. in today's world the slot machine often does know who you are and there's a huge amount of information about you based on the loyalty program. i want to step back for a moment and tell you about the history of the to ban which is the heart

of a lot of consumer data collection in today's world. the image in the background here you see green stamps which in decades before were given out when he would buy things at the supermarket for example and you might get 100 stamps if you bought $100 worth of groceries and a certain amount of time he would have enough to get a toaster or some other reward. the problem with those old-style programs as they did know who you were until that day you showed up and put down your coupon book and said i'd like my toaster. but the company really wanted to do more. who are my valuable customers and how do i cater to you the best? the best solution was the modern-day airline program. the airline in 1981 introduces the modern program. they tried to check passengers surreptitiously to figure out

john smith is going every week to london. let's give him a special offer so he flies only with us. the problem with that method failed its people were using different phone numbers and addresses and they weren't able to track people to find out who their best customers were. so they said let us offer some reward pre-flight so we can track our her best customers. from this idea almost instantly after american airlines did this other airlines followed united and other airlines and hotels and rental cars and other companies. in the casino context this is a world that you know exists with the slot machines and it's interesting how the evolution of the traditional old-style. there was just a lever and they didn't know anything. it was not an intelligent machine. then came along john akers who is a casino entrepreneur still

lives in las vegas today and in fact he standing in front of some of his current innovations. what he realized what he was opening a present he was packing some presents for his children and amongst them was to speak and spell game which is a primitive early electronic game where you see a word and spell it out. he was startled that this game was only 50 or $60 but it was sophisticated at the time. he had been trying to build brains that could track people on the slot machine but you have to build it for each different machine. there's a lot of hardware to be installed. >> may i have for attention please? the testing is concluded.

thank you. sorry for any inconvenience. >> so john akers was packing these presents as i mentioned that he became fascinated. how can they do this so cheaply when it's costing me three or $400 to build the tracking machine on the side of the slot machine. he got out a screwdriver and opened up the back and was quite inspired by what he saw. their children ended up getting one last gift that you're pretty innovated a modern system of intelligence for each slot machine could track who is doing like gambling. the way the system works today is when you arrive at a casino you step up to add register your name and address and other details. 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 freebies that come with it like the free meals, the free ram and other benefits than he will join the program. the overwhelming bulk of people at caesars and many other

casinos did choose to join the loyalty program. then wherever you go you have to stick your card into machine or hand to the concierge. if you go to the restaurant at caesars you may save a dollar or two on the entrée. you buy tickets to see jerry seinfeld at caesars palace you will hand them a card and they will register all of the services. so they are going to know everything you do in the public space at caesars if you're using the card. the tracking electronically behind the scenes as well so here are two employees working in the casino in cincinnati. they swipe their card and they may be swiping at other stations said they are following in the front of the room where the customers are in the back as well. the reason you want to join the program as i mentioned is you want better service for better goods that others get. here's a picture for example of the famous essay in caesars

palace in las vegas. this is a busy holiday weekend 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 he moved up into the tears you would be able to go for example this line the elite line. you would be quizzed to the front of the various lines to get much better service. that's why people join the program. when you do join they will know an incredible amount of intimate details at the time the instant you are playing. here's an example of what a casino management will know. you will have on his cell phone exact details and he will walk up to you. location. this slot machine eubie 01. john is playing right now and here is his level and the tears he is in the loyalty program. he's a seven star member which is top-level so he's an

important client. he now has 98000 points which is a few shy of being at the top level for the next year as well. kansas city is where he normally comes from pretty typically spends $212 per night and theoretically he should have lost $145 because he spent 1000 ordered $50 on a machine which keeps 10% on average and would lose 145. cellulaze $59 today. he's having a pretty good night giving the statistical odds. the amount of information the manager knows is the second screen here. here is the last time he visited the casino. the last trip he should have lost $563 but he had a quite poor evening and he lost $772. this is determined by the statistical odds with the slot

machine keeping 10% of every gamble. he gets extra credits and so on. know this incredible amount of information allows the host to step up and say good morning -- good evening mr. jones. we want to welcome you. they talk a little bit. when i wandered around with a manager often the players were not completely clear about how much money they were losing. they would say i have 150 but they didn't exactly know. the other thing that can happen is they can see this guy is down 772 and remembering the previous screen he typically plays $200 per evening. so you may come up to him and say oh i would like to give you a free steak dinner and here are tickets to the comedy show tonight so the person feels good about it despite having a poor evening at the gambling table.

what else is the casino no? they know what drinks customers prefer. drinks are not always served. there are some things the casino does not know and so as i mentioned the casino does pretty much what's happening in a public spaces but it doesn't know what's happening in a private spaces. here's an actual door that i photographed during my research in las vegas. this is what it said. i will read it out for you. the code for this party is. if you don't like the party please check out the parties upstairs. this is the activity in vegas that is not being surveilled because it's not useful for marketing purposes. of course there is video surveillance. a typical large casino in las vegas might have 3000 cameras

and some have 4000 or 5000 they are monitoring not the customers who are coming but also the back of the houses i mention. the reason for that is there's lots of opportunity for self-enrichment. you could be counting the money wrongly, you could have stakes that are missing. you could not charge for a drink and hope your tips with the increase. there's a lot of surveillance on both sides of the camera. even if you have 3000 cameras you don't have 3000 people watching them. what you have is a room like this. this is a las vegas strip security guard one of five or six typically and duty. they have monitors that show them at different points in the casino. various card tables and you will see various hallway entrance. for example some entrance points people coming in and out of hallways. like a lot of the technology they can be very good or it can

be negative depending on how you use it. if you have been playing at the slot machine and he left a handbag they are and you can't find which machine you are sitting out and maybe you had a drink or two clouding the experience they can go back on the tape follow where the bag is and recover the bag for your you left your ipod or any other device. oftentimes this surveillance can be used for good but often it can be used for different purposes beyond casinos. it's also interesting how widespread a lot of the technology has become worldwide. for example this is a street in a town in sicily. you see up here a little sign that says we are watching you video surveillance and we see cameras cameras looking the slam that way. here is another example of that. this is a church in sicily and the areas under video surveillance. this can be great because allows a the church to be open at

different hours without someone being there all the time but if they were using technology to say you have not been coming to church much lately and we have been tracking your behavior that might be something that's a little more intrusive. the technology can be used in different ways. the technology is also not new. this is a cave that was used by an ancient tyrant in sicily in the city of syracuse and east of the prisoners into this cave. at the very top emperor would put his ear behind this outlet and the acoustics were such that he could hear the talking of the prisoners. there's a sense of wanting to hear or observer people are doing. it's not new. it's just much more sophisticated and easier to gather that data in one place. i wanted to take you a little into this datamining to explain what are some of the details of a typical dossier or a typical commercial folder about someone might look like.

this is one example. you will see things such as genealogy and family, court records, education, work information web profiles photos and home information phonecalls e-mails and professional licenses. all of this is put into a commercial dossier and you can get access to these on numerous web sites that are people look up sites for example and there are more sophisticated ones then lawyers use when they are looking for people. there are also variants of this. ..

i find it hard to believe that they would volunteer. when i proposed the following letter i would say, i understand you are on this list and want to ask you whether you received commercial truck commercial offers you found useful. and they said, a letter like that would be an amoral use of our data.

this is an example of data brokers are quite secretive of. now now this is just one of many different categories they have hypertension, and continents, insomnia schizophrenia. if you want to buy a list of women who are schizophrenic you can buy this list. list. you may think to yourself, this sounds kind of out there and mainstream companies don't deal in that kind of data. well, according to the website of this company, these are some of their clients :: procter & gamble, comcast, toyota, so on and so forth pillars of the american economy

widespread daily use throughout the economy. it could also be use in used in ways that could lead to embarrassment or other kinds of harm. a the subsection a criminal data and humiliation. if if you visit las vegas today, one of the new sites is the museum of the law which celebrates the rich criminal history of las vegas. it is quite an interesting museum. this is how the museum begins. a room where you can line up and pretend to be on a criminal lineup. one of you has a long rap sheet, and people think it is hilarious , a lot of cackling and laughter. it is it is not so funny when it actually happens in real life. there is the 13 million americans arrested, only some of whom actually face

criminal charges. in recent years some entrepreneurs have made a business of publicizing these mugshots of course public record record documents. for the overwhelming number of people they were in court records. away from the general public. so one chapter in my book talks about the mug shot business. here is -- the chapter looks at a company called busted mugshots. his innovation was to print up a little magazine busted, in austin texas and put funny photos of people and sells it. after he got into this business the expanded to the internet putting people's photos up. the twist of this company was they would coat code them in a way for a typical person look up john smith

and because there is not much about you this mug shot would come up very permanently. permanently. one woman who has been impacted in this way a citizen of south florida. one day a friend called her and said why don't you join me for lunch. she says i have already made the afternoon but afternoon, but i would be glad to join you. she ordered a small portion of lentils. the bill came and the owner charged her for a large portion. she refused to pay the difference $3.68, lay down the exact money on the table and left the restaurant. the owner said if you don't pay the exact amount i am going to call the police. he did and going to call the police. he did, and she was arrested and taken to jail.

now cases -- the case was ultimately dropped. years passed. she was than looking for a job and someone called her up and said have you looked up your name recently on the internet? because an old mugshots comes up. so they had been posting it along with millions of other pictures. the twist was when you are horrified you can click the photo and page to remove the photo. so in terms of classic it was allowed under the law, although their are now lawsuits and legal disputes about it. it was a case where the law was hazy. it was not blackmail. they put up the photo and later offer you the chance to take it down but their are interesting things about

the company which includes the men behind it. the kind of person that goes into this business. there is a whole chapter about kyle perl. he has six mugshots. he lived a bit of an unruly youth a high school drug dealer. his father was a judge and he was a smart a smart guy who went into various financial businesses but always found them a bit goal there is what he looks like today living in austin, texas. there are variants of this kind of business. another one called my ex .com. you can put photographs of a

former boyfriend or girlfriend of all different natures, compromising naked photos anything and offer a convenience fee, $499 they we will remove your photo. others have taken this concept of the takedown fee. as i mentioned, a lot of people look at companies that have emerged in recent years. here is one that has been very successful thanks to clever marketing and successful marketing campaigns, instant checkmate .com. you look up a name, but often you will generate ads that say look say, look up this person or check out the arrest record. and they really ham it up. they say please use caution to ensure all information entered is accurate. learning the truth can be shocking so be cautious

when using this tool. they are hamming it up. so this is one of a a series of companies that make public information from dossiers. but but like many companies, this one in particular was not especially forthcoming about who was behind it. yet to shine some light on these companies i was looking in particular for a woman that appeared in this companies press releases quite often a woman called kristen bright. i called her up and they would typically say she is not here, we have never seen her we don't no. so i began to suspect there was something odd.

i began the search for a mystery woman. i became convinced over time that perhaps she was not a real person. i did find one pill. there is a yelp page with a single a single picture of this woman. it says on the bottom hello, i am kristen. if i could find the woman i i could say are you kristen bright? and from that little photograph i was able to find a headshot of a woman. from that i found other photographs. she had a fake surname. by digging around in various documents i was ultimately able to find there is another webpage i kept

looking through various documents. ultimately i came across a bankruptcy petition. this was using databases and looking at the bankruptcy petition she had some kind of debt at victoria's secret. some of the home photos. a lot of photographs. it peaked my interest. i was able to ultimately track her down. this is an episode from a thumbnail sized photo, how much information i was able to learn. an interesting side story

how she came to post photos on the internet. because our conversation is being recorded i will let you read it in the book. it it is quite an interesting one. finally i called them up. the husband answered the phone. here is what he said back before ten years ago there was total anonymity but it is not like that anymore. you put up a picture and get a guy from harvard calling you on your cell phone. the littlest smallest littlest smallest piece of information can lead to a lot of stuff. incidentally this is what she looks like today. as i said, a little piece of information can be vague, but if you have a few more pieces and a few more pieces

over time the full picture comes into view which is the importance of why you should give thought to how you share data. ultimately i am not one who says you must do this or follow this prescription but i advocate people give thought to this world of data collection because different people we will have different tastes. i encourage you to look into how it all works before you decide. here is a cartoon that sums up this sentiment. it says here your call may be monitored internet searches may be recorded, email may be scanned, whereabouts may be tracked, credit card purchases may be analyzed and your most personal details may be accumulated to serve you better. this seemed amusing but i saw this following at a turkish airline. the agent is behind the desk , that customer here, a

sign here. if you look at that closely, it is a recording device. it is recording the conversation and the sign above the desk says just like in the cartoon in order to improve our quality of service your conversations are being recorded. the.of this is that it is not just something common to our country but increasingly common throughout the world. again, it can be done in a way that is appealing to customers, or it can be done in ways that cause embarrassment or difficulty down the line. one question to think about, behind this fog of commerce, how commerce, how do you no what companies do with your data. here is the sign of lincoln's gettysburg

address, 272 words and hundred and 72 words, and a lot of it echoes through the time. here by contrast is how it looks against the privacy policy and education related website, 6,200 words. if you want to find out what this company does with your data it takes a lot of reading. do they accumulate data elsewhere and combine it, sell it to other people? these are all questions you should be thinking about. back to the casino example. one very interesting thing about casinos is the whole data carefully and tightly. they do not share it. they don't want competitors to no. okay i can trust this company.

a lot of transactions today, it is obscure exactly what happens with the data, who gathers it, and what happens over time. something pretty something pretty straightforward and easy to do that has not yet been done is something like a nutrition label for personal information. quickly say, we share data with outside companies aggregated. companies aggregated. even something simple like facebook, we are glad you love our service. of course, as you know, we are a free service and in order to make money we gather information to target advertising as best we can. companies today often are quite obscure and opaque as to what is done with data. i think this would be a straightforward way to give more insight. there there is more of this in financial statements.

a report from a credit card company might say what they do and be a little more clear thanks to regulation. by conclusion, personal data lives forever. information never disappears it may have been in years past you told the storekeeper something and that was it but now it is added to multiple files, often amassed by data broker companies many of them have hundreds and thousands of data points. for companies for companies personal data does not always portray or predict reality by this i mean, there is lot of wrong data out there. axiom had an initiative called about the data .com and you can look up what information they have about you as a consumer. if you are interested, you go there, put your social security number and other information, but it does not cost anything.

you see whether the list is being married or not. people i talked to said that they often got little details wrong. people interested as gun buffs and so on. there is a lot of data that is correct. another issue that i think we will come into the four of businesses who are open about what they do with data. and to some extent the casino model i i have been talking about, we gather a lot of data but we are giving you benefits. we are clear about the equation. i think that is a model worth emulating in other aspects of the economy. the opposite of that is, businesses dishonest about the personal data practices

for one day end up and run. over time if there is data breach or something happens, their may be steps that will lead to damages for corporations that have this information that were not especially open. that is something worth keeping in mind. that was the general outline of the book. an attempt to bring to life the narrative of the story of personal data and ultimately with the message of decide for yourself be informed and decide. if you want to take strenuous protection for yourself, there is an appendix that says you can do this and this. with that i am am glad to answer any questions. [applauding] >> thank you.

right here. [inaudible question] >> there will always be ways to discover more data. how data is used by organizations, researchers government versus how much information individuals but about themselves online. >> should the onus be on individuals or more broadly on other institutions. the problem is legislation and laws often fall behind the quick advance of technology. and and so we are here at a law school right now many of you could come up with the new new guidelines and regulations and standards to guide us in the future, but right now i try to encourage the consumer to park

themselves. certainly there could be more provisions to help in that regard. use of medical data for example our current standards sufficient to protect medical data given that there is such a wide sale of medical data that is unseen or should we protect data related to sexual orientation or religion or other sensitive information. these are things that i think are worthy of consideration. given what we have now reading the book today, tomorrow, a month from month from now laws may take some years. if you are cautious or thoughtful and the way you share data it may work to your advantage. you may have a multi- varied approach. we saw the case were intimate photos were leaked from the cloud. if you are putting up images

or documents into the cloud you may have two different servers dropbox is easy to use. the other might be an encrypted server, which server which is more of a pain but maybe where you put more intimate photos or financial documents. any other questions? >> during your research what surprised you the most about data gathering? >> i think it was not any individual practice but the vast scale of the practice. as i pointed out, this little company and this vast array of different sellers. one day i got a solicitation from the aclu with my knew home address. i called them and said, can you uncover

this mystery as how you have my current home address. they dug it up and found out through a magazine that i have been subscribing to sold it to them. i called up one day at amenities and they said, yes, we sell the information. from the magazine, they are not very sensitive to the vast amount of data being sold. ten and a half cents by selling my name multiplied by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers, it is attractive revenue. >> i have found that if you want people to do something you make it easy for them to do. a policy of 6000 words then you have different websites where people want

to join because others belong like facebook. you know unraveling choices done with language that is an accessible, even if they read it they do not no what they are agreeing to. what do you think we could do to make it easier for people to actually make intelligent choices? i i feel like i am a reasonably intelligent consumer, but it is all in my head from a matter of time and also a matter of even understanding what it means to share information in this way and not that way >> this could be an amusing experiment. a classroom of of students handouts the same privacy policy and have

everyone interpreted. it becomes so complex and tangled that even people studying law cannot understand it. exactly that. three groups, privacy experts, practice students and then crowd workers, just a person on the street. none of them agree. >> that is fascinating and shows that basically there is a a fundamental failure. of course, if you want to up the stakes stakes, you can confuse this vast array of people. as i mentioned before, there is nothing wrong with saying we collect data. here is the kind of data we gather. i don't think that is so bad. you can have an abbreviated

fax. they can look at the abbreviated version. and as i mentioned credit cards and financial statements, mutual fund statements have simplified some aspects of what they do with these. these are models that can help clarify. honesty should be rewarded by customers. many are frustrated by this deliberate obfuscation and are crying out for something simpler. the study you just mentioned is one example. [inaudible question] >> i think it is way to make you skip to the end and say i agree. whatever you need to do, you just agree.

first of all all, you might not understand it. and then the purpose is to make it not understandable. maybe i am cynical but i think it is like an insurance contract. do you understand everything? i don't. >> you are certainly right. my.is, it does not have to be that way. this whole data aggregation as part of advancements that have made our lives better. it is like the car, at a certain time without seatbelts and airbags that things were happening so certain measures had to be taken to up security where industrialization and so on. on. a lot of great progress, but things we need to look at. this is just a small piece

of how a lot of this data aggregation goes for targeting and marketing and social networks, but the side impact potential of what happens is something i think we should think about. some of your graduates may go on to be writing these privacy policies for companies. a lot of the language is written saying something like, we care deeply about your privacy and follow the law. they don't tell you that the law is weak in many aspects and can pretty much do whatever they want. you can put a lot of fat sugar, or salt into it but you should have the choice as a consumer. is there any other comments or thoughts on different approaches to how -- please.

>> in terms of nutritional labels who do you see as being the creators of the categories to change the way different companies something that companies could come together to develop guidelines? government agency any thoughts on those kind of nutritional labels. >> these companies would be the equivalent of the privacy commissioner that would oversee 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, outside companies, number of, outside companies, number of categories that would be relatively digestible to someone who had not spent years studying the law and companies would have to

comply by giving a clear answer. i i do not think this is such a revolutionary idea. it it is straightforward and easy but has not yet happened in most aspects of data gathering. >> i wonder wonder if you actually really need to put your finger on the scale much more heavily? basically if you want to say to illegal if you we will require people to do that to go to a public website. the enforceability of that, i understand but something along those lines posted burden on the company to basically say, i am asking you to do something that is not intended to benefit you. it might benefit you and some very long-term way, but

trying to explain it. so when i go to click the answer is no and they try to persuade me to say yes. >> that is more the european model where you can opt in rather than opt out. there is certainly merit to that debate. you think you think about some of the new products emerging now for health and fitness where you where a device and so on. a lot of these -- i just talked to an entrepreneur the other day. if i sell the data i can make it more cheaply but if i don't i am at a disadvantage. you can have one where you sell the data and one where you don't.

very torn by this issue because he see's competitors that deal in that category. category. so i think there is certainly merit especially stuff like that fairly intimate medical health gathering data as a default. they could ask for medical science we think this information would be useful. many people would probably agree but you should have the choice. this debate is not taking place on a national a national scale the way that it should be. telling more tales from what i call behind the data curtain is a way to do that.

i thank you all for coming out. it has been nice talking to you and i am glad to answer any questions as well. thank you all again. [applauding] >> over the next three and a half hours, book tv on technology. we start with walter isaacson. >> t-1 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and key public policy events and every weekend teesixteen. t-1 created by the cable tv

industry and brought to you as public service. watch us in hd, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> in his book "the innovators" walter isaacson tells the story of the people who created the computer and the internet. mr. isaacson discusses his book with computer history museum president and ceo john hollar and then takes audience questions. >> and now for tonight's program program, the history of computing is the ongoing story of how one of the greatest periods of creativity in human history has been unleashed. it is >> and now for tonight's program. it is populated is populated with some of the most fascinating people of our time. one of the most distinguished biographers of our time has taken it on and produced an exceptional

results. results. the biographer, of course, is walter isaacson the epic stories are all here. but he also reads a very a very skillful story about the lesser-known icons of computing the hackers and rebels behind the first online communities, the obscure belgian engineer. he even sorts out the real story behind al gore and the internet. [laughter]

walter will take us on an abbreviated version of that story starting with the distance but important figures of charles babbage and ada lovelace. please join me in welcoming kaythree. appmack. >> thank you. >> welcome. >> welcome back. >> it is great to be back. this is an amazing and wonderful place. you place. you can even reveal my injured -- inner geek. >> i think you are about to do that yourself. >> i grew up soldering ham radios. i loved circuit boards. it is good good to get back and write about them. >> is that how you originally got into this? did you develop a fascination with the technology? >> one of the things you learn as a biographer is it is partly about pleasing dad he made me understand how a

transistor capacitor resistor worked, how you make a circuit. i was so fascinated. i wanted i wanted to convey that excitement. most people probably remember opening things up, testing tubes in the radio figuring out how to make a circuit, but nowadays the fear that our devices are so closed off that we do not get that excitement i had growing up and and i was in charge of digital media incorporated. one point his boss says who owes the internet. how did it come to be? that is clueless. clueless. i realized i did not no the answer. i thought it would be interesting to figure out. when i interviewed bill gates one of the lucky

things about being at times, he said the intersection of the internet with the personal computer is like the steam engine and mel's enters intersecting. you want to do both of the stories. we have lots of books about the industrial revolution and the scientific revolution but we do not no who is the paul revere of the digital revolution. >> what was your inspiration for beginning where you begin? you go back to the roots of computing which we love but you go back to babbage and lovelace. >> as long. >> as long as i am embarrassing every member of my family, my daughter was supposed to be writing her entrance essay to go to college.

she thought to the contrary. my luck -- -- my wife was getting a little jittery. now, i actually did did know who she was, but i cannot remember what it was she did that helped define the digital and computer revolution. and so my daughter got me turned on to ada lovelace. i was already writing this book off and on for 15 years, but needed needed some frame. the more i studied ada the countess of lovelace and her partnership with charles babbage the more i realized that is a great framing device of the connection of humanities and audrey, processors and engineering.

talking about steve jobs. i think we even showed it. at every at every product launch she had an intersection of the liberal arts and technology which is what ada lovelace was, was her father being a romantic poet. she helped create that intersection where the true creativity happens in the digital age. >> there is a thesis in the book that i want to spend out. you wrote the key to innovation, creative geniuses generating innovative ideas, practical engineers partner closely to turn concepts into contraptions and collaborative teams work to turn it into product. you believe in that ecosystem and refer to it again and again