[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> hey, everybody. welcome to the new piano called security without backdoors come in the future of digital privacy. we have an amazing panel.

people who you've probably read, people who have bad on my podcast. i host a podcast called note to self. that's my biggest men in the front row. and it's not my mom, so that you could so what we do is we look at how technology is changing human behavior, asocial logical look and of course the law of encryption and surveillance are becoming very large parts of how it's changing our behavior and changing what we buy, what we download, how we are in touch with our loved ones, how we do everything. before we begin, i've been instructed to tell you that the books by these three authors can be purchased from barn to noble immediately following this program. they will be signing their look at dining table eight in front of the building. how many of you are here because you do have privacy concerns?

and then ago at 80%. this is being carried live on c-span2 by the way. how i view -- how many of you are here because nonfiction mr. jim. nobody? come on. don't raise your hand if that's not the case. you're in the right place obviously. what we are going to do is have each of the authors give five to 10 minute. i asked for reading and they all decided to decline to read. i was like at how will they know that they should get their money out afterwards? they just want to tell you about it. so maybe they will choose select passages. having read the majority of all three, i will say they are informative, and might name, frightening, but also optimistic in their own special way. let me introduce everybody and

then -- they will do their thing and then we will have a discussion here and then i definitely want to make time for you to ask your questions. i'm sure there will be many of them, but want to get to as many people as possible will keep it moving as much as we can. fred is going to kick us out. fred kaplan at the national security columnist for slate. he's here to discuss his most recent book, dark territory -- "dark territory: the secret of cyber war." next ahead ms. bruce schneier, wired magazine calls him though was from the security experts. his book is "data and goliath: the hidden battles to collect your data and control your world" and someone right next to me is professor of law at georgetown university law and direct there at georgetown center on national security and the law and she is director of the center on privacy of technology and her most recent book is the future of foreign intelligence. privacy and surveillance in the

digital age. let's welcome them. [applause] the maxell, past, present, future. all of this might be new to you, but it's been going on for a long, long time. it goes back to the dawn of the internet. in 1967, almost 50 years ago as the arpanet, the precursor to the internet was about to get rolled out, there is a man named willis where he was head of the computer science department of the rim corporation. he had been a pioneer in computers. he worked at princeton. he was also the scientific advisory board of the nsa and he wrote a paper secret at the time. it's been declassified and. you put information online.

it might've been the first use of the word online for multiple unsecured locations. if we are creating an inherent vulnerability. you're not going to keep secret. when i was doing research for my bucket went to the guy who is the deputy director at the time. i say did you read willis first paper? yeah, sure. i knew what it was he appointed you think? i took it and they said don't create a security requirement for a spin about how hard it is to do what we've got. at that time the wright brothers that the first plane has to travel 50 miles in 320 passengers. let's take this one step at a time. the russians are going to have anything like this for a few decades anyway. by which time for systems and networks have grown up with no provision for security

whatsoever. it took a while for computers to start happening. by the time they started happening in the 80s and 90s, it became apparent. there is the national security director signed by ronald reagan in 1984 which was spurred by a feeling of the movie wargames than asking could something like this really happen, which basically reads exactly like things you read today. our computer systems face vulnerabilities with electronic intrusion from terrorists, foreign spies. i than nine days, there was a wargame simulation were 25 ranking members of the nsa using commercially available technology act into law the defense department networks including the links between secretary of defense and the president of the united states. there were no provisions for thinking about this at all. no protocol, no nothing.

by the nsa was inside the defense department network, they ran across a few from france. they were part of the game. france is happiness in 1997. right away after that, we start putting intrusion detection systems on their computers. just what they see. intruders. russia then find out. when you read descriptions of what's going on now and we can get into more of this in your question period, but it has been anticipated for 50 years, it has been occurring for 25 years. it has been ensconced in secrecy. all of this is within the national security agency and other organizations you've never heard of which are by nature everything about them extremely secret. it's only recently we are beginning to be aware of this and think about strategic implications and its impossible solutions. so that is the setup.

>> i guess i am president. this is the christmas cattle only christmas cattle only with surveillance. my book is "data and goliath." i look at it and surveillance, how it arose, what's happening and how to deal with this. how do we get that privacy in the world where our self-loathing. this device knows where she lives, where she works, where she slept last night. we'll have one. these devices know that i may have to know that to turn them on to work. the search engine here is a very intimate device. i used to say my search engine knows more about me than my wife does. that is true, but it doesn't go far enough. it knows more about me than i know because it never forget things. i look at this data we are

producing and what's happening to it in what we should do about it. but i talk about here is something in the title. let's talk about that choice. they have been and will be. the aspect is very interesting. 2004, greece has cell phone network like everyone else does. they were surveillance capabilities built into the equipment through the manufacture with ericsson briefed them on the capabilities. they weren't turned on. it was delivered to greece. someone turn them on and we don't know who appeared spied on politicians and business leaders for about a year. at the backdoor ability that is being used by somebody who is like not legitimate user of the equipment. access are not the primary means

for my data or control. access are deliberate. accidental backdoors are vulnerabilities. you hear a lot about all of this issue. these are programming mistakes that are in computers like this one, like your computer, the one that apple downloads patches for that can be used to spy on us. and then there are these deliberate backdoors which are like the ericsson or liquid the fbi wanted apple to do. who wants these backdoors? what do people do. cybercriminals want them, terrorists want them. some of the data leaks you read about how mr. backdoors. do we believe the russian government used to access the systems. police want to.

rival governments want them. so there is this debate about what to do about backdoors. and the debate very much mirrors the nsa's to mention. the nsa is the agency with two separate missions. until very recently they were very separate. the second mission, which is the intelligence missions by on their staff and to protect our staff. these missions were much easier to separate when our staff and their stuff are different. when the russians didn't have the same internet we did, it was easier to protect the internet and spy on whatever the russians have. the problem is today we all use the same stuff. it's one world. we'll use microsoft windows and tcp/ip end quote browsers and i found. so when we find these vulnerabilities and think about

these backdoors, we have to decide, do we want to close them and secure the systems, securing stand the bad? do we want to leave them open late in the systems vulnerable so we can spy and they can spy. that is the fundamental debate we have here. nobody for us, a term used in the intelligence community in the united states. general hayden said on television a few years ago that there might be the vulnerabilities that nobody but us can find. we know that seems not to be the case. once there's a backdoor rechecked controller uses the period a stingray is a trade name for a fake cell phone tower. this is very secretive, has been for a couple decades.

the fbi has used this to basically spy on cell phones without a warrant. they put a stingray and they know who's in this room by using the technology. a big fbi secret for many years. they would not prosecute people who threaten to release evidence about that in their defense. there's one point when the state of florida really some documents in federal marshals can see them before they could release them. the problem is it was in a secret at all. a few years ago some magazine did a survey around the d.c. area, found a couple dozen of these stingray like devices. we actually don't know who against u.s. government buildings, foreign embassies not run by s. you now can go on alibaba.net and they cost about a thousand dollars. and you can conduct this kind of

surveillance. this is the problem. today's programs in tomorrow's and the next ad hoc or tools. once you have a backdoor, everybody can use it. one last example early on the documents i was involved in writing articles about them. there's something called quantum quantum was the big secret the nsa didn't want us to release. a lot of the system by which the nsa intercept your internet requests to facebook and slips now where into the return of antitakeover systems. kind of cool technology. it is sort of me. and this was their big secret, using this for a lot of really good port and spying missions. there is a hacker tool that does the exact same thing. you could download it. last year, make it one of these

was part of an undergraduate homework assignment at m.i.t. these are capabilities that slow down. the result of leaping backdoors open his vulnerabilities. if indeed we are choosing between security for everybody for vulnerability for everybody, the question to ask is what they saw as safer. united state industrialized world, internet security is so important that we are safer is securing our systems even if it means losing intelligence capabilities. i think that sets you up nicely. [inaudible] >> you give us the right one. >> i know who you are. just making sure for everyone else's. >> thanks very much. for the three people for whom

nonfiction is your chance, as an historian and law professor i can hardly be otherwise. for the 80% of you are more will have privacy or concerns, i share this concern and that is why about this book. in my view the attacks on privacy are one of the most serious threats to liberty in a 90s date today and i don't say that lightly. in many ways the encryption debate even about section 702 is like watching the shadows on the wall behind us that is burning and there's bigger issues at stake. in particular i talk about three that are coming together with confluence of these factors changing the right to privacy. first is over the past 15 years we've seen a radical expansion and national security authorities. despite efforts by congress to rein the executive branch and in the 1970s and the 1978 foreign intelligence surveillance act,

the executive branch on dead to 9/11 back enough side of the law altogether. when the actions became known the executives tried to shoehorn into statutory provisions and proved exceedingly ill fit. new-line a scathing intelligence agency more power as well as brad secret, legal interpretations that stretch the ordinary meaning of english language. the government managed to reintroduce the founding generations for good reasons not to prohibit in the fourth amendment. the second fact dirt is that the speaker standards adopted a national security are now bleeding over into criminal law with profound implications for rates across the board. i talk about this in the book at great length. the fourth amendment doctrine is failing to provide the backstop for the changes we are seeing particularly because it does not account for them in their back

room. that means they can be accessed, combined and analyzed, even as the resource constraints which protect the privacy of dropped away. the network convergence is accelerating the process and the dichotomy of the court has used to protect privacy for their four dichotomies. personal space versus public space. content versus non-content. personal information versus their party data in domestic information versus international information. those dichotomies, personal versus public's faith, content versus non-content and domestic first international companies operate dynamited the new technologies that have emerged. these three factors come in the broader surveillance authorities and the failure of fourth amendment doctrines are leading to an airing of our right in my view that the feature in the united states. i want to say word about a general warrant.

this is why we have the fourth amendment. the general warrant is a document issued by a court of the executive branch which gives officials about it already to search for nbc's private documents without any prior evidence of wrongdoing. it does not specify within a particular date to be searched for the papers or records to be seized. not supported by oath or affirmation of any wrongdoing. it amounts to a fishing expedition to find evidence of illegal activities. for centuries prior to the american founding, english or assembly go scholars reject a general warrant is the worst exercise that radical power. the idea was to to the idea of the sanctity of the home. they famously said of one's home to him as castles for his refuge. william pitt then said in an inch apart and then before founding his endeavor bounce

houses called his castle because it is surrounded by a moat or defended by a law? no, the poorest man may bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. the wind may blow through it. the storm may enter, but the king of england may not enter. all his forces dare not caught the thresholds of the ruined tenement. when they left england expected the rights of englishmen would come with them. in the new world general motors began proliferating again. james otis says taking on mr. mrs. m. is one of the most famous in american history. the crown should have the power. i love to my dying day opposed at all the powers and faculties god has given me come to such of slavery on one hand is the

spread of assistant lives. general moran with the first instrument of arbitrary government power. that costs one king of england has had in the other has thrown. the concerns about the sanctity of the home and the importance of ensuring privacy for security. one of the most essential branches is the freedom of one's house, a man's home is his castle and he says well guarded as the castle. they would annihilate this privilege. john matters later wrote about otis' adoration then and they are the child liberty was forwarded. all of our early state constitutions or not to prohibit and when madison took on writing the bill of rights, he vowed to create a prohibition on these warrants and so we have the fourth amendment to be a secure in their persons, houses, papers

against unreasonable search and seizure. what unreasonable methods against the common law of which general warrant violated the common law. the government could not collect private information. they had to have a warrant and that had to be specific to the second part of the fourth amendment goes on in my cell particulars of exactly what has to be included for that warrant to be valid. no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation in describing the place to be searched. so with that history in mind, because perhaps, forgive them for being surprised in june of 2013 to bake a announcing the united state with the data in a phonorecord. they required verizon to turn over the detailed record of the metadata created by communications both with the

united states and abroad and entirely within the united states. issued by the secret court the foreign intelligence surveillance court, the order did not name any individual and did not specify the crime. there is not oath or affirmation. it did not indicate a particular place. it empowered the intelligence agency and federal law enforcement agencies to obtain private papers under a judicial rest. any web server that obligated to comply and rather than starting at the outset with information and illegal behavior was underway, the orders were being is to find evidence of criminal at dignity. in short it was a general warning. some people have argued the information under this order is not private and doesn't deserve the protection of the fourth amendment. the statement does not provide scrutiny for two reasons. this is not the only program

under way. there's an area trying to collect information about u.s. citizens combining the information to try and find out evidence of illegal at the dsp i'm actually going to read a short passage from the book because metadata provides enormous amount of information. data is content to make what you and the boat. but metadata provides the context for everything we do. it can reveal the most intimate details of his eyes and it's far easier to sit through than pure content. as a former general counsel, meta-data absolutely tells you everything about somebody's life. if you have enough metadata to come you don't need the content. it's sort of embarrassing hubbard doubled we are as human beings. general michael hayden, the director put the point even more strongly. we kill people based on

meta-data. why is metadata so important? it offers that inconsistency for more accurate than predictive analyses of who we are, what we've done and what we are likely to do. during one phone call to a credit customer service line with the content may suggest a problem in the recent billing cycle. repeated calls in single cause at the city cannot add at stanford university found that metadata is unambiguously sensitive even alike did on 500 people for a few months. scientists are able to encourage the commission based on meta-data. they spoke at length with cardiologist at a major medical center talked for a short time at the laboratories received calls from a pharmacy for a medical device used to monitor

cardiac arrhythmia. another individual called a firearm source for the semi automatic rifle before customer service for a manufacturer that produces a line. one person telephoned and you have to wonder. they did know they were in the study. they went to a home improvement store. a hydroponic sealer to head shop. i'm from california. two days later -- in another person telephoned her sister is the current length. two days later she called planned parenthood. two weeks later she telephoned the clinic a few times in one month later final time. the metadata provided in type two heart conditions, gun purchases, cannabis cultivation and decision to have an abortion and it was a small sample over a short period of the limited number of calls. the advent of big data in

potential of these analytical tools. but technology has catapulted our world forward in the process has made what happens to the future privacy in the united states one of the most pressing questions of our time. >> i should mention laura is watching her book tomorrow actually. [applause] she's doing it debate with michael hayden. if you are in d.c. so we've got a law professor, the photograpphotograp her, journalist and what i want to ask each of you can assert if your land somewhere public opinion stands right now in light of what happened last night in manhattan. thank you in the united states, a lot of us feel very and settled by this. i hear from my listeners that it's really creepy when they say to there has been issued by more almonds and an ad for almond turns up on their laptop or phone. we are not at the point in france where they have asked ended the emergency action in

terms of privacy being overwrote since what's happened over the summer. fred, will you kick a southward and things stand now? we are in the same boat really wonderful storytelling does make people care more about these issues. >> some distinctions need to be made. a lot legitimately so about metadata. really a very, very small part of what the nsa did. and the five-man commission that obama appointed the biggest reform that was actually put in motion by obama wants to take the metadata out of the hands of the nsa in cuba with the phone can't need. metadata is created by phone companies. the nsa has been taking it and then they can draw on it. it's been taken out of their hands and put in the phone companies in the nsa can gain

access only by asking for specific information. the person who proposed that as a compromise reform is the director of the nsa at the time, general keith alexander. because metadata hadn't helped to manage. there's another privilege in cross-section 702 which is not metadata. its data. while the commission from foreign stuff. the commission just concluded that there had been no connections with terrorists found through metadata. they found that there were about 40 cases for the seven military data have helped in capturing terrorists and forestalling the thoughts. i think a lot of people -- not

40 yet come to think of it. >> we don't know. >> i'm just saying what the commission's report says. in which seven at two data helps forestall terrorist activities. in my book there's a footnote to it. you can look up the page in the report were this discounted. the point is a lot of people are willing to give up certain things if they think that a terrorist lot is going to happen. i'll be very brief about this. so brief it will be accused of being oversimplified. why is the nsa interested in what's going on in domestic stuff at all? -- the way that cannot work cannot be oversimplifying, but

when you send out an e-mail or cell phone conversation into a zillion little packets and comes back together, kind of a miraculous thing. the internet slows for the internet is concentrated. 80% of all internet traffic in the world at some point go through the united states. sort terrorist attack is in talking with the terrorists in jenin, and at some point it is likely to communication will be somewhere in the united states. the nsa figured we don't need to have a listening post. blood centers that in modesto, california where the packet is going through and we will hop on board. that was the reason for wanting to hop on the backbone of the internet through prison case and so forth. again, you look at the forest literally. it does violate the fourth amendment because domestic conversations do pop up within minutes. it's very hard to grab the domestic lines.

during legal safeguards within the agency to get rid of domestic stuff. but in the administration of president trump and attorney general christie, they could say forget about the safeguards. we are dropping them. do whatever you want. the potential for abuse is massive. the incident of the abuse so far is fairly isolated. >> depending how you count it. >> what you hear us but i talked about, this notion we are all in the same world. you cannot buy on the russian submarine indications without getting a conversation from topeka, kansas. you just can't get it done the same communication networks. it's worth talking about because we all have a lot of things going on here. talking a lot about government government -- government surveillance. you look up to vacation in

hawaii and you get at for the next year. for the things you see are very tailored, more pervasive. how much do we want these companies knowing about us and our fears and the things we worry about and think about and use that to try to sell us things. our comfort but that tends to change. there's a lot of we feel this way. it's a creepiness we don't like and how did they know that? who told them not? i didn't tell them not. how did the phone company know where he was an predict where i will be? we've seen in the past few years, snowed in in the documents really pushed this out for government. a lot of surveys that show people are very concerned about this, not sure what to do about this. privacy is a don't have a cell

phone, don't have an e-mail address. you can't be a fully functioning person in the 21st jury. even though facebook makes their money spying on you. that's their business model. we cannot engage but that is how we interact with other people. the most interesting survey i saw was about a year ago which looked at what people dead because of the revelations. all international 700 million people around the world the changes in their behavior because of the event and other surveillance that came in the wake of snowden. a lot of them didn't do anything useful. maybe they meant to do something and said they did. to me that number is 700 million people felt like they should do something.

i can't think of another issue that moves that many people on the planet at a time. smoking didn't happen that fast. i think there is going to be moving. we are all just a little too scared. when you are scared, you're willing to have things done to you, even if they don't help because you think they might get the fact that all the surveillance doesn't actually make us safer or doesn't percolate through. something must be done. therefore we must do it. that's what we had because we are scared. my guess is in an election or two this becomes a serious issue that the important of the real reasons why we have these security measures, both limiting the law and the actions of the for-profit corporations that manage the infrastructure we need to function.

our papers are no longer in our homes. the more secure our papers are, the more likely they are in somebody else's can either in the cloud. these old notions don't work. i think public opinion is very much changing it is going to be a decade or two, but we won't get the privacy because that's where we get security. >> i want to point out one thing. we are going to go to your question. there are two microphones here. please go ahead and lineup of laura answers the question as well. >> i take your question along the lines of what is most people are afraid. i think we should do her own thing regardless of what other countries do. the bill of rights is meant to protect against the majority over writing. even if most people would be willing to trade privacy, that the point. that's why we have the bill of rights. the government may not go

beneath that solar without amending the constitution and that was the point of the anti-federalist said we have to set a floor to the government does not read its powers beyond the rights. on 702, one of the arguments with sausage given when the government uses certain secrets. they scan the internet traffic looking for the selectors and they do it offshore. you have heightened protections in the united states, but she done overseas. they can do this overseas because communications traffic is all going overseas and they have certain targets. one order before the 90,000 targets are not about order they stand traffic overseas to look for these key selectors. they've been very private about what the sailors are. one of the arguments often given if it's not people reading it. it's a computer.

your privacy is not violated. the argument is that no human being to say, there is no privacy intervention. only when they pick a possible threat that if a human being a human being season at which point you have some sort of reasonable suspicion or some criminal at tivoli. i've always found this argument perplexing because if the government were to come into our homes and put a camera in the shower and say we are going to record you in the shower, but we are not going to look at it. we will they look at it if we have a really good reason to do so. that would not personally make me feel any better. privacy is determined by the person under surveillance, not by the first active of the person doing the surveilling. there is no automation exception in the fourth amendment to take account of privacy being violated. i think i'll probably just leave it at that. >> i would just add that i really interested in this idea

of each person defining what privacy means to them. that is something i want to explore on our show and also we did a great episode about stingray and the guy who figured it out the two were actually using this weapon. if you're curious to know more about that, please check it out. let's take a question. >> my question is direct did to the nsa in the security agent gave are really not capable of doing this job without this terrorism thing, without massively violating people's rights on so many levels. they are just not capable of doing that. because you look at the idea that james bond, for example, of actually doing the work in finding these thousand people, that has gone completely off. i think you are right in your assertion that basically we are going to have to have an encryption and are because unless the people, round to the philosophy that privacy is a

central bedrock to our republic, to our whole way of life, the governmengovernmen t agencies have no reason to stop. these guys are smart technocrats. congress isn't quite as top than or bring them in any significant way, especially if there's any kind of terrorism threat or people are confused about solving. so yes i think you're right. how would the encryption standard work and what sort of encryption should be moving towards until the people catch up to what they need in the political system responds correctly. >> will probably lose because of the audience. i want to talk about your notion that the nsa can't do his job without surveillance. we know more about the fbi. esb right now -- the fbi is in a position that we need to get data off suspect cell phones. and i think there is a box of expertise and a little bit of

laziness that before cell phones you had to collect data manually. you had to go and investigate crimes. now while you did is the cell phone. there's been about 20 years, 15 were the fbi lost a lot of its investigating capabilities. and now there is this lack of expertise and not argue that what the fbi needs is not backdoors. non-access to everything that they need to reengage the investigative techniques that they've lost but are still capable of. i don't think it's gone forever. if you put in legal restrictions on mass surveillance, you would get back this expertise. i don't think all hope is lost yet i think you have to push back on these easy technique to violate so many liberties and force the government back into the older techniques that worked then, work now and will work tomorrow.

>> assured i'm not come in the encryption debate in many ways is about the basic question, is there any such thing as private digital data? is there any such thing for that in some ways is what this is all about. the second point i want to make of this started out in san bernardino as a national security issue and that quickly in the criminal law. another example of how it starts out for national security purposes to weaken the standards and expand the powers and then it becomes the norm for all criminals. they're hundreds of police departments that want to open phones and they treat them on a case-by-case pieces for ordinary criminal at cavities. the third point is direct your commie has repeatedly over the past few months that says we always had the authority to break into your phone -- to obtain affidavits, to get evidence from you for evidence of criminal at cavities. that is not true. from the founding of the country

until 1967, over 200 years, there's something called the mere evidence rule. the government could not issue a warrant even if it was particularly supported by the affirmation describing what he sees. if it was going to be used as evidence in a trial for evidence of criminal activity, they could only get the information through the fruits of crime when you steal something, the painting of the middle east would be the fruit of the crime and instrumentality would be if you killed someone. this revealed the things you could get by warrants until 1967. in that case the court said we are going to step back but we worry the government will begin using more and to get evidence of criminal activity to use in court. we have not always had this ability from the log first met perspective to get the information and the reason was because the founding generation

worried about protecting a sphere of intimacy within people could develop their own thoughts, their own ideas. they could mediate relationships and decided they were going to bring into their lives. they could develop their ideas then this is the fundamental and side. the people change their behavior when they think what they say and do is be recorded and watched by others. the founders worried about that. most importantly the harm created by giving the government and tied into the private lives. this could be used to find individuals who might be political opponents have been the target to undermine them and head off political opposition and used to override the structural protection in the united states. this is what motivated the founders to create the prohibition. >> i want to point out that it's killing me would only have five minutes, technically less. i feel equipped to go all day

just order food and stuff your luscious take one more question. we may have time for another. >> just a quick comment. the comment is a sad commentary on the american people if they are willing to feel more comfortable to fight for their constitutional right to no longer these intrusions could reach into the cake the harder they are to fight. my question is several of the panelists have mentioned we either have completely secure, completely open, but can't it be a little more sophisticated msn that it seems that they develop within thread program which would have been very fact that at catching terrorists and i've done a good job of preserving constitutional liberties and the bush administration rejected it in favor.

i think the trailblazer which didn't do a good job of catching terrorists in a poor job of catching terrorists. >> trailblazing has been replaced. i've been to a lot of people are very sympathetic that this program actually a scale up to the would need to do the kind of surveillance that's needed and all world wide web world. >> there is a lot more you can do. we're simplifying a lot up here. >> but yeah, i think we need to because otherwise we are not going to be able to reach 99% of the population and its effect in them in ways that never has. i commend you for simplification. >> we do use math first. >> this question is for bruce. i'm a huge fan.

i know that the undermine privacy bileca said i feel like i need them to function as a 21st century individual. do you have any advice? >> the advice as you make your trade-offs. i'm going to say this on whatever, c-span2. i played pokémon go. so we are forever making our trade-offs online banking versus not, e-mail versus voice conversation. politicians decide. our decide. or save us an e-mail or make a phone call? we are all making our trade-offs. the world is such that we are being shunned to insert directions. i choose not to be on facebook. but i'm a freak. a lot of us have to be. my advice is you make your choices and you have to be okay with it. if you want better protection, it's not what you do. if the systems around you.

you have to fight for better legal protections, corporations because that's where the battles are. the battles are not about your practices. that's where the battles are. >> i agree with the importance of making trade-offs. you have to know what is going on in order to make informed trade-offs. one of the big problems is a lot of national security laws don't know what's going on. the big surprise is the government could apply tangible goods with the information being thought was relevant to an authorized investigation. that language was read secretly behind closed doors to mean that all telephony metadata is potentially relevant to investigations generally therefore we are going to collect everything. so if you are going to make relevant decisions, any greater

transparency. just after these revelations came out, right now the government said in a case called clapper, the supreme court that clapper did not have standing to challenge 702 because he couldn't show he was under surveillance by the government. the solicitor general had represented during oral arguments that if the government played somebody under surveillance using section 702, they would be told during the trial. thousand 2013 before the documents came out. six months later 702 is released and it turns out people are not being told when section seven of two data is used in the trial which is why challenge the number earlier because there's so much we don't know. the fbi continues to refuse to release the definition of what

to write for an information. you kind of don't know if the governments using this information again to you. we need more transparent the issues and how we want to protect privacy in our lives. >> to have a yes or no question? yes. [inaudible] >> it seems the executive branch is getting more and more private. you see an inverse relationship between the privacy of citizens and the secrecy of the government keeps? >> yes or no answer. sorry, fred. >> yes. whatever that means. >> i know. what can i do. >> if we say, what are they going to do? >> okay, though. just answer. >> sometimes the government, for

example, the whole business of the nsa is like looking for vulnerabilities in systems no one else has founded and the white house made this decision when you find they would have stayed great, let's explain it. now it has to go through generations he to decide whether they should close this vulnerability are exploited. they have to answer five questions. >> probably not yes or no questions. i am told it has been used sometimes. this is a very interest and am much more significant than it may sound for the government is actually not doing something to extend the powers or at least asking a bunch of questions before they do not answer just by the direct or of the nsa, but by the national security adviser

and the president of the united states. >> the difference is the power dynamic. you have the corporation of the people. privacy increases your power. surveillance decreases power. if what we wanted liberty is the least difference between the government and the people. surveillance and the people reduces their power, private individuals decreases. government secrecy increases bad. government transparency decreases difference to you best way to think about it. >> for me it's more than transparency. one of my colleagues at stanford wrote what is the best title. he let that how the more safeguards built into the system the less secure they become. because the social shirking

occurs. that is inside his national security. what he noticed about the redundant the is the more people to look at the problem it doesn't get better. you need more robust, better oversight of this program tonight is the position we find ourselves. >> im manoush zomorodi. thanks for being here. [applause] >> find the people in front of the building for barnes & noble will be selling their books. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> you're watching booktv on c-span2. live coverage of the annual brooklyn book festival in new york. we will take a short break and we will be back live in about 10 minutes with the next author panel. [inaudible conversations]

>> we are living in a moment when a man who is in the white house right now with a constitutional lawyer by trade and training, who won the nobel peace prize, who was portrayed as a transformative figure in american politics and is presiding over a global assassination program, is presiding over the most intense persecution and prosecution of whistleblower's in u.s. history has used the espionage act more during his two terms in office

than any -- then all of the presidencies in u.s. history combined with bad act was signed into law in the early 1900s. this president, obama, is viewed as this great liberal leader who had credible support and yet dick cheney, i imagine him somewhere in wyoming, having a good chuckle over how great this. has been for their agenda, for the agenda that john mccain would've never been able to implement. the agenda that mitt romney would have never been able to implement. barack obama -- [applause] has used his credibility, has used his credibility as a popular democrat in a constitutional lawyer to seek to legitimize what amounts to a global assassination program. every president since gerald

ford has upheld an executive order that says that the united states does not assassinate people. and yet the u.s. congress has not only avoided had legislating that issue are defining the term assassination, but has act really refuse to do so. the reason is because if congress actually defined assassination, and if congress that that's an executive order and we are not going to translate that into law. it would mean you would have 500 plus lawmakers who would be also was answerable for this policy. instead of assassination, what we are told is that we are engaged in targeted killings. we are engaged in a high targeted killing campaign. no, no, no. we are engaged in a global program where we are the embodiment of what richard clarke who was the counterterrorism under clinton

and came over into the bush era. .. who will live and die on any given day because he says so. i want to know with all the liberals who have supported this policy and at one point it was 70% of self-described liberals

said that they supported drone strikes abroad. i want to know how many of those people when they hear the phrase president donald trump's kill list are going to still believe in that principle because i will tell you something, there's no such thing as a democratic or republican drone strike. you can watch this and others online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> and book tv's live coverage of the brooklyn book festival continues now. the next author panel you will hear from, it's a conversation on terrorism, this is book tv on c-span2.

>> i see you writing something. are you writing my name? [laughter] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> all right, good afternoon, everybody. we are going get started. we are missing one panelist but -- >> she's here. >> dramatic entry. >> excellent. okay. so our topic today is terror threats and fear and basically what we are going to be looking at is the impact of post9/11

policies that have emerged in the last 15 years and looking specifically at the impact on muslims in this country and phenomena of islam phobia. it's a particularly interesting day to be having this conversation i know that i read of chelsea, oh, my god, i hope it's not a muslim or someone related to isis or other terrorist groups, no foreign connection which i assume means no muslim connection. but the other thing, though, before this happened looking at yesterday there was an article in the new york times which was talking about hate crimes

against american muslims. now, anybody who sort of reads the newspaper on a regular basis may have noticed that these issues are become at the core and two women attacked with their babies in strollers and another woman whose shirt was set on fire. there were mom and assistant who were walking outside mosque who were shot, they don't really know who did that. here we have statistical evidence that hate crimes on american muslims are up 20% over the course of 2015 and we can talk a little bit, i think n this panel of why that is, some of the causes seem obvious but i think some of them are probably a bit deeper than what seems apparent. i think we have an interesting really accomplished panel to discuss these issues with us today, to my right is

mr. fayumi, how does it feel to be a young american. he's a frequent contributors into various and among other things he has a new book out which i highly recommend it and image it for sale and t called "the muslim american life, "and i first read another book of his lunch with a by -- bigot and i recommend it to all of you, but today the book that we are highlighting is this one a foreigner carrying in the crook of his arm a tinny bomb and

basically looks at two very important sting operations that were carried out in the united states and then to my immediate left is masha green -- gessen, i'm so sorry. a russian american journalist and the author of the best seller, the man without a face, the unlikely rise of vladimir putin and several other books. the book we are going to be focusing on today is called the brothers which is a story really about the brothers who perpetrated the boston marathon bombing in 2013. she has always -- shuz shorter pieces that appear in new york times, vanity fair and all of those. i think we have a great panel so let's just give them a hand and we are going to get started. [applause]

let's start with amtava, we are going to start with islamophobia. how do you actually define islamophobia? is that the only measure of it, is there more to it than that? >> i frankly did not concern too much with islamophobia in writing this book, i was interested in how the narrative of entrapment explains how the fbi really is a very bad writer, their plots are poor, the conclusions, the way they are thinking of stories plan and poor account for exploration of reality. that said, how does islamophobia power interest and speaking of my own country in india, often

in certain situations all muslims are presumed guilty. with that translates with the idea of a predetermined identity and what i am opposed to -- i'm only saying that only all terrorists are muslims. inaccurate. to me rounded up in some ways a challenge narrative that a

particular person -- forget a particular group, even a particular person is we assume them what we want them to be. journalists should talk more about academy dem is. we don't certainly recommend it. i think general issues speak to writers because they have a much more imaginative reality than others. >> let me turn to you. how do you see it coming from that perspective? >> i wouldn't actually say that i explored islam in russia. i explored the kind of prejudices and persecution that is muslims have faced in russia and as a back story to this, to

the american story and the heart of the book is the american history and meshed up with what you were talking about and i think that the point that i was trying to make about islamophobia that it keeps us from actually knowing and understanding. we immediately assume that we know what happened. this was very much the case in -- in the story and exacerbated that the surviving brother didn't contest his guilty, but that allowed us to go on with this idea that we knew what happened, which we don't still. >> i mean, one thing that i think is interesting about the ternaive story if you look at

law enforcement and intelligent evaluations of terrorism, what are the signs of terrorism. there are things like becoming more religious, giving up drinking and smoking and overturning to islam and i felt like -- there were some signs of that with the younger tarnave brother, it wasn't a clean story? >> it's never a clean story. one thing that seems to be common to a lot of the stories of -- of people who have perp at a at a -- perpetrated acts of terrorism, it's an afterthought. >> let me turn to you, moustafa,

what is islamophobia, what is it a little bit? >> just to duck tail a little bit on that point of people turning to islam in these cases, because of course, with young muslims over the years many people turn to islam and become religious and that doesn't prove anything at all. so i think the afterthought nature of that is really important. we need to interrogate vocabulary. islamophobia, phobia in the name that muslims are feared but more

of a hatred there. i tend to prefer an antiislam sentiments or antiislam feeling or movement. these sorts of things than trying to use the term islamophobia. it's strategic that we can talk about early stages of the war on terror and there's something a little bit tragic about -- not just the length of that but also the shift that have occurred over the 15 years. i would say that in the earlier years of the bush administration, you know, we had a lot of antimuslim sentiments in the country that was mostly manifested through national security policies and national security thinking like we need mass round-up programs that is going to eliminate whatever national security threat might be within the paranoid mind set

of the national -- of the law enforcement agencies that might be within the muslim community, but somewhere 2008 and 2009 and i don't think it's a mistake that it happens right around the time that obama is elected, i think that narrative actually changes to one that's much more of fear of muslim culture, invading american culture, all things of muslims become frightening at all and you get threats about sharia law taking over the country and also the rise in these antimuslim hate crimes that you were pointed out reached apex from last year. i think the term islamophobia diverts us from where we are talking about. >> the other piece, of course, is one of the things that happened around the 2008-9 time frame, like act for america and

some of these groups who -- and the interesting thing is that a lot of these people are influential in post9/11 in the discourse in washington, they were really often -- you would see them on tv and as they became unpopular in the mainstream, you saw them kind of moving to the fringes and setting up these groups which pushed, for example, legislation and a number of states, calling for a ban of sharia law not being implemented and coming up with the imagery threats and been successful but always the radical fringe on this, but one of the things that i think we have seen in the last year coming back to this mainstream discourse. do you want to maybe talk a little bit about? >> they're certainly true they are connected.

i don't want to be the first person to say the name but i think i will, trump. [laughter] >> definitely connected to the rise of trumpism. it's actually more important that we talk about trumpism than donald trump himself. it's really the fact that trump get it is kind of support that he gets theas the most -- the most noteworthy thing and the most frightening thing that we need to talk about and the people that he has around him and when he had the called islam ban and statistics around that that are completely fraudulent when it comes to real social science by the name of frank and also part of the sort of fringe right-wing network who is connected to the movements that you're talking about a minute ago.

they tend to follow american electorate cycles and that's what we are seeing today in the most recent cycle of this is happening as well. >> okay, let me turn to you ma marsha for a bit. pain inflicted by the boston marathon bombing was one of the few aspects of act of terror that were immediately evident and certain. this book, however, is not about that pain, it's about something that whatever evidence on earth would never be certain, the strategy of bombing and reasons that led to it and invisible victims. i'm wonder if you can talk about those three things the strategy that proceeded the bombing, the reason that is led to it and invisible victims. >> yeah, that's not actually part of the book, it's my

attempt to face some of the criticism that i knew was going to face because the book doesn't address the victims of the bombing. i think it's sort of automatic for journalists in this country and understandable to focus within act of terror to focus on the victims. i think there's some very good arguments for doing that. it's humanizing and important when you talk about terrorism to talk about the actual people and the actual lives that were affected directly. but the flip side of that, is that the human story of the perpetrators and anybody else connected with that story is immediately discount because you can't in a situation where you're always in a rhetoric of war you can't see both sides of human, if you're humanizing the victims you can't always see the

perpetrators as humans, knowing that i wrote that at the beginning of the book hopefully to take that defenses of the people who were going to be criticizing the book for not addressing victims. it's still gets criticized rounding for engaging, i think one review wrote in the muslim-victim narrative for what i say about the strategy that proceed it had bombing, but, you know, nobody is going to blow people up because they've had a great life, right, i think we can agree on that and i think it was important to look at the lives that proceed the bombing. i don't think there's a way to explain how an act of violence happens, not just act of terror but any act of violence, there's always a leap but there's always a way to tell the story of the humans and the second part of

the book is all about the aftermath, and that was something that came to me -- it was unexpected and came to me in the process of reporting because as you mentioned i actually reported the book in the states, in a few years, my last couple of books before this one was about russia and i was really looking forward to reporting an american book because it's so much easier, americans love to talk about always easy to schedule an interview and public culture and different than reporting in a country like russia where a lot of people have sort fear and have reasons to fear of being public. amazingly this book was harder to report than a book that -- on russia. people were in more fear than a lot of the people that i have interviewed. >> what do you mean by people? >> i mean people who have been

harassed by the fbi and i use that word quite purposely, anything but harassed by the fbi in the aftermath of the bombing and this -- this is the entire chechan community and of course, the horrific incident where a man shot after interrogation a month after the bombing during an interview because it was being conducted in his apartment. why is it important to point out that it was an interview not an interrogation? because interrogations are video taped and a person in custody has no record and fbi agents, they were three of them and explained they shot him because

he became violent in the fear of their lives and the fbi concluded that they had done nothing wrong like the other 115 investigations of 152 shooting deaths of suspects by the fbi. so people who are aware of this and people who had been harassed by the fbi were terrified to continue and they were terrified in part because of what they were experiencing in the states because so closely reminiscent what they had experienced before they left. another group of people that were terrified of talking to me were just acquaintances of the younger brother who were also involved as witnesses in three obstruction of justice cases which i can talk about separately but they're quite telling, but these kids, you

know, 18, 19, 20 year's old had been instructed by the fbi not to talk and instructed by the fbi not to be by defense, they were really scared. those were some untold victims of the bombing and, of course, the four young men who ended up going to jail for obstruction of justice are also people that i spend quite a lot of time talking about in the book who are very important. >> so, you know, one of the reasons why i think you see muslims being afraid to talk to people is that that's been a lot of journalist going through mus him communities, pretty much every time something happen and often times you see journalists in the communities trying to talk to people, i don't know, being provocative at times and

one of the reasons to fear is obstruction of justice charges but also pervasive fear of operation and a number of these cases, i don't know 50 to 60% to have fbi's terrorism prosecutions are string operations. there's definitely a different point of view when you talk to law enforcement and they're like what are we supposed to do if we come across somebody that's x, y and z and shouldn't we go b going and interrogating them and trying to figure out if they're serious and some guy mouthing off but from the perspective of the muslim community, it seems that, you know, that people who are young or vulnerable in one way or the other either being, having allow iq or sometimes mental health problems are being

targeted by agents from the fbi and sometimes local police as well and are then sort of drawn into plots and eventually convicted quite easily and i will just remind you here that each charge of material support or each count carries a 20-year prison term so even if the kind of quote, unquote, criminal aspect of what an individual did it's actually quite small, you're still looking at very long jail times. he was charged with in essence translating materials that he found on the internet and convicted and was given a very long prison sentence. so sting operation, you look at a couple of sting operations and it fits into how the fbi doesn't write very good stories and this is -- you're talking about the defendant, a big-time arm's dealer, right?

>> yeah. >> there's all of this -- these clues that maybe he isn't such a big-time arm's dealer and went on to the question to believe the defendant's claims when everything was readily available and delivered nothing. did they want to be taken in by his boasting? >> you're from pakistan. >> was she alive then? [laughter] >> but if she had been dead and said the same thing the fbi would have been willing to believe that too. they believed every boastful claim he made about how rich he was, about what sorts of access he had, but he was a man who did not even have a fax machine in

his office, but the fbi was willing to believe that think would buy from his and chris christie, the great chris christie announced his first arrest under the patriot man of this act and said we have won the war against terrorism. [laughter] >> so all of you should now relax. [laughter] >> you know, the thing that has to be noted very quickly is that the global war on terror has been a giant money-making machine for law enforcement and for other auxiliary associations. the population of a whole state like indiana is the population of people in washington, d.c. where it's security clearance. and i shouldn't complain because i said the war on terror has been employment boost of people

persuasion like me. you go to court in brooklyn, the judge is never brown but the rest to have people are, the accused is office the defendant, the informant is grown, the translator is brown. so the sting operation fulfills a lot of needs, material needs that people have, you said, you know, something about if you have a good life you don't necessarily are not interested in blowing things up and what's true and what write in the book is you sometimes think, the state narrative that these are two separate people, the informant and fbi informant and then the other person on the other side was the accused but actually we have to reach that narrative because both of them are the same people, they are failed men, immigrant, great ambitions, they have no real

recourse and each informant makes about a hundred thousand dollars on each sting easily, sometimes five times that amount. that's where our money is going. so what i'm trying to say is in the sting operations, new economy that has come up after 9/11, vast people stand to benefit from it and i'm not saying the terrorist should be caught but these are not the terrorists. >> so one of the things and i try to get this one when i was talking about how the fbi view sting operations, right, and one of the things we hear about a lot when you do work in this area is, you know, well, we need to balance liberty and security, right? that's sort of the constant refrain about how do we get the balance right and moustafa you said something in the book which i thought was telling, the problem is that most of the

country is willing to trade some one else's liberty, mainly ours for their own sense of security. talk a little bit about that? [laughter] >> what do you mean? >> you know, so many of the policies have very little impact on nonmuslim americans. >> i don't know, everybody has to take off their shoes at the airport. >> that's an inconvenience. but not if you have precheck anymore which sort of makes me wonder, dwhie we have to do that in the fist place? there were reports in the very beginning too when they first started deploying national guardsmen in the train stations because you see them that sometimes they don't have loaded weapons.

great failure on law enforcement asian yous because 9/11 1 did happen. they failed misrab being in 9/11. they have to project that they're doing things and also the sting operation exists. unprecedented access of one of the men who has become an fbi informant and follows him -- the film makers, two of them, follow him unbeknownst to the fbi and one of the things that you don't hear about in that film, frankly, i know by talking to her afterwards, the man had made inflammatory facebook postings, many people do, again, making

inflammatory facebook postings, that was actually -- the third time that the fbi had sent an informant after him. they were trying to make sure there was a prosecution here. third time they sent an informant >> or that the guy wasn't serious. >> ill it depends on the nature of the investigation, what they're actually finding in those investigations and if you see the film, granted the film is coming from her point of view or the film-maker's point of view so i don't have access to the -- earlier investigations and great deal of imbalance and how the prosecutions happen,

right? according to him the fbi wanted him to sleep with women in the muslim community in order to gain trust of the community. >> does it work that way? [laughter] >> in other words, if you talk to many members, i would venn dhuir -- venture to say if they haven't been visited by an fbi agent, they personally know someone who has been visited by an fbi agent. you know, but these things are definitely and clearly felt by the muslim community and they're not rest by -- felt by the rest of the country by like taking your shoes off the airport and

to what purpose? that's the point. everybody in the muslim community knows that god forbid there were another huge and catastrophic attack that who would be the most vulnerable community, of course, would be the muslim community and so this idea that somehow muslims, the muslim community is harboring the terrorists or our rights are somewhat less valuable because we are somehow involved in the criminal enterprise i think is actually a very highly dangerous proposition and in these times future it could be any other group following as well. >> just one footnote sacrificing someone else's liberty and obviously the false dichotomy but one of the disserving parts to have boston story is that we are willing to sacrifice our own

security and our own liberties. there's something incredible that happened three days after the bombing. some of you might recall that there was a manhunt. the two brothers were in a shootout, the older brother died and the younger brother was on the loose. at this point the boston police and the fbi were fairly sure that this was a 19-year-old kid maybe armed with a shotgun, a handgun that he didn't know how to operate or maybe unarmed. he was hiding somewhere in watertown, a western suburb of boston. the governor of massachusetts asked the people of boston, greater boston, many sacrificed leaving housing, going to school, shopping, going to a

restaurant, doing anything at all because the 19-year-old probably unarmed definitely injured possibly with a handgun was on a loose in western suburb of town. this is unprecedented voluntary forceful liberty. >> a dark-skin suspect is the main person of interest and this continued for a day. what i'm interested is again the -- i hate to sound like a literature professor but unfortunately i am, the production of narrative and narratives that everyone

embraces so quickly so that a brown-skin suspect who had been missing from home was seen as one of the main -- a student from brown university and there was the idea and then the other sort of narrative that emerged that, oh, you know, the person's whose tweet h -- said it's not the towel heads that are responsible but people from czechoslovakia. >> i remember that very clearly, that moment very clearly too and there was a lot of talk about they're not actual white,

they're muslim. [laughter] >> they're from the caucuses so they're caucasian. >> i'm going to open up the floor for questions, there are two mics one on either side and i ask that you ask a question, please, keep it short and please introduce yourselves as you start. thank you. [inaudible] >> bogus and it's a joke, what about the case in orlando, the orlando shooter and they had a sting operation, they tried to entrap him, didn't work and two years later he shoots up and kills 49 people. >> that's a great question. what they're looking for when

they tried to entrap him and when they talked to him, what did they ask, i'm looking for that point. if you have a certain assumption on how a muslim behaves or what agrelings -- aggression is, you're doing the wrong thing. you're not open to the fact, for example, that this guy is a domestic abuser and violence could be not not because he's a muslim but that he has hit his wife many times. that failure to recognize violence impulse is condemning to the fbi. i go to the mosque every day. >> can i jump in and say one more thing which is that violence is really, really hard to predict. i mean, we've known this about every other form of violence like two people brought in exactly the same circumstances, might -- one might turn violent

and the other might not. one of the things that we have done is put ideological frame on terrorism and think that that provides us can guide posts and i think what one of the things that we have seen it's not necessarily true. but as to your point, what are they supposed to do, i think the answer to that is they're supposed to investigate crimes or suspicion of illegal activity because a lot of times that you find in the cases is well before anything happens that there's actually some other indicator, smaller criminal activity. even in the case of the ternave brothers, one was suspected of a triple homicide a year earlier on september 11, the thing that law enforcement should do law enforcement and not necessarily ideological monitoring, that might be more effective that way. >> i wanted to ask masha gessen

with some details about the connection of the brothers to larger policy of the united states and regime change operations utilizing islamist radicals to destabilize countries around the world, so the ternaev brothers had an uncle who was a brother-in-law of a top guy in the cia for 40 years whose concept of projecting power was to weponized radical islam in the middle east, the guy's name is graham fuller and their uncle was mare today this man's daughter and the elder ternaev met with islamic radicals and the fbi knew about this. expanding the scope, there was

no islamic terrorism until the late 70's when the united states weponized against the union and so i want to ask you to situate these brothers in that and what you think about our policies in that regard. i don't want to sound harsh but i don't think a good answer to bad conspiracy thinking is to engage on bad conspiracy of our thinking and wrong side of the road that you're trying to push me down and i think it's true that the ternaev's uncle was marred to the daughter of graham fuller and by the time they got married they he was retired,

there's no reason that he was engaged with policy toward the caucuses, anyway, it's a pretty long hype from here to there. in terms of u.s. foreign policy that actually has to do with ternaev case is a shift in u.s. policy toward russia that occurred after 9/11. basically there was a decision made to stop criticizeing russia for war in czechennan. i think that the -- adopting that narrative has been horribly damaging to the fabric of american society.

>> hi, i have a question about narratives. i think -- or my observations what happened in the muslim community there's an incident or even when there's not incident there's a tendency to explain and apologize and we are sorry, i think he's sorry but, you know, i think it's this in general what my observation in the muslim community always in the back foot and saying, no, islam means peace and all this kind of stuff, and it seems like -- it seems to me is that you are agreeing fbi accusation by saying i'm sorry. i would be interested in your thoughts about narratives that

could go in the offensive even that feels dangerous, but how could we tell different stories within islam about islam and specially show the beauty and creativity within islam, that would be my question, thank you. >> i guess i will take that one. but i think that, you know, we should decouple the idea that these violent acts are somehow related to the muslim community. in the united states there's a very simple foundation of legal principle which guilty is an individual and not collective. in essence that's the foundation of western jurisprudence. so when we start to engage in collective guilt, then we are down the road of prejudice and bigotry and so when muslims are put in a position where they have to apologize for something that they individually did not

do, they're actually feeding the mill mill of collective guilt is apparent and, of course, we should condemn all acts but also -- who cares about condemnations in the end. we have to understand what motivates the acts in order for them knot to happen again across the spectrum. and so all say that for all kinds of politics. we need -- americans generally need to understand how politics work across the world much better than they do as a whole. >> did you want to weigh in? >> i also like the idea when would white americans speak up, please, i think that is necessary. >> from a practical point of view, i mean, i work with a lot of these groups as i'm sure you do too, you know, they're stuck, right, because if you you're the

counsel in islamic relations in new york and you don't come out and condemn, then literally all over social media, look at the muslims they're terrorist lovers because they never condemn terrorism. so, you know, the people who do it aren't thinking about narrative cohesion and, you know, i mean, they are thinking about it, they are conscious that they're playing into the stereotype but what are they going to do in a practical level, they get slammed. >> organizations end up being put in a specific kind of place, but groups like care also push back on other kinds of actions that happen in there, well, why don't this group be condemned in the same way. pointing out the hypocrisies is another element which is where he's getting at now. >> really quick.

>> i do immigration and asylum history and i'm interested in the question of how this character of the terrorist is use today deny asylum to needed and perpetuate human rights to those suffered? >> you're the lawyer, you should do that. >> yeah, but i'm not an asylum lawyer. i don't know enough to answer that question. >> i can give one small piece of the story which has to do with czechoslovakia, following the 9/11, the u.s. started viewing people who have been engaged as having materially aided terrorism. to it's not a large group of people in this country but for each one of them it's been a family tragedy where often at least one person in the family

is suspended in limbo where the rest of the family asylum or refugee status because they came over as refugees and one is on infinite and one member of the family is vulnerable to, for example, after the boston bombing, the fbi comes and saying, now you're going to cooperate with us or else your parole is revoked and they can do that with -- >> that happens routinely for all muslim countries, constitutional right that is has litigation on that question and then, of course, don't forget the question of syrian refugees, that was just a catastrophe within the united states as they're all op-ed of terror coming into the country. >> so i'm afraid our event is officially over and they are giving me signs but thank you very much.

it's been a great audience. i'm sorry we weren't able to get to all the questions and thanks for joining us. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen fi can have your attention, it is important that we clear the room for the next panel. everyone must exit back down to the street level. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> and you're watching book tv on c-span2, this is live coverage of the brooklyn book festival in new york. several hours left in our coverage and in about ten minutes the next author panel begins. it's a discussion on political parties and elections.

you're watching book t on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> here is a look at authors recent le featured in after words. former attorney general alberto gonzález and white house counsel in george w. bush administration. georgetown university professor rosa brooks describes the expanded role of the military around the world and anncoulter made case for supporting donald trump.

also coming up mary thompson jones will talk about investigation of thousand of leaked state department cables and this weekend new york times president and ceo mark thompson discussing the way political speech has changed over time. >> attention span feel so pressed for time today and politicians are so anxious to find political language that work for twitter, work if the staff of the bottom of the screen of msnbc or c-span. maybe you lose some of the power language gets lost. >> after words airs on book tv every saturday at 10:00 p.m. and

sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch on our website booktv.org. >> you had a reporter from indiana who went down, really went out of her way to find some sort of christian mom and pop shop that she should stereotyped. that was basically allowing people to say, well, if you own a business and if you want to choose how you run your business, that's fine. you don't want to violate religious conscious. there are limitations. people think it's free-fall. but if you are sincerely

professing your faith, i don't want to give you my skill or expression, then that's what it is about. this reporter went out of her way and went to this really little, you know, really tinny small town, it was one of those small town where is you are sr. the store front windows and people park out in the middle of the street and went in and she saw some crosses on the wall of this pizza shop and thought here it is and walked inside cristal who is the daughter of the proprietor was at the cash register that day and asked her, well, would you serve -- would you caitor a gay wedding and the weird thick is that there was no actually service done, no goods or money was exchanged or anything like that, a hypothetical question and cristal said well, we serve customers every day but the act of a wedding ceremony goes against what we believe as christians so we probably wouldn't participate in that. i was thinking the reporter was going to a quicktrip or