in those days, washington union station and there in his diary records that jurgen said, logan, the left is going to lose the fire is too great. i'm turned in. indeed that is what he did. he went back to mant, reported to the fbi and became one of its most crucial assistants as his telephone tapped to the leadership of the cpusa was invaluable to the fbi. hoover was delighted and considered him one of a greatest assets. indeed, he even volunteered max jurgen to the district attorney to the southern district of new york, the prosecutor of the rosenbergs.

he ended his career defending south africa as a paid publicist and his papers are sealed at howard archives and probably would be of great value even today to scholars on the left. but they are embargoed. i think i probably exceeded my time or maybe i -- >> this is a wonderful presentation. thank you. thank you very much. with that, we'll take a ten-minute break and come back with some of the -- [ inaudible ]

>> well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. it is my great pleasure to introduce to you frank martinez. by day, freddy is a -- [ inaudible ] by night, freddy martinez is in my mind the leader of what i think is the most exciting grass roots anti- -- [ inaudible ] and he is a technologist and familiarized himself with the freedom of information to learn

an incredible amount about the use of stringray technology in chicago. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming freddy martinez. >> thanks, alvaro. how's my sound? yes? great. so i'm going the try to get through these quickly. a little bit about me. well, we'll talk about sort of the work i've done. sting rays in general. concerns for people of color and then what we'll be working on in the next 60 to 90 days and some things to work on over the next couple of years. so i'm a physicist by training. i was once called a skinny fidgety reporter from vice. but i love that. and yeah. i'm a technologist by day. so my motivation -- it all started over a beer at a bar. you know, everyone in this room knows this phrase. like someone should really look into this and inevitably like

you're that person that looks into it. but because i'm a physicist and because i have experience with different technologies, it allows me to do this kind of stuff. and then, the other thing for motivation is that, you know, when i organize i come from everything from a -- even -- i believe in ap ligs so i take that and apply it to our work and that really helps us in sort of the things we do. so i love this slide. for some reason there's a local news channel. they tried to look into stingray technology. they just believed that the police didn't have. just because they were told that. so for all the journalists in the room, don't do this. but because of the ways that we approach technology and the ways that -- the way we understand policing, we obviously didn't take no for an answer and we had

to sue multiple times, the police departments, states attorneys office just to get even the basic facts. so, what it is is like a suitcase-sized device and it basically is your phone number and other identify if iing information. they're portable. you can put on antennas, battery packs. essentially it forces your phone to give up identifying information about you. without any kind of, like -- there's no apting in or anything. it forces your rdevice to register. there are a couple of manufacturers in this space. harris corporation is the big one and then there's boeing subsidiary and there are also sold, you know, all around the world. okay. so, why you would use one. you can, like, send spam

messages for free. you can pull identifying information realtime location tracking. you can gather information about who's calling who. how long those calls are lasting. you can do this without a warrant if you would like. you can build your own. and yeah. so that's why people use them. mostly realtime location tracking which is why police departments across the country use them. so, we uncovered two or three in chicago. we have noticed that like across the country, police departments will get these stingrays and then court orders for what are called pen order trap and trace orders. this doesn't require a warrant and then they'll go around for realtime location tracking following suspects around -- around the country. so the reason that that matters is that pen register orders are not -- they don't require warrants. they require much lower legal standard for getting these and what isn't being told to judges

is really crucial, that they're following people through, you know, by essentially searching their stuff without a warrant so that's kind of why it's important that this is happening across the country and another thing that happens is that police departments are signing nondisclosure agreements that say, you know, if we come to you and someone is asking for evidence that you use this on my client, we'll drop the case. or we won't tell judges that we even got one of these stingrays and we are using it in a case. so that's really troubling in a lot of different reasons. the most important one is that the defense attorneys can't raise this judicial argument that this is not -- you know, that there's a fourth amendment protection here. the chicago police department claims that they have no evidence of this stuff being checked in and out of their evidence control rooms. which is troubling because they

also say that releasing information about this is, like, neighal security concerns, so we have these very strange legal arguments that happen, like, one i can't give you information because of national security reasons, but then on the other hand, we're not controlling who's using them or we don't have records of how many times they're deployed across the city. so it leads you to a very strange legal -- when i'm trying to do foya requests it's very hard to get an answer to a question because of these kind of really contradictory kind of statements that police departments are making. let's see. so in chicago, this stuff was paid for with seized civil asset forfeiture money from like suspected drug dealers or something. it doesn't have to be proven in a court of law there's anything

nefarious linked to it. we have linked about $50 million to it. i don't know what's worse, that they're doing this in chicago or nationwide that they're taking money from the department of homeland security and using that to essentially militarize local police departments. i actually don't know what's worse. but nation alally you will see there's department of homeland security or usai grants to buy the equipment and giving to police departments. so that's a huge concern. another concern is that -- well, i talked about earlier, the pen register orders. so in chicago, this stuff is controlled by the bureau of organized crime, vice and narcotics so that whole unit works out of the square and what they do is, you know, essentially target the poor.

we know that this is essentially what they do. so that's a huge concern for me. the states attorney, on the other hand, has claimed that they have no records of ever prosecuting cases with stingrays. we're trying to fight through a foya to see if we can get those cases and this is interesting because we can't raise these questions about whether or not it's appropriate to spy on people's cell phones if we don't know who they're doing it to. it's a very catch-22 and it makes our work a little bit hard but because we've had some real good success in some of the lawsuits we've filed we're getting close to answers. there's a great graphic in tacoma in 2014. the -- i mean, if we could just guess, what do you think that case is in green? what kind of cases would that be? so like some of these would be -- so green is drugs.

right? so in 2014, early 2014, someone must have been like, hey, we'll use this for drug cases. so that's the case in tacoma. in boston, there's similar. all of the officer that is have signed like the nda for the stingray in boston all narcotics officers. so, in the next couple of steps i think we should be trying to figure out where these criminal cases are being prosecuted, where defense attorneys are being mislead. i think that we should be challenging these prosecutions, letting people out of prisons that have been essentially lied to and incarcerated. so, in chicago, we won this legal case that we're going to essentially be getting records of deployments of use from chicago police department so we're really excited about that. there's a technology gist private activist michael --

sorry, his name is mike catz lacom and doing this across the country and if you're interested in sort of doing this kind of work there's hundreds police departments across the country that need investigations and i think that's it for my time. i have some references. i tweeted out the slides earlier. i want to thank matt topic, the attorney helping us. he's done fantastic work and he's one of the only foya attorneys that doesn't charge up front so if you're an attorney, consider taking those cases because we need it. questions? >> is your presentation available to us? >> yeah. i tweeted a link to it. >> oh, thank you so much. sorry. >> i'm not an attorney so this might be a naive question but in

terms of civil forfeiture, walk me through that. if you are acquiring basically illegal items, drugs, does that eventually get turned into money to be used to purchase these stingray equipment? >> so the way it works is usually, you know, you will have seized money from maybe a traffic stop or maybe like a search warrant or something and then that money will get seized so you'll get cases like, you know, city of chicago versus $9 and then that get entered into a general fund and then the police are using that -- at least it seems in chicago using that general fund and aloe katding new sources for the war on drug. so they're self funded. >> [ inaudible ] >> sometimes cash or beats he s headphones and ps-3. >> a question for you, freddy. we'll do this last question.

who are -- what communities are these stingrays being used in? >> yeah. so from what i can, it seems to be mostly drug cases. and when i mean drug cases, i don't mean like the guys who are jacking up the cost of pharmaceuticals. you know? [ laughter ] that's not a crime but -- but it seems that it's like -- it's like low-level drug offenders and then like to go back to this idea of where the stuff is housed, in vice, gang and narcotics investigations. that's all poor people. that's all people on the west side and south side of chicago. so that's -- i mean, i wish i had a list to show you every single, you know, demographic but i don't. but this seems to be consistent with what we've seen here in chicago and across the country with drug cases in general. [ applause ]

>> it's funny. thinking about asset forfeiture, i'm actually working with a number of prosecutors to think about ways that prosecutors can make a difference with regard to mass incarceration and race disparities and we have been convened by cyrus vance jr. when's the progressive head district attorney in manhattan and so he's bringing together about 20 people from all over the country. we're meeting regularly to talk about these issues. where's he getting the money to do this? asset forfeiture. so he's using the money he's getting from this questionable means. a lot of us have concerns about it but he's bringing us together to hopefully do something that will do some good. reduce mass incarceration and race disparities. a conference that's had a lot of

highlights this is one of them. you've heard already from one of the stars of this panel, alvaro bedoya, who will be the chair. he is the director of our center on private sy and technology and we now have the honor of hearing from david gar row. david gar row is professor of law and history and distinguished faculty -- >> pittsburgh. >> university of pittsburgh law school. he's best known for writing the pulitzer prize winning biography of martin luther king, the definitive biography of martin luther king. best known for that now. next year at this time he will probably be best known for writing the definitive biography of barack obama. that will be published in winter of 2016, 2017. and it's a special honor to have mr. james a. baker. he is the general counsel of the fbi. i can tell you, it's not easy to

get law enforcement officers to talk about these issues. we've reached out to mr. baker hoping that he would want to take a place in this because we were really interested in hearing from law enforcement as well as from activists and scholars and historians. and to our great delight he said, yes. and in saying yes, he actually continued a tradition that the fbi has started in coming to georgetown and talking about race and criminal justice and, again, this is just different for a police departments, for law enforcement agencies including the fbi, which is generally thought of as being the world's pre-eminent law enforcement agency. the director of the fbi, james comey, came to georgetown last year and gave a major speech on race and crime. and the police. i didn't agree with everything he said. but i was happy that he came to

georgetown to talk about the issues. we'll continue that conversation now chaired by alvaro. thank you so much. >> thank you so much, paul. paul's done a wonderful job introducing our panelists here. our incredibly importantly positioned panelists in this debate. i'll only mention we're running a little under 15 minutes over schedule. that's okay. we'll make up for it in the lunch hour. 45 minutes for launch is fine. we'll begin with professor garrow to speak about martin luther king and the connections to draw from that today. >> thank you. it's great to follow someone like freddy martinez doing just great present-day work. to me, as a historian, the simplist technology of surveillance remains the most profound, the most dangerous, the most troubling. and that's human informants.

in the technology of the 1960s, the fbi had three ways of surveilling dr. king. human inform anlts, bugs, microphones, my sores in fbi lingo and wiretaps. in the '60s, doing a microphone surveillance required trespass and the bureau was very hesitant and conservative about committing criminal trespass. wiretaps were incredibly time consuming and expensive to run throughout most of those years, the fbi is operating 60, 75, 80 wiretaps. but i want to concentrate on human informants and i'm going to tell two quick stories. the first involved dr. king and the second involves the african-american who was the most surveilled person of the

1960s. not dr. king business the head of the notorious and politically conservative nation of islam. i got interested in this in 1979. and in 1979, thanks to the church committee, thanks to attorney general ed levy, thanks to the house assassinations committee, we knew pretty much all of the chapter and verse about the elect tronnic surveillance of dr. king and the anonymous threatening suicide letter that alvaro put up earlier this morning that was written by assistant fbi director and head of the intelligence division, division 5, bill sul vi land. and sent to king without j. edgar hoover's personal knowledge. it's critical in looking at the hoover era fbi to not personalize hoover as some individually weird, dangerous,

unique monster. the fbi had a culture, an organizational culture of surveillance and of political control. a culture that was much more inclusive and all encompassing than just zwrchlt edgar hoover. in 1979, when i first got interested in the story of the fbi and dr. king, my beginning question was, why did this hostility get started? and we knew then that it focused on dr. king's closest political adviser and friend, stan levison, a white, jewish, new york real estate attorney. within two years i was being threatened with indictment under the espionage act of 1917 by the chief of the fbi's foreign counter intelligence unit, the late -- now late michael j.

steinbeck for the informant identities that i had managed to discover by means of interviewing. interviewing fbi peep. interviewing communist usa leaders. interviewing a kgb agent or two. morris and jack childs were brothers. had grown up in the communist party and by the early 1950s they had become the fbi's most valuable human informants ever of the hoover era. they were the fbi's and the cpusa's conduits between new york and moscow. they visited moscow regularly. morris visited beijing. it's a fascinating story but we don't have time for that. in that work, by the time they're working for the fbi '52 to '54, they've met stanley levison. stanley before he met dr. king was a communist party usa

financial operative. stanley's story like morris and jack's is a wonderful, compelling tale. and it's richly memorialized thanks to the fbi's very extensive wiretapping of stanley, of dr. king, of rustin, of clarence jones and we don't have time for me to give you a little bio sketches of who these folks all were. the fbi's hypothesis that stan levison was a dangerous communist influence on dr. king was quickly disproved because in all of those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of electronic surveillance, there is no scintilla of evidence that stanley was in any way manipulative in his relationship to doc. stanley was as loyal and as

helpful to martin luther king jr. as everyone in doc's life. i also in 1981, when the bureau was threatening me, had come upon the name of jim harrison. james a. harrison. still alive. who was the fbi's main human informant within sudden christian organization. dr. king's organization in atlanta. one cannot understand the history of what the fbi did to dr. king, did to the civil rights movement without knowing the full stories and the full documentary record of human informants like morris and jack childs, informants like jim harrison. since jim harrison is still alive, we don't have his file. and the most profound question

to me as a historian focuses on the fbi's position, a position that predates jim baker's role as general counsel that they will never give up even decades later the records documented what human informants have done in american polical movements. i have a name for all of you to search for. it's a wonderful story of tremendous journalism. earnest withers. withers. mark paraskia of memphis has done phenomenal work in recent years documenting how withers, like jim harrison, was a major paid fbi informant against the civil rights movement. even after judge amy burrman jackson here in the district court in d.c. held that withers'

status as a fbi informant was without question, true and accurate, the bureau maintained a stance that it would never release in full the withers informant file. now, my second and last quick story. going back to what i said about elijah mohammed and the nation of islam. as most of you who know the story of malcolm or the late mare ball's work will already know, malcolm was murdered by a criminal conspiracy organized by the nation of islam. the primary gunman remains alive and free today living in newark. google the name willie bradley. we know thanks to several documents released two or three years ago that as of sometime in 1965 we don't know for sure as

of the late of malcolm's murder, in february of 1965, that the fbi had multiple top lev, that's the bureau term of art in the '60s, top lev as in top level like morris and jack childs, top lev informants in the nation of islam. and historians who know the nation story well have some very strong suspicions who those informants were. and top lev does not mean you are a member of a mosque. it means you are a member of the hierarchy. the murder conspiracy that killed malcolm remains uninvestigated, unpursued by the u.s. department of justice and by the new york county ie manhattan district attorney's office even today. it is a travesty of american justice. if black lives do matter, let's

make malcolm's life matter. but, and i had this conversation with jim baker yesterday. [ applause ] we cannot solve and fully reveal the conspiracy that killed malcolm until all of the fbi files regarding the nation of islam and regarding the top lev human informants within the nation of islam are released in full unredakted no deletions so that scholars who know how to understand the nation, not people with department of justice security clearances, can look at those documents and map out the real conspiracy. several people remain alive. they should be prosecuted and convicted. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you very much. mr. baker.

>> sure. hi. well, thank you. >> i didn't mean to be that curt. i'm going to say very nice things about you afterwards. >> we had a great conversation yesterday. mr. baker has no relationship to the hoover era. >> we can confirm this. >> thank you very much. so obviously the american people have invested the fbi with great powers. under law. under the constitution. under the statutes of the united states. but you have given us great power and we can talk about the limits of that as we go forward, especially when it comes to surveillance if you want and maybe during the question period. but you have given us great power in order to protect the country from foreign and domestic threats and to enforce the criminal law. with that, we need, you want us to have and we welcome constraints. so we need -- we have power and we need constraints. and we need constraints under

law so that we can do the job that you want us to do the way you want us to do it. that's the key thing here. and so, i think one of the lessons to be learned, especially when you start thinking about the electronic surveillance activities that occurred during the investigation and activities around the martin luther king case, is that there were insufficient constraints on did government's authority to engage in national security surveillance, so-called at that time, for these purposes. and one of the important lessons, i mean, you cannot really understand american surveillance law the way it exists today. you can't understand the statutory framework in which we operate today, you can't understand the constraints that we have on us today if you don't understand the king case.

and so, to contrast what happened in the past and to shed a little light on where we are today, there is much more significant accountability and oversight, constraints, with respect to the fbi's surveillance activities than there were in the past. in fact, just this week, the director of the fbi was telling a story about how on his desk he has a glasstop desk and underneath the glass he has the one page authorization that j. edgar hoover submitted to attorney general bobby kennedy for authorization to conduct surveillance of dr. king. that has basically no -- has very flimsy support for it, factually. it has really no limitation on duration, on geographic scope, on what could be done with the communications that were collected. it really is a quite

astoundingly broad authorization and the director keeps that on his desk right now and every morning he is responsible for certifying applications under the foreign intelligence surveillance act, an act that was enacted after the king investigation and is -- its provisions in many ways in reaction to what happened, what was uncovered, by the church committee in the -- looking at the case, the investigation. and so, the director literally putts his stack of fisa applications on top of the one pager every morning and the fisa applications are like this. each one of them is quite, quite extensive. quite thick. with numerous recitations that are required by the law and i can talk about those in one second. but the point is that the era today, the protections that we have in place today, are

substantially, substantially different than they were in that point in time. and so you have layer upon layer of requirements that are an effort to have accountability and oversight. so just to name a few. so for example, with respect to every fisa application, the director or the deputy director or some other high-ranking national security official inside the government has to sign a certification that meets certain statutory requirements and basically explains the purpose of the surveillance and the necessity of it. that's in essence what the certification is. there's that. in addition, every single application has to be signed by a high-ranking justice department official. the attorney general, the deputy attorney general or the assistant attorney general for national security. they, too, have to sign their name and therefore personally accountable to congress and to the public with respect to these surveillances. in addition, something that did not exist at the time, we have the fisa court.

the foreign intelligence surveillance court which is a real court that consists of sitting district court judges who review all the applications and the government cannot go forward with these surveillances except in certain limited emergency circumstances if the fisa court judge has not signed off on them. also what was absent back in the king era were permanent oversight committees in congress. that did not exist at the time. that has existed since the '70s. that is a huge oversight mechanism, hugely important oversight mechanism that existed today that did not exist in the past. in addition, something that's not focused on much. if i could. >> you're good. >> the statute itself has a number of standards set forth in it that, again, constrain the power of the government and focus the government's attention to make sure that we're doing these types of highly intrusive

surveillances, there's no doubt. that the government is doing them in a way that's consistent with the constitution, with the statute and with -- i would submit with american values. so for example, there are specific standards about what it means to be a legitimate target under fisa. you have to be a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. what is the standard this applying. probable cause congress has said. that's what the judges have the look at. there's limitations on the duration of the surveillances. there are limitations on the facilities is the word. so the phones and the other types of location where is the surveillance is directed or the search will be conducted. those have to be described and the judges have to make certain determinations under the law with respect to what they're authorizing. importantly, there's significant limitations on what the government can do with the information once collected.

and i don't think david touched on it but one of the things that was the most problematic about what happened with respect to the surveillances of dr. king is what the government did with the information after it collected. the amount of information disclosed to other people and the sensitivity of the information disclosed to other people was really quite astounding and so today there are several different important parts of the statute that limit that kind of use of material. so in particular, the information cannot be used for an unlawful purpose. it can only be used for a lawful purpose. in addition, there are court ordered min mization procedure that is are -- apply and minimization means that the government has to limit to the extent feasible, the collection, retention and dissemination of the information consistent, consistent with the government's obligation or interest in producing, obtaining, producing and disseminating foreign

intelligence information. so that's hugely important, as well. so what i'm -- i guess what i'm trying to say is that the structure -- the government learned a lot from these cases. congress learned a lot. congress passed laws. the government has been implementing those laws for a long time and we at the fbi have learned a lot from it, as well. and we recognize to this day right now and every single day with the director having this on his day we need to stay focused on this particular case, but the larger issue that it raises with respect to being cautious about our own exercise of power, being cautious about the beliefs that we have when we're thinking about exercising the power that you have given us under law, questioning our thinking, questioning why are we doing something, pushing ourselves to make sure that we're not engaged, not deceiving ourselves, that we're not

unaware of our own biases, that we're focused on what we should be focused on when we engage in investigative activity and when we use investigative tools. so i think that -- so this is something i just want to tell you that is something we think about very much today. it's very much on our mind and with that i'll turn it back over and look forward to your questions. >> thank you so much. [ applause ] >> thank you. >> i think it's important to recognize and underscore something that you said, mr. baker, is that it's pretty bregs. you know, in congress you do have some folk who is talk about the dr. king case, folks like pat leahy, rand paul, keith ellie son. but it's important to say that in the executive branch, the one person who and i'm repeating myself from this morning but i want to make sure that everyone hears it, the one person who talks about the king case today

is director comey and me's very deliberately made the decision to train all new fbi agents on the case and i want to ask you a question about what that legacy means today. director comey gave a speech i'm sure you're very familiar with about hard truths in law enforcement and race and at the start he kind of told you a story that you think is an introductory speech tostory talking about his grandmother was a chief of police in yonkers and apparently his grandfather calling pop comey became very unpopular after he apparently cut a fire hose that bootleggers were using to transport beer from the place they brewed beer to the speak easies in the neighborhood. and the story is inoknocuous unl you realize there's a time when beer was illegal in this

country. and then you think, you know, there was a time, not too long ago, when it was basically illegal to be gay. there was a time when it was illegal to be japanese. and living on the west coast. japanese-american and living in your home in the west coast and central part of the united states. and as we are seeing from this conference, there was a time when it was effectively illegal to be a black civil rights leader in america. and so, bringing it to the modern day, and the debate i'm sure you're spending a lot of time on, how can the fbi say that it should always be able to access the information on our phones to root out illegal conduct when throughout our history the law has been repeatedly misused in ways that hurt vulnerable people? >> so, okay. there's lots there. >> i haven't given any thought to the question. >> i'm sure. i'm sure. [ laughter ] >> so we're not -- we are most definitely not saying that we should always have access to

everybody's phones. that is absolutely not what we're interested in. we want access to data that we think is necessary in order to conduct our investigations that you want us to conduct, that you have -- you being the american people have charged us to conduct. when we have appropriate legal authority to do so. so when we have, for example, a search warrant issued by an independent judge that says, there's probable cause to believe that there's evidence of a crime on that particular device, what we're saying is, okay, today, what we will then pursue that. we'll try to get that evidence off the particular device because that's what we're expected to do. we're investigators so we investigate. what we have been trying to say with respect to what you're referencing is that increasingly for a variety of reasons including encryption we are unable to obtain evidence in a case in a situation where data

may be stored on a phone or in a situation where we're trying to do a more -- well, trying to do a wiretap and the data is in motion and because it's encrypted we're unable to access that so what we're really trying to say and director comey has said it and i've said it, is that in terms of i'm just trying to say how we think about it. we think of ourselves as the servants of the american people. that we belong to you. you own us. so, we follow your direction. it's our obligation given the responsibilities that the american people have charged us with to tell you how it's going. to make sure you understand what difficulties we're encountering because you want us to do certain things to protect you and what we're trying to tell people is when it comes to electronic surveillance, it's been an effective investigative tool when used appropriately over the years. it's much less effective today. what do you want us to do about

that? the laws today generally speaking do not enable us to get access to this type of data. is that okay with you? is that all right in situations where we -- where you have the woman in louisiana who's been murdered and her mother think that is there may be evidence on her phone and we can't access the phone? is that okay with you trying to find a child or you have a situation involving a child predator? is that okay? is it okay when we know we have leaders in isil in syria communicating through intermediaries with people in the united states, people in the united states, using encrypted communications. we can see sometimes that they're communicating. but we don't know what they're saying. is that okay with you? do you want us to have different tools, or as a society, are you -- and we, all of us, are we willing to live with the

inevitable, inevitable public safety costs that are associated with encryption which, of course, enhances all of our privacy, inclouding mine. right? so at the fbi we also are charged with dealing with cyber security threats. right? well, so, encryption is great in that regard. we love enkrims. it helps us so many ways as a society but it has costs and we need to think about it as a society how we're going to deal with those costs. maybe we say we'll accept it. maybe that's it. that the value that is associated with encryption is so tremendous and so great and so beneficial that we will deal with the costs. the reality is, and this is a -- we didn't talk about but i september spent most of my career at the department of justice and now at the fbi one of the thing this is's impressive to me is the proximity in terms of me giving legal advice to people, i am much more proximate, i'm much more closer to the agents

literally having to go into houses and put their lives at risk, i'm -- i therefore, am much closer to the bad guys and we collectively are all much closer to the victims. and so, we have to deal with that. we have to face the victims and what -- and what is our obligation to them? so it's very challenging. these are hard issues. they're very hard issues. no demons here on any side. the companies trying to do thing that is they think legitimately and i do not question their motives for a second. long answer to a short question. >> important answer. i want to ask a question of mr. garrow and then open it up to the audience and ask you to reflect on anything that mr. baker or what you're thinking about. one nugget for you to consider. i think one of the most powerful things in your book is what mr. baker raises is now the fbi use the information. people know there was a wiretap. in your book, you talk about how

fbi didn't just take the information or use it for blackmail. they also brought it to press. they also brought it to funders and to try smear and stop what dr. king was doing. you're not supposed to ask for speculative question quhs you're a lawyer. what would dr. king's life been like in the absence of that surveillance? >> great. two points. dr. king was able to survive as a landmark civil rights figure because the journalism standards of the 1960s were set by ben bradley, not by nick denton. in today's america, dr. king's private life would have destroyed him before 1963. and the degree of sexual

voyeurism that j. edgar hoover, bill sullivan, seymour phillips, the degree of sexual voyeurism inside hoover's fbi was not limited to dr. king. by any means. the bureau tried to do that in many instances. but american journalists back then, nobody touched it. nowadays, you can see what has become of this culture. second point, which alvaro touched on, too, scored and scores of people, probably several hundred people here in washington, knew what was going on, knew that all of this sexual information was being passed around to catholic bishops, heads of foundations, religious journalistic political figures. all over the government.

not a single whistle-blower stepped forward. and i mentioned the organizational culture of the hoover fbi. the organizational hoover fbi m was never a whistle-blower. so to me as a historian, whether we cite someone like jeffrey sterling, an african-american who is in jail in this country today, a name you should know, or whether we think about a great american patriot who is living in exile in putin's dictatorship, whistle-blowers are -- history teaches that's whistle blowers are necessary to american freedom. without miwhistle-blowers, you t a hoover fbi. [ applause ] >> so, ladies and gentlemen, we have time for one or two questions. i know. i know. trust me, we can stay here all day. mr. baker has to be general

counsel of the fbi and david garrow has many things to do. we have a question here. >> this is a remarkable presentation. i appreciate mr. baker is here from the fbi. my question lahas to do with, wt is the lesson that the fbi is drawing from the martin luther king case? and how is that applied to new technology? not just surveillance authorities but the fbi's racial and ethnic mapping program, which we know from public disclosures of the fbi's policy's manual, it permits the fbi -- the fbi believes it has the authority to collect and map publically available demographic information about racial and ethnic communities in its effort to carry out its duties. i think that the public is concerned. the aclu has filed numerous public record request about this program. and how that authority is being implemented and how it is not

leading to wide scale racial and ethnic profiling in intelligence gathering and investigations. >> thank you. so i'm not sitting here right now, i'm not going to be able to give the details of that program because i don't have them in my head. let me say this. the protection of privacy and civil liberties is baked into everything we do now. t we have numerous requirements with respect to ensuring that civil liberties and privacy are protected. in addition, we have numerous officials within the fbi, both in the operational management part of the organization as well as lawyers -- i have a team of i think it's 11 privacy and civil liberties lawyers who, in my opinion, are excellent. and they are all over these kinds of issues. we are in a challenging environment. right? and so the world is constantly changing. the adversaries are constantly

changing. and the technology that we -- technology and tools, analytical tools that we have available to us are constantly evolving. and so what we have do is make effective use of these tools so that we protect the country but do so in a way that's consistent with law and consistent with the constitution, consistent with our values and that makes sense, that are efficient uses of the resources that we have. and so what i would say, i guess, is that we are constantly worried about the kinds of things that i think you are worried about in terms of some of the concerns under your question. we're very worried about that, too. we want to make sure that what we're doing is defensible. we know to both public and to congress and because of whistle-blowers, we are going to be held accountable. so at some point, all of this stuff comes out. right? so we want to make sure that it is -- that what we're doing is defensible.

sometimes it's hard to figure out in the moment what that means. so we have robustdiscussion and debate within the fbi about what are the requirements, the appropriate thing to do. there are a lot of pressures on us. i have laid out what i think are the concerns and the things that have been put in place to avoid the kinds of situations that david talked about. but then you also get critiques, it's too slow. it's ridiculous. that slows us down. so you have these pressures we have to try to figure out what to do. the idea is to put into place the appropriate mechanisms and structures and people who can make the right decisions. >> for the second and final question, i want to recognize that we have a lot of folks watching at home from live stream. and we also have a periscope feed from georgetown balsa.

so i'm going to give you, mr. baker, a question from periscope. i'm going to paraphrase. the question is, where minority populations are often disenfranchised, politically and economically, how does that affect the sort of -- the american people who are quote unquote authorizing the fbi to do what it does, to collect this data or not? the questioner asks, isn't it true that many of the american people who want this data are not the ones at risk of being surveilled? [ applause ] >> trying to make sure i understand the question. that's a tough one for the -- that's a tough one for the fbi to answer. as i said before, we're the servants of the american people and the american political institutions that tell us what to do. in particular, congress and the courts. so if there are -- that's a question about the nature of

u.s. democracy that i'm not sure i can or should really be the one to answer. >> i would like to just use a phrase -- a phrase that i mentioned to jim yesterday, a phrase that alvaro has heard me use. it pushes back a little bit against today's theme. muslims are the new black. think about the political culture in this country today in terms of communities who are under suspicion. >> we'll talk about that immediately after lunch. so stick around. >> so we face old questions in new contexts. >> excellent. ladies and gentlemen, i think it's important to recognize the unique conversation we have here between professor garrow and mr. baker. wasn't to reiterate what professor butler said. it's very easy to turn down an invitation. and we invited a lot of the

nation's top intelligence officials to come. and many of them said no. you said yes. and that's important. and we really appreciate that. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for coming to the morning. we have so much for you in the afternoon, including a discussion of precisely the overlap between the african-american population and the muslim population from prove the professor. you have 45 minutes for lunch. we will reconvene at 1:05. we have a cafeteria. we have food trucks. we have restaurants in the neighborhood. there's a list upstairs. one more round of applause, and see you at 1:05. [ applause ]

you are watching c-span3. next, a discussion of medicare and medicaid. then two panels from an indiana university forum on america's role in the world. the first on foreign policy and the second on nuclear non-proliferation and arms control. later, a talk about the role of courts and public policy. c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up tuesday morning, christian berg, former deputy general council for citizens

united and meredith mcgehee will discuss the current role of money in american politics. efforts to reform the campaign finance system and the impact of the citizens united v. fec ruling. then sheila crumbles will talk about outside groups including pacs and super pacs. watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 eastern tuesday morning. join the discussion. he had a couple of meals and a steam shovel. and i think, again, it's one of the other ironies to be so anti-government and owe your entire fortune to the government. >> sunday night, author and investigative