one, the navy, no doubt about it is committed to getting after this. and so there is that. just like with all of the other lines of effort, they don't exist as independent variables there is a lot of overlap. an influence of one on the other. the green line of effort, this learning one permeates into every. but probably most into the goal line of effort in particular leader development, and how do we train leaders to go out and instill this fast learning. and then learning at sort of the division work center level is a lot different than learning at the fleet level. and so how about that? so we're exploring all those questions. but the enthusiasm is tremendous out there. people are really attaching themselves to it. i've got -- i've got this effort to reduce administrative distractions out there. in this area, i would have to give myself an f, okay.

>> you really are a nuke. >> yeah. so we just for whatever reason, we've been unable to get our mind around that and actually offer up some programs to kill. i started this when i was at submarine forces and then at navel reactors and now as cno. and there is a -- there is a hesitation or reluctance to identify those things. so we're going to go after that more aggressively. but i think that also is essentially intertwined with this fast learning thing. we've got to create space for people to go out and do these sorts of fast learning types of things, right, which involves a lot more doing than computing or writing or reading, that sort of thing. and so we've got -- i think that our thinking is much clearer now after discussing this around the force for a while.

we've recently -- in fact, just last week, i had discussion up at the naval war college who is going to take the lead for this line of effort for us going forward. and i have so many other tools at their disposal up there. first, the faculty is world class in this area. second, they run so many of our other leadership programs. the navy leadership and ethic center, the senior enlisted academy. i just spoke at the 200th graduation of the senior enlisted academy. and so bringing this all together, injecting this how do we learn into leadership development i think we'll start to make some progress very quickly soon thanks. >> robbie? >> admiral, thank you very much. rodney harris, former naval person. thank you for your comments. >> distinguished naval person, robbie. it almost goes without saying. >> a mic here for you. >> thank you, sir. thank you for your optimism

regarding -- and i'll use the acronym. thank you for your optimism regarding dealing and overcoming a2ad. we don't hear much of that optimism to be candid with you. >> it's inherently defensive sort of. >> so here is a question for you, so you know. rating your optimism, but is that optimism -- is that justified, assuming that the budget control act continues? and assuming that we have a navy somewhere between 270 and maybe 300 ships? >> okay. so let's talk about the bunt control act first and foremost. i think all assumptions and optimism are off the table when we start with budget levels at sequestration types of levels. so that would make things extremely difficult to execute

any of this balance admiral davis talked about maintaining a force today while planning for the future, organizing our people that all gets into the mix when we start to talk about that. with respect to the force level, we're doing an awful lot of thinking this summer. and in fact, it's all coming to a closure now. and we're sort of digesting it and marinating in it, what do we do with all of this data that we'll get at exactly sort of the balance that admiral daly described. some of it is talking about future fleet designs and fleet architectures to meet the challenge of the future. some of it is sort of hey, we have a lot of the fleet that is going to be around for a while. how do we make best use of that. what is our force structure that is required both in the near term and in the far term, dovetailing in those technologies as they become available. and so the force size, your question about 275 ships moving up to 300. we're on a growth path there as you point out. but more to follow in the near

future in terms of how we're going to see our future and what that may entail for force size and composition. >> if i could just jump in here. you talked about the level of the budget. and that is in itself an issue, especially when you have caps like the bca. how about just the fact that can you just talk for a minute -- i know you've testified to this. but how about what it does to you as the navy leader when you can't get an enacted and appropriated budget. >> these are two of the three whammies that i described when we started -- just describe the challenges that we face. the first one is the matter that you pointed out, which is that the fleet is running very hard. it has been running very hard for 15 years. and that has a consequence. that has a consequence on our

people who are -- they've been at sea a lot. they're deploying a lot. coming off of ten months' deployments in some cases. and then when you bring those systems back, the people are worn out. the systems are worn out. the material, our ships and aircraft, you bring them in for maintenance, and you find that hey, that job that used to be predicted to kind of be this size is now bigger because we've been going longer and harder than we thought. and so that throws off some of your assumptions. you spend more time in maintenance and that cascades down. so one whammy is that the fleet has been run hard for 15 years. and that has effects. that has consequences. two is the budget levels, and they've got to be adequate. and the fact that we sort of start our conversations with the bca and work our way up, that's just work that we have to do every single year.

and then finally, i think your point about the predictability. >> yes. >> of the budget. we just went into year number nine of continuing resolution. and that also has consequences. it injects a stutterstep into a system that really thrives by predictability and confidence. so when we talk about delivering things on time, when we talk about delivering things at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer, which i'm completely committed to doing, all of that gets perturbed in the wrong direction by these stuttersteps in predictability. these budget continuing resolutions. if you think about that, how behavior has modified over the course of now nine years, nobody puts anything at risk in the first quarter. nothing important happens in the

first fiscal corridor because it's so vulnerable. try and be a fortune 10 company trying to compete out there against your peers or near peers. throw on top of that we're talking about national security. and do that in three out of four fiscal corridors, very difficult. >> yes. especially for those big capital projects. >> of course nothing new starts on a continuing resolution. so there is no authorities to do that. but i'll tell you also, even things, our facilities, those have a lot of contracts associated with just managing those facilities. often you have to double the contracting load, right, because you have to write a brand-new contract just to cover that period of a continuing resolution. and then you come in with another contract to finish out the rest of the year. and so as we are all committed to reducing headquarters numbers

and overhead, if you will, everybody is in on that. but these sorts of things, they make it hard. i've just sort of -- i'm writing two contracts in many instances when one should have done. >> roger that. it's right behind you. >> it's wonderful to see you again, admiral. i'm missy worth. i'm with the naval postgraduate school. i'm a social anthropologist by training and was lucky enough to come to the navy 40 years ago. it's a little hard to believe that. but boy have things changed. >> i think this is where we do the emergency exit. social anthropologist comes to the mic! >> a word that has struck me that is now in the conversation that i just heard for the first time this year is called relationships. and i heard both the vice president and the secretary of defense use it he was speaking at cnast this spring. what strikes me is when i came

to the navy it was always a competition between the services. now you recognize you need to work together. the word complexity is now very much a part of the way you think about -- this is all so much harder. and i've said this to you before. if you want to have accelerated learning, i think you need to take the term from apple computer, the most successful corporation in the world, which is if you don't know, ask. we all learn together. now i've been to so many meetings with the military where they use your a2d2 terms and not everybody knows what it is and they walk out not knowing what they heard. so i think your whole idea of explaining in a way that nonexperts can understand will accelerate the learning for your entire team and the fact that you're working collaboratively really thrills me. >> mitzi, i have to ask you,

because of our rules, would you ask a question, though? please. >> how will you do this? [ laughter ] >> thank you, pete. >> i tried to help. i tried to help. it didn't work. >> well, i -- in many areas in this learning line of effort, as we think about those things that we can do to stimulate the right type of mind-set and behaviors in the fleet, a lot of it, particularly for senior leaders comes down to going to the right places and asking the right questions. we're not going to just dictate solutions. and so how do we get at that? well, oftentimes, and i know this is going to shock many of you. but when i go visit a particular command, the commander or maybe, you know, three echelons above

the commander will take me to the most bright and shiny area of that command. and then we will talk about all the success that that space or that area entails. and that's fine. that's a part of the program for sure. but it's much more useful to me if that commander takes me to the area where he is having actually the hardest challenge, right. this is the area where i'm struggling the most. and then we can have a conversation well, why is it so hard? let's talk about that. let's explore that. and what are you doing about it? what is your first try? how is that going? and when will you know that you're making some progress? how can i help you? and if we all get comfortable going to those hard areas and having those conversations in an area that is not a climate that's not oppressive, that's just really focused on the solutions. and if we can get all of our

senior leadership to do that, then we start to stimulate this conversation and set of behaviors that really gets at, okay, let's go talk about the hard things rather than gloss over the hard things by taking us to the easy solutions, the successful things. [ inaudible ] >> some do, your are right. it's not a new idea. you know me well enough i'm not smart enough to have a new idea. i can find others with great ideas. then in terms of being clear thinking. we hoped that we set a good example of that with the design. and we had many languages to choose from to publish that. and we chose english. and so as you read it, i hope that it speaks in clear terms there are very few if any acronyms in that. you don't have to be ten years inside the beltway to get a sense of what it's saying. and then to your point about

asking questions again here, i think an example is a very powerful thing. i rarely understand what an acronym is. in fact you get to sort of do the days that i have, you'll see the same acronym come through four times and it will mean four completely different things. so i'm always stopping and asking. i don't want to make any bad assumptions that i know what you're talking about. could you explain that a little more thoroughly. and again i think senior leadership, just like with the questions go, to the hard places, ask the right questions. we can start to maybe turn this corner. >> do your sailors feel free enough to ask questions? >> yeah. i go to all hands calls. and i used to -- well, my first one when i was a rookie so, you know, i thought, well, geez, this team is just going to be riveted by my every word, you know. what i got instead was a lesson

about how fast the united states sailor can fall asleep. when they're not interested. it was not -- 90 seconds is about the average. so what we do now is really just highlight how much respect i have for that team because they have so many choices today. they're so talented. and then open it up to questions. and just like today there is sort of a microphone. usually they have standing mics. and in no time at all, every standing mic in the room is there is a line ten deep. and so they start asking questions. and it's not just that. it's the tone of the questions and the sophistication of the questions and the whole thing is just absolutely uplifting in terms of what your sailors are concerned with, what is on their mind, how much they want to get to a better place.

and so yeah, i think that they're empowered to ask questions. we want to make sure that just as they're ten deep at every mic at my all hands calls and other all hands calls, so they're empowered to speak up at every level of their chain of command. >> okay. let's spread it around here. this gentleman over here. >> admiral, my question, i'm ted kay, and i'm talking a little bit about information warfare and effects. and so my question is how would you define the capacity to engage when you're talking about the future family of ships? each ship's different capacity to engage. >> you mean -- how do you define engagement? >> it's a combination of the weapons system or the kinetic effect with the wb system? how does that work? >> what do you want, like a jane's fighting ship thing? >> no, sir. i'm coming from the same school. the issue is in order to get an effective weapon on target, for example, you need to have a kuku

with which comes from a lot of resources. they're all tied together. >> okay. we obviously exercise that a lot. and whether we do that at every level of evaluation. so some of these are just sort of tabletop, you know, do the systems talk to one another, is it physically possible. and then of course as you know, what might be theoretically physically possible in a classroom or a boardroom or some tabletop or a lab, you've got to get that out and get some saltwater mixed in, atmospheric effects, you know, the whole nine yards. so it's got to translate into fleet experimentation, fleet exercises. and what we're finding is that we're able to do more and more synthetically in a virtual

environment. the models are much more sophisticated now than they were. we're validating those molds against real world performance. so that part of our education and that part of our achieving that successful engagement and everything that is involved with it, more and more of that can be done in a synthetic or virtual environment. and that includes multiparty, right. and so we can stitch together different elements of that system, even though they're geographically dispersed in a very realistic scenario. but even with all of that, there are some things that can't be done, except by going out and doing them. and sort of my community, the submarine community learned a valuable lesson about that at the start of world war ii. it took us a year and a half two, years to get confidence in our torpedos that they would actually home and detonate as they were designed to do. and so we want to make sure we never get into that place again. and so we do enough of that type of testing to ensure that we've got the requisite confidence.

so that's in the systems that we have. and then there are those new possibili possibilities. as we mentioned, we can now look at new connections, new connectivity, new possibilities in terms of sensor platform/weapon combinations. so that's kind of the horizon we're exploring. and we're doing that very practically as well. this is not just something that is in a power point or something that is on a computer screen. we're actually at sea doing those things. and if you can start to think about that type of an approach proliferating, and you've got to make sure that you have the requisite security, the requisite reliability and all of those connections, all of that kind of comes with it. you know, i'm optimistic. and then of course you started with information warfare, i think. and a big and growing part of this is sort of information warfare, whether that be cyber,

electromagnetic, spectrum type stuff. so it doesn't necessarily have to be kinetic in the traditional sense. all of that is being explored. i remain optimistic. >> okay. far side here. >> hi, chris cavis, defense news. just as a communicator, anybody who wants to drop jargon is doing a great job. so bonus to you. now for all the reasons you just said, a2ad is a confusing term, people spend time trying to figure out what it is, come up with all different kinds of answers. what can you do about the third offset? >> well, just like everything else, you just continue to ask questions, right. and so i encourage everybody to continue to ask challenging questions about what exactly is meant by the third offset. and so it includes elements of a

lot of different things. it includes -- and you've heard secretary works speak about this as much as anybody, chris. some of the new capabilities/technologies right around the corner or the horizon or even here amongst us, things like artificial intelligence, things like new ways of man-machine teaming, all of those things are going to be part of that. but to me and secretary work and i have discussed this, and i think we're in agreement that we're in a period of time where no one idea is going to be king for very long, right. and so we may achieve an advantage, but if we're not thinking about the next three, four steps down the road to maintain that advantage, it's almo someone is going to catch up or surpass us very, very quickly. it's just the nature of the

environment right now. technology proliferates very fast; information even faster. so if we're not thinking about pace, not only this idea, but the next three moves, then we're going to be caught out of position. we're going to be caught behind. and so i think that this idea of pace of innovation, getting speed to the fleet is as much a part of the third offset as any single technology that is going to be part of that solution. >> okay. we have time for one more question. >> is the hour over already, pete? >> yes, it is. that lady far on -- my right. >> thank you. thank you very much, admiral richardson, and thank you for giving me the last question. my name is lynn kowalk, and i'm from brookings institution. i was wondering if you could turn your attention to the south china sea. can you give information on what

activity the navy can bring to bear on activities that are over features on which sovereignty is still disputed. thank you very much. >> okay, thanks. and that's, you know, a terrific geographical area, a very interesting that brings a lot of what we've talked about to very clear focus. talked about to very clear focus. i've had a chance to discuss the situation of the south china sea with my counterpart of the people's liberation army/navy, as well as other regional counterparts in that region. so one thing i think that is important to appreciate is that it's not just a bilateral u.s.-china thing down there. there are an awful lot of nations with huge stakes in how this comes out. and so watching that security dynamic play out with everybody participating is one thing that we must keep in mind. with respect to what options the

united states navy can bring, with all of the partners in the region, including china, there are many areas in which we've got common interest, even today. often those are glossed over. there's a lot of areas that we do have common interests, and we have to make sure that we pile in and reinforce those areas where our interests align. there are areas where certainly we have -- we don't agree. as we work towards a compromise, both -- i think everybody's desire in the region, all naval leaders especially would want to do so in a way that mitigates a risk of an escalation that would send us in the wrong direction. so the hope is that we'll reach an agreement that's acceptable

to all players in the region, including the united states, china, and everybody else in a way that does not involve conflict. so certainly we wouldn't want to do any deliberate conflict, but we would also want to make sure we don't do any kind of conflict that results from a miscalculation or a mistake. so one good thing that all the navies have adopted in that area is this idea of c.u.s.e. i talk about this quite a bit. it's such a great example of how we can manage our way towards dispute resolution without creating problems, particularly confli conflict. it's a code for behavior when we encounter each other at sea. all the navies have adopted it. it's been very successful. i was on the john c. stennis as the strike group deployed to the

south china sea. we were there with a lot of ships from other navies, particularly the chinese navy. and there were many, many encountering between u.s. navy ships and others. by and large, not 100%, but the vast majority were conducted right in accordance with these cues that allow us to use all the tools that the nation has, and all of the mentions of our influence and power to come through a conflict resolution. and so our job as a navy is just to make sure one, we're there, we're present there. don't have many option it is you're not there. so we are there, we're going stay there. we've made that very clear. we're going to continue to enhance these sort of rules of behavior, advocating for rules and norms of behavior that will allow us to peacefully resolve differences, and then it was very important, i think, that we

have a dialogue, so that in the rare event or unlikely event of something happening, we can get on the phone with one another and deescalate quickly and keep this thing in context so that we get to our -- an end state that is acceptable by all in a way that doesn't involve conflict. >> thank you. admiral, our time is up. but on behalf of csif and the u.s. naval institute, we thank you for your time today. we know it's precious. we also want to acknowledge once again our sponsors, lockheed martin and huntington engle. so again, we thank you and appreciate your time. >> i'm very grateful for the chance to be here. thank you all for your terrifically inciteful questions. thanks for the challenges. >> thank you. [ applause ]

>> tuesday, environmental attorneys and other experts discuss the epa's attempt to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants, and how the plan is being challenged in appellate court system. that's from the bipartisan policy center. watch it live, 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. and later in the day, a look at outside efforts to monitor the upcoming general election, with representatives from the organization for security and cooperation in europe. they hold a news conference at 2:00 eastern.

live coverage here on c-span3. >> before the second debate between hillary clinton and donald trump, we're looking back to past presidential debates saturdays on c-span at 8:00 p.m. eastern. this saturday, the 1992 town hall debate between president george h.w. bush, arkansas governor bill clinton, and businessman ross perot. >> you can move your factories south of the border, pay $1 an hour for hlabor, no pollution controls, no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a job sucking sound going south. >> if all the jobs were going to go south because of the lower wages, there's lower wages now and they haven't done that. i've just negotiated with the president of mexico, the north american free trade agreement. >> you have to increase investment, and reduce the deficit by controlling health

care costs, prudent reductions in defense and asking the wealthiest americans to pay their fair share of taxes. >> then the debate between george w. bush and al gore. >> our national security is at stake, if we have allies, if we tried every other course, if we're sure military action will succeed, and if the costs are proportionate to the benefits. >> i would take the use of force very seriously. i would be guarded in my approach. i don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. i think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. >> in the 2012 debate between president barack obama and former massachusetts governor mitt romney. >> if we get us energy independent, north american energy independence within eight years, you're going see manufacturing jobs come back. >> we can't just produce

traditional sources of energy, we have to look to the future. that's why we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars. that means that in the middle of the next decade, any car you buy, you're going to end up going twice as far on a gallon of gas. >> watch past presidential debates saturday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. watch any time on c-span.org and listen on the c-span radio app. now, a look at efforts to stop online sexual harassment. california congresswoman jackie speier outlines legislation she introduced in july that would make distributing explicit images without consent a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. other speakers include the president of the national organization for women, and representatives from facebook and the federal trade commission. this is an hour and 15 minutes.

>> good morning, everyone. i'm daniel castro, vice president of the information, technology and innovation foundation. i would like to welcome you to our event. so the goal today is to discuss this problem of nonconsensual distribution of sexually explicit images, commonly referred to as revenge porn. the different responses we've seen from government and the legislative steps we can take to better protect victims. before we get into this, just a few logistics. this event is being recorded. if you want to participate online via twitter, we're using the #itifprivacy. we have a really fantastic panel today. to get into this discussion. but before we get do that, the

reason we're having this discussion here today, and i mean that both in a general sense as well as a literal sense, is because we had the prif liblg of he privilege of hearing from congresswoman jackie speier, she serves on the house armed services committee and the house permanent select committee on intelligence. she's a tireless advocate for women's rights and a champion for the safety, health, and rights of ordinary americans. this is why "newsweek" named her one of 150 fearless women in the world. one way she's demonstrated this is through the writing and introduction of the intimate and privacy act that takes on this issue of revenge porn. not only does this outline a

responsible path forward for lawmakers but brought this discussion to the forefront and created an opportunity and space for us to have this type of a conversation. so we're very delighted that you're here to talk with us about your motivations for the bill, the current status, and where you see things going from here. so please join me in welcoming representative jackie speier. [ applause ] >> good morning, everyone. and thank you to daniel and all of you for being here, because this is really a very important issue. special thanks to the information technology and innovation foundation for putting together what is a pretty impressive group of experts on this issue, and i really ahmad the panelists, all of whom -- for most of whom i know and really admire. i hope this doesn't come as a surprise to you, but the internet is not the same place for everyone. for the fortunate, it's the

place for open and thoughtful debate. for really banter and cute cat pictures. for some, and this includes mostly women and ethnic minorities, it can be a place of unrelenting sexism, racism, verbal abuse, and even death threats. now, as a public person, i sort of expect some of that. and believe i get plenty of it on the internet. for the average person, this is not what they expect. take the recent experience of actress leslie jones. for doing nothing more than starring in a remake of a movie about fighting ghosts, she was subjected to a never-ending stream of racial epitaphs and sexualized threats. she left twitter, but the abuse didn't stop there. it culminating in her personal

web page being hacked and intimate photos being posted publicly. jones' case is regrettably typical of the experience that many women, and especially non-white women have on the internet. for them, the internet has become a new age sewage pipeline carrying the worst material imaginable in endless quantities. and as social media proliferates, so too these opportunities to destroy people's lives. several years ago, i started reading chilling stories of young people committing suicide because their image was being distributed without their consent. audrey pott, a sophomore in san jose, committed suicide after photos of her sexual assault

were passed through snap chat. another girl killed herself after photos of her gang rape were posted online. tyler clemente, a college freshman, killed himself after his roommate used a webcam to stream him having a sexual encounter with another man. christy chambers seriously considered suicide after her ex-boyfriend posted intimate photos along with her name and personal information to more than 35 different porn websites. earlier this year, anisha voera spoke at a press conference i held. she described how she deactivated her facebook account, changed her phone number, dropped out of school, and moved out of state after her ex-boyfriend posted private images that ended up on more than 3,000 websites.

she was stalked by strangers, including one man who pushed his way into her family's home and made it almost to her bedroom because her ex-boyfriend included a diagram of the house with her address, along with false claims that she had rape fantasy. it should come as no surprise then that more than half of victims of nonconsensual pornography report having suicidal thoughts. this kind of abuse is widespread. the economists has reported there are as many as 3,000 websites as millions of images and videos that feature non-consensual pornography. terry goldberg, who is here today, is representing hundreds of victims of this abuse.

these groups have been contacted by thousands of victims seeking help and justice. but these numbers, so appalling, are just the tip of the iceberg. that is because nonconsensual pornography can stem from cases of revenge, to images and videos of sexual assault being shared from purient entertainment as tyler clemente's case. there are even particularly disgusting cases where trusted caregivers have shared images they came across in their duties. one study found that 35 incid t incidents since 2015 have occurred of nursing home staff posting graphic photographs of residents with dementia and other ailments. it makes you wonder what will people stoop too?

as this continues to spread, survivors have often been left with nowhere, absolutely nowhere to turn. celebrities have hired high-priced law firms to demand that websites remove the material and individuals with financial means to hire lawyers have sought civil damages against those sites that profit from posting this pornography. but even in these rare cases where they have the resources to do that, the images off still can be found on the internet. you can make a full-time job out of searching the internet on 3,000 websites to see if there are non-consensual photos of yourself being posted. a few revenge porn sites operators like hunter moore have faced criminal punishment. but that's only after they committed wrongful acts of extortion, blackmail, and hacking. not for disclosing the images.

across the country, 34 states have adopted their own bans on nonconsensual pornography. some of these laws lack important elements, such as explicit first amendment protections. still, others only punish nonconsensual pornography when the perpetrator is motivated by a desire to harass the victim. which leaves perpetrators only interested in greed or voyeurism, to continue to commit the crimes and abuses that we seek to address. this patch work of regulatory schemes creates great uncertainty for victims and tech companies alike. all victims, all victims deserve recourse. not just those in some states, and all companies should be able to set policies that will apply nationwide. only federal legislation can address all of these concerns.

it was clear to me that there was a need for a federal law to address this behavior. but i knew it was not going to be easy. some of you may know that the long path to the ippa has taken over two years. i need to get something done on this complicated issue. i needed to draft a bill that had teeth, yet could withstand constitutional scrutiny and that would garner broad support in the advocacy community and from the tech companies. i also knew that we would need substantial bipartisan support from my colleagues. now, most of this would not have happened without the talented chief of staff to help thread the drafting of this legislation. so i want to say to josh conley, who is on this panel, without him, this would not be a bill

that we are addressing today. after many revisions and with the help of professor marianne franks in drafting the bill, we started vetting the legislation with constitutional scholars and legal organizations. after a lot of work, we lined up strong support from legal organizations such as the national association of assistant u.s. attorneys and the national district attorney's association. and 12 heeding constitutional law scholars, including the dean of uc irvine school of law. the dean has literally written the book on constitutional law, and argued five cases before the supreme court. his take on our bill sums up the constitutional question well. he says, and i quote, there is no first amendment problem with this bill. the first amendment does not protect a right the invade a person's privacy by publicizing

without consent nude photographs or video of sexual activity. i never get tired of reading that quote. we also brought together a broad coalition of supporters, including online businesses like facebook. i want to thank facebook for being here today. and twitter and victim's right groups like cyber civil rights initiatives and the national organization of women. if past, ippa will punish individuals and websites that knowingly post private, intimate material while providing a safe harbor protection for websites that don't advertise such contacts. ippa contains strong exceptions, ensuring that disclosure of private this was that's been

voluntary made public would not be criminalized. most importantly, it would end immunity for revenge po pornographers who continue to do their "craft" because ippa does not exist on a federal level. we have more work to do to get the bill passed. six republicans have joined in this effort. i hope when i introduce the legislation in the next congress, presuming i'm re-elected, that we will have numbers that are extraordinary in support of this legislation. and that we will be able to get it to the floor. today, with smartphones and endless social media platforms, there is no difference between online and offline life. it's all just life. the same technology that gives

numerous ways to improve our lives gives us numerous ways to destroy them. the supreme court -- and this is very important to underscore -- the supreme court has noted protecting privacy is often vital to protecting free speech. when people live in fear that they are -- they might be private information that can be disclosed to the world with devastating consequences, they cannot express themselves freely. the first amendment does not require us to stand idly by as real lives are destroyed by virtual action. not only do they deserve justice, society must hold perpetrators of this vicious form of abuse responsible. a civilized society cannot shrug

its shoulders and say oh, but there's nothing to be done. of course there is something to be done. that's why we must do something now to address this issue. it is already out of hand and it's time for congress to act. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, congresswoman. now, there's a lot there that we want to discuss, and i'm very pleased to hear your expectation and next year we're going to see this bill move swiftly and with great bipartisan support. so we have a tremendous amount of expertise in the room. we also have a tremendous number of people in the audience. so we do have some seats in the back. if you're coming in, you can just fill in back. let me briefly introduce our panelists and we'll get right

into this discussion. starting on my far left is josh conley, who is chief of staff for representative jackie speier. to his right is terry o'neill, who is president of the national organization of women. for women, excuse me. to her right is mark icorn. tiffany davis, who is head of global security at facebook and she also worked for the state attorney general. i'm going to be asking for some views on some of that work, as well. finally to my left, terry goldberg, founder of a law firm specializing in internet abuse. so thanks to all of you for being here.

let's just start off, terry, you've been working with a lot of the victims that this law is intended for. can you talk about what you're seeing in your practice, what are the experiences that you're seeing with your victims, and the challenges that they have today. >> sure. so i'm basically the lawyer that i needed when i was under attack by a malicious ex. so i started my law firm focusing on online and offline sexual violence, because i couldn't find a lawyer and i was in family court and being told by a judge when i asked for an order of protection that i had a first amendment issue. so what i'm seeing is that victims come to me and they're absolutely so distraught. their images are all over the internet. often times they've been

targeted by somebody known to them. and the images are spread from device to device, usually ending up at some point on a social media site. and my clients are 13 to 65, 90% women. but most of them are on the younger side of the scale. and they do not know what to do. they're absolutely terrified that they're never going to get control back of their reputation. at this point in time, nobody can get a job or a roommate, even a date without being googled. so you have to think about how would you feel if the first five pages of your search engine results are images of you fully exposed and naked, images that you never wanted anybody to see. so my clients are distraught.

they're afraid of their future. >> thank you. terry, let me bring you into this conversation. this problem affects both men and women, but women have been disproportionately affected by this. can you talk about the gender nature of the problem, as well as what you're seeing. >> you know, by the way, thank you to representative jackie speier for bring thing legislation forward. this is another tool that domestic abusers use to stop women from leaving. there's an intimate photo taken and she doesn't think it's going to be shared with win because she's in love with him and trusts him. yet when she decides to leave, he holds this out and says if you leave me, i have expose this to the world. it's absolutely a tool of intimidation that is available in domestic violence.

also a tool of intimidation in the workplace quite frankly. and think in terms of -- for example, modeling agencies or dare i say it, beauty pageant contestants. there are girls as young as 14 years old that come to work for modeling agencies and you can imagine that it's entirely possible for photographs to be taken of these girls. they're lied to about what will be done with these photographs and then that material is utilized to control them. it's a common tactic in sex trafficking. it's a common tactic in other forms of exploitation of women. so what we are -- what i'm very excited about, this legislation, since this is a federal crime, that it can result in serious penalties and that the women themselves know that the country is behind them and that we will use all the power of the

government to stop these abusive behaviors. >> thank you. >> you've obviously been looking at the broader sphere of online safety for a while, and you've seen a number of challenges in this phase. how do you look at this issue, and how have you seen the issue grow. because we are talking about it more now opposed to ten years ago. >> so we've always had policies against this type of behavior. we don't allow people to bully or harass. but a couple of years ago, we saw an increase in this type of activity and we made it much more explicit in our policies that you cannot do this type of harassment. >> have you seen this issue -- i guess how would you quantify the issue, if you can? because that's always been one of the biggest challenges. you have so many clients, but still you're only one lawyer.

we know this happens outside when people never even hire a lawyer. >> i would say the question is in some ways not how we quantify it, because one single person having this devastating effect on their lives is enough to make it worth solving. >> josh, let me bring you in on the conversation here, too. there's obviously this kind of question when should government get involved, and when should the federal government get involved. what was the kind of thought process you guys had between saying that this is the point where we need to step in and talk about federal law, opposed to maybe state law. >> good question. congress is not always the best at forward thinking technology policy and implementing it. that's no secret. so we were very careful and deliberative. but we just heard story after story of how destructive this is, and really how no legal

remedy was in place. and obviously technology and the internet doesn't adhere to state borders. we also looked at a patch work of state laws, some good, some bad, some just down right ineffective. so it really seemed appropriate to address this at the federal level in a way that was -- that took into account both the realities of the tech industry and just the sheer volume of information that they're going through, and to put in place something that really had teeth and that would serve as a deterrence. >> i know in your website, you track some of these state laws and have been working with a number of these states in terms of responding for victims. how do you see the differentiation between states and their responses and the availability of recourse?

>> so we have 35 states plus d.c. that have criminal laws. and we also have 35 dates plus d.c. that have different criminal laws. there's so much variation between the laws. we have another 15 states that are completely holding out. in those states, it's perfectly legal to take an image of somebody else's genitals and post it online. it's legal to do that there. so the need for a federal law, just to protect -- i mean, to protect everybody is so necessary, particularly in the state where is there is nobody, no lawmaker protecting them. no lawmaker that sees the value in sexual privacy. >> just in terms of online privacy, we traditionally have addressed that through federal law, not state law. can you talk about some of the work that has gone on in the past in terms of children's

privacy or other types of online privacy that might be a lesson as we're looking to move forward here. >> we have actually supported the legislation at a state level in over a dozen states. but we also saw the need to support federal legislation, as we've done here. i think if you look at children's online privacy, we have federal legislation to deal with these types of issues. i do think that it provides an additional piece of arsenal for going after people who are committing these crimes, which is extraordinarily important, especially in those place where is you have victims that are in states that don't have protection. >> the s.e.c. has been involved in this, as well. can you share with us what their involvement has been? >> sure. i'm just speaking for myself today and not for the commission or any commissioner.

so probably most relevant was our case against craig britain, who was running a revenge porn website. we are a civil enforcement agency and our section five of the ftc act gives us authority over unfair acts or practices. so under that authority, we brought an action against craig britain and obtained a settlement. this man was allegedly soliciting photos from people through means such as he would pretend to be a woman seeking a woman on craigslist and then basically solicit photos from women with the promise he would send his own in return. then he would post those with their personal information on

the website. so as keri talked about, and when you have the personal information in combination of the photos, it makes it searchable online and they start to come up and be associated with you, so we challenged his conduct as both deceptive and unfair under the ftc act. in part, he was also pretending to be an unrelated third party and challenging a significant amount for removal from the site. this affected more than 1,000 people. so that was an action we brought up a couple of years ago. we also have been involved in related areas. we brought a case against a key logger called remote spy that

was advertised as something that could be used to -- you could trick somebody into downloading it and it would get on their and capture information from them and report to you about location and passwords and things of that nature. so that's some of what we've been doing. there's a lot of other types of cases that we brought, as well. i guess one thing i would say is that a lot of this debate is colored by the fact that there's an assumption that these photos were originally taken consensually in the first place, even though with a limited scope so that the individual had the idea, well, i'm sharing it with you but i'm not planning to pubbish it fpub

i publish it for the world. a lot of our cases -- we brought a case against -- well, trend net, which was an internet based ip camera that you could hook up. and due to poor data security, even though you could set your feed to private, hackers could get around that quite easily, and they made feeds for some like 800 cameras available online. another case that we brought was the designer wearer case where people who were getting rent-to-own computers were, without their knowledge, getting the computers preloaded with software that allowed the rent-to-own franchises to determine their location, but

also use the camera of the computer to take pictures of them without their knowledge or consent. so those are some of the things we've been doing. >> yeah, where are you seeing the fcc hands are tied? or maybe you see victims, you see cases where you want to get involved. obviously the fcc is only one agency, but are you guys not able to act? >> for one thing, we're a commercial agency, so anything we challenge has to be in commerce. so in the craig briton case, this was an individual who was making money allegedly through this scheme and running the website, as well as sort of directly soliciting the photos himself. so if you had an example of

someone who was like an eventual ex-boyfriend who was just sort of posting it to some website, you know, without a commercial motive, that wouldn't be something that we could respond to for example. >> terry, i think one of the things that is kind of maybe a defining characteristic of this type of problem is that there's so many different motivations or trajectories for how this happens. and i think -- i mean, so there's the angry ex. there's the pure entertainment value. and so the responses have been so diverse, but the problem with that is, it creates a lot of -- it's a heavy cost on the victim or the person affected by it to figure out how do i deal with it. is it a copy issue, a commercial issue. so maybe you can talk a little bit about that type of -- probably because we see this in other areas.

>> you know, i really think it comes down to a consent issue. the question is whether the victim consented to this particular use of intimate images of her or of him. you could think of two analogies. one is the privacy of medical records. clearly, people consent to the sharing of medical records, right? you want one doctor to share with another doctor, but you don't want those records put out on the internet. because that information could be used to interfere with your ability to keep your job. that information may be something that is so private to you that it is crippling in the sense of people really can't continue to function when they think, oh, my god, this is out there. people see this about me. so there's a real analogy

between nonconsensual publication of intimate pictures and medical information. i bring up that analogy, because i am very sympathetic to the first amendment "problems" with the idea of criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of intimate pictures. i think that when we think about the first amendment, we need to think about why is it that it's okay under the first amendment to prohibit publication of private medical records pu not to prohibit publication of private, intimate images and photographs and videos. i also think there's another analogy, and that is sexual harassment back in the workplace. in the '90s, the first amendment was used to resist title 7 of anti-discrimination laws, to stop sexual harassment in the

workplace. the argument was, these are just guys being guys. just because they put pornographic photographs of the woman on the locker, they need to be able to express themselves and they have a first amendment right to say i don't want women in the workplace and i can harass them with these images of a sexual nature. ultimately when anita hill testified about her experiences, with this sexually harassing behavior by her boss, that is when people began to understand that the first amendment does not give carte blanche for people in the workplace to stop an individual from being able to perform her regular job duties. i think the same thing is here.

we are all online a lot of the time, so i think the first amendment argument is really quite frankly that comes from privilege, and people who haven't experienced it. who are much more likely to be worried about the first amendment problem. those who have experienced the total shutdown that can happen to victims are much more willing to say no, no, this is -- we don't have a first amendment right to do this to an individual. >> let me open it up to the whole panel, this discussion about where basically you draw the line. i think that's been the single biggest hurdle towards moving forward, because most people recognize it's a problem, but they say should we be concerned about how this could go awry. and it becomes this kind of -- if you don't care about the issue, maybe the first amendment trumps it, and that's been a big roadblock until we have really seen a movement for a number of

reasons. >> i think ultimately critics have basically said this should be structured as a harassment statute, and something inherent in this to hold congressional -- or constitutional muster would have to be harassment. it's -- this is arguably more destructive to people's lives than an x-ray getting out or someone's social security getting out. it's just the reality of the time we live in, this is a very real and pervasive threat to people's lives. and we see it as solidly that it

can withstand constitutional scrutiny. i don't know if this becomes law. i don't know if secretary clinton -- maybe this will be the first bill she gets to sign into law. but we'll see if it will be challenged in the courts. >> it's interesting. what i would say on people's ability to share and speak, we see that people don't feel safe, they won't share. so for us, it's very important to create a space that they can feel safe and share. so i think rules like this help, legislation like this helps people to feel safe to communicate in a way they

normally would. >> one of the things that is bizarre about this situation, after the case with craig briton, who was the video took action against, he was using a law to try and de-list search results for his name. so someone like that is more likely to be successful almost in protecting this completely truthful, legal government public information about them than getting this more sensitive information removed that nobody else really had a right to have out there. keri, i know you've been thinking about this, as well. >> i just think it's a problem for us to see this, marly the intimate privacy protection act as pitting privacy against free speech. that's a false tension, and if we really saw that play out in the hulk hogan versus gawker

case, where there were so many headlines talking about this issue between privacy and free speech. and they're just not diametrically opposed. to think about what we've said all along, if so much speech would be silenced if everything was considered a public matter. in the gawker case, the question raised wasn't about privacy at all. it was about whether it was news worthy. and we have case after case in court finding that sex tapes are not news worthy. even if they include famous participants. >> so also we have seen these -- the hulk hogan case, the

celebrity iphone leak, hack, where we had a turning point in culture. where one, this issue is more recognized. maybe that's the kind of anita hill issue for this moment, that something really seems wrong. again, i want to open this up to the panel. how have things changed in the past two years since we've had these high profile cases, high profile victims speaking out. how that shaped how we approach this policy and how can it help? >> i wanted to tell you from my perspective, there's a growing movement among women online and women in tact to push back against a lot of the quite gendered harassment and bullying that you find online. i think gamer gate sparked an incident in which a number of

women who are developing video games, which is a very male dominated part of online industry, they began to be attacked very viciously and were "doxed," which is a little like what happens with politician's intimate pictures. their home address, all of their information was put online. simply because they were women who were invading the space of gamers. women began to organize and push back against that. and i think that there's a growing awareness, sort of generally, online of be the existence of this kind of bullying and how gendered it is, how it impacts women. so when you see this incidents, for example, leslie jones and

other victims of intimate -- of publishing intimate pictures, it comes -- it hits people with a cognitive face. so i think it fits this new bill. i think this is something that people will recognize, describes a problem that people will very much recognize. >> yeah. josh, i know you reiterated this is not the gawker bill. >> yeah, some have interpreted that our bill was somehow a reaction to the gawker case. in fact, it was not. i think a more interesting example is some news organizations calling into

question, well, what about abu ghraib, would that photo be prohibited or expos them to criminal liability? just look at -- one, we don't dispute it was in a very important story and a very important picture. but when you saw most news agencies, i haven't seen any news agencies that didn't do this. they blurred out the faces of the individuals that were naked and their genitals. and i don't think that detracted from the power of that image or its importance, or the effect. but i think it would be gratuitous and unnecessary to not put those people's faces out that would essentially we victimized them. and in no way would create any sort of -- i think the public interest question is a real one, but if you look at common sense and look at where the courts come down on some of these

cases, i think it would easily be interpreted. >> i think there's been such a huge cultural shift in the last three years. i mean, not only have we gone from 3 to 35 states that have laws and we've had some of our most celebrated celebrities come out and talk, like "vanity fair," about being a victim. and we've had several cases that resulted in large judgments. we just had a new one for $500,000. we've gotten the ftc to bring a case against a revenge porn operator. we have several outcomes against other operators, and all this happened in the last year. i think it's all given the media

the okay to be writing about it, which never happened three years ago. now there's articles from the perspective of the victim and it's really educating the country about this. >> we have a little time, to talk about what victims can do right now and what's available. so can you yo talk about the mechanisms in place on facebook, how you see that kind of -- walk us through how you would have crafted the policy and maybe how it's played out in practice. >> on facebook, as i said earlier, we do not allow this kind of sharing of intimate images. we make it very easy to report. when people report it, we will remove it immediately.

>> can you talk about what that removal process is? is there somebody reviewing it? >> yes, we have a multitude of people around the world reviewing these reports 24-7, in over 40 different languages to remove them. i think there's something that happens with this particular type of sharing that is devastating to victims. that is it's shared across multip multiple platforms. another thing is we've worked very closely on guides to give people the resources that they need when they are the victims of something like this. so they can go and find, can they reach out and what are the

local resources in their area, and we've been testing a reporting flow where those resource also be provided immediately upon reporting that. >> great. keri, you can talk about this, as well and how you see this. >> we're continuously talk about what victims should do. you know, but what we should be talking about is how we deter the offenders. that's why we really need the criminal laws. offenders are not afraid of being sued for a copyright infringement or being take on the civil court. they're not usually people that have money. they're often abusive exs. they would love to get back together with their victim. but what people are afraid of are going to jail. and having something on their public record.

so it just -- there's such a need for the criminal laws. victims don't have to think about what to do, because they won't be victims, because offenders won't offend at the same rate that we're seeing. >> that's a very important point. mark, that's part of the fcc's role. in terms of your enforcement actions in general, the fcc doesn't go after everyone. do you think that's been set through thing shuns? are you seeing a change and what people are willing to do commercially that affects individuals? >> i think that her actions probably have the most effect in sort of hike the legitimate company space, frankly. and so we do a lot of anti-fraud work and so forth.

and work of this nature against sort of basically individuals. we certainly hope that will have a deterrent effect. but some of these people, if you're -- i mean, a lot of this is not necessarily rational behavior in the first place obviously. it's driven by a lot of really ugly emotions or even you wonder about mental illness or other things going on. so it's harder to defer that. i just want to go back to one more things about helping victims, which is that we, on monday, put out a piece on stalking apps. we do a lot of consumer and business education, and this is a piece for women who sort of -- sometimes an ex will sort of

basically know where they are at every moment, and be able to track them and maybe even brag about i know you went here and there. and just about the fact that these stalking apps can exist and sort of how you might be able to find out that your phone has been jail broken and that these apps might be on your device and sort of what to do about it. so that was something we put out just this week. and then we have another information online. for example, there's another piece for victims of domestic abuse and so forth, advice for them. >> terri, maybe you can talk about it, this is a digital representation of issues that have long existed. but the traditional response from individuals, if they feel like someone -- if something is illegal, they call the police.

one of the problems we saw when we looked at this, a lot of local police aren't going to know how to deal with this issue, even if they escalate it to the fbi, because it's cross border or they call it an internet crime, they're still not really that same type of response that you would have for other types of domestic violence or sexual violence or anything like that. are you guys thinking about how this fits into that broader set of resources that are being made available? >> you know, it really is a problem, like victims of sexual assault who are immediately not trusted initially, that what they often find, they go to the police and they're subjected to, we don't trust you, you were lying, what were you drinking, what did you say. all the reasons why the victim might have been at fault. i think what you have in this -- in publication of intimate pictures is the same kind of

victim blaming. there's a lot of shaming, why did you allow that picture to be taken in the first place? you should know to protect yourself at all times. so we do see a lot of the same kind of victim blaming and there's a spectrum of perpetrators, that perpetrators really do follow a spectrum of motivations for why they're doing what they are doing. sometimes it's revenge, sometimes it's just control. sometimes it's a predator using photographs to control individuals. very much true in the sex trafficking world and in the world of domestic violence. so when you're dealing with a predator, it's particularly important to have the criminal law of the united states of america behind you. >> josh, let me go to you now. i think what we should do, i

want to open it up to questions, but i want to spend a few more minutes talking about the law itself. can you walk us through maybe in a little more detail how you have thought through some of these different issues and put it in the bill. and then we can -- i want to open it up to the panel for their reaction. >> yes, we looked at a lot of stuff. we looked at digital copyright act, the process of notice and takedown of copyrighted material, we looked at child pornography to try to come up with a model for some sort of notice and takedown regime. and this -- neither solution seemed to really work. so what -- we really wanted to go after -- te wanted to deter the really bad actors, these folks that are uploading the

contempt. and we wanted to get after the revenge porn sides. -- sites and how they're get thing content is they're knowingly so less fitting or advertising for this content. so basically, we define what this content is. we carve out police activity for investigation and the bona fide public interest, to say that if you're knowingly uploading or share thing content, that you -- with reckless disregard as to whether the individual contented for it to be distributed, that you would be held criminalably liable with a maximum penalty of five years up to prison. then we don't touch section 230, which is like the third rail of this issue and many others to

ba basically, if you touch it, you break the internet as people say. so the good actors like facebook, it's not only in their self-interest to be vigilant about taking this content down, but do a pretty good job of it. so again, we really wanted to go after the bad actors, both the folks uploading it and the ones trading and benefiting and profiting the websites from selling this content. >> i know everyone here has looked at the bill. your reaction to the measures and anything you're particularly pleased about, anything you would like to see changed if it's reintroduced? >> i think the most important piece of it is that it shows that the united states government is on the side of women who are struggling with this issue.

it's extremely important to get the word out that women will have resource, that we needed a bill, as josh said, as congresswoman jackie speier said, we needed a bill with teeth. and this is something that women really can use. and i think it sets a tone. along this spectrum of people who might not be the predators deliberately creating tools that theek use to control individuals in the sex trafficking, go on the other side of the spectrum of people who might be oh, i'm going to get back at her, a true revenge porn situation, a criminal law could deter that and i think will in many cases. >> i'm a fan. i was pretty active in working with josh to draft this bill and we think it's terrific.

>> we're fans, too. and in all seriousness, this is a very serious crime, the behaviors that people who are sharing nonconsensual intimate ima images, it is devastating to those people in the photos, and we felt it was very important to support legislation at the state and federal level. >> and i also want to say that the exceptions that are in there, i think very much take care of all of the first amendment issues, and to -- and i think that what antigone said earlier is extremely important. the free speech of victims is dramatically increased by this bill. the ability of women to be able to say -- to be able to be out there, to be online without fear, to know that the internet can be a safe space for them. but it's not just actual victims

of nonconsensual porn, it's bystanders who fear that they might become victims who shut down, don't want to go online, are fearful of it. so this bill opens up great deal of free speech, not for those who are privileged and they're using the internet, but for those that need to be on the internet. >> one thing i didn't point about in the beginning, you know, a lot of this goes back to this idea that we've always advocated nor the idea that technology is designed by choice and we should be thinking about what type of technology we should be creating, what this vision is, and how we can promote more innovation. that only happens when you create the space that people want to participate in. that has a government and private sector component. i guess the last question i have, before i open it up to the

rest of the room, we have probably some state lawmakers who are going to be watching this event. we only have 30 something states with these laws. what's the takeaway for them? should they be taking a step back, moving forward, do we still want 50 states with these laws? what's the message to them, anyone? >> i would say better -- something is not always better than nothing, but i would point them to the illinois state law, which i think is really sol it. not crafting it as a harassment statute but a privacy one and making it a criminal offense. >> i think the advantage of moving forward and trying to get laws like this passed in all the states is that it educates prosecutors throughout the -- up and down the levels of government, and it really gets the word out there to all of law enforcement that this is in fact a crime. >> yeah, we absolutely still

need to maintain state laws and all 50 states need them. the fbi is not going to be looking into every single case. we can't expect them to. they have much more discretion about what case to take, so we need our local law enforcement to be stopping nonconvenn chsen porn on a local level. we would recommend that the 15 remaining states look to the illinois law. the other trend we're seeing more and more is civil remedies. so we've been talking about how criminal laws really deter, but we should all have options. and so if a victim wants to take matters into her own hand, then there should be civil liability.

and the good civil laws allow victims to keep their anonymity and to get injunctions to stop the spread. and so they don't necessarily have to wait for law enforcers to act.