tell you the down side is tipping the status quo because it is going to get worse, and we know that. we are seeing it. >> i am afraid that is all the time we have for questions today. on batch of the hudson institute we want to thank you for coming today, and wish you a happy 64th birthday yesterday. >> thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> actor and activist clooney

clooney testified as a senate foreign relations committee on zanan. you can watch it sunday at 10:30 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> this week on "the communicators," west virginia senator jay rockefeller, chair of the commerce science transportation and subcommittee. he talks about cybersecurity legislation and the nature of cyberthreats. >> senator jay rockefeller, chairman of the commerce committee, you said that cybersecurity is necessary now and that citizens are at risk. why do you say that?

>> do you view cybersecurity or cyber attacks as terrorism? >> i do. i view it as war. i like to discipline myself in that thinking because it really is. if you are hacking into the pentagon three, four or five million times a day, and every senator's office, virtually all corporate america, something has to wake us up. we are not awakened to it. we started this cybersecurity bill. i am impatient about it. we started this thing really the day before obama was inaugurated. when he was elected, i knew he was going to be interested in this. we got to work and put out a

bill. then joe leash and -- lieberman and susan collins have come in, and it has progressed. it is virtually pottable. we have to get some republicans on board, but i think we can do that. >> senator rockefeller, how current is -- how similar is the bill that you brought to committee three years ago? >> very similar. our bill was accepted by the leader, accepted by the white house. we did it with both melissa hathaway and howard schmidt after that. we have had thousands of meetings either directly or through telecommunications with all kind of people. we have made adjustments. we meet with so many people, and we have made so many tweaks just to get it so that it could pass. it has got to have critical infrastructure, which is what

the republican bill doesn't have now, but i think that will change. we have to protect our federal situation, the so-called dot-gov. we have to have a lot of research and development. we have to develop a lot more talent for people who are up to speed on cybersecurity to keep up with other countries and other actors. it is critically important. i compare it to 9/11, except is his much more obviously than 9/11. 9/11, you suspected there were people coming in and out of the country. you couldn't keep up with their movements, but you had a bad feeling about it. something would go on at the minneapolis f.b.i. station, and it won't get to headquarters. then there were dots to be connected, people living in certain houses in san diego.

it was all very clear that something big was going to happen, but we didn't know. here we know because it is happening. warfare in cybersecurity is being waged, and we are losing. 3,000 people died in 9/11. if they unleashed dams, or poisoned water systems, or shut down grids, hospitals -- shut down air traffic control so that on one of those soupy days airplanes are running into each other up in the sky. they could kill so many people so easily. the miracle to me is they haven't done it so far. it is not to our credit. it is just the fact that it hasn't happened. but it will. >> are you finding that these attacks are organized by nation states or rogue agents?

>> both. i mean nation states would be the first priority obviously. but a 15-year-old kid living in indonesia or spokane, washington, or oregon, or whatever, could be doing this. it just takes brain, facility and a malicious intent. >> what are you hearing from the so-called critical infrastructure businesses, the electric companies et cetera, about the regulation? senator mccain called this a regulatory leviathan. >> i have a hard time with that because electricity morales runs every hospital, business, school, home, every enterprise in this country. therefore, it is the security of the nation. if they can shut down grids, which they have done in selected places across the united states already. if they can shut that down on a

broader scale, then critical infrastructure becomes exactly that. it is the infrastructure that you absolutely have to protect, that number one protect is protecting critical infrastructure. that is where people's lives are at risk, where you really lose thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. think if they got into the computer system of a dam and all the water was released, and all the people below that dam. they can do these things. >> do you think there is a need for a white house level cybersecurity czar? >> no. that is one of the original anxious we did in our first bill. i am kind of embarrass birthday it because we don't like czars. someone criticized that, and we just took it out. the history of the development of the bill has been the history of accommodation to industry, to other committees,

to other people. you tweak. you can stay with your principles because it is not all that complicated when your goals are clear. cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, protect the government, protect the overwhelming 85% of entities which are private, information sharing, public partnership with the private sector, all of which is good. it is not regulation. it is just called protection. it is keeping us safe, keeping us alive. >> so when you hear republicans criticize that this has been fast-tracked and the legislative process has been subverted, you disagree with that? >> i would say we have been on a very slow track. i would like to have complete this a i don't remember and a half ago. as it is, it is going to be

hard to get floor time this year. i take republican criticism constructively, and the individuals in it, all of whom i respect greatly, all of whom know what they are talking about. my approach to each one of them -- i was on the intelligence committee when we started this, and then on the commerce committee, so i know a lot of these folks really well. they are our alleys. they just may not know it yet or we haven't done a good enough job in making ourselves clear. it has hung around. legislation that has hung around a long time begins to lose momentum. i fear that. >> harry reid said he wanted to fast track this. how did you do that? >> olympia snow and i came out with a bill. we did it in short order.

obama hadn't been president more than three or four months, and we had a bill written. we began talking with industry and other groups, and it has evolved from there. it is not the same as it was at the beginning in a lot of details. but in its basic principles it has not changed a whitt with one exception. we have to get people who do not have a critical infrastructure, which is a great mass of functionality, that has to be in the bill. that is not necessarily a debatable matter. you can't have cybersecurity without having critical infrastructure included. >> why is the del potro of homeland security the right doctor the department of homeland security the agency to monday tar that? >> the cri cooperate do it. on the other hand, homeland

security can cooperate, as they are, and even be a partner with n.s.a. i don't see janet napolitano when i don't see keith alexander at the same place. we had a meeting earlier this week, and they were both on the same page and cooperating with each other. somebody has to take the lead, and janet no poll -- napolitano, who i really trust, and you look at katrina and other things and say i don't know. but it is the right place and in fact the only place that you can do it. >> now some groups such as the aclu and others have raised privacy concerns for individuals with this legislation. >> and that would be automatic, wouldn't it? when i was chairman of the intelligence committee, we did fiza, allowing two

telecommunications companies to be able to go ahead and collect intelligence with their servers all-around the world from whence we got about 80% of our worldwide intelligence. but they have been sued by $40 billion or $50 billion. the question was are we going to let them do that and collect or say no, you can't do that and protect privacy in absolute terms and put ourselves at risk. it was an easy decision for me. not at democrats agreed. >> a few more questions. the chief of security for at&t testified at the house recently, and he said that congress -- and he was worried about the i.s.p.'s, and the comcasts and the at&ts of the world lumped in with critical infrastructure. he said congress and the administration have leadership roles to play in assuring the u.s. continues to focus on deck knowledge innovation,

burdenening the private sector with the cost of unnecessary and-in effective regulations and processes is contrary to that objective? >> well, if we were burdenening the private sector with unnecessary and burdenen some regulations and duplications, i would agree. but we are not. we are saying to the private sector, "you do this. do what you think. use your own imagination." if you can't, if you don't know what to do, we will come help. but in essence we leave it up to the private sector to do it. but then we hold them accountable for what they have done. so is that regulation, or is that being sure -- this isn't like some kind of a business tax or something. we are talking about national life and death situations. and so companies that know what they are doing, and they are already doing it, go right ahead. fine with us.

but if companies don't know how to do it quite, or are missing the point, we are watching. we are monitoring. it is not regulating. it is monitoring. if they need help, we will be there to help them. and they will want us to be there to help them because they know how much they are at risk and what the results of that could be. >> senator rockefeller, any funding issues with this legislation? >> no. i say that pretty casually, don't you? i have to think it through fairly carefully. the one thing about this is that in the end, people are just going to vote for it even if it costs money. we just finished passing a transportation bill as you and i are talking on this day, and that costs money. everybody is saying we can't do anything which costs money. but it was bridges, and rhodes, and the different kind of

infrastructure, also critical, but in a different way. it posed overwhelmingly, 4-1, this morning with republicans and democrats voting together. the congress knows what is really at stake in this country. and when you get an issue bike cirque security, they say you have to get it done, and it has to be like that original bill. it has got to have crit infrastructure in it. they say that specifically. all kinds of input from people. i just don't see the money as a problem. >> have you looked at how our countries are managing their cybersecurity issues? >> i haven't. i should have, but i haven't. i have just been so wrapped up in getting this done. europe is very different, china is very different, india and

brazil are very different. i am not sure it would have been useful. i think it will be useful for me to to do that. but i want to get a bill which has been vetted so many times by so many people, put in front of so many organizations, the technological community, the private sector communicate -- community. we have given a lot of speeches to them, accepted criticism, made changes. the staff i have worked with in intelligence and commerce have done the same thing, and they have made changes. if you really want to get something done, don't insist on having it done exactly as you want. don't compromise on the four or five main principals, particularly critical infrastructure. public-private partnerships is what we do in america on all kinds of things. i feel pretty good about it. >> and finally, senator

rockefeller, i want to go back to the legislative time line. we talked to collins and lieberman, and they were pretty sure this bill would move in this couple of weeks of congress, and you seem to express some doubt about that? >> yes, and i don't want to. i wish they are right, and i hope they are right. you also want to take the positive view. but floor time is hard in the senate right now because of the political bickering back and forth, and holds on things, and no, you can't talk about that, or we are not going to take that up, or you have to get 60 votes and all this kind of thing. so i am being cautious. and i want to be so certain that we really do get a tremendous buy-in from all parties, including the republicans now that appear not to agree with what we say. i think maybe they don't feel as strongly as it appears that they feel. i have had several of those

conversations with several of those folks. we go to them and say what can we do to make this more amenable? we can't compromise on chris cal infrastructure. that is the really big stuff that makes this country go, blowing up power plants and stuff like that. but i think we will work our way through that. >> senator jay rockefeller has been our guest on "the communicators." he is chairman of the senate commerce committee, and we have been talking about cybersecurity. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> on news makers this week, virginia's attorney general discussing his state's lawsuit going before the u.s. supreme court challenging the affordable health care act. >> justice roberts, some people look at his joining the majority in the comestock case before the federal government filed the motion to dismiss as a harbinger of doom for our side. i don't see it that way despite

the very broad language of the case, which was a necessary and proper clause case, the very last paragraph of the majority opinion brings very broad language through a very thin funnel. the federal government can't get this bill through that funnel. if that is a requirement for justice roberts, then i am confident. but again, there hasn't been enough time since the comestock case. >> you can see the entire interview on "news makers" sunday morning at 10:00 eastern and sunday afternoon at 6:00 on c-span. it is also available online at c-span.org. >> actor and activist george clooney testified at a senate foreign relations committee on zanan and 0 south zanan. you can watch sunday at 10:30

eastern on c-span. >> i was radical as a young person, and i was the one that thought that singing we shall overcome was really not a very effective way of gaining civil rights. i think i thought that more confrontation was needed. >> economics professor, columnist and substitute host for rush limbaugh, walter williams on being a radical. >> i believe that being a radical is any person who believes in personal liberty and individual freedom and limited government. that makes you a radical. i have always been a person who believed that people should not interfere with me. i should be able to do my own thing so long as i don't violate the rights of other people. >> more with walter williams sunday night at 8:00 eastern and president on c-span's "q & a." >> a house committee gave the

federal government a c-minus grade on the freedom of information act it receives. the report came out as american university law school held an event on tyrants appearance and -- on transparency and open government. this is an hour and 10 minutes. >> we are going to start in again on our first panel. if everyone could quiet down. i know there are a lot of conversations going on upstairs where the hand-outs are. and the refreshments. we call that the foyer. we don't do that just during sunshine. we call it that all year long. by the way, it does look like the sun is beginning to peek out a bit as befitting this

freedom of information day during sunshine week. i want to make sure that everyone here in the audience knows that we do have hand-outs, many hand-outs up there, including detailed boy graphical sketches on everyone who is speaking today. you will find the moderators, including myself, we will not spend a lot of time with respect to boy graphical details -- bio graphical details. we will try to get as much content out. i will sit in on this first panel. i will introduce matt winer first, who is -- miria plnch, who hopefully is known by everyone here as the director of the government office of information services. it has been in existence since

2009. it has been two and a half years. it either feels like it has been 10 years or four weeks depending upon one day to the next within the five of government information. she is someone who came back from paris to her husband's dismay to accept that senior executive career position as director. >> he was with me. >> i am not implaying a break-up. i saw him back here in washington. [laughter] >> but he made it very clear to me had you turned that job down and allowed him to stay as a kept man in paris, france, for the near future, that would have been fair -- fine with him. enough of that.

she has probably more varied experience in the openness in government related area than just about anyone else because prior to being the director of the information services division at unesco in paris, she was at the archives where she was the right-hand person to several archivists over the years, council for the american library association. back in an earlier life, 30 years ago, she was the best darn deputy director for the information services area before. with that, i am going to let her go on with the rest of the panel. i am going to let her talk about interesting developments

about not just ogis in general, but sunshine week in particular. >> thank you, stan. good morning, everybody. >> good morning. >> i know this is a little late in sunshine week to be mentioning this, but you do have a little bit of time left. downtown, the national archives building for the first time ever this week has been on display the original freedom of information act. i know some people in the room have made it by this week. if you haven't, and you have a chance to, i am not suggesting anybody would want to leave this program early -- but if you find yourself downtown somewhere around pennsylvania and 7th streets this afternoon, stop in, in the rotunda of the

national archives and look at the display. we hope this will become an original sunshine week event, but we were proud to have the original law displayed there for the first time. >> does it show president johnson's signature in a shaky hand or a firm hand? because we gather he was a little bit shaky about signing? >> we understand from historians there was a bit of kicking and screaming involved, but the signature is there quite firmly, and it did become law, and there we go. i wanted to express appreciation for being able to have the benefit of sue long's historical perspective this morning. it really does make you realize how far we have come with changes in the law over the last 45 years, and certainly to

the good even though we still have some enforcement issues as sue points out. i don't want to spend much time talking about ogis even though dan very kindly made it the subject of this particular panel. we really would like to focus more on the part of the subject matter that deals with the future. not so much the ogis vision of the future, but also some of the alds that those of you in the room have, starting with our panelists, who can talk about what they see and what they would like to see. although, a little bit of caution. one of my favorite yogiberra quotes is the future ain't what it used to be. you can think about that as we go through the next few minutes.

ogis is a very new part of the freedom of information act, a very welcome part, i think, for many of us because we feel like it does embody some congressional expression of strong interest in in having foia work in a little bit different way, perhaps more collaborative. certainly for the first time in the freedom of information act congress was saying that it wanted to see alternatives dispute resolution medford mediation brought to the process as an alternative to litigation. that certainly, which is only part of the ogis mission, is i think a strong significant statement about what congress

so the future of foia being, that we would be moving beyond adversarial approaches and moving to that culture change of disclosure, not with holding as sue talked about this morning. we approach that part of our mission immediating -- mediating disputes, trying to find solutions to some of the problems that arise. and perhaps even more importantly, trying to prevent or avoid disputes before they arrive as a really significant part of what we do. we see that as a part of what we believe is and can be a culture change in the foia community in terms of, again, that expectation that things will be disclosed. we have a little bit of a tough