and how they're going on about surveillance, there has to be -- i believe in protection and i've believe that the leaders of america where following the -- who areiples following the right principles from the bible should take over our country. -- if anybodywhen is in [captions copyright national cable satellite corp 2014]

caller: these are things i consider and i am concerned about. i want people my age group to get involved. a lot of people don't have a platform to talk about this. i think they have a lot of energy. i'd like to really see the youth, and people in churches, and people that have good morals and ideas for the future to step p. >> it looks like the brookings interests tute discussion is about to start. we have time for one more. you are on c-span. go ahead. caller: yeah, i was watching the speech and stuff, which i thought was good to a certain extent. the thing i have a problem with is they can say all they want on these speeches, but they are

still going to do what they want to do behind closed doors. i was raised to respect the title of the person, whether it be the judge or police officer, ut it boils down to a person that has that title. if you can't respect that person that has that title, then there is no respect at all for law or our government. i'm not just thing obama, i'm saying our congress and senate and so forth. until we get our act together and get some good people to do their job like they are supposed to instead of giving us a bunch of double talk, it is not going to work for any of us. >> we appreciate your call. we'll let that be the last word. we remind you, if you didn't see the president's speech, we have time, you at 8:00 eastern

5:00 pacific time. live at the brookings institute. >> a senior fellow in studies. i will be brief on the introduction side. i'm going to need as much time as humanably possible for the substantive discussions we are going to have here today. thanks for coming on very short notice. as you all know, the president gave a major address this morning on signals intelligence, the n.s.a., and reform of the authorities and policies in connection with the snowden disclosures. these issues and the speech raise

a -- just an incredible array of discrete policy and legal questions. there are the domestic authority questions, civil liberties questions, there are foreign policy diplomatic questions, there are internet governance, there are u.s. industries, which are losing very large sums of money as a result of loss of confidence in overseas markets, and there are privacy questions. we worked foreign policy program to put together this very quick event in which weather going to offer a bunch of different reactions from different parts of the institution. keep in mind, the speech was only given very recently. it covers a wide range. so certainly a lot of what i'm going to say today is still

relatively tentative, and some of my thoughts may be subject to change over time on that. so i want to be candid about that up front. what i think we're going to do, each of us, starting with bruce d cam and wallace and myself will speak briefly and give some overview thoughts, and then we will have a brief exchange and then try to leave as much time as possible to go in what directions you-all would like to go. we have a twitter audience as well. people will be tweeting in questions. if you see me being handed little slips of paper, i hope those will not be things telling me i have been completely wrong and i should be correcting myself, but that they are questions. with that, i'll turn it over to

bruce. >> i think we are trying to give a preliminary reaction to what is really a large amount of data. we have the speech, we have the we have bark grounders, and we have a lot of material to work with. i would characterize it as a good speech, i would characterize it as classic or vintage barack obama. this is a man that likes to be thoughtful, deliberate, and likes to reach out to as many groups as possible, and i think he has done that. if there is a message, i would say it could be, let him spend more time in hawaii, it is very good for the delibtive process deliberative process. i think the emphasis here is on transparancy to the extent possible and oversight rather than fundamental changes in the

collection programs that the n.s.a. is carrying out. those programs, as i see them, remain largely intact with a few fixes but with more transparancy, to the extent that is possible, in secret programs and program oversight. the president policy directive that accompanies the speech, ppd-28, is, in my judgment, unprecedented. in two hours i couldn't really check, but i don't think we have ever had a document like this that lays out the protocols, principles for american intelligence questions. i think it is good for the american public and the global public to read it and see what those are, and it is good for the national security agency because the national security agency can see what we did was legal, it is allowable under pp d-28. of course, the second section question, we largely have a

punt. the question of who will hold on to that data. this is a complicated and difficult issue. rightly called the hot potato of this problem. i'm not sure 60 days will come up with a solution, but i think 60 days is probably enough time to identify if there is a nonu.s. governmental entity with the capacity and the financial willingness to carry this out. one last thing i would stress from the overview. as the president said in his speech, and as was made clear by his aides and backgrounders, the president has found no abuse of authority by the national security agency. he said that over and over again. his staff has said that over and over again. they found no evidence of an abuse of authority by the n.s.a. where they found mistakes were made, they also emphasized those mistakes were corrected rather quickly. that is a pretty important judgment to put out there.

let me deal with a couple of questions that were on my mind before the speech was made and how the rpt responded to those questions. first was the qui, how did he portray the national security agency in particular and the national security intelligence in general. did he portray them as the security defender? after all, he's been five years on the team. did he support them or did he distance himself from them? on this i think the president was clear and unquiff cal. -- unequivocal. he identified the national security agency as the spiritual son of the sons of liberty and paul revere. i can't imagine a better description in the eyes of fort

meade than the one the president gave them. he called them the world war ii code breakers of today. the first five minutes of the speech is how the n.s.a. is protecting our securities and liberties. he even went further than that and said, they are protecting the securities and liberties of people around the world. a lot of people won't believe this. but if a is a powerful more al a powerful b is antidote to what you hear about the demonization of n.s.a., how many tv shows have you watched that look like the n.s.a. is spying on everyone with no controls and willie-nilly oversight, and the rpt -- president said all that demon demonization -- is just hogwash. how did he characterize these

programs? especially section 216. over the course of the last several months we have heard of them in the attempts of foiling arious terrorist operations. on here i think the president was on a bit more shaky ground. he said multiple attacks have been thwarted. the issue is raised, can you provide us data that backs that up. the only issue he launched into was september 11. he said if n.s.a. had had the mega-data program, it would have realized that when one of the 19 hijackers called home to yemen, he was in san diego. the problem with opening up that pandora's box is, the c.i.a. knew he was in san diego. the problem isn't that we didn't know about it, it is that one hand didn't tell the other hand.

i think this is one occasion when the administration will regret having opened up the discussion. it is not really crucial on the president's statement today. the third thing on my mind, is he going to mention edward snowden. it came up very clearly. the president made his views on edward snowden clear as he has in the past. he is not a whistle blower, in the president's eyes. he's a man that violated his secret service oath. he's a man that leaked information in an often sensationalistic and inaccurate y, and he said snowden has harmed our ability to gather information for years if not decades to come. the president in effect

associated himself with remarks from british intelligence chiefs who have asked the question, what has snowden done, responded, al-qaeda will be lapping it up for years to come. that's pretty strong words, and the rpt came up to close to the same area. the last question on my mind was, what about the so-called "no spy deals." are we going to expapped the so-called five-eyes agreement in hich the u.s., britain share intelligence and agree not to spy on each other. there wasn't word on that. the question of whether another country would qualify to be in a no-spy deal did not come up. i'm not surprised. this president has specifically said forget it, we're not going to do that with anyone else. there is the idea that only the heads of state will not be spied

upon, and we are told a couple dozen already fit into that category. i would suppose one of the great guessing games at various international summits in 2014 is, am i in the good guy category that doesn't get spied on or am i in the bad boy does get spied on. it is a very important question, really, not a trivial one. does behavior over time change whether you are in one category or another? what the president has done in p.p.d., he's said there is going to be a constant review of that process at the highest levels of the nalt security bureaucracy. one last point i would like to make. i think it is important to remember that only a few months ago we had a similar big speech on drones. that speech on groans a few months later is a good one to look at in comparison to today. a lot of things that were talked

about in the drone speech are still works in process. the transfer of drones from thesy say -- c.i.a., the department of defense, to be charitable, we could call it a work in progress. secondly, a lot of it requires the congress. for example, in the transfer of dropes from the c.i.a. to the d.o.d., they have said no, we don't think that's a good idea. we're not going to go that route, mr. president. so this is a stepping stone, this is a first step. there is a lot of material to work with. a lot of this has to be translated into implementation, and a lot of it has to do with what capitol hill wants to do. >> for those of you standing in the back, there are a few rose in the -- and i would urge you to sit down and be a little more comfortable. cam? >> while i agree with bruce on the tenor of the speech, the

president began with, as bruce said, a strong defense intelligence gathering, then ended it with a strong defense and the an values, importance of america upholding those values. of testament to the balance he was able to strike there, is i can tell you that in the room with a sizable portion of law enforcement and community there as well as a number of privacy advocates, that both groups went way smiling. i focused on what this says to the international community, to our allies in europe in also around the

world, and what it says for privacy issues, what it says for internet governance. because at the end of the day, as great as the impact on intelligence gathering may be, i impact on the trusting the united states government, trusting the united states industries, trust in the united states developed model of internet govenance has been far greater. that has had enormous economic and diplomatic fallout. there i think the president accomplished a great deal. i think he went further irthan -- than spkted -- expected in declaring we are going to extend

proteches to nonu.s. persons, to non-u.s. nationals. egardless of where they are. that will be principles for intelligence gatherings. many of those principles have been developed by the intelligence community. i know the first of its kind goes far beyond that, and i think it will resonate with the international community. it is a statement by the president in the highest levels of policy, and it is binding, and it is public. so those are all important things.

the president and the ppings licy directive declares that -- the president and the president policy directive declares that everyone is entitled to their privacy, regardless of where they live. it also goes beyond some of the existing policies in articulating a set of criteria legitimate stitutes telligence gathering related to nuclear proliferation, terrorism, et cetera. you know, that i think helps to not only provide some reassurance and trust but to advance the international digital n norms in space.

that the president alluded to that i think sort of helped to kick that off, but i think what is important is that the united states has taken a leap in defining what is legitimate national security protection. that is a key piece of the national norms discussion. every country collects intelligence. ok, what are the international norms that define legitimate national security protection? the president has put down a marker on that. he has put down a marker saying that the united states regardless of what other countries to -- do is going to bind itself to a set of norms. that is an enormous step.

something i think will advance the discussion and help to repair some of the short-term damage, and in the long-term, to help to begin a serious discussion rather than a sort of larm discussion, but serious discussion about international norms. >> thank you. >> i wanted to draw attention to the three things that the president really didn't emphasize in his speech and i think may have been significant for that. not necessarily a criticism. there are things that are deeply complicated, but i think there are things that will continue to festor wip the wider debate and to remind ourselves of them i think is an important part of situating the context for the

peech. first is the organizational question which to some people's surprise is prominent in the review panel report. there are a few organizational proposals, again, decisions in ,he p.p.d., about the oversight changes to the committees that oversee some of the intelligence gathering, but not so much focused in the speech as some had hoped on how the collection s organized. there were proposals in the review report. there was plenty of discussion the last few months about whether the n.s.a. commander and

-- should be separated. that decision was clearly -- or that opportunity was clearly not taken by the president. pick upthat reflects to the point of the operational zanssquans of what the n.s.a. provides potentially over and above the potential presentation. that may reflect the fact he thought he got those presentational benefits from some of the other pleasures that he took. -- some of the other measures that he took. the british system has not , is such a public issue he fact that the political

party is not necessarily the person who has the benefit of the intelligence collected. hether you could designate n.s.a. as a security -- as ligence collecting opposed to defense. that was not brought up. i think for the most part this was an endorsement to the intelligence community and its way of doing things. second was the question of cryptography and whether the national security agency evails upon this to weaken cryptography to make it easier for n.s.a. to spy on people, and

there has certainly been a lot of concern in the community that this was a brief of trust on behalf of the u.s. government. again, and for example, a large number of quite significant security consultants have said they will not attend the r.s.a. conference in protest in the idea that r.s.a. may have taken month money to weaken some security standards. the important thing to note here is that the internet is heavily dependent on the geeks outside government to -- in order to operate in undermining their trust on the wider side of the security community. i think it is going to be something the government will have to work hard to regain. that wasn't addressed here, and that probably is a reflection of the fact that there are no easy answers to this question between

errorism and cyber-security. it has not been particularly explored in the public dialogue because there are no simple answers. again, i wouldn't expect to see that today, but again that'sy think this isn't the final issue -- word on this issue. this is going to be a crucial issue going forward this year because of a big debate that was already going on about snowden, and countries that wanted to maintain athe oversight, and another set of government who is prefer a more governmental approach. think the concern with snowden, the governments sitting

between these two were beginning to distance themselves from the united states. .here is a lot more to do but i also attend -- i tend to cam, that national security data is changed in which foreign leaders or policies governing have failed. we have had some of those governments who themselves have engaged in signal activity and -- that may help them get and allow them to take

forward a more public engagement. it will not alone solve all these problems. i think it gives a basis on which the u.s. government will change the dialogue and can reenter the norms debate in hopefully a more active and positive display. the bottom line therefore, this is a base system. i don't think it's the end of the story by any meavepbs means. >> i'm going to do two things. i want to talk a little about the tone of the speech, am identify on some things -- amplify on some things that have been said already and then i want to geek out and talk a little about the substantive legal l areas the president has talked about. i essentially agree. i think the speech was sort of a surprisingly strong endorsement

of the essential activity of the intelligence community broadly and of the n.s.a. in particular. i think surprisingly, not because the president is, you know, has tapped out on this in the past but because he has actually been under enormous pressure. the review groups that he appointed came out with a series of recommendations that were quite dramatic in the scope of the reform they were proposing in certain respects. i think he really did have a choice to make todays, whether he was going to be somebody who essentially game in and, you know, saw an out-of-control intelligence community under his watch and was going to be the guy who reformed it or whether he came and described it as a situation in which there was

lawful and important intelligence activity taking place in his administration. i.e., his administration, his intelligence community, and that certain changes were needed to increase the perception of legitimacy of that lawful ppropriate activity. i think he very solidly chose the second option. i think up until relatively recently, the one direction he was going to go in that was somewhat in play at least according to news stories, and sort of other signals and trials . so i think that is a notable thing, this sort of high arc. in particular, i want to focus that ithing that he said think will have -- was i'm sure not an accident that he said it and really reflects an anxiety

in the intelligence community that is pretty pervasive and pretty strongly held. i think it will mean a lot to a lot of people that he said it. there is a portion of the speech that i should have highlighted and just read it, but where he said these are people that work every day knowing that the next time something terrible happens, they are going to be asked why they didn't connect the dots. i think identifying with that dilemma. that when you talk about removing authorities, the anxiety that this engenders is the anxiety of people who believe they will be held accountable for not having exercised the various authorities that were taken away from him. it was a rather zahavi -- savvy thing to include, and to identify with a specific dilemma that the ns intelligence community is in on a basically

hourly basis when they decide what to use and what not to use and how aggressively. i want to talk briefly about three substantive areas the president discussed in his speech. the second is the 702 thords, and third, the total victory of the f.b.i. and the justice department on the matter of national security letters. on 215, this is presumed the multion core of the political dwafmente it is the moulten cower that faces the civil liberties community. which is to say, this is a comprehensive collection program, but it is a comprehensive collection program aimed at a very narrow category of data. which is to say metadata.

so its capacity to either do great good, as bruce describes, or frankcally,ing to do terrible damage in the civil liberties arena, is actually much less than either collection under 702, which i'll come to in a minute or section 703, it is not that broad-based a program in terms of what gets collected and analyzed and how. so what the president did here, he basically adopted in a limited sort of way, the review group recommendation, which is to say, moved the program outside of government and allow it to be queried with an order of the fisa court. the problem is, that's actually very easy to say and very hard to do. so what he did, which it's

clever, and the question is if it is too clever by half. he said, well, we'll implement part of it now. which is to say, we'll imentpleement the number of hocks people can take on their own. he also said they can do on their own if they get an order from the fisa court. i actually don't think that is right. i will be interested to see if the fisa court buys that. i think the fisa court will say we have no statutorial authority to investigate these issues. then he says he will investigate how to move the data off site for the next couple months and then we will work with congress to figure it out. what that bhacecally means is reforms ono do minor my own, and if congress can design a system, or we'll give em some guideans, but --

guidance, but if not, we can keep living under the existing authority. so i think at one level, this is an adoption of the review group recommendation, but at another level, it does not seem to dramatically impede the ability of the agency, at least in the short term, to collect and query when needed the appropriate recommendation. 702 strikes me as a bigger win. 702 is a massively important program. it is a bread and butter collection program devoted to overseas intelligence targeted at nonu.s. persons. cam is absolutely right that the president for the first sometime -- and it is a very important statement at a kind of spiritual

level that we acknowledge that non-u.s. persons have privacy rights in the context of our overseas clecks. it is very hard to overstate the sort of spiritual importance of that statement. the practical importance of that statement may be dramatically less than the spiritual importance. and the reason is that the fns community actually doesn't collect and dissemimate llie-nilly stuff about overseas targets that has no value. they don't not do it because it is illegal, but because it is a total waste of their time. when you have a program and you limit it and you say now foreigners have privacy rights in belgium or tejekistan and we're going to have minute zation rules that only cause us to disseminate intelligence value, i suspect that is not

going to cause big problems in any foreign intelligence agency that's doing its job with inimal competence. so i think this might be an area where the spiritual significance goes a long way without changing very much. it will be interesting to see what documents, if any, get to proceed over a more granual level. finally, one of the big surprises in the review report, because it wasn't a feature in any of the snowden leaks, involved the f.b.i.'s issuance of national security letters, which are demands in national security communication tozz turn over basic information. these are done without perspective judicious review and

they are done at a very low level of the bureau. they are quite controversial. they have nothing to do with the snowden leaks. and the review level, i think it was the second recommendation quite high up in the review group reports said this stuff needs to be subject to prospective judicial review. this did not go over well at the f.b.i. and the f.b.i., unlike the 215 program, a few hundred queries a year, this is thousands and thousands and thousands of requests. so this is really part of the daily bread and butter of f.b.i. there was a real interagency squabble over this, and the bureau won. and the president actually sounded a lot like -- in his speech sound aid fair bit like

the f.b.i. director did in a discussion that the "new york times" reported on or some other media reported on a few weeks ago and basically said it shouldn't be harder to get these phone records for the f.b.i. in a national security investigation than it is for a u.s. attorney or an assistant u.s. attorney to get bank records in a criminal fraud investigation. i think this was an area that was a little lower profile and doesn't relate to snowden but ended up in a dispute and the agency came out pretty much where it wanted to be, i think. so i'm going to stop there. if you have questions, hold your hand up and wait for the mic to come. sir? >> thank you so much.

martin from the "german weekly." bruce i heard you not mentioning the nonspy agreement means actually an awful lot. i do agree, i just listened to the speech at the justice department. but i have a question. what does it mean, the extension of privacy rights to foreigners? what could it mean? you said the spiritual effect might be bigger than the practical effect, but what could it mean to foreigners? are they thinking of the privacy act of 1974? what could it be? >> well, there are several procedures outlined in the , sidential policy directive inute zation data re--

minimization data related implications. basically, by implication at least, limb takes on how data base yizzes are queeried where e operative -- bases are queried where the same policies will areply to u.s. and non-u.s. persons. that's where the operational significance will be. because that is t.v.d. it is delegated to the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, to put those procedures together. i guess what i would add in the sort of broader structure of things is that one of the recommendations of the review board that the president adopted is ensuring that considerations of privacy and civil liberties,

commerce, international trade, internet policy, are part of the discussion. that's embodied in the p.p.d. i can tell you as somebody who ove was the one raising those issues in discussions here that that's -- that is a -- an enormously valuable thing. it is not that the people in law enforcement aren't receptive to these issues, but they are not built into the discussion. now they are. now they are as a result of the substantive criteria in the p.p.d. and they are there as a result of the review procedures looking at the intelligence gathering at the priorities at the targeting, you know, through the national security council,

deputy's commi committee and principle's committee approval by the president. that ensures that a wider set of yes and considerings go into the implementation of intelligence gathering. those, i think, are important tems that -- you know, but to at pen said about this intelligenceat the community has done, is one that is looked at from the perspective of those other issues, i think this came out in the right place, you know, in terms of the structure, in terms of the limitations. it's not everything that the review board recommended, or

that some have advocated. where i think i do differ is on the significance of meta-data. it is potentially highly significant. one of the rich avenues of research these days is what you can learn from social networks. we came back here, one of the leading scientists from m.i.t. is going to be here to talk about his new book "social physics." but what's key here is what do you do with that data? how will you manage it? that awill be made more robust. but i think the validation of what the intelligence committee is doing, because there has been a strong set of protections in place. qumming from a different perspective. at the end of the day, i would not structure a lot of the

privacy protections that in the ly if i were i.s.a. making those decisions. really, because there are a robust set of proteches in place. they are being made more row bufment they are being broadened in terms of the scope of who they recover. in that sense, it is a validation of what has been done. >> i just want to -- >> please identify yourself. >> rick rempert, merits professor. i want to mention that the devil is not so much in the details

here as in the bureaucracy. i spent some time at the department of homeland security, n.s.f. to give two examples. obama issued an executive order on class identification which in essence said we were classifying too much and that we should err in the direction, if you will, of openness. i certainly have not seen evidence that the bureaucracy picked up on that districtive in any realistic way. second example -- and this deals with the implications of applying u.s. privacy law overseas. d.h.s. in fact did that. at least in some experience i had, there was research we wanted to do, which would involve the collection of p.i.i., personally fiblee final

information who said it was great to do this research. there were great delays. i think given if they really are applying to u.s. privacy act and its rules about what may be collected and held, there could be more significant effects, particularly in the relevant issues that hlm of would affect us. >> i'm just making comments. this is the end of the comments. i throw it open. if you want to question how is the bureaucracy going to be able to transform this or will it be able to transform this? will this be accepted and followed? >> to clarify on the privacy front. the review group did recommend a d.h.s. like policy level plication of the privacy act

to the extent of a policy matter to non-u.s. citizens. the president's speech does not do that. at least not as i read it. it talks about recognizing that nonu.s. persons overseas have privacy rights, but it does not do it with reference to the privacy act. so i think it is actually a bit of a step back from the recommendation of the review group. >> if i could add one thing to that. i think it is an interesting question about bureaucracy. the big winner is the enhanced power of the d.n.i. when we think of it in historical terms, when the d.n.i.'s fiss was set up about a decade ago, it was clearly intended this was going to be a small office with a small staff without its own building which would largely be a coordinating

role. here is one more step in the increase of the d.n.i.'s authority. the d.n.i. is on par with the attorney general in establishing all of the bureaucrat mechanisms this.ind of flow out of which means that the d.n.i. is not going to have a small staff, he is going to have a big staff. he's going to get into privacy issues he has not gotten into before. it is, as you said, it comes down to how does the bureaucracy implement this, and i think it comes down to how aggressive will the d.n.i.'s office be? will be it able to work with other agencies? will the n.s.a. listen to it? i think it will. is a winner at the d.n.i. office, in short. >> gary? > we bring -- let me bring the

microphone over to gary while ian is talking. >> the bureaucracy is going to be under a lot of scrutiny. the idea that commercial interests will be brought into the decision making. everyone accepts that will be a good thing for u.s. power more generally. but it is more important in this some perhaps, than 34 others. the private industry has to be convinced this is happening and if not in theory. if they don't, the u.s. will not be able to operate through the soft powers that the u.s. tech sector delivers. and that will be important in delivering some of its national security network through. similarly, i think the

international community will be watching some of this very closely. i think obama has given himself the opportunity to change the nature of some of that international gay debate and move things forward. but if the sense of what is happening is not what he has promised, then they will move back from that and that will move without progress. so i think there will be a fair ability -- amount of scrutiny on this and that will keep them on their toes. >> changes in the bureaucracy, one other thing that the p.p.d. does, is they say in will be a privacy officer at o.m.b., and the l office will appoint someone who will coordinate with d.n.i. that's something else that ensures there is additional

perspective and brings one of the main points of contact with he tech community into the intelligence discussion, the intelligence oversight. >> i'm derrick mitchell and i write "the mitchell report." i want to not let a comment that two of the first two of you on he panel, bruce and ben, made. i want to check. -- at you did a kind of the outset said, you know, doacht write this in ink. i'm going to need some time too think about this and my views sometime down the road may hange. i want to ask whether there is

more than a sort of generic, wise, this all happened this morning, i need to get ready for e afternoon observation or whether, and perhaps i was a, prized, and b slightly swayed by or well he did what he did, were there components of what he touched on that raised some yellow flags for you? i think pen specifically talked about fisa cord jurisdiction relative to skks 215 as one example. so was this sort of generic, were l hold on, folks, or there some places where yellow signs might be flashing. >> it is a very per spentive question, at least in the psycho analysis of me.

i can't speak for bruce. so in my case, there are a mber of areas that i am at this point aware that i have not analyzed with sufficient thoroughness to know what my opinion is actually going to be. let me flag them for you. i'm not i'm entirely sure i understand what the implications of the privacy rights -- acknowledging privacy rights for nonu.s. persons overseas is. and i'm not sure we will understand that until you hold 12333 against existing minute minimization procedures that they are going to have to write for this. and there is this phrase in there, as cam pointed out, these

have to be the same as the minimization of u.s. citizens to the extent available. until you put all these puzzle pieces together, and i understand how feasible it is consistent with national security, how similar and how different they are going to be, i'm going to be a little tentative in how i react to that. in is also a part in the speech where the president says he 702 ts some reforms of vis-a-vis the use on non-u.s. persons. l give more nformation, but he sort of

punts it. i would like to see, are those privacy rights essential or are they sort of unimportant? but you are going too see -- you chapter of see the headings here. what you see in the granularity of practice is different. it is also possible it is clear what it means, i just don't understand it yet. >> i'm not going to psycho analyze myself. i think what ben said applies. i would highlight two other points. there is a fair number of places in the document where there is language which you could drive a truck through. for example, they can't seek out except in an emergency situation. what is an emergency situation? it is a judgment call.

one of the points the president was saying about this whole thing is, we don't need to just think about the judgment of this president, we need to think of the judgment of the next president and the president after. when you have a lot of those rather loose formulations, it is a subject for worry. what would a next president do on something like that? then i think there is the other question of throwing into the many congress, and maybe i'm just influenced because i'm reading bob gates' book right now, but his character zation of the congress as the uglier it is, the closer you get the more ugly it is, certainly applies to our current situation. and the notion that this congress is going too come up with creative solutions to some of these very, very difficult problems strikes me as the

triumph hope over experience. i just don't see that happening. that is the worry. we could find out that instead of a path forward, that is a path to nowhere. >> i'm not going to psycho analyze either ben or bruce, but i would say, i have had two very similar conversations, but one after the event, and one with people there or and another with people preparing for this discussion both trying to parse exactly what the president said about the 215 program and where it is going from here. that's going to take some many onal analysis of the -- lng of the speech, and some further explanation as well. >> other questions? >> yes, thank you. i'm with the u.s. department of state. i used to work with cam kerry.

i continue to work on a lot of these issues. it is good to see cam again. i have a question again i'm voicing on behalf of bureaucracy, because i am a career federal bureaucrat, and it really goesing to congress' willingness to reform. to my experience, oversight costs money, transparancy costs money. if the president issues an order to improve trans transparancy but the size of the office doesn't increase, you get preath pretty lack luster results. judicial review requires more judges and more people to argue in front of those judges. so we are hearing man zates on some of the very people that awork on some of these issues now. some of these people are working on furloughs. the independent review dwrupe was forced to stop working because of the government shut down. so from the congress, do you see any recognition from them that oversight -- the desire for

oversight can be expressed with commitment of resources or is there a danger that we're going to see a new set of unfunded mandates and a requirement on remany assert the deck chairs in hoot way. >> the short answer is no. the congressional oversight -- and this is a very dangerous point in this area. because these are highly eelaborated, highly de -- they very dense statchtri schemes that were put together with enormous care over many, many decades now by congress -- congresses that worked better than the current congress does. the care and feeding of the fisa

regime which has gone through a great many rewrites over a long period of time, current following changes so quickly, it actually requires regular revisiting not just for the oversight reasons, that you the be, but also because technology changes and it bhoims out of date. the point bruce made about congress is, it is -- it can be devastating. it becomes harder and harder to reach a point where the congress with work in a bipartisan fashion, and this legislation always has to be bipartisan on a technically dense area of enormous legal complexity. when you create these oversight

issues that the executive has to a work with, it creates huge burden, and it is actually an enormous problem. caps cans captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- [captions copyright national cable satellite corp 2014] >> the situation doesn't bother me, access bothers me. i had access to the information before. d.n.a. felt that the ow is from booz allen. we gave them too -- are we giving too much power to rporations to have the

information? >> i was just handed a question from brandon andrews that says "do you think americans feel safer with information in the hands of private agencies or the u.s. government, and if so, why?" i throw that to any of the panelists. >> let me begin with that. as one of the a. tickets one of the administration's consumer privacy bill of rights, i certainly would like to progress ove forward on that.

we do have a sig consultant issue with the private sector. i think maybe now we can put some of this in the past. we can't put all of it in the past. there are a lot of other documents out there that will have the report next week, and other things that will continue this discussion.

at least we may have reached a point of deflection. ?ow do we manage that selection how do we ensure that that is appropriately protected that meets expectations and ensures that our choices that people want to make in their lives on't get affected. >> are you safer at fort meade or are you safer at target? >> i think the answer to the question is you are a lot safer at fort meade in what matters to ost americans. unless the congress of the

united states is prepared to enhance the career resources, most of these will be out-sourced to contractors. we will see more and more security evaluations and more and more data collection handling in the hands of contractors. i think if there is one lesson from eric snowden, that is a mistake. that is a really big mistake. how did a junior officer find a way to download the top intelligence community information and nobody in the office seems to notice he is doing this? the congress us should have long ago called up boos allen and asked them those questions and made them answer them.

unfortunately, i think congress is part of that contractual world, too. when congressmen and senators move on, where do they move on to? he board of directors. >> so the speech was mainly in reaction to snowden. do you see the speech having an impact in terms of giving the u.s. government a higher moral ground on this debate or do you see it being likely in the long-term? do you have thoughts on that? >> i do. i think probably the u.s. is

moving away from basing it on moral authority in this particular regard. what i think the speech will do, least in the context of internet use and international issues is provide a basis on which the government can now proactively stop engaging in a way that it felt prohibited efore. there is enough in the speech that allows other governments to engage with the u.s. in a way that they can self-act to their own public. i think how that actually translates into outcomes depends takes the administration it happens in

england the u.s. has an enormous scale when it comes to the internet debates, for example. the values on which the internet has been built and driven the success of the global internet sort of opened the freedom of a multistake holder is far more attractive to people in countries around the world than the more authoratarian model of government with lots of overnment regulations. but i think people have been stepping back from the united tates because of snowden and hopefully the dialogue will open up willing a coalition around taking a step forward.

>> i agree with what ian said. attempting to answer the request gives more moral authority. the greatness of america lies not in being more enlightened but in our ability to repair her aults. i think in this discussion, now you need to set procedures that create better transparancy that the president has established a model that really puts it to other countries around the world. i think he was quite pointed about that. certainly one of the effects of the snowden disclosures and i think has tempered some of the international outrage is that the press in other countries has

been asking the question, looking at some of the snowden documents to find those answers, what are our countries doing? what are our governments doing? and so certainly a number of countries have had disclosures about their own activities that to look, and namely brazil. that is enormously helpful in the discussion of norms and governments. you know, de la rusa said at the u.n., we need a system of multilevel governments. it happened. it just happens to be a nongovernmental one. many countries would like to put this under government control that is more respectful of

government interests, more respectful of borders. this helps, i think, to move the discussion back to a better model of governance. >> i would like to gently disagree. i think it is worth drawing as sharp a line as possible, and it is not really possible, between the internet questions which do rely in a profound way on moral authority and espionage, which is a deeply moral exercise in which we pretend to be outraged about the things that are done to us and pretend great moral outrage lies behind our pabblet ability to do it to the other guy. i think at the end of the day, there is a lot of feigned anger as well as some real anger.

i don't believe that the loss of moral authority in the espionage space was ever quite that great. and i actually don't think that this will do much to restore it. again, braketting the internet side, which can be hard to braket, the reality is a whole bunch of stuff got found out that is embarrassing to us and not ad van tageous for us to have out there. that is not fundamentally a moral issue, it is fundamentally an embarrassment and unpleasantness and diplomatic ram fantastics and business ramifications issue. you had a question, sir? > tom curry with nbc news.

when tom kerry spoke, he drew a recommendation that the panel made that he said hpt gotten really any notice at all, and that is to expand n.s.a. authority and give it emergency power when a terrorist suspect who has been under surveillance outside the united states enters the united states for the first 72 hours and gives n.s.a. authority to track that person. did the president address that? and how significant is that? >> so the president didn't address it. i think you can assume that the reason is, if you are giving a speech about, you know, imposing -- by the way, asking for new authority in the context of that speech is disonan with the larger message, as it is in fact disonant with

he larger review report, there is a group of news reports from n.s.a. that suggests that the problem of what are called roamers, who are people of legitimate subjects of intelligence collection overseas, and you wake up one morning and you find out they are in cleveland, and all of a sudden the intelligence and collections are illegal. and what we do, is we shut them off and those show up asclines issues in the u.s. it is a fairly complon cause of compliance problems. so one possible way to think about that is to say, well, ok, there is no problem. when it turns out that that surveillance is illegal, we shut it off and notify the f.b.i. the other way to think about it is there is huge problems and the n.s.a. is behaving illegally and they are doing all this illegal surveillance, which is the way the press has covered

it. they capped it as illegal surveillance. the other way to think about it is, hey, it is a security problem. we are turning off legitimate argets of oferse collection. the review group took that position toward it, and i think rightly, and i suspect the president will not talk about this much publicly, but if you look at it, i wouldn't be at all surprised to see the house intelligence committee take a look at that recommendation. >> would that require legislation? >> yes. >> we have a couple questions that came in over the transem. which are the most serious recommendations that the president didn't mention? ian these go to sort of the moulten core of what you were talking about. what is the most significant

thing in the internet governance indescription -- incryption space that the president didn't say and what do you think he should say about it? >> i actually think we have good cryption.n the en i think that may be why neither are the panel nor the president got into that space. where i think he did engage on a whole group of issues is on the future and the structure of the .s.a. and we have potentially an opportunity with general alexander moving on to do a number of structurally different hings. either to split the n.s.a. and give it a more implicitly

intelligence function taking away the military use. you could, in support of the detante, ernational you could take the n.s.a. out of review -- >> and there is a separation of information assurance. >> absolutely. and i think what you have in the speech with the popt saying this would have a short and medium-term operational impact which i'm not willing to take, but i don't think the presentational advantages of that are necessary given the other things that i'm doing. it remains to be seen.

if you think this is basically an endorsement of a number of arrangements to modify key constituents, we will have to constituencies respond to that, but i think they will find that they need to move a little closer to where -- he needs to more closer to where they are. >> how significant are the reforms that the president proposed to the f.i.t.s., the foreign intelligence surveillance courts? i can answer that. f.i.t.c. s that the should reform, and that is significant reform to the metta-data program, and depending on how much it brings down the requests, it is actually a significant workload

t.c. to the f.i. l a former judge wrote this week that the review courts are a massive work loid load burden, and some of them you shouldn't give us, and f some of them if you give us requires a lot more judges. so the team is relatively small. it is -- there is an institutional impact there. the more significant impact, the president endorsed a public impact before the f.i.t.c. he was intentionally vague about what he was endorsing. there are two basic visions of what a public advocate could be.

one is to give the f.i.s.c. the authority to appoint amicus when it argues against the government when it feels it needs an adversary briefing. they want the judges in control of that. the more expansive vision, which has been in some of the legislative proposals as well as n in some of the review group, s in having a -- basically a standing office of public advocationy to get them to intervene when it wants to. the president said rewards can be sort of read to leave that question up in the air, and i think that's one of the things he's punted to congress basically, how significant it is institutionly is largely a function of what congress does with that.

>> mathy perez, competitive price institute. there has been a lot of discussion about how this -- congress doesn't seeve a lot information about intelligence agencies, that they are very object secure. what is left -- >> does anyone have thoughts on that? >> i will take a shot at it. >> congress has said if you don't answer the question in the right way, you get a misleading report. secret intelligence agencies collect secrets to have a

secret, not to give them away. the congress of the united states has not established a track record on very sensitive secrets that leads anyone to a great deal of confidence, other than to see if they can maintain that secret. strong bases in pakistan is it one example. i think one of the things the president has done here, by endorsing the n.s.a., biby -- ing him the 21st century by he says we have new documentation that says that is legal. and we're going to tell you what we're doing. the problem of getting agencies to answer the question, even if the question isn't rightly phrased, is usually, not always,

but usually, been a bigger problem with the sfraltbs -- intelligence agency than the national security agency, because national security l programs are, for the most part, ones that can be articulated to congress fairly simply, whereas a lot of c.i.a., especially covert action programs, there are elements of it which are if g to be at risk, misinterpreted or loose lips put them out thrt there in the public domain. >> mike nelson with microsoft. one of the things you haven't talked about is the president's promise to have a high-level group led by john podesta looking at big data. i'm curious what two or three questions would you hope that

group would try to answer? and do you think within the year we'll have another obama speech on the broader question of big data and privacy and will we have a brookings panel on that speech? >> on second thought -- >> we have had many panels on that subject, and i'm sure we will have more. does anybody have thoughts -- cam -- on this? >> well, i'm very interested in that inquiry. it is frankly not clear either from the d.b.d. or from the speech exactly what the scope of that inquiry is going to be. it is apparently a short timeline to address those

issues. this is important to have on the government side and the private ide. we are at a stage in this world where we can't focus on the issue of collection. it is going to take place in ways that are beyond all of our conception today. and as you know, it is expanding at an enormous rate. i think on both the government side and the private side, we can't just say, stop the ollection. we can't just disregard data that's available. replays we areth dealing with in baseball. it would be nice to say we want to disregard the information that's available. but there are going to be times when you wish you had access to t.

there are enormous gains, enormous risks, and we need to focus on how we manage that data. we h certainly had a discussion with the president on that dodd, and i want to see the discussion move forward on the consumer side as well. >> we have time for one more round. why don't we take questions, and just we will go down the panel for final thoughts. so if people have questions, let's get them out on the record now. >> hi. my name is anwar. i'm a student. throughout the years we have groups of color and muslims, do we see moaching forward -- moving forward, do we production of racial

profiling reduction moving forward? >> ok. one over here. oms thomas stephenson. i'm also a student. would cyber-command take over the -- like if the n.s.a. was removed from military operations? >> ok. anybody else? fore we close the question floor? n a brief wrap-up. >> one role of the n.s.a. is to look after the security of the deprks o.d. networks. the other two being commanders, and the third, which is somewhat

difficult and challenging is to defend the nation. so do they have that responsibility? i think the challenge that would arise from splitting the two is at a lot of the intelligence that cyber-command needs to do its work comes from the n.s.a. side, and splitting the two out would be highly inefficient. that inefficiency would be worthwhile in the long run but in the short term i think the judgment is -- the benefits do not justify that inefficiency. general sort of wrap-up comments, i think what's not being commented on too much, is one of the interesting aspects of the speech is president obama directly confronting the international aspects.

so when you have the d.n.i. sitting in front of congress saying this is only affecting american citizens, however factually accurate that might be, over six billion people rpped the world say, i'm not one f those. the way the president came out and directly confronted these issues is helpful in taking us forward. >> so on the question of profiling, one of the principles that the presidential polling directive has made explicit and made universal is that the united states shall not collect signals intelligence for disadvantaging persons based on their race, gender, sexual rientation, or religion.

i think that, along with many of the other things here, i go to the point that we have here, the president speaking out on these issues. when the study disclosures comes up, the president said he wanted to have a national and global conversation about national security. it is a conversation he wanted to be engaged in as reflected in the choice of a review board, people that are very trusted by the president. he has not endorsed all those programs, but he has certainly taken that on board as a vigorous conversation, and i

think that can be a tipping point to move forward in some very substantive ways on the broad set of issues we have here. >> i think one of the contributions the president has made here today is this image of he out-of-control or rogue national security agency. i think that's an important step. the two things i'm looking seeing next, one, what happens when there is another terrorist incident, like a repeat of boston or something like that, has been rightly put down. the president acknowledged that. i think he's acutely aware of this. he has been very lucky for five years. very lucky. his luck is the going to go on forever and ever, and our luck collectively isn't going to go on forever and ever. then the question is, why are we wasting time going to courts when we know there are terrorists? that is a matter of time. the other thing i'm going to be

looking for is what's the next oe to drop from the edward snowden apparatus. what are we going to hear from his network of supporters? in the course of his revelations so far, there has been a patter of orchestration that has been quite interesting. you know, you get a leak about germany, just when we are about to go to germany. you get a leak about brazil just when the brazilians are about to come here. i think he tried to get the similar effect. i don't think he got much of a bounce. and the question is, we will see, is it really edward snowden doing this, or is it a larger apparatus. i know many people in the community who are looking at this issue now no longer regard edward snowden ads -- as a thief or traitor or those things, they regard him as a defector who has gone over to

another foreign intelligence agency. that's a good question, that we don't have a good handle on. let's see what comes next out of moscow. >> i very much agree that a lot of the next few months will be conditioned by additional disclosures. have we reached the point where each additional disclosure has less and less impact on the debate? in which case, i think you could really imagine this presidential speech combined with a certain apathy in congress or a lethargy in congress beginning to be the set of tail end of this scandals or possibilities. the other question is that, the disclosures continue, and they

maintain a certain fevered pitch both the egments of conservative and liberal bases that really condition the congressional politics and keep can be ve in a way that very unpredictable and i think sort of dangerous, if what you're trying to do is bring stability to our understanding of what authorities will and won't exist, should and shouldn't exist, and what should be written in law, what should be policy, what should be fluid, nd what should be fixed? finally, and i will close here, the other big factor is the fact that the patriot act authorities, including section 215, do sunset in a little less than 18 months.

so in the short term, if congress doesn't do something, what happens is the president maintains all the authority that vis-a-vis ncluding 215 subject to whatever additional constraints he puts on himself, some of which he did today. but in the longer term, and the longer term really isn't that long, that default switches. and if congress doesn't do something, the 215 authority actually goes away in, i believe, may of 2502015. so one of the questions, i think we'll leave it here, is do the politics settle enough that you could have a congressional enactment that says, this is the portion of this program that we ,ill endorse beyond may of 2015 and does the review group recommendation as articulated by

the president today embraced sort of by the president today provide a formula for that longer term stability or not? the picture strikes me as very different if you think that that recommendation and the president's discussion of it today provides a basis for settlement of that issue than if you believe it doesn't. thank you very much for coming, and come back. [applause]

[inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] >> so that wraps up this brookings institution discuss on the president's speech on

changing government surveillance programs. reaction continuing to come in from capitol hill. arizona senator john mccain reacted to the president's speech by saying in part "president obama's speech today left many crucial questions unanswered. now is the time for congress to improve how it improves constitutional rights oversight abilities to ensure that we are fulfilling our obligation to protect both the security of our nation and the freedom of our citizens. that's why we will introduce diagnosis legislation to establish a senate select committee to examine all of these important issues and uestions." 's ense secretary chuck hagle remarks include, in part, "these programs must always balance the need to defend our national security with our responsibility to preserve america's individual

liberties and the decisions and recommendations to do with that." if you missed the president's marks earlier today, we will show them to you again in their entirety tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. former defense secretary robert gates has a new book out and he's speaking at the constitutional center in philadelphia later today. we'll have his remarks live at 6:30 p.m. eastern on our ompanion network on c-span2. tom coburn announcing he will retire at the end of the congressional session. there has been a special election called to fill his seat on november 4.

>> it is very useful to restaurants that we all have credit cards and it is useful for us that all the restaurants will take them. but it is not so useful if the gatekeeper says, now, some of these restaurants, we're not going to allow them to participate in the system. translating that to the president, if the internet service provider were to say, you know, not all the people that are putting the content on the computers, we don't want all of them to be able to have access to all of the users, that's a problem if a gatekeeper behaves that way. >> this weekend on c-span a look at the impact of the d.c. circuit court ruling on broad

band and high-speed internet regulations. aturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern. author gary young later asks examines the speech -- examines "the speech, the story behind martin luther king's dream." >> 300 years ago, the first pioneers crossed the ocean to a new frontier. the promise where a man could have his own acres, raise his children in freedom. yet in one of the great river valleys of america, something went wrong. in the tennessee valley, three nturies later, the l assemblance of the pioneers were a neglected people.

for these children, the hope and the promise were dead. >> the tennessee valley authority was one of the early museum projects. it is a project and a concept that had been under consideration for some years before franklin roosevelt became president. frank noris of nebraska, senator, was looking to help improve the quality of life in the tennessee river valley to bring flood controls, to generate some electrical power, and to improve the lives of the people living in the tennessee river valley. it was one of the poorest regions in the country at the end of the 1920's and it was an attempt to improve the lives of people living all the way to the ohio river. >> this week a look at the history and lit rarey life of chattanooga, tennessee.

saturday at noon and on c-span2. >> now a discussion on this morning's "washington journal" on the subject of net neutrality. >> this week a federal appeals court struck down the federal communications open internet rules, i.e., net neutrality net roles. rules. next hour or so we are going we're going to talk about those with two former members of the f.c.c. who served during the time those rules were established. robert mcdowell is a republican and was the senior republican on the commission for quite a while, and michael copbs was in the majority during that time. he also served as acting chair of the commission for a while. chair of the commission for a while. , what exactlyopps is net neutrality? what are we talking about here? guest: i think net neutrality is the effort to keep the internet free and open.

terms,ted into practical it means consumers have a right to access the lawful content of their choice, to attach whatever devices they want to attach to run applications that they want to run and have the benefits of transparency, openness, and nondiscrimination. to makeally an effort sure that consumers rather than companies are in charge of their internet experience. host: when we talk about net neutrality in this view, if somebody is downloading a netflix movie or sending an e-mail, they get equal treatment? guest: that's right here at host: do you support what the appeals court did? guest: no, i don't support what the appeals court did nor do i support what the fcc did on the way to the appeals court. court credit, the appeals did emphasize that the fcc has

authority to conduct some oversight, to keep the internet open. the so-called net neutrality. which, incidentally, i think is a god awful term because it is such an anodyne and non-mobilizing thing. i would rather talk about the open internet or internet freedom, because that is really what we are talking about here. and a lot of the discussion we will have today will probably get in the weeds. but people need to understand what is at stake here, what we are talking about. the future of the internet. and that is the place where increasingly our civic dialogue takes place. that is increasingly where television and radio and news are going. and that is central to our democracy. that is central to our ability to conduct civil dialogue, giving people the news and information, openness without gatekeeping and all of that, so they can make intelligent decisions for the future of the country. goodness knows we've got so many problems in the country. i am one of those people who

happens to believe that journalism is hemorrhaging. we don't have the type of investigative journalism we used to have. and the open internet is very much a part of whether we will have that in the future or not. host: you said you did not like what the fcc did on the way that you supported at the time. guest: i voted for it because it was that or nothing. but basically you get into the weeds are really quick here. but what the federal communications decided several years ago, the beginning of 2002 and then in 2004 was broadband was not really a telecommunications service him it was an information service. , you information service cannot conduct oversight or regulate it to the degree you can if it is a communication -- telecommunications service. things like consumer protections and privacy and public safety and things like that.

but the fcc said, no, it's not that, it is an information service over here. what the court said was, if you are going to call it information service then you have to regulate it like information service, or in this case, not regulate it at all. but if you go back and classify it as a telecommunications service, then you are probably on sound ground. it would be contentious but it would not the all that complex. you would have the commission go back and say, we kind of made a 2004.e back in 2002 and of course, this stuff is telecommunications. at telephone call is a telephone call, whether a land line service or an internet call. functionally it is the same sort of thing. why wouldn't a consumer be callled on that internet to the same kind of protections that advocates fought for or consumers for years and years

west among all these things we are talking about? mcdowell,issioner same question. how would you define net neutrality? what did you -- do you think about the court did? the folks me say for watching, michael copps and i come from different philosophical approaches on many issues but we are the best of friends and we had a terrific colleagues inas the fcc. this is a rarity in washington. sometimes we would arrive at the same destination but through different paths completely. and there are things that this -- divide is. it is not republican versus democrat and not necessarily net neutrality, but he is unc chapel ill and i went to duke -- so am wearing my duke tie and cufflinks just to throw him off his game. i have to resort to such tactics. can i emphasize what he said? when i was acting chairman we went through the dtv transition, a consultative thing, and i

cannot not have had a more cooperative attitude -- traveling to dance around the country explaining to folks. of looking at how this plays runs, and it turns out while there are less optical differences and differences of opinion in these issues, over 90% of what the place does is by consensus and it is not divided by politics of the left or right. it is a license or spectrum dispute or something like that. but when we were talking about net neutrality this was a partisan issue. guest: thank you, sir. appreciate that. guest: net neutrality is what i called for years a workshop term , what different people see into it. the concept of open and freedom enhancing internet i think is important to everybody. we all agree on that. let's look at the internet before december 21, 2010, the date of the net neutrality vote. it was open and freedom

enhancing then. you had start up companies. google was a start up once upon a time. facebook was a start up, so was twitter and a lot of other companies. they blossomed beautifully. the internet has been the fastest penetrating technology in the history of mankind. all across the globe. and i think it is precisely because that space was unfettered. and keeping it deregulated and not regulating it like a monopoly phone company, which we will call titleii for folks folks, the for shorthand. that was bipartisan consensus. whatoing back actually to we call computer inquiries, starting in 1970 at the fcc, and again, another big bill -- big order in 1980 and another in 1988. during the clinton administration, then the chairman of the fcc, bill kennard, i'm a big fan, talking about how we should not regulate

the internet or broadband as a phone service. reasons.iety of it just operates differently. if you talk to an engineer, packet switching operates differently -- that is the internet -- from analog circuit switch voice. there are a lot of differences. so we treated computer-two-computer medications differently for a variety of good public policy reasons. consumers have been a net beneficiary. guest: commissioner mcdowell, what you think of the decision -- host: commissioner mcdowell, what do you think of the decision by the appeals court, to clinton employee -- appointees and a reagan appointee? guest: commissioner baker at the time and i wrote a very long , and the --dissents scaredited our dissents i was very happy with the bulk of what it said. that the commission exceeded its

statutory authority and that congress never gave the fcc the authority to do what it tried to do. i note that it did leave in the fcc's roll on transparency so internet service providers still have to be transparent and disclose to the public what their practices will be. this has been underrated in the mainstream press. it is not really been picked up. the significance of that is big. the other thing that is big is while the court reinforced the fence around the fcc's jurisdiction, or wall off the jurisdiction saying the fcc cannot legislate and only congress can legislate, there is a hole in the fence under what is called section 706, the cornerstone of the fcc's argument that december 21, 2010. as they looked at the section to give it authority. the court says there is authority to do something --

section 706, at hole in the fence in the jurisdiction. we don't know how big the whole lives. this is a prelude to a sequel, to be continued. then the court went on to say it can't look like any regulation -- any regulation, not a fcc cannot look like the old-style phone regulation. it can't look like that. the judge, who also fashioned a case also known as of data roaming case about 18 months ago or so i think was looking for a looser net revelatory structure. that is my cute -- theory of the case. whether or not a new panel of the d c circuit will uphold that, you have a panel of judge kavanaugh or williams or other in the majority -- i don't think they will agree that the commercial arrangement of the loosely knit -- i don't think

they would agree that it will hold up in court. host: what is going to be the effect? what is going to be the us that on the consumer of this decision? guest: absolutely nothing. weremmediate press results that consumer costs were going to go up. actually, i think the opposite will happen. if there are web destination for applications that consume content, there is now the freedom to have those companies subsidize consumer bandwidth consumption. i would use my 14-year-old son griffin as an example. he uses his mobile device to look at espn a lot. we will try to get him to look at c-span more often. anyway, that consumes a lot of our data plan. withpn has an arrangement the isp, the wireless company, in this case -- and by the way,

the commission exempted wireless from the neutrality rule -- his grades -- rates may be able to stay low. it punishr is doesn't or dis-incentivize startups? the answer is, no. there is a whole panoply of laws already on the books. antitrust laws, consumer protection laws, common law, interference of contract, the federal trade commission, the u.s. apartment of justice antitrust division, state attorneys general, consumer advocates, a whole host of state and federal law where the government can come down on internet service to writers like a hammer if consumer harm starts to arise due to deals being cut that produce consumer harm. consumers are safe. maybe next year their rates are not going to go what. in fact, they may have a more robust experience. let's wait and see how the marketplace develops before we as a government try to guess. host: michael copps? guest: i think the cost to consumers will be high cost and potentially horrendous if this

decision is left unaddressed. i look at what is happening here really as a slow, sometimes not so slow cable ovation -- cableization of the internet. if those watching the show are happy with the cable providers and don't mind all of the fight to the cable and content get into onto whether they will carry a football game or the nfl has to pay more for the game or your favorite dramatic series, fine, don't be worried about this debate we are talking about right now. but if you want to consign this open internet technology, perhaps the most innovating -- will in history to the gatekeeper control and potential discrimination with the provider can favorite on products or favor those who can pay them the most fees, then you ought to really be concerned about this. this is not what broadband was supposed to be. it has the potential to be the most opportunity creating technology than the printing press.

you see it go the way of cable or the way of any other communications system -- radio, tv, or cable -- that we have had, i think would be a tragedy of almost historical dimensions. on theur discussion is open internet rules that the fcc developed in 2010 and the federal appeals court denied this past week. 202 is the area code -- guests are two former members of the federal communications commission and you can begin dialing in. we will begin taking the calls in just a minute. you mention what could occur, what the fcc commission could do. the new fcc chairman tom wheeler book about what the fcc may do, yesterday. [video clip] the court invited the commission to act.

and i intended to accept that invitation. -- intend to accept that invitation. using our authority we will readjust the concept of the open internet order, as the court invited, to encourage growth in innovation and enforce against the abuse. we noted with great interest the expressions from many internet service providers to the effect that they will continue to honor the open internet orders concepts even though they may have been remanded to the commission. is the right and responsible thing to do, and we take them up on their commitment. , we accept thee court's invitation to revisit the structure of the rules that it