eastern, maled governor o'malley speaking at the democratic convention in des moines. >> and we'd like to welcome back to "the communicators," lawrence strickling. mr. strikeling, if you'd start by telling us what it is you do and when -- where you are in the organizational start? >> sure, peter. and thank you for having me back. i think it's our third or fourth visit here and we always enjoy sitting down with you and your guests. ftia is the principal visor to the president on communication issues. we're not a regulatory agency but we do work on internet policy, broad band spectrum, and

part blic safety is a big of our portfolio. we cover a variety of telecommunication topics. >> let's start with the internet do main. the i-can issue. something you're working on right now is who should control, who should-o the internet domain names and there seems to be some disagreement between congress and the administration on this >> well, it's a little different from the way you described it. the responsibility for overseeing the domain name system has been ican's responsibilities going back to 199 . at that time the clinton administration determined that they wanted to move the operation of the name system out of the federal government and privatize it. so what we announced in march

was the completion of what started in 1998, which was to complete that privatization of management of the do main name system into ican. i can has been operating at a multistakeholder organization since 1998 and all we were saying was the time had come for us to step aside and eliminate the remaining role we had with ican in terms of these specific technical functions and in that part of it, we're saying that the united states no longer has to have the role it's played in terms of having this contract to designate ican to perform this work. they've been doing it well for the last 16 years and it's now time for the united states to step aside from that. i think where the issue has been with some members of congress has been the question of the extent to which through this role the united states was able to exercise control over the

internet and in fact, we don't control the internet. the internet is a combination of many, many different networks tied together. hundreds, thousands of stakeholders who all have a role and a part to play in terms of managing the internet and the policies that determine how the internet runs. >> would it be fair to say -- and i think this is what's coming from the house of representatives, at least to the appropriations bill, that the u.s. has been yinald -- kind of the overseer to ensure that it remains free and there's been concern that if it's turned over to an international body that it may not have that same freedom. >> two points on that. one is we don't exercise the kind of oversight that some members of congress perhaps think we do. in large participate this is all handled by all of the stakeholders' businesses, technical experts. but that has already been put in place. it's already working so we don't

actually oversee anything. our actual role is a clerical role of making sure that any change or update to the root zone file, that high-level address book for the internet, that those changes are accurate before we pass them on for execution. we're saying we'll step out of that role. we've asked the stakeholder community, companies like google and at&t, civil society, technical experts from around the world who have worked on these issues for years to determine what, if anything, they want to have replace that clerical role that we perform and dema effort is just getting under way. >> joining our coverage is brian fund of the "washington post." >> if you -- appreciate your having me on the show. just to follow up on this ican issue.

you're headed to a meeting to discuss these issues in the coming days. what are you hoping to accomplish there? >> ican holesdz three large meetings a year. we all went to singapore a week after we made the announcement in march. we had hundreds of participants to start to collect input. in london, there will be two things happening. the first is a high-level meeting of governments being stator ed at mini vasi with the u.k. government. whatever we replace us shouldn't be a set of governments or intergovernmental organization. then the normal ican meetings will take place at which there will continue to be discussion about how to-o the transition plan. there will be a full week of discussion and activity but we're still at the front end of this process in terms of the

stakeholders getting organized to go forward and develop the transition plan that we've asked for. >> so we talked earlier about the house of representatives and when you went before the house to testify, you faced a lot of skepticism from some members about what this plan actually entails and i think part of that may have been motivated by the narrative in the media that this is the united states relinquishing control of the internet. do you think that's a narrative -- how did that narrative affect the way you sold the story to ngress and do you think that n.c.a. could have done a better job explaining what was actually happening when it came to the ican process? >> i think we've been very clear in explaining what's at stake here and the evidence is that the business community largely has come out in great support of

this. the u.s. trade association, individual companies like cisco, at&t, verizon, google. have all come out in strong support of this. civil society, technical experts also have come out and supported this. i think we were facing questions because it's not determined exactly what the transition plan will be. the strength of the multistakeholder process is to give the community the opportunity from the bottom up to develop a plan and that's what we've done. some folks would like to have had us nail down exactly what the plan had to look like but that would have deprived the community of a discussion they really need to have to determine how to transition the united states out of this role that we currently play. the fact that we don't have it nailed down yet because we're going to let the process work i think was uncomfortable to some people on the hill who wanted to know exactly how this would play

out. our responsibilities will be to keep congress and other stakeholders apry prized and try to keep up with these issues due to the lack of knowledge in terms of where we're going to end up. i'm confident that the process is going to deliver a strong and well-conceived transition plan but until we have it it's hard to prove that to people. we'll work with congress and continue to plain -- explain what's going on and hopefully work through these issues with him. >> so one of the proposal is the dots-come act. which would require a study before going on with the stakeholder plan. how is that requirement viewed in the process? >> as i said in my testimony, we have no problem with the g.a.o.

doing a report and indeed last week, the house energy and congress committee, certain members went ahead and asked the a g.g.a.o. to go ahead and prepare the report, just as i had suggested at the hearing in april. we have no problem with the eport being performed. dot-com act is not yet law. it's only been passed as part of a house appropriations matter. it would have held up transition and basically have left it to the g.a.o. to basically become the judge and jury on a plan that's going to be put together by an entire multistakeholder community. that could be interpreted by folks internationally as indicating that congress doesn't trust the multistakeholder congress and congress has been unanimously in support of the multistakeholder of internet government and we were worried there was dissonance there

between what congress had unanimously stated back in 2012 and then this measure to basically hold up a matt stakeholder process so that the g.a.o. will look at things. again, g.a.o. will presumably go ahead and do a study now and we'll work with them to get that review done. >>er i want to entrust another topic that t.n. -- ntia is working on and that's spectrum. sit fair to say they've requested an inventory of all available spectrum that may be available for the option center coming up? >> we've always had a list of candidate fans to be evaluated in terms of making more spectrum available for consumer services. i think what you may be referring to is an announcement we made several weeks ago of a new database we've put up online to allow anyone to come online

and look at all federal bands and see information in terms of who's using that band, how it's being used and that sort of thing. it's our fortunate to put more information in front of the community but that's parallel to the specific detailed an itic work we do on specific bands we've already identified. back when the president first issued his direction to us to find 500 meg hertz of spectrum to reallocate to commercial eulls. at that time we found about 2,000 meg hertz of candidate bands to look at and we're still working our way through those. so far we've identified about 405 megahertz of the 3500 that could be reallocated. two bands the f.c.c. will be auctioning off later this year. nose of -- are of particular interest among the carriers.

>> is there resistance among those that have spectrum? >> resistance isn't the right word. the federal agents are excited to meeting the president's goal. the problem is we have a finite opt of spectrum. growing demands, the commercial industry, which has seen exploding demand for more speck strum -- spectrum and the thadge -- challenge is how do we take these increasing demands and find a way to satisfy both of them. the big advance in terms of what we've been doing in the last few years is to settle on spectrum sharing as the only bay through this, which means finding ways for the federal agency and commercial folks to co-exist in the same freak sis in the same locations at the same times. a lot of this is going to require new engineering work but we're already seeing a shift in attitude by simply having come

guard and saying this is the way forward. the president's council and advice on technology two years ago concluded the same thing. they agreed with our conclusion that spectrum sharing has to be the way forward in order to work our way through these issues and meet the needs of both industries and government going forward. >> so they're working to consider how much spectrum it can give up for commercial uses. where are we in that process now and how much work is left to be done? >> again, we do it on a band by beband basis. the two most recent bands we moved over to the f.c.c. for auction, the two bands coming up this fall are about 40 megahertz f sfeck triumph in the 1710 to 1780 range that. second band hash long on the wish list of the industry in terms of being

able to get access to that spectrum. we work three these issues on a serial basis. i don't predict that our work will ever totally be done. when we're done with one set of bands, there'll be another set of freak sis to be looking at. >> beyond the pentagon, what other agencies is nita considering working with to grab more spectrum? >> we work with a few dozen agencies in terms of who all has spectrum assignments. d.o.d. is by far the biggest user. in the case of the 1695 band, the principal user are weather sites that are operated by noaa. you might see some operated by one of the defense arms but generally d.o.d. is the about si we're most working with >> to transition the k a little

bit. as you mentioned, the f.c.c. is working on a plan to auction off great deal of spectrum sometime soon and some of the money from that auction will be driven to a project that ntia is working on, which is first net, the public safety wireless network. earlier this year, the chairman of the f.c.c. said he expects first net to be substantially funded by the time we get to the broadcast incentive auction next year. is that your view? does that sound about right? >> i don't have my own opinion on that. congress has authorized first thet net to use up to $7 million of spectrum auction proceeds. i'm confident those dollars will be raised through the f.c.c. ings. it's not particularly important to me which auction they get raised in as long as first net is able to get full benefit of those dollars and assist it as

it develops and build out this national safety public broad band network. the work at first net is going well. they're getting staffed up. they have a new chairman of the board just announced last week. sue sequenceson. ery dynamic, energeticing --ic individual. we've been led by sam ginn for the last two years, a top former wireless execa -- at pacific t texas elesis and others and sam did a wonderful job of giving the organization the correct credibility it needed at the outset. he's decided to step aside and sue will be taking over. >> larry, from an organizational point of view, what's the interaction between ntia and the f.c.c. >> the f.c.c. is the independent

regulatory body. as they're dealing with rules and enforcement. they have the jurisdiction to do that. we can provide input into their rule makes in the form of administration positions and we do that when we think the opportunity is appropriate but in general it's the -- it's the f.c.c. that has the ultimate responsibility in those areas. >> how much time to you do you spend with tom wheeler? >> we stay in touch with each other. ling. ry stric brian fung covers technology for the "washington post." next question. >> again, on this topic of the relationship between the f.c.c. and ntia, obviously both agencies are working very closely in the public safety realm.

later this week chairman wheeler is going to give a keynote address about cybersecurity at the american enterprise institute. can you describe the overlap and responsibilities when it comes to public safety and where the responsibilities sort of divide? >> the f.c.c.'s primary responsibility with public safety is to be involved with the spectrum that's being utilized by the public safety organizations and they can set rules around those and deal with other issues that emerge and they're dealing dealing with a whole panoply of public safety, both in terms of the spectrum used by state and local agencies. they deal with next-generation 911 issues. our role is limited to first net. first net was created by congress in 2012 as an independent entity within ntia with the mission of taking 20 megahertz of spectrum and then $7 billion and developing a nationwide public safety broad band network so that's been our focus and it's really helping

first net as they get staffed up and moved forward to help them in terms of getting out and getting this network -- the conception and design of the network and then getting it developed and up and running. >> so at this point, you know, expecting some folks to say that the potential for first net is very large, obviously, but it's also a very ambitious project and if adequate oversight isn't provided it could become something of a boondoggle. you have a very large sort of footprint, obviously, the wireless network will need to be accessible by all sorts of first responders croog -- across the nation. what happens to first net when it's not being actively used in a crisis? >> in terms of the spectrum, the spectrum would have priority -- or the first responders, public safety users have priority to use that spectrum.

when it's not being used, there's an opportunity for first net to basically allow other providers or one other provider -- multiple other providers to utilize that spectrum to serve their customers' needs. as first net has been evaluating options for getting this network built, one of the options they're looking at is the idea of partnering with one or more existing commercial carriers who will allow first net to take advantage of existing towers and balk haul networks and such to cut down the costs in exchange of which they would get to use the access spectrum. that's not only envisioned in the act of congress, it's specifically urged and promoted by the congressional language. >> let's turn to privacy for a second. your agency has just asked for comments about big data and the

privacy implications surrounding big data. when the federal trade commission released it report, one of its recommendations was for congress to take a closer ok at data brokers such as experian or some of these companies that sell information about you and me to marketors and other companies. sit your view that companies like yours should take a look at data brokers? how should we be responding to these? >> let me explain our role in privacy. the president issued his blueprint on consumer adapta privacy back again in i think 2012. included in that was the consumer privacy bill of rights. the inquiry we started last week was in light of the lighthouse

big data report that came out several weeks ago. we asked whether there were changes or tweaks we should be bake maing to the consumer bill of rights. with respect to the president's blueprint it was to establish principles through the bill of rights. e then at ntia would work with industry and any interested party to develop more specific rules. multistakeholder rules of conduct, which would allow for reat fecks -- flexibility, greater responsiveness to problems that might emerge based on the problems in the bill of rights and then as companies adopted colds of conduct, that would be enforced by the federal frustration commission. what we've teed up is we now have the white house big data report, which has identified a lot of interesting new issues. the bill of rights we put out in

2012, does it now need to be modified in light of what the white house found? that's different from the f.t.c. work, which was specific with respect to data brokers. data brokers is an issue we've been interested in. we haven't spoken specifically about it and it's not directly implicated in the inquiry we came out with last week. >> so does the internet age call for a redefining of what we mean by privacy and the things that are included in the -- and it and the protections that are associated with privacy? >> that is the big question that we're teague up folks. the report we put out was focused onion line privacy but it was i guess what we would call small-data privacy. the use of the kind of individual records that might be kept on people as they transact

business on the internet. thewe weren't talking about large evaluations and analysis of data now being talked about. we thought we had a good framework for the internet age was we were dealing with more individual transactions on the internet. now we're going back and taking a look and saying in this era of big data do we have to rethink things at all? i'm not convinced we will. >> what kind of impact did the the edward snowden leaks have on your decision to revisit this issue? >> on the privacy? >> right. i think it would have opened up the idea that we have these privacy issues not just in terms of government surveillance but terms of how other agencies in the federal government use big data and in terms of how

private industry uses it. not just the issues of the snowden revelations but a growing awareness of how all these different organizations use data were what drove the decision to develop the big data report at the white house. >> could you see changes in how the government regular late big data and how much they can hold on to and how they have to look at it? >> as we look at government agencies, and i'm not talking about the intelligence committee but other agencies such as the department of commerce, which is one of the biggest data agencies in the federal government and one where we're looking how we can develop that. in large part that's not personally identifiable information. to the extent we have years and years of weather information that doesn't present privacy questions at all but we ant want to look at the entire yours that's being drawn before we draw any conclusions. >> just to talk briefly about

web neutrality. that's on a lot of people's minds. verizon and netflix are engaged in a dispute about some of the interconnection that happens and what happens to that data and netflix has said that verizon ought to treat that data just like it treats any other kind of data that comes to its door. that it should open up the door and allow the data to move through. net -- verizon says netflix should pay for the extra connections it needs when there's a surge son-in-law of data moving through verizon's network. this is information that's not visible to consumers as nebutrality. a lot of the companies involved in this space have suggested that maybe these are related issues. the f.c.c. has said no, these are separate issues. what's your take on this and

shouldn't net neutrality and interconnection be considered as one in the same? >> i think if we're going to be evaluating at what the consumer experience is we have to take a look at that? what do we mean by web neutrality or interconnection, i'm not going to speculate on that but it does seem important to look at the entire network of connections in order to understand whether or not the consumer is experiencing congestion and the experience they have at their home or business in. that sense i do think taking a look at the whole universe of rhythms may be important in terms of understanding what's going on. i don't suggest by that that regulation ought to necessarily extend throughout every piece of that but i do think in order to understand what's important and what's not we ought to look at the thing end to end. >> unfortunately we're out of

time. larry is the straightor of the national telecommunications and nformation administration. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] >> maryland governor mark -- martin o'malley spoke today at the iowa state dwath democratic convention. >> the patriots who made america great. they didn't pray for their president to fail. they prayed for their president to succeed. [applause]

and our founders didn't be little science. they didn't be little learning. they aspired to it. they didn't appeal to america's fears. they inspired american courage and they would never, ever abandon the war on poverty in order to declare a war on woman, a war on worker, a war on immigrants, a war on the sick or a war on hungry children. [applause] what was true for our parents and grandparents remains true today. america is the greatest job-generating, opportunity-expanding nation ever created in the history of the free world but america cannot serve our children's needs, cannot serve our children's future well if our republican brothers and sisters in congress keep shutting us down and selling our country

short. [applause] >> you can watch all to have governor's remarks tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. part of c-span's road to the hite house coverage. colleagues and journalism would give a spectacular grade whether they're liberal or conservative. the freedom of information process has become a joke. it was already well on its way but this administration has perfected the stall, the delay, the redaks, excuses. it's shocking. i feel strongly that the information they withhold and protect many times belongs to the public. but they covet it as if they're a private corporation defending trailed secretes