or e-mail us. >> now live at george washington university for two former digital technology strategist from the obama and romney presidential campaigns, talking about help innovation has changed the way campaigns are run. event just getting started, live coverage. sure we are highlighting the best innovations in sustainability. he also is an emmy award-winning journalist, prior to being the snpa heof the school of was with cnn for 21 years. lease welcome to the podium frank sesno. [applause] >> thank you, mark.

good day, everybody. welcome to george washington university and the jack morton auditorium. we like to say we are the crossroads in public affairs to where media, politics, communication meet, collide, explode, whatever verb you andse, they do it at snpa we are very pleased and honored to be part of this event today. i want to thank you again for joining us at this digital campaigning when he 12 and beyond event. and we hope you'll join us for subsequent events as well. we have other ones upcoming am hosting a panel of journalists who will be discussing covering the midterm elections. this will include professional journalist from roll call, meet the press, washington post, and surely coincidentally i'm all of

which happened to be alumni of george washington university and our program. please join us for that. you wouldn't want to miss that. and i joinrk kennedy in thanking him. paul wilson's contribution help make possible the school of media and public affairs to host the conference which many of you have attended today. also a member of our national council advisory board for media and public affairs, he is the founder of wilson rand communications and we thank him for all of his service to the school of media and public affairs. i would also like to do a shout out to my colleagues who are cochairs of this year's conference. so thank you to you both. [applause] i also want to congratulate one another colleague who is named

the new editor of the journal of communication. he will officially assume that role in january 2015. he is stepping down as editor-in-chief of the international journal of resin politics. today,cessors with us and we wish both of them the best of luck in their endeavors in these prestigious journals. please join me in wishing them well. [applause] online, we will go digital. i would like to introduce our two guests today. i would like them to come out as i do. zac moffatt is a cofounder of targeted victory, technology company and full-service interactive advertising agency that has served over 220 campaigns and organizations. please have your seat. [applause] he was the 2011-12 digital director of mitt romney for president where he managed a team is possible for the

campaign's digital strategy, and will have a great deal to tell us about that. i would also like to welcome michael slaby. michael is the managing partner of a new company working to help solve social, civic, humanitarian challenges with better technology, engagement capabilities, and creative capital. i like that. in addition, he was the chief integration and innovation officer in the 2012 obama for america. so it would seem we have two campaigns here. i'm going to go and take my seat in the middle. [applause] welcome to you both. i explained that in addition to our c-span audience, for which we're greater -- very grateful, we have a number of collects -- scholars and academics. and faculty.

start broad and then we will come down and compare your campaigns because i know you will have complete agreement on all things. back, what three things would each of you say are the most significant game changers or strategy changers in this online world, in your world of campaigning? in the world of a mine campaigning, i think the ubiquitous social media has changed the way we consume thermation and changes nature of the way we communicate as individuals, the way businesses communicate with consumers, and i think the fundamental nature of the communication landscape is different that has been in the past. we have a tendency to talk about social media through the lens of a network, very naturally.

facebook has promoted this concept very heavily. all can medication spunk since like a graph. we are interconnected in all -- allf ways, -- communications function like a graph. the power and value of is to teach it in direct communication is as important as the value of strategic, direct communication. the idea is direct communication is what i say to you. indirect communication is what you hear about me from someone else. that can be done haphazardly, at random, which it will be done whether you like it or not, or it can be something that is part of how we try and build efforts around helping people engage with each other and the power of horizontal communication as one of the fundamental changes in the way media functions. it used to be hierarchical.

linear, and everybody's role in that system was very fixed, which is boring and not exciting. >> it's a little more complicated now. ubiquity of social media. >> the rise and availability has changed what is possible in terms of our ability to build and manage our own technology infrastructure. we will talk about the differences between our differences inhe 2012 relative to the application technology versus the development of technology, which is a totally different bag of cats. >> you have one more. >> those two are good. no, the last one i would say is still really important, the question we were having when we

were backstage. the modern political campaign has not changed that much since 1840 or 1896. we were debating when the modern political campaign came together. idea of engagement and communication and the durability of the strategic value of empowering people to drive an organization forward is completely independent of digital tools, social media, e-mail, facebook, twitter, whatever is going to be new next week. forced multiplier. because we have developed digital tools we don't now have digital outcomes and goals associated with the organization. that is something that is easily overlooked sometimes. >> zach, what are your top three? 2008, itt digital in

was a core competency at a digital level. the audiences were not there on the social network via facebook or twitter to go much beyond that. electiond be the first where it needs to occur online. you have people who would vote for you who never went to your website but they interacted with buton facebook or twitter, have never gone directly to your site. we're trying to think about what that experience looks like. that plays into the things that have changed the most. redefining your budget, how do you start on day one? how do you write a budget for 2012 and beyond where you put ,ata and digital at the center and what do you find as a result? become morewe have danced in technology, the role of a human is so much more fans than ever before. when i look at the obama

the ability to hire so many staff and to have that process is something that was quite unique. when we look post-2012, lean and are not doings we stuff. were going to cut corners and get mee rating points over the line. if anything, the role of social media is more powerful at the local level. staffing, how you , and thetechnology belief that democrats or republicans are ahead and it flips every seven or eight years , i don't think it's like that anymore. is the ability to leverage technology.

that will always be the challenge for campaigners as they look forward. >> who is empowered by these changes? is it the candidate, the campaign, the consultant, or is it, god forbid, the public? >> hopefully in some ways it's all of the above. smaller campaigns to reach audiences they may never have been unable to reach without tools like this. some the things we're able to do with a community organizing is tood model, it personal, too much about one to one communication. it should not be able to work at the scale we're able to do, except for the capacity to engage in drive a lot of engagement via the internet. the only way you end up with 2.2 million volunteers doing the same thing volunteer has always been doing, i think more opportunities to engage and get

more information and more places is good for voters and citizens. i think the transparency and discipline required of candidates is good for them as candidates. anytime there's something new, consultants are going to benefit and they are going to find a way. >> i agree. it is being disruptive. digital has allowed the apparatus to be shaken up a little and i think that is a net positive. probably free presidential's before we would have been a whole different role. if anyone says they are a social media expert, it just means they really like it. there are some things that makes sense relative to the brand or the client or the campaign, but there is a separation that is

constantly evolving. it's really empowering. people would not get to participate. what it has done is extended the ability for people to participate. them -- in some ways in brand it is about deals. in social campaigns, it is about access. reporters get to see a candidate a certain way. i don't think they are ready to let go, but it does bring people more into it. i think the obama campaign in 2008 change the ability of not forcing you to go to certain places for fundraisers.

opportunity cost of doing something else is one of the few things people take into consideration. >> it does change the role of journalism because it goes right over there head. i want to mention to the audience that we will turn to your questions in a few minutes, so start preparing those. you heard mark introduced the event, a former member of congress. if he were to come to you today and sit down and say, what is it going to take, and what is the big innovation, the big change are going to bring to me? him he needsu tell to do to raise money and when as a congressional candidate. we are back to the local level now, using these remarkable new tools. >> he has to invest on the front end. you have to be committed to engaging with the community and to say are going to build tools

that people can use. think that means actually taking the time of going to invest in actually having a conversation with them. congressional and below can still get away with television or pay-tv. the first thing is like what level of commitment are going to make to having an actual conversation with our constituent? what is it going to look like? are you going to feel comfortable with you on social media, actually engaging with you? until you know the candidate's willingness to be a participant in the process, it's hard to build that out. >> what are some of the examples of the approach and the effect and how it actually moves voters or dollars? >> it definitely can move dollars. fundraising asd a whole, that's wind started there because it's so easy to track that. even the use of social media, i

look at marco rubio is a classic example after 2012, when he drank from the water bottle. that was a specific moment. if it had been an older -- he picks up the water bowl and take the photo and tweaked it out. something social media allows him to do to change the whole conversation. ann romney had that, she could cut through the clutter. call --open the phone it was the last thing we did better change the entire conversation. social media has leveled the playing field and allows people to have follow-up commerce nations.

>> what zach said about investing early is really important. institutionalizing the value of engagement in relationship building is an essential part of the campaign, so that digital force multiplier for the things you're trying to do, relative to billing community and empowering people to participate in a process. is goings that digital to drive whatever values are present in the campaign. we are using the same tools. it's not like we invented fusion and didn't share. all the tools we are discussing, we are both using. we are just using them differently and applying them different league. staff, budgeted, use them, the time had to plan versus them was a wild advantage for us. -- yous of coming to us

have to start with a premise that you are willing and interested in engaging in sort of a humble way as a participant in a process with others. >> are you suggesting a politician is going to engage in a humble way? >> yes, if they are going to do it well. >> tactilely use these tools to broadcast to another audience? >> you are saying something fundamental has changed? >> of you use them as broadcast tools, they will be only marginally effective. can become something greater. if you're interested in using facebook as another version of the channel seven news, it's going to be really boring and people will see through it really fast.

>> we say we will help them set up their facebook page so it is tagged the right way and has the right images. after that we say we cannot respond for you. it's all by proxy. it's a new toolset. you only need 50 volunteers, 30 volunteers to make a huge difference. the tools have leveled and they are ubiquitous across the board and people can use them. you eliminate your waste of time. hopefully we have been neville to help you make the most of your time and be as efficient as possible. if we are the ones having the conversation, that will come through very weekly. the investment that is

required is largely human. if you're going to participate in these conversations and be , it is a huge commitment of time and energy. you need to be prepared to engage and respond in effect in a dialogue and be prepared to create content on a constant basis. people have a tendency to say the internet, social media are free. using the tools is free. talent andwell means it means a team you're going to staff and resource appropriately to do this well. maintaining relationships with millions of people at a national level. that a dramatic departure for candidates in the way they're going to engage through a campaign? or is it merely evolution? because retail politics always has been about a conversation, ,f you're going to do well

people are not going to stand there with you for very long. >> i agree. -- essentially instead of talking to a voter you can talk to a million voters and you are still doing those same person to person relationship building at scale. one of the things it does fundamentally change is the requirement of producing content with real-time engagement and real-time response. we talked a lot about rapid response in politics. real-time response is the fundamental nature of your conversations and engaging with the press in something that has to approximate real-time to be effective. it is a genuine shift in the nature of making strategic

decisions. careful there be is risk reward and all these elements. don't do it late at night when you are angry. it's hard for candidates to take that separation. the same with athletes, they don't treat them like people. to 2012 when you both were firmly rooted and where you both helped redefine this whole landscape. zach, i'm going to start with you. thanks to my colleague david karp for suggesting this question. we will go right to the fun orca., which is it was a mobile optimized web application that was then to be used as a get out the vote device. it was supposed to allow volunteers at polling stations

around the country to be able do report who turned out and who didn't and be able to target accordingly. point it said it would provide an unprecedented advantage, which did not do because it did not work. why? >> this is an example of how campaigns are structured. as the digital director, we had no involvement in the process. >> you just washed your hands of built -- itit was had to be something at state level through the primary process which works very effectively. what you saw there was the shortcomings of professional technical managers to come in and run a process. everyone believed it was going to work if it went through.

if you have 100 people to vote and we have 40 of them, our goal is to talk to the 60 we have not reached. you are aws if morning or afternoon voter. the challenge became when it starts to scale, it hit the breaking point very quickly across the board. hugeone of those frustrations because so many campaign members have said this is going to be a huge tool. no one goes into election day not believing they're going to win with the tools they have. that was a challenge for us. had it worked perfectly, it probably would have just told us we would have lost even sooner. if we are being completely honest about that process.

unfortunately, it has allowed people to be able to point to a culprit. stronglyy i felt very and defended it after 2012. over 50 million pieces of data. the problem is, it did not do what we hoped it would do. i hope it never happens again. people don't understand and under resourced what is such an important task on these election days. on thee are people conservative side of things that say this technology and its focus somehow depressed them. >> that is their choice. outn't know how would turn less people to go through. have won by more in ?008

talking aboutwere this at lunch. it also reveal just how hard it is to build technology at scale inside an organization that is as messy and moves us fast as a political campaign. the points back is making about the right people to build the right kind of things is really important. accessibleseems so to us, but creating it is actually really difficult. a big difference between using and consuming and applying technology. this did not go right for us in 2008. we did the exact same system built differently. the parallels in this external reality of our campaign and there's was very similar. candidate people did not expect to survive the primary, no time to plan, very little

time to prepare for the general election. we ended up having huge resources but very late in building think it's risky. use mobile phones, to track who had voted early in the day so we can repurpose resources. it crashed miserably early in the day and no one ever heard from it because we won. his four years later, the technology was undoubtedly better than what we built, but they both fail because it is hard to build things to scale at that pace, and that type of system. in reality that what we had 2012, we had a massive internal engineering operation to create and build our own technology. we also had a year to build and plan without an opponent. staff and weo

hired in the technology group very early in the campaign. we started spending money on managers.and there were 125 people. our cpl joined us the first of april just after the announcement. we hired as early as we could. on top of the technical infrastructure is a whole other layer of content and strategy and engagement talent in the digital team. it's another 175 people. we are talking about 300 people, almost half of headquarters, dedicated to this. numbers are not the important part. the proportion of commitment to this as a valuable strategic

element, and as an element that's going to drive all the things the campaign needs to do. the campaign needs to deliver messages, mobilize people, and raise money. >> so organizationally this is built into the foundation. >> because of the structured think it would be the greatest thing for a campaign to have eight michael across the board, to always have a person sitting at the table from day one. what you try and do in a campaign is worked again or as seemingly -- seamlessly as possible. became the nominee when rick santorum dropped out, our digital department -- our entire

campaign was 87. argue that republicans under invest in human capital. that is to the detriment of our campaign. the challenge is, it's very easy to say until resources become finance. we made it through a primary. our model was going to every when over every state by three points. we did it again and again. we would have had to cut back on staff to implement that plan. when they have hundreds of millions of dollars -- both sides are coming out in the

primary. i felt no sympathy for kerry in 2004. that is the way it works. the differences now the technology and planning make such a difference. you can say i can undertake six major projects. lose one, that's the piece am never getting back. i suddenly have lots of money and no time. the next thing you know you have conventions and debates, and the next thing you know we are electing. grace the same people are mad at facebook when it goes down. >> you have great sympathy for

health care. what is your perceived technological advantage now? >> the continued investment and continue to build new products, new platforms, and investing in the creation and advancement of technology and the training of a new body of talent. they are going to learn somewhere. we need to do a good job of sustaining and building talent inside the party so that we can continue -- so we don't have laddercredibly tight where there is talent at the top and then no one else. investment in this

is really, really important. there is a lot of talent and technology in the democratic party that lives in startups and vendors that we use. the same is true on the other side. there are pluses and minuses, this is the build or buy question for institutions and it is important and complicated. in either case, this is us continuing to invest in the advancement of technology. solution toind a the ongoing application of technology. that means continuing to do it. you said we buy advertising for people who don't watch tv anymore. what did you mean? >> we spent a lot of time finding these people. we define a mess off the grid. one in three likely voters and not watch live television other

than's ports. again, one in three voters do not watch live tv over the past week other than sports. >> that's what it is. that number has been pretty consistent. we have seen the huge explosion this year, this is the first time people who don't mind where they watch it, computer screen, 17% of thetop -- population are linear. 54% are in this middle, bouncing around. they have recorded. really the only time you're seeing ads is during sports. grid who aref the

not buying the cable box, they're just using the internet. that is a growing number of people and is growing in demographics. that at ant was baseline, you want to go to election day. you're talking about the differentials being 160,000 or less. if you want to believe that one in three people have not heard tv messaging. pretending it's like the 1980's except no one's consumption behavior matches up to that. we know the number to move polling. we don't know the number to win elections. what is the right media mix to allow you to win. part about that is

budgeting from the middle out. everyone wants to think there is one message. they should each have a different budget. 10% of the television budget and i was very appreciative. i should have gotten a lot more in digital north virginia. it becomes very difficult, very challenging. you have to really commit to that and you might have to cut the steps you have. to take into consideration geopolitical ways to factor that into this is -- to the decision progres process. >> with all those resources, how

and why did you buy and take this thing into consideration? >> dana wagner is a brilliant guy. built --s team basically that idea was to look the grossld and it is ae point is -- statistical idea of how many people might be watching based on previous behavior. you are not buying actual impressions. buying more make tv like digital buying, where you are buying actual impressions or actual conversions, even better. there are increasingly datasets about set box top data. watchedactually being

and how is it relating to people's individual consumption of information, and then tying that to targeted voters. the other problem with traditional media buying is it is very course from a data perspective. the reality is, that is not torly detailed enough understand the kind of people or time to reach and the relationships and stories we are trying to tell. we can go deeper into not just our people 35 and older seeing this, but our targeted voters, what are they actually watching? and trying to get down to a level where we are thinking individual and what their experience of the campaign is. >> what do you mean by that? what are you watching? >> i don't watch tv. i watch everything on dvr.

>> the only live television i atch is a gigantic crisis or great game. you want to get to me, and i am a guy of a certain age, and all the rest. i don't count, anyway. in the world of television, i no longer exist, once you are over 54. >> you consume information from all kinds of sources. you don't consume it from broadcast television. at is, ored to look their group of people like you that are important to us as target voters that we need to persuade. at a certain place and a certain time, our goals around who is .oing to vote for us in ohio what do they look like and how do they consume information and by, based on that. this,you understand

you've cracked open the entire resource conversation. this is the problem, campaigns don't need more money, and people think of the presidential results, but most have finite resources. they have a plan. if we can crack this, it opens up all these other resources to do more engagement, more door to door knocking. it is important that people understand with the television buying just how bad that model is. you look at florida 2013, this is post 2012. february of this year, we had almost $10 million put into broadcast. up 18%.makes $.80 on the dollar is wasted before your start. then half the people are not registered. getting $.10 on

the dollar. in most of the buying is done in the last two weeks. florida has a high absentee ballot early voting state. of are getting 4.7 cents value on the dollar before you did anything else. it is not a republican issue. no one ever got fired for buying ibm. both sides did the exact same thing. going to stand down on her broadcast until the other side does. >> are you on the inside saying you should? >> you get this last moment of saying, what if we do it wrong? imagine what it would be like on television.

you cannot change that much as we go through the process. made thee the one who decision that broadcast is not necessary and you lost thomas and a matter what the reasoning was, that is reason. it is important for people who are coming up that want to be part of all it takes, you have to realize the money you have to spend is the single most boring resource you have to do all the other things. >> do you believe that will carry on into the future as this realization of the audience and access to the audience has so changed and fragmented? >> i think in the short run. as that television is still relatively broken medium for. but it will in the short run. >> if you look at ad spending relative to media consumption, the graphs are all kind of wacky and hilarious. by versusf how brands

where people are consuming. it is easy to do the things you are confident in, you know that someone is going to watch the bhs. a certain amount of minutia has to ship. -- has to shift. there are a lot of incentives that line up around the system continuing to stay the way it is, even though it doesn't quite make sense anymore. is becoming more obvious that it doesn't make sense which makes it more likely that our campaign in 2012 was very different. we still put a couple hundred million dollars worth of ads on tv. >> you were talking about this moment ago, and that is money and resources. you to talk each of about how you use technology in the most original, most effective, most digital way to

raise the most dollars. using like the square application, we had people making a donation when they were buying. we did over a million dollars of sales in just four days. we were a year and a half ahead of that. requirements make it like a risk lash restriction for use in commercial applications. using square was an important example. using data to find out more and and golook-alike models after people who have not been asked before. that's a huge part of technology on the digital side. would go and find similar types of donors.

it allows you to create models of the type of person you should run your e-mail marketing campaign two. it fundamentally makes you smarter so you eliminate that wastes. when fundraising mail goes out, the best day is their first date. you should beginning better every day afterwards. .ou are establishing a baseline it's a fundamentally different worldview. >> i think the thing we did really well in 2012 was applying best practices from large-scale e-commerce to making the donation process as inefficient as possible. system is, the more people donate. if at any point in the process lag, you're kind of just introducing an opportunity for people to get bored.

people tripped and hit their head on the computer, they would give us back more. andg things like amazon large e-commerce retailers alighted to save information for a long time. i want to buysay that, it has shipped before you have a chance to say maybe i don't need that. inspired andet excited about something, we don't want to introduce barriers to purchase a patient. we had to build this into our infrastructure during the 2012 campaign. a best practice in e-commerce for a very long time. >> let's go to audience questions. let's see what happens here. there is a hand up.

we will let you take the first question. go ahead. >> i'm in the graduate school of political management. my question is, as someone who is young and really interested in doing what you guys do, i'm always being told that you are young, you should be on the hill right now. that is great and i love my experience, but wanting to do what you guys do, and especially ones to do it in the 2016 campaign in some capacity, do you guys still recommend doing the hill are trying to get in the private sector? >> i would never work on the hill if i was you. campaigns, to do

sometimes the hill people think they are good at campaigning. campaigns and do that's what you are passionate about, you've got to do it. there are opportunities where you could work with firms as an assistant campaign. you want to go somewhere like you're in the back of like a grocery store in ohio and thinking, this is what it is really like. i did 10 years of toiling in the field before doing this. >> what do you mean, toiling in the fields? phone banking, door knocking, child caring. in order to get more wrong tears. if this is what you're , you have toout find a way to go and do it.

if you really want to get on a campaign, go do it. you are making a huge commitment to do a campaign. but michael, i would like you to answer that. keep in mind we have c-span, we have a national audience. a lot of people would like to get into politics who are all ready using social media. i wonder what your size for them would be on the same western grace don't come to washington. there is a big difference between campaigning and governing. same skill set. there are some people who do both and do both well. but that is rare. being involved in a campaign at the field level is really important. i had a career doing graphic design and digital development

and all these kinds of things. i went and started working in politics and campaigns. i sort of put those two things together when digital became a thing. if this is what you want to do, find a way to do it. there are campaigns everywhere. -- if youalways really want to be a campaign there are off cycle stage you can work in. in midterms like now, there are places to get engaged almost anywhere in the country. there are opportunities to participate in the process everywhere. there are both physical and digital ways. increasingly we see good campaigns blurring the distinction. just be talking about engagements. the idea that were talking about digital campaigning, this is

probably the last time we should talk about that. if we think about the haveession from 2004 -- i a friend who tells us joking story about the campaign managers. in 2008, our digital director who is brilliant, reported directly to david luff. that was a huge shift. called new media, because it was new. now it's not new anymore, so we call it digital. >> what is the difference between digital and communications? i don't know anymore. it will become redundant and strange and uncomfortable. we will just end up in a place where this is just am painting.

>> find ways to get involved in campaigns off the hill. hill experience is great. i started in senator durbin's constituent office in chicago. that was my first job in politics was opening the mail for senator durbin. it was a real important subject for me. >> thank you very much. >> i'm shannon. first off, thank you for your efforts. you have given me so much great material to study and i really appreciate it. my question now is, i'm studying what i call self personalizing. candidates are using social media to share personal details about their lives and relating

to their own story and lives. some candidates have 0% vocus don that up to about 30%. do you guys see that these kind of posts drive engagement? >> i think it is incredibly successful and really important. the reality of most of the interconnectedness in the media landscape we operate -- operate in are driven by platforms assigned for humans to have relationships with other humans. these are not broadcast mechanisms. they were designed for people to stay in touch at college. the more human we behave in using them, the more effective we can be. that's really uncomfortable for

brands, political campaigns. fallible is being something we do not allow candidates to be. usinge requirements of these systems well in a authentic way. i think doing that well requires a candidate to be comfortable with that kind of exposure. a kind of exposure is very different that being on tv every day. this exposure we are comfortable with as leaders are professionals even, this is a very different kind of exposure for me personally than any number of different kind of

conversations. i'm talking about some experiences and this is a very comfortable, public position to be in. if i start talking about something more personal, it changes the nature of this conversation completely. there's an opportunity if you want to build a real election ship. being human is a great way forward. >> are you saying in response to the question, the candidate is running for office because of these. even morel become personal, more invasive in some ways? >> i would love it if it became more human and that we allowed our leaders to be human, which we john -- which we don't, generally speaking. fucking ridiculous.

sorry, c-span, for my french. [laughter] >> they won't forget about you, michael. it's been a glorious and short career. [laughter] you have to take into consideration the comfort level. i think people know when you are faking it. that is really the challenge. all the things are true, but it has to be because that's where you want your campaign to go. we can't kind of dip your toe in and walked back. if you don't want to know what they're going to say if you asked him a question, don't ask the question. there's nothing worse than asking a question and there is no feedback. i think the committees all do quite well. they never follow up about the four most important things. with candidates it is a lot harder. that's exactly right about social media, they have these massive audience.

the hilary rosen moment on twitter was the one that broke through. what i found the most fascinating and most powerful was that in three days we had 100,000 who all came together and they volunteered and came to all our events. it had nothing to do with what mitt romney was doing day to day. you share their story and make that a greater part of the campaign, knowing that probably has no tangible affect. but for us to know that was so powerful for what we were trying to do to recruit volunteers. if you don't have that background in that skill set, it is hard to teach someone about the digital element. >> the reality of the campaign -- is that people come with

different levels of expertise. did that answer your question? >> it did. thank you very much. >> my name is also shannon. i'm an undergraduate student at the university of delaware and am studying communications and political science. there's a littering of the definition of artistic patient in terms of politics. there is this old-school kind of donating and volunteering to a there is and also new communicative form where your liking a candidate on facebook and sharing and talking about them with your friends. i was wondering with -- as coordinators of digital campaigns, what are you which one do you think is more effective in helping someone vote for your

particular campaign? ofif you look at a continuum liking something at one in giving an actual donation at the other end, that is more easy to measure, but this is really powerful. you are reaching people indirectly. like a third person validated it to say i agree with it. sharing negative content on facebook did not go very well. people are very tough on twitter. it is very hard to do that. it is very difficult. at each to look platform differently and communicate with people accordingly. you can get 10,000 comments in five hours. to go through all of that is a challenge. at the local level, it's very easy to do. onlyperson can become not a donor, but much more.

there's a different expectation. on social it is when you reach out and make that connection that is really powerful. do you have enough time? that's where you could use volunteers to do some of that out reach and initially. the tools are getting better to have these longer conversations. we we haven't figured out to edit content out at scale. we have to figure out where to put the responses. that can seem inauthentic very quick limb. campaigns don't feel comfortable in posting limited answers. >> the other thing is we should think about this strategically

as a boat end conversation, not an either/or conversation. we should give people tasks that are simple to do to start finding their way into the community and becoming very active. a tweet is easy to do. you can do it at stance, mobilely. something like volunteering in your local field office requires a whole different level of commitment and you want to build people's rhythm over time. and you're blending offline and online in this gradient. some of the great things about social and digital tools is it offers more low entry opportunities to more people at a distance. it doesn't require people who want to participate in a campaign to come to an office. which means there are whole groups of people who couldn't volunteer in the past who now can. single moms, for instance.

people assume that it's all college kids. college kids love volunteering and walking around offices. single moms can't. they want to participate so they tools. online calling 'm making gig general -- generalizations here. you can decide the nature of your sexrim whatever you decide is great. we want you to be part of this in the way that makes you feel inspired and we want you to keep deepening that relationship and having you be more active. all the actions you're talking about are the supporter actions. you asked about the relationship between that and voting. most of the things we're talking out are when we activate supporters. generally speaking, if the people who are donating money to

you, they're going to vote for you. thinking about social in terms of individual actions like retweeting and likes as activations for supporters and the voters that are getting touched that you need to persuade are the second circle beyond them. this is a really important strategic principle that became really important in the second campaign. when we had this massive all of a sudden of facebook of tens of millions of people. the second voting circle was basically the entire voting age in the united states. how can you influence the circles around you? right, and that's where you start talking about voter and persuasion engagement that's very different than supporter activation. >> was there something that you did that you could point to as the most effective way to get to that outer circle? >> we built a whole platform

around this to try to make sharing behavior better than random. you see brands and campaigns constantly talking about sharing things with your friends and we use online tools for all kinds of things. whether it's content in sharing, activations, lists, online voter registers, for instance. if you -- registration. if we ask to you share a voter registration for five friends, we don't mean any five unregistered friends. we meanwhile your five you been registered friends in ohio. >> you have to provide that, right >> we can tell you share this with your five unregistered friends in ohio. by the way, you don't know which ones are unregistered or you can tell us who your friends are and we can tell you. >> and how many parking tickets they have outstanding. i joke.

thank you very much. another question? es, sir. >> thank you. phil howard, university of washington at seattle. i'm wondering if you guys can look ahead and maybe talk about bots. >> talk about -- >> bots. automated scripts are being used to solve some problems of the volume or you said real-time is not fast enough. are candidates going to start using more automated scripts? they'll lose that personal -- -to-face but >> i think that's incredibly high and the risk is great. i think using automated tools for listening and monitoring and seeing conversations and being able to listen to your communities at scale are really important and there are great

tools for this now but my experience with automated response -- unless it's something as trivial as thanks for your notification, we'll get back to you, that's clearly automated. if you're trying to impersonate personalization, you're in very risky territory. generally speaking i think it's not a good strategic decision. using automated responses to give people a sense there's a process. we heard you, we're going to get back to you and set an expectation about when. that's fine. it's clearly automated and transparent to the user. the user experience of that feels comfortable. if you send a response that feels like a robot, even if -- or it's discovered to be unauthentic in some way, you're running a huge risk of destroying a relationship. >> you agree with that? >> i do. and it doesn't solve the content

problem. that's the challenges that automated responses, the risk/reward is not in your favor. >> unless it's a narrative science, which works. doesn't work well in politics. >> you have found, and what you're saying is that there is, if not a sophistication, certainly an expectation in the audience and the voting public that will sniff through this kind of thing and this conversation now is required and can't be faked. >> i green. yes. >> other question, sir? > my name is israel. i'm a student in political science. campaigns used to be vertical and now they're becoming more horizontalle and as they do, i'm sensing you lose some of your to the o administer

soldiers. plus, you have to respond in seconds to whatever the other side is doing so how do you keep control of your troops? >> flaves a really great question. when we work with organizations, political campaigns or otherwise, we talk about a progression of how to design that organization that's going to be effective working in the world we're in. values, strategy, tactics. typically, digital power centers center around tactics. those are all important and totally mutable and will change by the time the next election comes around. what is durable -- durable is who are we and what are we trying to azpheeve if you're clear as an organization about who you are, what you believe and what you're trying to achieve, as part of the culture of the organization, how you

hire, recruit, work with staff, how you introduce people to who you are, people are joining your mission because they want to help. if you are clear and vocal about who you are, they're going to be joining you because of a shared sense of purpose and they're going to work in line where you're going. are they professional communicators? not everybody is david axelrod. that's ok. we don't need everybody to be david axelrod. what we need is you to speak with your friends in a genuine, authentic way that is in line with who we are as an organization, a community participating together. organizations that end up with too much control tend to avoid the emotional and cultural work of getting values and missions correct. this is particularly egrieges in brands who don't want to have that conversation at all. sit more naturally comfortable

in a campaign in some ways but it's where corporations go wildly off the risk. >> that's right. the process is you can start and unfortunately become very militaristic by the end of it. they start to stifle the creativity. again using the bush-cheney example, we were metrics and result driven in 2004 and it became so numbers oriented it almost became debtry meant. you had a script you were trying to do in a certain amount of time. testament to the obama campaign to allowing their volunteers more flexibility. but also, that comes with a structure to have too implement that. how do you do it when you're only six people? it's completely different, right? you've to have your north star, know what you want to achieve and think about what tools you can provide to make them better

at it. a lot of times the command is not giving enough information out anyway, which is why people go rogue. people start making it up. the problem with communications has become difficult. when one person goes rogue, they speak for everyone, right? a republican operateive makes a mistake, the d.n.c. is not going to let that go. they speak for the whole side and that's the way it is. media consumption, as it gets better, people kind of know how to respond better. it's less difficult to deal with now. i remember twitter in 2007 was -- 2011 was so difficult. it was like do we need to respond for everything? no. you knew because you'd been using it for a period of time. the campaign was working through that. >> the tyranny of now. >> for reporters too. they give you eight minutes to

respond. >> we haven't gotten into the impact of traditional campaigning in the echo chamber and all that. one day the day of the gatekeeper is gone but the day where the candidates need the gatekeeper is on. candidates go online to announce their candidacy, they don't hold news conferences anymore. >> why would they? >> well, i could -- we have time for one more question from the floor. sorry, you get the last question. we'll grab him afterwards. >> monica from harvard university. a lot of big campaign 23u7bd raisers will say that for big donors, you want a return for investment. your $1 million will get you this many minutes on campaign. this is what you can do to my campaign. how do you sell digital for your big done snow showers >> that's a great question. >> $1 million buys this many

impressions in digital media is more accurate than might buy this many yinals -- eyeballs on television anyway. generally speaking we overvalue the sort of line-item nature of fundraising, that often we can provide too much detail to people. they want to believe that you have a plan for using resources effectively. that doesn't necessarily mean they want to know the relationship between a tweet and a dollar. talking about things that failed, in 2008 we built the whole system around line-item fundraising. we wanted people to by -- we needed seven advance in iowa next week. you're going to buy one and you're going to buy un-- one. when someone had bought seven, it was gone. so confusing. people didn't care. >> not motivated to buy a van. >> they didn't want to know.

they didn't want to see the thought process that much. but we thought it was going to be really compelling because it was going to fill this need of people understanding the value of their dollar. i think that's a more emotional need than a data. so when we think about donors in general we have a tendency to think about left and right brain. data has a tendency to convince an emotion, a to inspire and you need both. when we separate this, people go, that's interesting, i'm bored. i'm going to give my money elsewhere. and then people see something about some organization doing something amazing but are concerned that they're actually having an impact. we need to treat people as a whole human in this regard. >> i think now donors who realize they're investing in gital realize they're

investing in infrastructure. if you're investing in a candidate you're investing in a personal. if you're investing in a cause you're investing in a exavenlt i'm helping seed an organization and start these conversations. but when you look at the long-term, when you're doing donations at scale trying to get a lot of people to participant. everyone thinks if we hit this one pot positive hot button, that's going to be it. like fast and furious. we sent an email out to everyone. literally. we raised x. we were kind of like it was ok. five days later we sent an email from mitt romney going i could win. this is the path to victory and here's what your dollars will do. it had a 600% lift to the exact same audience five days later because he gave a vision. too often these campaigns are so

tactical. they think people are paying ttention just like they are. they were like this is what people are talking about in d.c. right now. it's to reactive. they want to know where you're going. they want the vision. campaigns become so tactical to the strategic detriment. and fundraising is interesting to watch right now. this campaign is saying the sky is falling, this is the way to go. all these shock tactics, which are work. the question is does that work at scale and can you bring in new people as you're losing pipe? because you're turning off -- when you get to the next phase -- definitely more so on the left right now just as the scale they're doing it. tilled -- be concerned about that be >> three-minute lightning round and then we're going to call it

a day. one, prediction. what is the biggest single area where you think the technology will change or alter tactics or strategy in 2016? >> all of a sudden-based television buying. you'll be able to start -- the efficiencies you'll get from television will pree. the bunts to do anything else. and you'll get to set information. >> yours? >> active proximity based mobile communities. people being able to organize their own communities based on proximity in real-time. >> in 2016, what will the role be for the traditional journalist with candidates now capable of going via digital and social media to anybody, anywhere, anytime? >> we spent a lot of time at the

center thinking about this last year. that one of the things that journalism need to reimagine is the value of being first. >> is it more important or less important? >> it is almost impossible, unless you're talking about investigative reporting for a reporter to be first. so if you're not first, what is your job? reimagining that question is something that journalism has not yet done. >> i love that. that's great. >> individual reporters i think will have an impact in 2016 mostly because they're becoming their own brands but i think the campaigns are going to have to figure out ways -- they're going to try to go around them but the marketplace will react accordingly. the media is not going away. our challenge as consumers is we have to understand how to take that information. that's the problem right now, especially with false information. but i think the campaigns will continue to work with reporters, especially if they start to write longer, better pieces.

>> i think media is still an important part of the graph we convey information. just different. >> the need for context, historical understanding is huge. the last question in the lightning round here. will your client in 2016 be hillary clinton? >> my company doesn't work for campaigns or a candidate. > when you are recruited, will your candidate in 2016 be hillary clinton? >> uh, i will not be working on the 2016 presidential campaign. >> if you're volunteering in the 2016 campaign, will you be volunteering for hillary clinton? >> uh, if she's running, i'm be -- i'll be volunteering. >> i'm done. your turn. >> we believe we provide a product and service and we'd be ready and willing to work with any republican candidates.

>> fair enough. i'd like to thank you both. before we finally wrap up here, gain, i'd like to thank mark shankman and paul wilson. mark kennedy and the graduate school of political management. our students and graduate students from the school of public affairs and asfa, who is in town and they're gathering here. for our c-span all of a sudden, i'm frank sesno. you've been listening to a fascinating conversation at the george washington university and thank our guests, who have been unbelievable. michael and zac, thank you very much. good luck and i hope that in all that you do, whether in politics or out, whether you're working with the candidates or merely volunteering that in using these technologies and engaging people, you can put some meaning and some hope and movement back

into our political structure. because it's not good enough to just come here and talk about that. and i don't mean that in any insulting way. but what we need to do in this country is we need to get our communication and our citizens and our politics working again and that's a big task. >> totally agree. >> thank you both very, very much. >> thank you. appreciate it. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org--

>> all this month while congress is in recess, we're showing you book tv in prime time. tonight at 8:00 eastern, books on american astronauts and space travel. we'll begin with an afterwards program looking also the book "neil armstrong: a life of flight." see all those programs startsing tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. and on c-span 3, it's american history tv with events on the cold war. first, historians discuss the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. then a history professor lectures students on human raidation experiments after world war ii, and finally, scholars talk about the presidency of george h.w. bush

and the end of the cold war. all these programs airing tonight starting at 8:00 eastern on c-span 3. tonight, a discussion on social workers and their goal of improving the lives of minority and impositiverished communities in the u.s. steve perry is the founder of a magnet prep school in harvard, onnecticut that only semis first-generation, low-income minority students. he talked about the cost of incarceration and what happens to those prisoners when they're released. here's more now. >> we're spending in some communities on education and incarceration more than we're spending on anything else. we're dropping a lot of money at the back end. in some communities, 30, 40, $50,000 a year to incars rate.

just imagine if some of these preventative programs that you mostly work in or want to start, just imagine if you had $50,000 a client. you can buy a new house per year. but that money is just poured down a hole because what happens is we allow the political forces that are going on in our country to come up and say lock 'em up. three strikes, you're out. and then wonder why they're vagabonds when they come out and can't get a job. can't get a student loan. can barely even get access to their own children and then we wonder why the kids don't have anybody that their life. you see it. you see how this thing happens. it's a couple of small decisions that become big. >> that was part of an event held earlier this summer on ways to help improve minority and

impoverished u.s. communities. you can watch the entire event tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. tomorrow on washington journal, clinton watts of george washington university looks at what's next in the u.s. response against iciss and the possibility of an attack on u.s. oil. after that, a discussion of crisis management in political campaigns and while some campaigns survive a crisis while others don't. plus, your comments and tweets. washington journal, 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> there tweaked on the c-span networks. friday night, native american history. then on saturday, live all-day

coverage from the national book festival. and a decision on scotland on whether to end its political nion with england. justice of the court of appeals shares his thoublingts. in-depth with former congressman ron paul. then on saturday, all-day coverage from the history and biography pavilions. and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, fterwards with william borroughs talking about his book. friday, a nassa documentary about the 1969 apollo 11 moon landing. saturday, general sherman's atlanta campaign. unday night, a look at the

supreme court and gore loss of bush vs. gore. at 202-626-3400 or email us. >> next, remarks from former virginia governor jim gilmore on global terrorism and why he thinks the n.s.a. is essential in helping the government track information. he lls also debated charlie kirk, the founder of turning point u.s.a. over national security versus personality privacy issues. held by the steamboat institute, this is almost an hour. >> good afternoon. as you know, the purpose of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens but what happens

when criminals and terrorists leave electronic footprints instead of real foot sflinlts what does a government do then and how does it protect our privacy while simultaneously protecting our life and our liberty? to discuss that we have governor cris.ore and also charlie >> kirk. >> ok, i completely fudged it. there you go. in order to discuss these issues, i have these two fine gentlemen. i will have them each give a 10-minute openers then a series of answers and a one-minute rebuttal and then give you a chance to ask questions. with that i welcome governor james gilmore. >> thank you. thank you very much. i've seen a lot of you already. [applause] >> thank you. charlie and i did something like

this at c-pak several months ago and it was so flamboyant they decided to invite us back. we'll try not to disappoint. i don't know what biography was given because i was sequestered at the back. i might as well be a congressman, i guess. but you probably know i was elected prosecutor in my local county. i've been a croment prosecutor as well as a defense counsel. i was the republican governor and chairman of the republican national committee. so everyone here knows i was a lawyer, a politician and a party leader. not a good start. but hi other half is good. let me talk about that a little bit. i was chairman of the board of visitors of the united states air force academy, which has put me into colorado quite a bit. i've enjoyed this wonderful state. i'm on the board of directors of the national rifle association right now. [applause] that usually gets an applause

line. i was an intelligence agents in west germany in the 1970's as an army veteran during the cold war and i was the chairman of the advisory panel on homeland security of the and that was the time of the 9/11 attack and i was governor of virginia during the 9/11 attack. watershed.tack was a we all know that. it was a very serious issue. i will keep as close why can't a 10 minutes but this is a very complex subject. i was very concerned about the reaction to the 9/11 attack in the united date. the bush administration, the congress, the people of the united states were all calling for security.

i was pretty nervous about it to be honest with you at that time. give a bit of a counter pose. if you look to the letter i wrote to congress that year, one of the principal things we needed to do was to protect imam proceed and individual liberties. it is paramount to achieving the ultimate victory. and the protection of individual liberties with the entire game. aboutt feel differently that today, but i will tell you that my concerns are even greater today as far as the safety of this country goes as they were then. it is a very serious issue, the threat is more serious than at the time of the 9/11 attack in 2001. your hotelo into room and turn on the television, can you, without looking at what is going on with the james foley the heading, isis right now.

the threat now is much more dangerous than the cold war. now you have state threats and nonstate threats. a dual problem we have to confront is the united dates of america. it seems determined to get it and i for one do not see the united dates at war with iran. but what are our choices if they insist on getting a nuclear bomb? will we allow them to have a nuclear bomb? nukes, not tose mention israel sitting there. the chinese arrested. the russians are all very familiar with that. what happens if they can invade

the ukraine and take it over and decide that the baltics might want to be their next victim? and there are others. that is not the principal problem. it's one of the two principal problems. the nonstate actors we see this most famously in al qaeda and the rise of isis. and don't forget the drug cartels on the southern border. these are people that belong to no nation, observe no rules, except they have certain asymmetrical rules of their own. they can attack this country and spend almost nothing and cause us to spend trillions of dollars in response. have we not been doing that? how long can that go on to the democracy of the united dates collapses? -- herout they attack primary mission is to attack civilians. why do they do that?

they want to undermine the united states confidence in their own country and in their own government. what little confidence the people of the united eight have, the enemy seeks to dissipate even further so we will turn to other forms or isolationism. which, by the way, we have people in our own republican party that advocate this kind of drawback right now. at the center of the potential that canhe danger happen in this country from secret cells and people in this country who might come to this ourtry or even attack allies, we have seen it in this nation. we saw it in a first trade center attack and another. he has seen it in allies, countries, the goal to attack civilians and undermine our of thence in the ability country.

i may speak in the breakfast at the morning. nation keep our advantages. particularly within the nsa, the national security agency. that is enormous power. we will do more of that on q&a as well. losst to tell you that the of our technological advantage to be able to understand what the enemy is doing, where they are, what they are thinking, what their plans are, the loss would be catastrophic. that is the danger that we face. madenk the arguments being that say that the nsa has to be drawn back in the name of privacy prevents -- presents us

with a false choice. our goal in this country is not to be driven to the choice of .reedom or security our job as americans and the challenge of leadership is to achieve over. not false choices. that is not easy to do. the simple procedure is to go all security or to simply have total liberty. that is a false choice and i say that we don't do that. having there are ways that we can reform plans and nsa type of operations in order to protect the privacy of american people and maintain our advantage. war.e at . long war make no mistake about it. we need presidential leadership right now that understands the

dangers that we face, the challenges that we have. the ability to save our country in the long war ahead, we need that kind of residential leadership which means we need change in the white house. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, governor. charlie? >> i am excited to be here at steamboat. i get to travel to colorado to visit some of our campus and college groups throughout the greater denver area. it is nice to come up to steamboat and hike a little bit and meet all of these wonderful people. i want to congratulate the people here. by attending this conference you have earned yourself an irs audit. you can be expecting that early next year. i had arnor and wonderful discussion back from washington dc and i look forward to continuing that dialogue and

diving into the nsa. i'm not going to pretend to know every inch of that model or the people even working in it know all about it. there are so many unknowns that we have to go in understanding that this agency -- we have to take a step back and talk about the philosophical beliefs behind it and have a discussion about that. i will ask everyone a question here and i think you will consider some of the thoughts of the nsa. imagine lois lerner running the nsa. imagine it for a section -- a second. we live in a client -- climate and culture that uses agencies like the irs weaponize against systems like you. it's true. i have been targeted by the irs and i'm sure many of you have as well. we are living in a culture and climate that no matter what agency it is, there is evidence of collusion of interagency

conspiracy against citizens. catherine ingle brecht was a citizen from houston texas, visited by five different federal agencies in two months, audited by three of them, tax by all five. they said we are not talking to each other. andthese agencies visit you ask these questions, you are trying to tell me they are not colluding? the nsaalking about which is admittedly probably the most powerful and intrusive arm of the department of defense which, until edward snowden's actions, has gone relatively unchecked. most americans did not know what nsa meant until edward godin did what he did. of lines of data accumulated and stored in banks in utah about every person in this room. and i would like to venture a guess that with this

administration, we have seen the track record of the a bruce -- babies of power. do you want to wield that kind of unchecked power to bureaucrats like lois lerner or the irs guy that got into a debate with paul ryan? he asked, why didn't you tell us you deleted e-mails and he said, you never asked me. but as the people you want running federal agencies that collect trillions of lines of data? andgovernor said the enemy he is exactly right. the enemy is isis and international global islamic jihad. government bureaucrats don't view those as the only enemy. a few the enemy as people that disagree with what they believe in. we can see what happened in the irs were they thought that conservative groups and tea party groups and republicans were the enemy. word are going to use that

so loosely, what does the word enemy mean to an unchecked nsa employee who can tap without war and, every person in this room? rant.ked and without war do we want to give that authority to people that we know have a subversive agenda to overthrow our founding principles? that saida slide those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither and i truly believe that. if we are trying to get back to our founding principles, we have, in many instances, ask ,urselves as conservatives should we give this authority to an agency that a four edward snowden released it, most of us did not even know existed? governor gilmore did. if you look at the freedom and

liberty. they have no qualms with growing government. where you out there complaining? we have to, as conservatives, lead the charge against the abuse of power. you have to. bureaucratsderal for the wars list. wiretapping of american citizens. if barack obama wanted to look at the nsa, this look at the enemy right here.

the most powerful agency we have ever seen. do you trust the federal government? do you trust the people running? thank you. >> it is not a question of liberty or security, it's where we put the line. how do you propose we balance those two things? >> the debate -- i knew ben franklin, he was a friend of mine.

he's no james madison. . think it is useful there are people that say that we are not. but we are exceptional. it is exactly the kind of that these ofsaid the touchstones americans have that no other country in the world does have. that challenge is that much greater. i think the duty is not the way the world is moving but to worry about what we do.

we have to remember what the nsa is able to do. the messages, they have already succeeded in intercepting the messages of hezbollah. they already succeeded in following the al qaeda leader through africa and getting to the point where they can be arrested. iny've already succeeded president karzai of at guinness and when he was interacting privately with the representatives from iran and camethem -- the americans and he would be working very well and making sure that there would be no interests against iran. these are advanced just that we americans have that no one else in the world has. the enemy would like us to become paranoid.

the enemy would like us to become distrustful. the enemy would like us to throw this advantage away so that they can get on a level playing field with us. we have advantages that have been built because of the superior state, the superior economy, the superior system that we have that has enabled us to become sophisticated and therefore able to defend our people better. one on the basis of saying that we have to protect privacy. i believe it can be done. the congress has miserably nsa.d to oversee the there are commerce been today that say we are looking forward to the day when authorities expire and time is on our side to which i hear al qaeda and isis and russia and china standing up and saying bravo. we want to bring your country down.

here, inke us steamboat, to make sure that doesn't happen. doing a't seem to be very good job, at least they have lost the confidence of the united dates. -- united states. anyone who goes in as charlie suggest and uses this information to spy upon american citizens and appropriately and to let that information out and any improper way, to look at our pictures, private letters, to we need tovailable, put people in prison. and finally, the executive branch.

and i say that that can't last. >> thank you, governor. >> i agree in a large part with at germany you look and france, they don't have a constitution with the fourth amendment that privacy and liberty the way that we do. they don't have a provision that disallows unreasonable seats -- search and seizure. i will say that the conversation that i think we should talk about is not as much spying on karzai or international, but should we be spying on american citizens. some people may call us terrorists.

congress has not been a good job overseeing this agency and i will venture a guess that before , and majority of representatives didn't even know what the nsa was. it was kind of this undercurrent , they are this agency that keeps us safe. do you think it is ok for the nsa to go completely unchecked? we need to start that dialogue and conversation because if we are going to respect the constitution and be the party of limited government, we have to go back to our roots on the fourth amendment. there is no way to say that with the nsa has done is really constitutional. >> this is the reality of what we are looking at eight now. -- right now. the nsa has enormous capacity to

the very sophisticated computers to be able to get information. what they are getting, not to mention all the overseas information, but they are getting information that says who is calling who. they don't have the ability to look into those phone calls without a warrant. they can't look at your information but if somebody from yemen telephones in the chicago chicago, if they are looking around at what they , they canalking to gather evidence. i think what we have to guard , there are things that you can do. conversationsvate -- i amhould be

certainly not interested in the government spying on everything the citizens do. they will throw it away and frankly, suspicious and paranoid. >> there has been a lot of debate about whether or not these people do store these things for a long-term. edward snowden made a claim that they did, other people said he was mistaken. i think that you would agree, governor gilmore, that it is necessary for both parties to call for the nsa and do a complete forensic examination of how you treat u.s. citizens. is this being stored, and who has access to it and why? the facts get all about that because edward snowden did say that every phone -- but there has been a big

debate about that. know in the case of james foley that he may have been murdered by a radicalized member of the u.k.. it is not always the case of bad guys overseas. we may have bad guys here. radicalized elements within our own population. how do we track those individuals without tracking the rest of us. it seems to me that you have to have a standard that says we are going to focus in on people with reasonable suspicion. the isis people, if they can put somebody in this country that can do some kind of attack.

it is not unheard of. they were not representatives of anybody. the significance of it is very material. the rising of nuclear proliferation. they change the way americans , we havet themselves to protect ourselves against that while at the same time protecting our privacy's as well. >> every time someone makes a phone call, i can't tell you how

many times someone said i would rather not talk about that on the phone. a lot of people do live in paranoia now. a lot of people in this room live in fear of their government or the fear of retribution. there is more than one reason for that. >> they say we spend too much money on surveillance and so on, you're not going to hear that.

the enemy has big advantages. they can spend a few dollars and all of a sudden, the press is talking all the time about the attack. it is a big advantage that they got because they are taking advantage of a free society. they can cost them very little. hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent can see 9/11 attack which can be used for the benefit of cutting taxes. the enemy has great advantages. we have to make sure that we use ini have supreme confidence

the quality and nature of the american character. that is what we were discussing this morning. american character. that is why this conflict that is here, it is still coming. we are going to prevail because of the nature of america. >> many of your coming up with questions. if you can write them down on the no card, someone will be by to pick them up. i would like to ask one more question. edward snowden, patriot, traitor, or neither? you go first. personally, i think he should be held in front of a jury of his peers. i no means do i call him a patriot, the government has yet to charge him with treason. but what he revealed has opened a lot of people to understand how complex the data cannulation

can in. it is indisputable. truly to be civil disobedient, he would have turned himself in and would have paid the price and not be a vigilante internationally and collude with some of our enemies of the state. -- weuld all understand now have a discussion and a point of evidence. i guarantee you this panel today would not be here because american privacy if you look in national circles and debate gone up.t has

>> they can tell it to the jury. this is edward snowden. edward snowden is a traitor to the united states of america. i say to you now that edward snowden is a traitor. edward snowden was given the most confidential trust. he traded that security appearance. he had a job in which he had trust. when he made his information available and undermine the security of the united ace, he

told his boss he was going back to california for a medical treatment, got on a plane and went to hong kong where we know or hisunder communist diction and ultimately ended up in russia where he has received an extended time of good treatment and asylum in russia. sooner or later, the russians are going to come to their senses and realize they are not going to be able to put the soviet union back together again. being part of the western community of nations is a benefit to the russian people. and when they do, one condition the united states should places the return of edward snowden for trial. --a traitor for this country to this country. [applause] this country. my favorite question is if

the nsa can find lois lerner's e-mails or phone calls. [applause] that is per the awesome. -- pretty awesome. fromtelephone someone yemen, m.r.i. guilty of unknowing association? guilty of unknowing association? are calling and you may just be calling a relative. how do we separate the bad actors from the good actors and not intentionally go after people who, you know, are guilty by association? >> it is a great question and it assumes that you can be targeted as soon as you get a call from overseas. there is no evidence that that is the case. furthermore, we ought to make it not the case. it seems to me that we oughto