the five-on-one sector court of appeals. multipleying >> so we're trying a strategy to try to get the courts to rule these programs are unconstitutional and try to unseat some of the legal series that the the government has been really relying on in the secret courts. one of the underlying problems are secret decisions in the secret courts that have interpreted statutes in ways that were not readily apparent from the language of the statute, stretching beyond i think the breaking point, and -- >> referring to section 215? >> i am. i think that the section 215, the language of that statute, relevant to an authorized investigation, when you interpret that relevancy to mean all the records of all the people for all of the time, you have written relevancy out of it. it means the same thing whether you have that statement or not. that is not a traditional

interpretation of statutes. and, also, the supreme court has indicated in the u.s. v. jones case dealing with g.p.s. they have doubts about smith v. maryland and those doubts existed in opinions written by five of the justices not all on the same opinion but that shows some support of a reinterpretation of smith and smith v. maryland is the underpinning of a lot of the programs and the interpretations. if you can get the courts outside of the secret court to hit these issues, to find some things unconstitutional, this makes it much more difficult for them to twist the words and make sort of creative arguments in the secret court to expand on things, even if we don't know what they're doing in that court. it makes it, if we end up having a special advocate, that gives them something to cite to

something to work with in those courts and so we're hopeful that by getting some judicial change on this can really set the stage for widespread reform. >> and if you don't -- if the courts rule against you, are you worried about setting unwelcome precedents that could cut against reform? >> well, our plan is to win. >> are you confident you can win? >> i think this is a -- this is a good court for it. the unanimous opinion in riley, finding that there was a necessity for a warrant before searching a cell phone incident to arrest, the analysis in the jones case. there are some good indications that the supreme court is rethinking this, is more understanding that some of the thinking that had been done in a different technological era needs to be -- has a fit with

new technology, that if you have a decision that says as it did in smith that it was okay pen register dialed for one person for a short period of time for a particular crime, that might not mean that you can do that for all the people all the time for everything. and that some of the theories that the government has been -- i mean, certainly, you know, in the riley case it wasn't about the smith v. maryland case but it came up in there that the government had argued because you did share this information, with a third party, at some point, that it was sort of retroactively you lost your fourth amendment interest on your phone because it was the kind of information that you would share. so the government is trying to move forward with interpretations that would basically strip out fourth amendment protections for anything besides your house. you know, besides locked things

inside your house. they didn't spend a lot of time on it. it wasn't worth spending a lot of time on. the court rejected that. i am hopeful the supreme court may be useful here and we have to get through the ninth circuit and the state secret privilege. there is a ways to go. >> just quickly, you know, the constitution is this wonderful document that is sort of endlessly, has these timeless principles that are really adaptable to new circumstances and new technologies, but the courts have to do their part. they have to apply them to the new circumstances of the new technologies. they can't wait 30 years before they start to, you know, agree to hear these. the supreme court is still trying to avoid hearing a third party case basically, ruling on the most narrow grounds it can. and the other court, the lower courts are applying smith vs. maryland as if that principle actually applied to these new sets of facts. the technology changes so

quickly that the current 10 to 20 to 30-year lifetime we see in the courts' address to new technologies is serving us very poorly. the courts are kind of taking themselves out of the game way after the fact and congress can't tie its shoes, no offense, i mean -- she can. she really can. what are we left with? i think, you know, there needs to be -- there are institutional failures that we need to be looking at here beyond just, you know, collecting too much information but why can't we get legislation on this? why has the court taken almost 40 years since smith vs. maryland to look at this question again when we've had several technological revolutions since then? systems aren't working quite right. >> i think we have about 10 minutes left for a few questions from the audience, so if you raise your hand and wait for the mike, you know the drill.

>> while we're waiting for the mike, let me add to that. i think we see some attacks on smith vs. maryland. i think we're seeing an erosion of that doctrine and i think the most plain example is the warshack case where the court, the sixth circuit said you retain a reasonable expectation of privacy, meaning the third party doctrine doesn't illuminate your constitutional right to privacy and the contents of your e-mail when held with an e-mail provider. so that's -- ma may seem absolutely obvious to you and not a great breakthrough, but it is. d that case is significant for providers who now all -- certainly those in the ninth circuit, which includes google and a lot of the big providers -- require warrants before they'll disclose the contents of stored communications like your e-mail. where the statute that governs this actually doesn't always require a warrant.

so we have case law that actually goes the other way so go ahead and talk about the updates. >> rick is exactly right. it is the electronic communication privacy act and senator leahy and others have bipartisan legislation to require probable cause for obtaining the contents of your communications so it is another surveillance reform effort that's been ongoing. >> thank you. >> go ahead. >> mr. selgado. i'm from the uclu. in january, 2010 google revealed to world they had been compromised by the chinese government but it wasn't until last summer in a story in "the washington post" that we learned it had been google's

electronic surveillance system, legal compliance system compromised by this foreign government. a two-part question. one, why do we have to read about it in the newspaper? why didn't google ever tell in that three or four-year period, not tell the world the surveillance system had been compromised rather than the sort of vaguer information that some systems at google had been compromised and separately can you tell us in the few years since has google's surveillance system been compromised any additional times by any other governments that you know about? thank you. >> yeah, so the -- the attack back in 2009 was one that, you know, we got hit by this attack. we conducted investigation into it at the time of the attack. this may seem odd sitting here where we are right now but back in 2009, 2010, you may remember there weren't a lot of victims of computer attacks out there announcing they had been

attacked. within google we had a debate about, you know, are we just a company that just is going to have this happen? clean up our systems, and just hope nobody notices? and/or -- and the attacks could be continuing on other industries and other companies. and, particularly, in the course of that investigation, we discovered that there were some concerted attacks against some human rights activists. one of the things we decided was that we're just not going to do what other companies presumably have done and just fix it and move on. we wanted this to be known. and so it's somewhat at that time famously a blog post was written describing the attack, describing the actions we were going to take as a result of our discovery, and our

investigation, and i have to say i think that was exactly the right thing to do. it was as far as i know unprecedented in doing that. since then, i guess this is going to be unfair, but it's almost become vogue to have been attacked and to blog about it. so we're very proud of the results that came from being open, that companies could talk about being victimized and not feel the shame of it. it's okay to come out. e can have better secure systems as a result of this and let's make it known that this is an environment of aggressive, state-sponsored, in some cases, attacks against these networks and that we've got to take security seriously. it was a turning point i think for a lot of companies in how we have to secure our systems and our data. both corporate, which is really what was at issue there, but also the consumer data as well, the data we hold on behalf of our users.

now, wei didn't go into the details of that attack and we are still not going to go into the details of that attack. i'm not going to -- i will not go into the particulars of it. but i do think it was the right thing to talk about it to the degree we did and to make sure that the world understood that this is serious and network security is not just something you put a halftime technical engineer on your network to address. companies need to take this as the threat it really is and be ealistic about it. >> okay. the gentleman right there. >> i'd like to follow up with a question to richard on that. also, you emphasized how you're keeping the e-mail secure, but isn't you -- aren't you also arguing in court against this class action suit that the statement that there is no

expectation of privacy in e-mail and that's why you take the position you can scan the e-mails without the permission of the people who put their stuff in g-mail and why you can correlate that information, pass on that specific information to advertisers who then produce targeted advertisements to that individual? so, yes. it has a value to you and so that's a little -- the other side of the coin, so how, given that, do you respond to the criticisms eric schmidt alluded to or more recently tim cooke? >> i'm not sure about the last two but i think i understand your question. if i answer this like a lawyer it's because i'm a lawyer and you can come back on this, but what we're talking about in the le i'm in at google is about securing the data vis-a-vis other entities in the world,

not google, securing your data from the entity you gave it to is a different thing. and the reasonable expectation of privacy that i'm talking about is your reasonable expectation of privacy that the government is not going to be getting into your business without there being probable cause established to do so. and that's what surveillance is about is the government getting to your information, your private communications, your medi data, subscriber information, what other information we may hold on your behalf without making the necessary showing to get it. then the other part of that would be any external party that really doesn't have authorization to get it. that's more of a security side. when i'm talking about reasonable expectation of privacy, that's what i'm talking about. > thank you. >> hi. i'm griffin boyd technologist for the tour project. i have a curious question for

richard. five years is a really long time in terms of technology, so it's very interesting that google is not really interested in releasing details of that attack. is this a vulnerability that still affects google in some fashion or is this something that's been resolved? >> oh, no. had, i ck that google think we described it somewhat, but it was a fairly sophisticated one but it wasn't like there was a vulnerability exploited. it was a series of -- i think if you talk to people who have been -- had intrusion attempts against them sometimes successful and sometimes not, it's not like there is a single hole in the system that gets exploited. this is the kind of attack that we're talking about was pretty sophisticated and so it's little by little by little, one method to get one place, you ybe stay quiet in that one

place. you wait for your chance. you move to another part of the network. presumably, all along the way increasing your authority on the network, permission to get into other networks. it's all cleaned up now. but it's over simplified to say "a vulnerability wasn't fixed." it's a sophisticated attacker on a network is not going to be pick igbavboa about the tools -- picky about the tools they use to get into your network. sometimes they'll use stupid things. if they work it's great and sometimes they'll turn to zero days and maybe burn a zero day if they have to to be able to get into it. it isn't as though there is some magic thing that gets you in and then you're there. it's a very smart, patient attack. >> and back there toward -- on the left-hand side. >> our final question. >> that will be our final question? okay. >> john petty from maclean, virginia. the panel asked about a technology solution perhaps as an alternative to a back door.

let me just remind them that in 1996 the federal reserve bank sponsored a technology that went to the american national standards institute and created a national standard in 1999 and it renewed ev five years by about 150 companies. and the technology would provide the solution which i won't go into for a minute. it's been frustrated by the nass because of its game -- n.s.a. because of its game of messing with the commercial encryption business. but i recommend that x-973 be viewed as a solution. i'll stop there. >> matt, would you like to respond? >> i don't know what x-973 is off the top of my head, unfortunately. but there are many technologies that can work in this space. i'd be happy to talk about that

offline. >> i hope you'll all join me in hanking our panel. we need to rearrange our stage slightly so we'll take about sa 15 minutes. we'll reconvene exactly at 4:30 for the closing session and i guarantee you if you have stayed this long you with ill weep bitter tears and lament if you leave now. we have a special session tonight. think it's worth staying for. >> our live coverage here on c-span continuing of the cato institute surveillance conference today as you heard a break noun and then the event will resume shortly. a quick congressional note. the senate today is in session

working on a defense programs and policy bill and later we expect senators to begin consideration of the federal spending bill passed by the house last night. watch all of that in the senate on our companion network c-span 2. here, coming up after this break, an interview with former n.s.a. contractor edward snowden. he'll be appearing via satellite from an undisclosed location as our live coverage ontinues here on c-span. in the meantime more from the surveillance conference from earlier today. a conversation with eric schmidt who is executive hairman at google. >> thank you all for coming. thank you to our tv audience on c-span. this is an incredibly impressive group of people the cato institute put together today. some of the most august minds

in the legal policymaking journalistic circles. so i am very honored to be here and very pleased that dr. schmidt has agreed to find some time for us in his very busy schedule to talk about surveillance. >> thank you guys for having me and this incredibly important conversation. >> great. just so you know i'm going to ask a few questions. about half way through i'm hoping to open up the floor to questions so if there is something you've been dying to ask eric schmidt for many years this is your opportunity. for now, i'll start off here. when "the washington post" first learned that the n.s.a. was tapping the links between data centers for google around the world, some of our reporters showed a diagram of how this worked. your engineers responded with a fuselage of words we could not print in our family newspaper. >> yes. so i was wondering if you could tell us exactly how you learned this was happening and what your first thoughts were at the time.

>> the gchq which is the i-'s arm of the five had put sniffers or the equivalent of sniffers on traffic between the data centers of google -- google has a very large private data network that moves the data around in a very complicated, powerful way. it's why google works so well. it's a massive and amazing technical achievement from google's perspective. i've read it in "the washington post." i was shocked because jerry conan and i had written a book which talked about this being ssible and people had hinted it was possible to do this by monitoring light fiber though i think the mechanisms are probably classified we obviously didn't know but the fact it had been done so directly and documented in the documents that were leaked was really a shock to the company.

here we are more than a year later, from the original snowden revelations and the index is up 20% right? google remains one of the most massively profitable companies in the world. has there been real damage to you or the industry or us more broadly? >> there's been damage sort of at many levels. let's start by saying that that if you're a european right now you're less likely to trust an american firm to retain your data. be less should always likely but now as a result of these revelations you're less likely. as a company google massively encrypted our internal systems using encryption that is 2848 bit long and for the nontechnical i'll just describe 2048 is much larger than the

original 1024, not twice as big but many, many times bigger. it's generally viewed at this level as unbreakable in our lifetimes by any sets of human beings in any way. we'll see if that's really true. but i today believe if you have important information the safest place to keep it is in google. i can assure you that the safest place to not keep it is anywhere else. because of the level of attacks, first the chinese ttack and then later the n.s.a., gchq, whatever you want to call it attack. so it has affected our relations and in particular conversations in europe where people are sensitive to this. it's also caused us to tighten every procedure within our systems. so we're just a lot safer. >> assuming there is a cost, a financial cost or moral cost, who do you blame for that, the u.s. government or edward snowden? >> i'd like to offer a rule of

sort of surveillance life, which just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do something. the fact is all of the technologies we're describing are capable of massive, in the hands of the wrong person, violations of people's privacy. everyone here has a mobile phone. everyone with those phones are on a data network. the phone bs where it is. the fact is all of that information could be misused. so i think the snowden sort of set of incidents including your coverage and all of the things have essentially sort of caused people, maybe the nontechnical people, to understand there is a great deal of data being collected about you that's benign but nevertheless could be misused in the wrong hands. so as an example, i would offer a rule for governments, which is that if you collect data in a data base, you better be sure

ou know what the data is going to bed for and make sure it doesn't get leaked because along the way technological opportunities have allowed for large bulk leaking. we look back at the pentagon papers leak. those things were done by copiers. people would copy documents. now an opponent if you will can take the equivalent of usb sticks and download a large amount of data in a very short amount of time. this is true for everyone in every country and so forth. be careful about collecting data and not misusing it. i was part of a white house task force that looked into the technical questions of this. we were not part of the policy side. issued a policy recommendation unrelated to us. and the question was, can metadata be misused? the answer we came back with is that information about the data as opposed to the data itself can, using very complicated and powerful systems be misused.

that's why the industry, in tick google but all the other companies oppose the u.s. 215 stuff because although the government claimed that it was not a misuse of the data, our argument was that the metadata, itself, could be misused. i think these are learnings the country has to now know sort of forever. >> i feel like you answered the u.s. government part of it. you hold them to account. edward snowden, hero or villain? year and a half later, how does it look? >> it is interesting that depending who you ask in america, you get a different answer. it's the same with julian assange, busy attacking gooming and me at the moment. as a stereotype if you talk to east coaster, they tend to view these things in very, very negative contexts. west coasters, again, generalizations, there are always exceptions, tend to view it with a much more civil

libertarian view. i'll let the courts decide those questions. we clearly do not want to encourage bulk data leaking. imagine, again, think of all the data bases that exist about us, health records, tax records, where you are, all that kind of stuff, it is not good for people to encourage people to do that. on the other hand his disclosures were helpful in shining a light on these practices that certainly people like myself and maybe you didn't know existed. we knew they were possible but the extent was a shock. especially when it starts to monitoring data traffic between google servers where they're clearly monitoring traffic for people who are in the u.s., which as i understand and i'm not a lawyer is not their mission. >> the response of the tech industry has been fairly clear. massive encryption, lawyers for the companies being much tougher in court about turning over data. the response from the u.s.

government a little less clear i think, a little more muddy at this point. i'm curious if you were to give your industry a grade, a to f, for how it has responded and how the u.s. government has responded -- >> i'm proud of our industry's response. we knew encryption was powerful and google was -- there is a set of things we do. it's not just the 2048 encryption. for example when e-mail systems talk to each other, g-mail for example is fully encrypted all the way from your hand held into the system and out. but what happens when the e-mail goes from server a to server b, it turns out there is a protocol which the industry has now agreed to which will maintain the encryption as it goes from g mail to yahoo or g-mail or what have you. the industry as a unit acted to protect its users' interest and the data is all legal. i say that the government's response has been fairly clear. i'll tell a story. freeh was the

f.b.i. director i believe. we had the first of one of these. it was a meeting in dn feinstein's office, which were the ceo's of the time. i was at novell bill gates, myself, a few others were there. we had the public safety people. people trying to do the right thing including louis freeh and the director of the n.s.a. she asked them to report on the dangers of all of this. what they wanted was the trap door. the anted the trap door, idea that the government could with a warrant or some other mechanism go in there and watch all the e-mail traffic. i remember sitting there listening to these presentations and saying virtually all criminals now use e-mail. right? and what we want to do is be able to watch the e-mail. now, our industry, and i remember the meeting, we snuck out the back door. we weren't allowed to talk to the press. off we went. this is 20 years later. exactly the same conversation.

and the problem with the government request is it would be great if you're the government to have a trap door. how do we, google, know the other government has not taken over the trap door from you? and we can't prove, and we're not endorsing this notion of a u.s. trap door. which is precisely what the public safety people would like. our argument, which i think is very clear now, is that the government has so many ways and properly so by the way to go in what we call the front door. they're called warrants. okay? they're called good police work. they're called sitting the perpetrator in the desk with the guy in the front. you see this in the movies. all that kind of stuff. just because you could put a trap door in does not mean that you do for all of the unintended consequences. >> you raise an interesting point with the warrants. you were all clearly agreed

that because you had a front door n.s.a. was availing itself of the back door. you all have done encryption. >> we did not intend to put a back door in. right? there isn't a back door left. the house only has front doors. > right. mplets we've seen google and other companies do these encryption initiatives. there is a new wave of encryption that doesn't even have a front door where the government comes to you with a search warrant, the company doesn't keep track of it. apple has done this with i-message and face time. i'm curious what you think of these initiatives that actually lock out the government entirely where the company can't open the door. i'm curious if we'll see that with google products. >> let me not preannounce any google products. let me simply say it's been known for a long time, and we wrote this in our book, that encryption in the hands of individuals is very empowering. it is an incredibly powerful tool for freedom fighters in

repressive regimes but also does allow people who are evil r nasty to communicate bilaterally. the good news is these systems are not that easy to use and we argue in the book and i'll say again that you're probably winning when the evil person is using a cell phone, because, trust me, those cell phones if you're trying to find them and you're a government and you're willing to look for them, you can find them. cell phones emit where they are. indeed, this is how osama bin laden was tracked down, through ultimately a cell phone tapping according to the reports. i'm not as sensitive to this argument that this is the only way to solve this problem but it is a fact that powerful encryption has been around since 1975 when it was invented e-crypt system and because of in my view the over reach of perhaps well intentioned but ultimately flawed strategies this

encryption capability is becoming more and more available. >> do you like these services that are encorrupted so thoroughly the companies can't get into them? do you think this is a good idea or a terrible idea for the reasons you mentioned? >> you are asking sort of an emotional question. >> it's really fascinating and fantastic, this day of discussing the complex and yriad problems surrounding surveillance. joining me for our special nal session today is julia gland, a veteran journalist in the privacy space. she has had a career at "the wall street journal" before moving to the investigative journalism site republica.

she is also the author recently of "dragnet nations" an absolutely fantastic book that you should purchase several copies of right outside after joining us and also and i know our folks in the working on getting a couple technical issues resolved but we are going to be joined by an unannounced guest, edward snowden will be joining and public question will so our people distribute index cards so you have about 15 minutes if you want to write down questions for mr. snowden. we will be checking twitter. f you want to use the cato

hash tag you can send questions my way, the spy-con hash tag. we'll take a look at that and we have oon as looming behind us like an apple ad, mr. snowden. >> ah ha. >> good afternoon, edward. applause] >> thanks very much. >> julian, do you want to lead in? >> sure. welcome, edward. can you hear us? we can't hear you yet. hold on. >> one second. minor technical difficulty. >> we can also do this in sign anguage.

>> let's set up -- i think he can hear us now. ey should have the audio resolved momentarily. the obvious question here is we've had more than a year and a half of stories based on mr. snowden's disclosures perculating out. eestablish our connection.

>> people are actually using angouts today. >> while we arrange for him to be able to be heard as well as o hear us, we've had a year of disclosures that ignited a pretty fierce debate. so the obvious question is for someone who has paid an extraordinary price and essentially surrendered a fairly comfortable life, do you feel satisfied with what you have seen, how this is unfolding?

there's been a proposal, nothing yet passed, we've seen a presidential directive. are you satisfied with the reaction you've had? >> first let me confirm. can everyone hear me? >> yes. hello. >> i am broadly satisfied with ha has happened in the last year. we've seen an extraordinary change in public awareness. we have seen an increased openness. i would say innovative spirit in government, not by choice, but by necessity. speaking we had bob earlier which was great to have him with us and he mentioned they've decided to be more transparent in the future because they recognize these policies of over classification, over secrecy, and, in fact, are damaging. i think we should scrutinize

the value of not just the government's shall we say improvement and not just around the world in the court systems, a number of panelists have spoken about beneficial things we're seeing in the united states court system. the first federal, or first open federal courts review of programs found they're likely unconstitutional and the european court of justice struck down the european ersion of sort of a smith v. maryland, said the date of attention directed is unallowable and fundamental violation of rights. we've seen the united nations issue a statement that mass surveillance is not permissible under any circumstances. it is necessarily a contradiction of sort of our fundamental values and it's an inherent violation of rights. and we see a lot of things like that. but beyond that we see the real change that's happening is actually occurring outside of

courts, outside of congress, outside of the executive agencies entirely through things like technology companies. let me actually make sure i can see these right. what we've seen are things on the technological side sort of in the fabric of the internet where immediately upon the public awariness of the problem technologists, academics, engineers around the world all came together and went, this is a serious concern. how do we address this? how do we solve this problem? how do we make sure we can deal with this in the future? we see that individuals as well are taking action and taking steps to try to retrieve their rights that have been sort of unnecessarily taken out of their hands, out of their domain. run by a canadian

group. they got a representative number of internet users around the world and found 60% had heard of the revelations of the last year and 39% of those had taken active steps to improve he security of their privacy of communications online. it was interesting how the media interpreted this. they said, well, this is a minority. people must not care that much. nobody is really making changes. when you actually do the math of the 39% of the 60% world's internet users is that is 702 million people around the world who are now safer today than a year navel ago. this is where i think we gen to see the -- begin to see the framework of how we can move forward in the absence of political and legal reform and this is good. because what we've seen politically around the world throughout the development of human civilization and history s that politics is about

power. when you have people in great power positions, when you have super states, they will not cede any sort of authority the ve claimed back to public, civil society, unless hey are afraid of a more undercutting alternative. this is what is setting us up o have a sort of renaissance of security, liberty in the way we speak and research online. when we think about reforms and ultimate chael ention in the united states, these are big picture problems but at the same time only the things that are happening -- as to the policies of the national security agency and the national intelligence agency and f.b.i. in regard to sort of respecting the boundaries of our rights, they are good, relative to many other overnments around the world.

we have to think about how to protect not just the rights of americans but people around the world who live under much more authoritarian regimes and the only way is to make sure there are international standards well agreed upon as to what behavior is proper or improper. we have court mechanisms that can enforce these. and ultimately, fundamentally, we can enforce these through technology. on the basis of all of this i would say i'm tremendously satisfied. >> julian? >> hello. it is great to meet you. you did a great job of marketing my book for me. i was already half way through writing it when your revelations came out and i benefited greatly from that. so thank you. also, i want to say one other things, i don't know if anyone has seen "citizen ford" but in case you are convinced edward nowden was grave, appearing in

your bathroom is really a brave move in a documentary film, so if you haven't seen it, there's bathroom scene. >> entirely unflattering. >> everyone makes their own choice. we'll have an up-or-down vote. i'm a huge fan of encryption and i try to use as much encryption as possible. i think you're right that there is a renaissance of encryption programs going on, but i am concerned about an arms race, right? citizen, am trying to be a huge -- beat huge agencies that are trying to defeat my encryption and i'm trying to keep one step ahead i feel this is something under funded and concerned i'm not going to win that. i think we have some evidence that the arms race is escalating. i would point to one thing that really disturbs me which is

that we've seen a lot more spy tactics that involve spoofing. so we saw the dea spoofing of facebook page. we saw the f.b.i. spoofing and associated press article. we saw the n.s.a. spoofing a linked-in page. we've seen commercial hacking companies such as fin fisher spoofing adobe updates. so i would like to hear what you have to say about it. can we win this race in a world where we might not even be able to trust the contents that we see in front of us? are we going to enter a world we can't actually authenticate anything that we see online? > this is a challenge. it's rapidly increasing. computers are fundamentally so insecure today it is impossible to rely upon them, impossible to trust them fully. many of the reasons i was

successful in what i did was because i had structured a threat in such a way i did not have to rely upon any particular computer or communication to remain private. this is not a world we want -- this is the reason we're having this debate today and the reason people are fighting in countries around the world to push back against this kind of evasiveness, these kind of policies, and also simply the state of play in terms of our security around the world. now there are a number of business interests that have been referenced by some of the other panelists. the aclu, matt greene, and many others who have referenced the fact that there are commercial incentives today to actually find vulnerabilities, find weaknesses in our system. and rather than work to fix those, rather than work to secure our systems, they actually leave those open.

they will sell them to the highest bidder, and use those to enable the exact kind of masquerade attacks, spoofing attacks, phishing attacks you re describing. more concerningly we see agencies of government for example the national security agency which has "security" in its name actually using this same paradigm to weaken our own infrastructure. we've seen them go to standard bodies to spy on them and look for vulnerability and rather than fix those standards, correct those flaws, they leave them in and try to exploit them and in other cases look at where they can introduce them make them less zure overall in certain vulnerabilities they did not exist before so they can exploit them and gain access. we can understand why the national intelligence agency would want to seek to do this. novel d give access in

places previously denied but at the same time those same vulnerabilities can be used against the american government, american people, allies in other cities and other systems and other countries around the world but also in our products and services. pretty ogle has had a big situation. this is not just about google but every american service around the world and product. if we're creating phones that have inherent insecurities, we're creating flaws in our standards and protocol that every interoperable system relies upon to communicate, we the basis of our modern economy because america relies more on the internet for economic gain than any other nation on earth and, yes, concerning flaws the standards may give us some sort of comparative advantage in spying on china, once they discover it they'll be able to use the same thing against us and even if it's not them, latin america,

russia, they begin doing the same thing, we quickly learn that being able to spy on other countries, particularly based on how we restrict the uses of the product of intelligence, for example, the american government is very fond of saying recently that we don't give economic secrets to -- te companies, although we find out that the benefit of having secrets on other than we is worth less gain because we put more into research & development efforts than other companies. we put more into education and research than other countries, more in military spending than other countries do. everyone is insecure at an equal level. we don't benefit because we have the best spy agency. are tually lose because we

more reliant on security than everybody else. >> edward, you alluded to, and guess julia was, also, the spoof thing in connection with a sort of suite of malware tools that are collectively referred to as quantum. one of the stories that flowed from your disclosure that i found way most troubling was related to the idea that apparently it's called turbine, that is delivering these in an automated way to kind of, think of it very crudely as a.i. for hacking that lives on the internet backbone and pushes out malware to thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of target computers, categories of target computers and the goal is eventually to be able to sort of automatically compromise millions of computers around the world. i was surprised at sort of how little, i mean, i don't know if anyone here, turbine, i guess

this is not a representative audience but i don't know how many people had heard that before. it seems like of all of this sort of stunning stuff, people have heard a fair amount of the program, maybe something about prism, but a lot of the other stuff, i guess i'm surprised it hasn't gotten as much attention some of the earlier disclosures. you feel should have gotten more attention, what bothers you most. >> this is a talk that could go on for days as opposed to the short time we have here. what you're touching on is a fundamental problem that we discussed earlier in reference to congress. we've got a few representatives who are trying to protect and promote the interests of millions of americans, but classification authorities who

provide the clearances, offices like the d.m.i. say their static can't be cleared. this is problematic because people in the d.n.i., c.i.a., n.s.a. say i wish i had this. i wish i want that. i'd want a private secretary, too. they don't represent millions of people. they represent small agencies. the same dynamic happens with the press. we have a few editors, a few reporters who are not grounded. they don't have background in technology. they don't have ph.d's in computer science. and technical reporting in mainstream news at the "new york times," "the washington post," is incredibly a modern thing. one reason we don't see the media keen on stories that are of real important is because they don't realize they are of critical importance. we are increasingly reliant upon the technical community to kind of do this for us and

represent us. this is danger over time because what we see is an increasingly disempowered citizen class and even in the press, even in politics because they have no idea what's going on that matters. and increasing empowerment of people who have sort of unique, technological literacy. i think this is dangerous over time because you will see a concentration of power around small groups, small individuals, who can increasingly impact society in greater and greater ways. i personally am not the world's expert in technology but because i was where i was, because i saw massive crimes against the constitution happening on an unprecedented scale, and i had the technological skill, capability to do something about it, i was able to change the conversation in a way, make some small contribution to the public that has really had an outside

impact. we do not want our government to rely on this model because -- to get back to the basic question, stories that have been overlooked, one of the very significant ones is the fact that all of this information we're collecting in bulk, bulk collection is the government's euphemism for mass surveillance, is the unreasonable seizure that is forbidden by the fourth amendment, these programs, mass clacks, the 215 programs and what not, collecting all of our information but the n.s.a., d.n.i. and so on, they assert this is okay because they apply what's called minimization to it. they say that if we see you're a u.s. citizen we'll remove your name and replace it with a stewed nim in place of it. we will -- we'll replace it with a pseudonym. we'll take measures to say an

analyst can't target a u.s. person though we're collecting and can read all of your information we can't do it by looking at you but who you're talking to. that kind of thing. but this is not done when we're sharing this with overseas allies in many cases. there was a story that was run i believe late last year that showed we were sharing unminimized information, that included information on judges, u.s. political figures, officials across the spectrum, private industry, private businesses, private individuals. their private records were being shared with israel. this did not get a lot of play in the mainstream press and in the u.s. in the "new york times," public editor later investigated this and went, why? this is a story of incredible public importance. there wasn't really a convincing answer. who the editors

previously sat on one of the wiretapping stories at the "l.a. times" i believe also sat on this story. we also saw a story last year reported in "the huffington post" that found that the national security agency documents reflected that they were intercepting, collecting, and then planning to use information on individuals' pornography viewing habits to discredit them in their communities and in public on the basis of the political views they held. these individuals were islamists and their politics were considered radical so we can understand why this sort of interest would be there. they go, well, we're preventing radicalization. but it also said these individuals were mott suspected to be associated with violence. these were not actually terrorists. these were people who on the basis of secret judgments made by a secret agency with no public oversight and with no authorizing legislation had decided that a certain brand of

political viewpoints would authorize the intrusive monitoring, collection, eventual disbursement of your private records related to your sexual activities. this is a fundamentally unamerican thing. we have to ask ourselves, why do we allow this in the first place? okay. maybe it happened. maybe mistakes were made. how do we hold people to account for this? and i think this follows on to a fundamental point. ou know, i don't want to be -- bob came to the forum so he is kind of what we've got. he is doing a hard job. we all know he is trying to do his best. he said something that was fundamentally concerning in regards to the false testimony of james clapper. e said that the real problem was not that the most senior official in the united states intelligence community committed a crime in front of congress. it doesn't have to be perjury,

a willful lie. giving a false statement to congress in itself, providing false testimony, is also a -- under u.s.c. 1001 u.s.c. 18-1001. that false statement itself is a crime. he was not concerned about the crime and the impact it had on the public. he was concerned that the question had been asked at all. this kind of paucity of concern for the public's role in the function of american of american government is a real danger represented by these programs. i hope this is -- he spoke quickly and that is not a representation of his true intent, but the reality is we see this consistently and it becomes increasingly concerning. it is this incautious language that causes them to lose credibility, that causes us to lose faith in institutions of government upon which americans must rely.

he said something such as, it is indisputeable that the disclosures of last year caused amage, that terrorists had changed their communications and we lost reporting as a result of this. but the evidence on the public records shows this is in fact not the case. it is entirely kron tri. there is no evidence on the record that this has been caused as a result of the disclosures that were made last year. now, i do believe him when he asserts that, you know, some sources of intelligence have gone dark. some caps we have are no longer producing. but this is ordinary to the process of intelligence collection. people change their route and methods of communication all the time. as anyone knows, correlations do not imply causation. we also know from the evidence on record that there is no reason to suspect causation in the first place. and that there is actually no evidence for a correlation at all.

the methods changed at the same rate in the same manner in the last year as years prior. the only study that has ever shown anything contrary was actually done by a contractor that is funded by the central intelligence agency's investment arm and so we really need to be careful about these kinds of things and the representations they make. it is entirely in dispute that damage has been caused at all by these revelations but the benefits of the disclosure are not in dispute. in fact, the director of national intelligence himself argues that it is necessarily in the public interest to know about these policies about these processes and the fact that they should not have been classified in the first place in the justifications that are being to disclose these programs. so how can it be that we view of the language -- we haven't reaped the benefits. the answer is politics. and their understanding. this is an agency, a community

that sort of feels itself under threat. this is unnecessary. if they were more open we wouldn't have these problems in the first place. what happened last year was way that torture program was avoidable. one of the things that did not sit well in the torture program was that individuals in the cia and other factions within the government knew these programs both a moral basis and on a legal basis, and they raised concerns about it. bullet point showed people were concerned about how long it could go on for. the third shows individuals were actually brought to tears as result of being confronted with the reality of these programs. others transferred away, and other said prepare for something for something that has been

never seen -- been seen before. these were concerns that were raised in the agency, and it went through official traffic. the only thing to go into official cable traffic are things that have been agreed upon by an number of individuals. only the chief of state in the countries have the authority. analysts, others, write a report just they were questioning not the legality of the programs. the questions were rejected, very, and the head of the counter is an program said these concerns need to stop being put in official cable traffic. they need to stop being put on the official record. they need to be varied because such language is not helpful. i think these are things we as a

society need to think about how do we correct, how do we restructure incentives to make sure when individuals have these concerns, when we see clearly unlawful activities occurring, as is still the case today, regardless of the justification being put forth by this, that, when they are at least in dispute as to the legality, how can we ensure they and theseted decisions can be made not behind closed doors, but in public? >> because you mentioned that, it occurs to me before we moved the questions from the audience, i might give you an opportunity to direct a comment to a couple members of our audience. since you talked about awa what you regarded about illegality. we have sharon franklin here, from a board which is one such

mechanism, and while they took a fairly dim view of the 215 program, the 72 authority used for prism or upstream collections, general warrants that involved a siegel authorization and then tens of overseas of targets, tasks at the analysts' discretion, and were basically satisfied with how that was being used. sad that it seems not to be used in an abusive way. i wonder if you were comforted looking at the findings of the board or if you think that they neglected something. is there something that you suggest they would take another look at? >> a challenging question because i have personal use of the 702 i-30, and i believe the conclusions of the board specifically in regard to the

value, productivity of the program. it is an extraordinary invasive authority and it allows you to get incredible intelligence from when it is used in a certain way. the real danger, because when we saw the response to the 702, it was universally derided from anyone who had personal connection to the issue, any kind of knowledge on the civil liberties issues, is they looked at it in a certain way, and a way that i used it, which was on a party basis, where you look that individuals who were already suspected to have some thess to some this, that or other, particularly prison authorities where you are were requesting content from a private entity. they were not looking at the mass applications of it. they were not looking at the upstream authority in the detail they should have, because that is where the real danger is.

there are few people who contest that we should be able to pursue investigations using almost any authority. against individuals where you can get a judge to sign a particular lies warrant. a person basically argued should we have legislators involved, should we have public rose about where we apply our surveillance capabilities because vladimir putin might know about it? i say yes, because there's no court in the world -- and these no court outside of russia -- go this individual is an agent of the foreign government. of course they will say this guy foreign intelligence value, we will sign the world. if we know the about the authorities, there is no problem whether the public or private he cannot hide, we know what his capabilities are. there is some argument to be

made this is not the case with terrorists, but we have also seen that mass surveillance is not beneficial in the context of terrorism. despite all the mass surveillance that is happened since 2001, all of this to 15 collection, all of this internet collection, all of this stuff is happening with retrospective search where you can go to your i want to seeook, the context, i want to see pictures, i want to see every they didess you used, not stop the boston marathon bonmbings. theseade us think individuals were not associated with terrorism despite the fact we had intelligence from human sources, actually from the russians, we saw this guy going into chechnya and associating with terrorists, saying you might want to look at this guy,

you may want to look at this guy. mass surveillance did not stop the madrid bombings. it should not be part of the policy, pursuit, funded, because it takes resources away from things, method and mechanisms of investigation that we know work and are effective. this is a very timely and locked the torture case. we know that rapport holding interrogations work. we know that we become friends with these people and say the intern later is your advocate against your captors works. and all the intelligence with f beforeprogram was gained we applied torture techniques, and yet we did not end it. we funded it to the tunes of millions of dollars. all these officials have never been held to account for what are unambiguous war crimes.

julia may have a last question for her -- >> i want to challenge you for two things. some of us do have some technical skills, and i built a team at "the wall street journal" or i had to people working full-time. i agree -- that is not true in every newsroom -- but i want to raise a flag for journalists. that leads me to another question which is that i think the decisions that are made about publishing the story in the hands of a few people, and you yourself might not agree always, right, with what decisions are made. i wonder if going back, do you think to yourself maybe i should have set and sifted through more

carefully before handing over, you feel there is a wider a way of capable journalists? if you could design the optimal system, where would it land? want to go back and second-guess the reporting in hindsight. andan look at the record see that harms have been mitigated come it harms to exist they are amenable. there's no evidence in the record despite the incredible incentives to show lives lost that occurred. but there is always the chance that things could have been done etter, and i made the --what i can say it was either was very concerned about my own -- i evaluated all the stuff because i believe it was in the public interest to know about these things, that these were programs that went too far from that had constitutional

publications that should not have been tested government should not have assumed itself these authorities behind closed doors without any kind of debate, because they were limiting the boundaries. tell fromnd you can my manner of speaking, it is an issue i am passionate about, and i recognize i could be drawing the line in a different way than what would be considered the interest. i demanded the government, that this could cost unnecessary harm if it was published this ay, to allow them to draw the lines differently. by creating that system of , that was balances really the only thing i could have done because there is no way sitting back where i was when i was operating with only

the benefit of one brain and no debate partners, how i could ensure that we could get the best possible outcome. bestot sure we have the possible outcome of all worlds, but it is clear that the public globally agrees that this has worked out relatively well. >> so we start with audience questions. a bunch of them about sort of how they can protect themselves. >> we are having a wonderful party after this event. i do not think everyone will be able to join us from tech support -- >> let me know. be reallyd interesting, we have two representatives from google here. is fact that each one of us

going to be less effective at doing it and if they do something for everybody, or apple. i thought maybe you could address it in a broader way, which is what are the things that should be done to secure the internet? >> we have microsoft in the room as well. >> the first thing that i would maybe they could get on the same page with apple and -- they could encrypt reason they do not want to do it so far is because the benchmarks that have been done on their phones that have encryption enabled shows there is a performance impact because of a whatever,blem, but we need to take a standard here that -- the government does not have a mandate to say what corporations can or cannot do to protect the quality of the products and services.

if google is not willing to take a position of leadership in the way that apple is doing here and say that the one thing we can do we sellhen you -- when yo you a device, the devices is going to be secure even if we cannot guarantee the things that happen off the device and they have no place in the selling of actual hardware. this has got to be the standard moving forward. i want to point out the counter argument -- i forget how they represented themselves in the -- one of the unrepentant -- which is prevent law enforcement -- i worked aainst chinese hackers, complete fiction. but someone said previously it was not going to be about compelled disclosure, it is to be about remote exploitation of flaws in

websites, in devices. for judges to say, i think, this is the is >> and we are going around this is welcome for the government to say in this particular case we will authorize you to commit the criminal act hacking into this device for the purposes of a limited investigation, which is analogous to the way they tell police we will grant you a warrant to do a sneak and peek on this house or to kick in the door and search it. i think that is the biggest thing. is oncryption that google its way to do it, but many of us on the internet need to do it. they need to commit to guaranteeing they will protect the certificates that protect their sort of -- these sort of and to end communications. eric schmidt made reference to encryption certificates.

if the government or any government or any criminal group access tory can gain the certificate, that encryption is meaningless. saying we will make best efforts to make sure that our network is not hacked, but they need to say if we receive a secret order from any government, any jurisdiction, we will fight this publicly to the highest court of appeals to prevent that. i think that is the obvious best step. ask, actually, let me because you talked about a lot of technical solutions, and it seems in the background of this is that while you maybe optimistic on the whole for the future of privacy, you do not seem sanguine about the prospects for productive political change. we have a question from sarah on twitter. 81.ut hr46

i do not know if you have looked at the authorization. but talking about that, legalizing aspects of some of the programs. in case you have not studied that specifically, brought in that a little bit and say is their legislation that you looked at that you feel is helpful in moving the ball in folksght way, or certain are supporting the freedom of information act, leave they are blocked into the kinds of programs they were trying to reform. stateds rand paul's reason for not voting for that bill. could you give us a quick take on the legislative developed -- >> let me respond on the intelligence authorization act, and you got this section 309

thing, which apparently some could read to be providing sort of legislative haloes, recognition of 12333. that is an authority that exists only on a piece of paper signed by the president. it says you can basically do whatever you want overseas. the problem with that authority s it collects americans' communications as well, because of global communications go to the googlethat are outside our backrs and they bounce and come to us. they have this authority that do and and run around congress and collect information about americans, although save it was not part of it, of course. it did not need to be reported, noause there is congressional recording of --

because it is not provided through the legislature. who hasave, mr. litt, set on the record, and i hope everybody makes a historical footnote of that, is that there is no intent in providing that halo. if we have any faith in our institutions, we have to assume this will be accepted and that his statements can be accepted and -- relied upon. maybe it just does restrict the activities. session,at reform is a we have got a lot of reforms of there which are a good deal and make small steps, but we do not have anything that solves the problem. stepslooking at a be reforms, and this is fine. we got to start somewhere, build some momentum, but if i can suggest something radical here for a minute, we need to think more broadly about the kind of guarantees and process protections that we want to have

with regard to our rights and access and with regard to our ability to challenge evidence that is not just used against us in court, but gathered for use against us within agencies through some kind of mean-spirited we have to have some way to provide for redress of grievances, which today to start exist. and could we actually take a bigger step back and go, all right, we have intelligence agencies, but where would these agencies born? they were born in times of total bore, and world wars, and contests between superpowers. intended to exist for particular lies means for what everyone would imagine is a untild period of time they were eventually demobilized. anyone who has an understanding of government knows that never happens unless there is some kind of scandal.

ofticularly in the context state security agencies, spy agencies, to we really need them? are the product of developing society, developing government, developing civilizations that can be replaced by air methods of law enforcement? of the talked about reference to vladimir putin, do we really need the nsa and a secret court to say we are going to wiretap putin? forget any judge to sign that warrant? i do not need think we need a special mechanism to provide for wiretaps for targeted efforts. it is not part of our leaks to provide [indiscernible] outside secret organizations that inevitably put the lime beyond on what the public would agree with. >>

one of the arguments i would make is i remembered at nsa, cia. he tends to get martin luther king to commit suicide, these were by the fbi. had very little insight into how they are operating, and we do not have any effective oversight even at the level of dni in how to manage this. let me argue by anecdote and provide some data points. just two days ago come report was released that the central intelligence agency tortured at least one man to death. he died after being tortured, chained to a concrete floor without pants, apparently, and froze to death. beyond that, 29 more were disappeared. i worked at the cia and i can tell you nothing happened there

without people making a record of it, making a note about that come or picking up the phone and coordinating folks. 29 people do not disappear from a secret government torture program without any records. so we do not know what happened to them. 80 beat they ran aware and disappeared off into the forest and are living a happy life now. we can hope for that. the reality is much more sinister, probably. feeding, thing, rectal hydration, saying these are not medical procedures that have on anyone anywhere. and yet we were using them for what they said -- it had the ancillary benefit of increasing compliance. if you think these things are not related to trying to get someone to commit suicide, but not torturing them to death, i would have to question your moral compass, nothing personally, that in a general

way. beyond that, when we talk about scale, scope, domestic abuses, another data point and credit my journalistic investigation of "the wall street journal," that story'sorted a elite that we were using the --ngray type device that can that eminent over certain wave frequencies. that cellular phones, the wireless cards under laptops, that means certain kinds of smart cards, thing like that, and the co-relate -- then we do a reverse search to correlate the device identifier with the username you log in to save your account or your google play account, and suddenly we know who is that front. we can then correlate this

briefly with going -- we have a plane that is circuiting over at this point in the transits, this point in the transit, trying to triangulate location. data.s very compressible it is a very small amount of data that allows them to create a comprehensive index of the movement of not just a targeted ,ndividual, but by necessity they have the data set of everyone who is carrying a phone moving in these cities. gotwould go, ok, these have to be exceptional authorities, maybe they are only used in certain ways, but where does it come from in the first phase. where is the legal grounds for using this for the doj to be operating this program in the united states, which is the case today? that is the story "the journal" wrote.

it actually broke in a story by the intercept earlier this year of a program called shenanigans. i cannot imagine who chose that code. [laughter] this is a program putting the source of stingrays on funds, actually called a dirt box, putting it on a phone and using these things in yemen to target the drone program. they tried to figure out where this phone is in the should a missile at it. that is what this program was developed for. it was an extraordinary authority that was being used overseas allegedly against terrorists, in yet we saw within the span of just a few years, without any public awareness, authorizing legislation, now being operated in the united states on common criminals that are not threatening the existence of our society. how can this possibly be justified without the involvement of the public in

some way, in some manner? as was mentioned previously, these programs are not briefed to all members of congress. when we talk about certain decoder programs, missile strikes, drone strikes, we are relying on a very small group of people. they are called the gang of eight and so forth. this to thend intelligence community, incentives are entirely wrong for them to represent the public interest because everyone sitting on the intelligence committee can even opponents of the agency, people like wyden and udall, received twice as much in terms of campaign donations from defense contractors, from people who are seeking business with the nsa, cia, than any member of congress. they had every incentive to approve these programs to maintain their own chairs, their own seats, as to hold the people who are acting for an authorizing for them to account

for them. and we're thinking about how we can fix these structures, and provide mechanisms that will prevent this in the future. something [indiscernible] maybe yes or not, but in the mirror universe, where the the evil edward snowden is motivated not to disclose things because it was in the public interest because the but because they wanted to help one political party and the other, let's take, could evil edward snowden have targeted someone for those political persons -- do you think your evil counterpart could have gotten away with that? >> absolutely. it is no secret, here we are 2014, the december nsa still says and ask under congressional us, what do you get? if there are viewing is so poor that after a year and a half of

investigation, god knows how many man hours were spent, how much money, or vegetables they brought in, they cannot tell what happened with an individual who love myself was not trying to cover his tracks, what is going to happen when you have an individual in the position of privilege access who is trying to stay under the radar, who is trying to abuse a system of who is trying to use sort of these incredible authorities, these exceptional powers for the benefit of themselves, their class command group, their own interest? today there is protection against that him and that is an incredibly dangerous, incredibly concerning problem. they have not provided an answer for it. >> we have room for one last question. there are some of the people who really want to know about your personal life. with oneg to come by question, which is do you expect to return to the u.s.? i think you have said yes. do you like wine?

you said you do not drink wine. i would like to know why you'd cane the name citizen four, you mention in your interview that you are working on a tool that you might offer to journalists in dangerous areas, and i wondered if you could update us on that. combine this into one. it is my goal to return to the united states. unfortunately, there are no provisions under the mechanism for the charge that a bit level against me for a fair trial. i'm counseling a working with the government to see if there is any way we can do this that serves the public good. unfortunately every week have heard implies they want to use me to scare everybody in the world out of ever saying the andic has to see this, obviously that is fundamentally something that i would never agree with. there is work to be done there, but we see changing all the time. becoming more is

open, and who dies for it also internationally it is becoming more there as well as in the united states that this -- i never should have had to do this the first place, so we will see. something was do i drink. no, i do not drink. i have never been drunk. it is not a religious or ideological thing. i just do not like the way it tastes. i am neither the first or the less, and when i was thinking about this, he used a number of citizens, but the point that i wanted to reflect was that this is a tradition in the history of civil society. people have to put themselves on the line people have to take risks. a citizen had not just an interest, but an obligation and view,st believing in my but standing forth and challenging the government when it goes too far. if we see our constitution being violated on a massive scale and we have been demanded why our

own government, by these officials, to swear an oath that we will protect the constitution against all enemies, not just foreign, but domestic is what, we have a duty to stand up and do somethi about it. and i tried to do my best to do that, and that is what it reflects, and i hope others will do the same in the future. i hope we will have no need for something as dramatic as we have wen in the last year, but will go from there. the last one, i completely lost track of, so sorry. whether you are working on a tool to protect journalists. >> that is still an area of active focus. i am doing a lot with the freedom of the press foundation. there are projects i am working in developing. i'm actually beginning to develop in my thinking there, which is we should not develop tools that are specific to journalists and we should provide tools that are toward the general audience, provide

value, and serve everyone, but they also take a specific interest in providing to protect the use -- that come to june analysts -- to journalists. right, journalists, your sources can communicate with you on this. it will be all approve. -- it will be bulletproof. much more nuanced than that. suddenly stand out like a sore thumb when people are looking at the crowds. when you look at the analysis over mass surveillance systems, they go, who is using the communications signature of this one program that we know is associated with journalists communications? >> encryption makes you invisible, but highly visible to [indiscernible] >> everything will intelligence group in the world goes, why is

this person different? we see this in is changing and normalizing the use of immigrants are in -- of encryption, which is important we are hiding within the crowd. this is being done which has been going on for a number of years. i trusted my life to it, and history shows it did work. it is not bulletproof and is -- in the future. things,sactional basically what do you use for your bank transactions online, communications, all the stuff has to happen with greater -- i will say one thing, have to point out i'm disappointed in amazon.com so uses unencrypted vacations. when you go and look at a copy about84" online or a book wherever organization,

that jurisdiction is, they can see what books you are looking at. this is incredibly dangerous, and it is morally response will as a business, and it is problematic that amazon allows this to continue. when they have the capability to provide more secure communications, because as soon as you go to purchase that book, they turn it over to encrypted communications. i would hope that amazon would take a position there, and say, all right, let's encrypt the whole library. >> some of our friends from "the washington post" can answer. i would love to do this for but we are at the end of our allotted time. i wanted to thank you for both taking the time to talk to us and thank you for taking the risks you have to inform the public. [applause]

>> thank you. you can go off to your party, and i am no longer disrupting the conversation. thank you so much. >> obviously, you will have a lot of people here to welcome here if you do come back one day. it seems like a great segue. the tech support, but we have the next x, an incredible array of experts and tools.ion those of you who are interested, head upstairs. half hour sessions will be repeating. i hope you will join me there.

i look forward to learning from our experts as much as you do. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> here is a live look of the senate. the senate now voting on a number of executive nominations. lawmakers will then begin debate on the spending bill which the house passed last night. the president signed a c.r.nuing resolution or funny the government until tomorrow night giving the senators time to pass the spending bill. the house was in a pro forma session today and passed another temporary cr that funds the government until next wednesday at midnight. just in case the senate needs even more time to pass the false

pending bill. this could be approved by the senate it are today or tomorrow and be delivered to the white house for the president to sign before saturday night's deadline. given taking your comments on federal spending all day today on twitter and facebook. a couple of posts here. variances the republican just that every one of their voters in the backs. i am done with the republican party forever. jerry posts, our democracy has been sold to the highest others. the oligarchs are now on charge and this recent bill passed the house gives them more power. you can tell us what you think. coming up tomorrow on c-span, how sharpton is joining the garner, anderic trayvon martin for the national justice for all march to the u.s. capitol. it is being organized by the black women's roundtable, and double acp, and national urban made along with partners from

civil rights, labor and the church. i've coverage begins at noon eastern from freedom plaza in washington. >> here are some of programs you will find this weekend. sunday evening, politico reporters share stories about being on the campaign trail with mitch mcconnell. night, lin saturday lewis on money and politics. then senior correspondent for the daily beast on sunday on the military use of cyberspace to wage war. on saturday,ory tv kean onincluding deavid skills up toactor the a president.

and sunday at 8:00, a former showso president makes it his interview with the former president about vietnam, watergate, and his resignation. find out the complete schedule at www.c-span.org and let us know about the programs you are watching. call us, e-mail us, or send us a tweet. join the conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. retired marine corps general john allen is now a special presidential envoy who is coordinating the effort combat isis. he spoke yesterday on the threat state andhe islamic the strategy for defeating it. this is hosted by the wilson center and runs an hour.

>> good morning, everyone. >> good morning. >> good morning. i am jane harman, the president the wilson center. a recovering politician. it is not a 12 step program. we are delighted to host him here today. i first met general john allen while i was taking a congressional delegation to guantanamo prison. we stopped at centcom to see my good friend david pretorius. general allen was dave's debited. down at dinner and i

was in pressprich first rising from dec deputy commander and isaf taking command of when dave went to cia. general allen spearheaded some tough missions in your form, but he has led two of his toughest out of it, organizing and effort as special envoy to the global coalition against isil and keeping israeli-palestinian peace discussions warm on the security side. when a history of the last three years is written, i hope there will be something positive to say about what has been achieved in the middle east. if there is, major credit will be due to general john holland, and we are thrilled to have him today. the plan is to ask general allen to make some opening remarks. i will then ask him a few questions, and will take audience questions.

what is missing that little clock that shows me the time so i make sure we keep this event to an hour. we may have a camera men in front of a clock, but someone will figure that appeared general allen, welcome. much for thatery introduction. i will seek to live up to the standards in the comments that you have made. let me first start by addressing your comment about being a recovering politician. regardless of regardless of how you would describe yourself all of us who no you and you have seen you in action in this town regardless of whether you depict yourself as a politician or anything else, we all knew you as a leader, a forever leader, someone who will influence the discussion in this town for many

years to come and also someone who has touched many of our lives and, frankly, made us better for your participation and presence in our lives. i speak for thousands of people who have had an opportunity to interact with you and are better people for it. as we walked down the steps coming in here, you were telling me about woodrow wilson and the magnificence of his vision. this particular institution is an engine for thought that creates an opportunity for all of us to do better. so thank you for that. it is difficult to find a particular starting point to represent the role that i play in this particular crisis.

i had the great opportunity to have serve in iraq, where i had a difficult time, a little bit in 2006, all of 2007 and part of where i had the chance to see a crisis in a very personal way into work closely not just with the emerging iraqi and provincial governments but also to work very closely with the tribes, the sheikhs, and to understand some of the dynamics and the true complexities that are the inherent reality of working in a rack or more broadly in the middle east. and so when i i received a call out long ago as to whether i would take this position, i called my wife and we had a conversation. i was well entrenched in retirement, making a little bit of money, and we both agreed

that the 4500 of our young americans who never made it out of iraq alive was a reason for me to take this position and the thousands who were wounded in the families who will ultimately bear the price and the consequence of that. so i do what i do and try to do what i do not just to be of help to the president and the administration, but also to make their sacrifice meaningful. the role that i play in this particular crisis is to work with the coalition and to work within the strategy for the implementation of the strategy. the first is to help consolidate the coalition of the many states that are involved, 62 separate countries, number of international organizations who have come together because they all in common believe that the

crisis of isil is a crisis for our time, a crisis within the region, and is not just an issue and associated solely with syria or with the potential fragmentation of iraq. it is a crisis that can come home to all of us in the context of foreign fighters command we talked a bit about that and the reality of foreign fighters last night. as we have gone through the process of consolidating the membership of the coalition, and i believe we are generally they there although there

will be members who we will still seek to become members but their will be those at some. we are generally there. the second thing that i do is to seek to integrate the contributions of the members of the coalition into the strategy, and in that context, as we said in a previous conversation the strategy with regard to the coalition generally falls along five lines of operation. the first of those is the military line, the one that is receiving the greatest attention today, the one that is most conspicuous and in broad terms has two components. one is the current campaign which is intended to blunt and reverse the momentum of daish and set the conditions ultimately for the other very large portion of the mission which is the building of partner capacity to give the iraqis ultimately the moderate syrian opposition capability to deal with daish in the battle space. very broad and precise explanations that we can get into greater detail about. the other four lines of effort in which coalition partners are playing heavily, and they receive less attention, and it is important to understand that

these are prominent investments of national prestige and treasure and blood, is the effort by the coalition to deal with foreign fighters. foreign fighters are something we will live with for a long time. they originate for a particular reason in source countries, and as they generally are recruited mostly through social media they can be recruited, and doctrine aided, and targeted and sometimes not even have to leave the home country. we are working together to deal with the recruitment of foreign fighters, their transit from source countries across borders using international transportation, the mechanisms by which they are able to find themselves into syria and iraq and in other places and ultimately what we do as a

community of nations, but specifically by virtue of our internal efforts, what we do to react to them when they come back. there has been, i think, some very good work that has been done by individual states and international organizations to highlight the problem and take executive and legislative action domestically to deal with the problem. we will be dealing with foreign fighters for a long time. the third area is the area of understanding and beginning to squeeze and disrupt the revenue streams that give daish the ability to conduct its operations. they generally fall into several areas. the one that is most conspicuous is the area of the oil enterprises, from where it comes out of the ground to its refinement, the refining process, the development of products, the transportation of products, the black-market sale

and the illicit enterprise that is associated with the distribution, generation of cash, the use of certain bank branches and the connection of those banks into the international financial system. understanding the supply chain and understanding the nervous system if you will has been something of great importance to us. we have dedicated significant intelligence assets to it to begin to understand where we can start to take it apart. other areas where daish is able to generate revenues is the coercive criminal activities that it inflicts on the populations over which it has sway, in the populations in the area of occupation. plundering the occupation that it rules at this particular moment.

as well, daish is involved in kidnap for ransom. a great deal of revenue is generated at a much lower level. sons and daughters of prominent individuals throughout the region are sold back to tribes or organizations, not an insignificant amount. of course daish is now engaged in the year 2014 active slave trade. sometimes we have been so exposed to this organization that in some respects people become desensitized to how horrendous this organization truly is and what it has done to the people that it has conquered

and what it is prepared to do to the other people that it is prepared to conquer. for an organization not just to be engaged in slave trade but to celebrate the fact that it is doing, just has to continue to be one of the important factors. tragically all of those things together are tragic enough, selling the antiquities and in other areas where they have plundered museums. foreign contributions that have been helpful, although we think that that amount is reduced largely because the oil enterprises permitted to be self financing. a fourth area is the area of humanitarian assistance. this is one that must be part of our attention, one that the coalition has been hugely helpful in helping us to reduce the misery and the human

suffering for the large population that has been affected in the middle east, but very specifically in syria and iraq. helping the refugee populations on the frontline states of turkey, lebanon, jordan, and they deserve great credit. the humanitarian nature of what they have done. but also, of course, beyond answering the u.n. appeals for syria and iraq, helping countries in the region deal with the large substantial refugee populations will have to be keenly attuned to the immediate humanitarian needs of the populations which we will be liberated in the course of the counteroffensive, which we were

anticipating 2015, at least in iraq. and in many cases beyond the generosity of the united states in contributing to the humanitarian piece of this, the elements of the coalition have been equally within their means generous, both to the u.n. and other international organizations to help end the suffering. the fifth area and was the coalition is deeply involved, and it is one that is really essential to success is dealing with the image of daish, and it is really a two-sided coin. go about the business of delegitimizing the organization, exposing it for what it is, pointing out the massive flaws with the idea of compromising its attractiveness for the purposes of recruiting, to diminish within its own ranks the sense that it has inevitable

outcome with the caliphate that we will endure in the region. the other side of the same coin, as i said, is an opportunity to celebrate those societal values and the values of the faith of islam that deserve ultimately to be highlighted in the context that they exist in direct contravention to that which daish stands for, so it is not just important that we delegitimize the movement. it is equally important that we celebrate the values of this marvelous faith, celebrate the values of the region, and in the inherent nature of the relationship, the complementary effort do away with our diminish

the idea of daish at the same time. so the coalition has come together. members of the coalition are actively contributing across these five lines of effort. we are working hard with our coalition partners in the context of the strategy to bring to bear the full capabilities of the coalition ultimately to accomplish the strategy, and now we move to the third principal area in which i am engaged, which is the coalition, coordination, and management. as the coalition comes together one of the most important events that we have seen it is important to recognize the coalition really only starting to come together about three months ago. in the course of about 10 weeks or so, we have gone from a group of states that have a common vision for what needs to be done with daish to an organic organization which met just last wednesday in brussels at the

ministerial level led by secretary kerry and a number of international organizations where the ministers of 47 of the countries of the 62 joined all of those members, all of the states in commenting on the strategy and commenting on the lines of effort in committing their national purpose and their national resources and assets to this common endeavor that we we have undertaken, which is ultimately the degradation and defeat. and that is an important moment. i have then involved in a number of coalitions. i think this is my fifth. when you think about how we operated in the context of the international security assistance force in afghanistan there was a clear legal international basis for that that flowed from the united nations security council resolution but there was also an international framework in the context of nato which gave us