small company called a stub hub for ticket sales. it goes to your point, jonathan, about the communications decency act and whether the government will break the internet. if you look at section 230, we would have said today that the internet had been broken. the irony of section 230 is a law meant to limit speech on the web ended up being one of the greatest proponents. part of this is the government acting in ways that doesn't come out the way they expected it to come out. i do the two did get anywhere close to passing section 230 in the united states.

as the far end of the pendulum it allows everybody to start from a position of we are going to work to keep openness as the basic principle and work act back from there with the exceptions. >> it sounds like you are saying, congress, keep up the good work. just to put you on the record. thanks so much for your enlightened legislation in the internet area. >> a senator from nebraska ended up being a visionary that he never expected to be. [laughter] >> you can layer on acceptable use policies, things that in the company's judgment like auctions that are prohibited. >> sure. that has been from day one also. that was part of the protection of section 230 and 512 that provided for the ability for companies to exercise judgment

and to get rid of things they believe are in the consumer's interest. >> when there's been a conflict and commerce. fake rolex watches, fake wetsuits -- watches being sold on ebay, is that settled now? >> i would say that the great copyright and trademark wars over the internet are not settled. there is always the ability for people to push the envelope. i would say in general for the vast majority of commerce, it's a much better situation than it had been. i think there is no reason to reopen the digital millennium copyright act, and globally most , companies have adopted similar statutes and regulations.

>> can i ask you to weigh in on this? >> i am also from trip advisor. we used to do an online review. intermediary liability is an issue that we confront relatively regularly. i would agree with todd. as the state of it is today in the united states, 230 is a terrific bulwark to our business model and others here today. it is under threat from time to time. you can see that there is a a group of state ag's a year or two ago trying to claw back some of those restrictions. in europe, it is a little bit more unsettled in terms of the regularity and the rules of the road there. it is a less friendly environment for the intermediaries.

>> as todd was suggesting, nothing in particular you would ask of the government? nothing in this area that you are particularly fearing it will do? >> on the u.s. side? >> yes. >> no. internationally, i think clarity. the big ask would be what it looks like. to todd's point, yes, it's unlikely that would be passed today, 230. it may be a difficult road to get past internationally. >> matt, maybe i can ask you. tell us where you're from. >> i am at the republican senatorial committee. prior to that, was in the house majority leader's office. the republican party over the last 20 years has had an amazing resurgence, it is a great, golden age, as we all know. [laughter] >> and how much would an issue like the one we were just

talking about be on the radar, whether for a campaign, or for policymaking, or is this kind of in the weeds? >> presently today it is an issue that is largely to the weeds, which is a benefit to the tech industry as a whole. tech policy is an area of remarkable consensus more or less, and as we have seen in recent policy debates on the hill, there are issues that are forming unusual coalitions, so issues where you have darrell issa working with others, and that is to the benefit of my view of the tech industry that it does not become overly aligned with either political party. as you zoom out the lens on the issue of the right to be forgotten and these other issues, within the construct of how you set up this roundtable and you say what is the perspective in the future, i think it is an inevitable shift as society changes their

perspectives, so-called digital natives into their 30's, 40's and 50's, and frankly we have a different view on things like social posts, search information, and the rest. the baby boomer generation digital immigrants if you well perhaps will be more concerned about some of those issues than digital natives will be ultimately in the end. >> we are hearing about the lifestream people, they are not hearing you. >> they are not hearing me? apologies to the lifestream for the distance of the mics. got it. let me ask a question knowing we have a good friend from facebook at the table. here is just a quick question -- suppose we have some form of

unrest, à la ferguson of the last few weeks, and there are posts on facebook about it, and facebook has an opportunity in the interest of public safety to decide whether to subordinate post that say something like let's meet at the corner of x and y and really show our rage maybe facebook can say well, we will escalate a little bit video of a cat. [laughter] >> they might do that anyways. [laughter] >> let me turn to joel kaplan of all people so he may express his outrage for the record that i would even ask the question. >> yes, i'm just recovering from the shock that my friend, matt would suggest that. joel kaplan. i'm the vice president of u.s. public policy for facebook which was a small startup social

network with a goal of connecting the world, and hopefully by 2024 we will achieve that. it is a great question, and i think it does, it extends out the conversation about intermediary liability in a way that i think touches on some of the broader issues that we see not necessarily the united states. i think i agree with the earlier comments that u.s. law is actually pretty good as a result of section 230 and other efforts, but we do see in other places around the world efforts to hold internet companies responsible for the content of the people who are posting it, user-generated content. one of the places where it manifests itself is when the

citizens are using the internet, not just facebook, but other sites, to communicate their dissatisfaction and potentially plans for meeting, and i can that can turn into unrest. at a summit you see governments around the world i think very conscience of and increasingly conscious of after the arab spring in 2011. >> what is your baseline way of dealing with that? is it analogous to adam's original, as google, google's original view of it is the internet if you have a problem , with it, go to somebody else and facebook is saying look, we have a secret sauce that organizes what posts rise in the feed. we do not tweak it so much, it does what it does, don't blame us. or is there licensed reserve to do exactly that in the interest of the customers or the public good? >> i think you are conflating two issues, which understandably, how the algorithms for the newsfeed operates, and whether facebook will be responsive to a government that wants to

crackdown on dissent. >> you are right. let's talk about the first one first, which is wholly on the absence of government wanting to do anything. with facebook on its own, the way trip advisor might decide that there has been a change in ownership, we are going to make a change to our algorithm that might otherwise show a review. is there is an acceptable use policy? >> the algorithm that facebook uses to determine what to show in an individual's newsfeed is a somehow or effort to show that individual the information we think is most relevant and interesting to that person, and that is a constantly evolving determination, taking into consideration lots and lots of factors. so, i mean, i don't really view that as facebook -- i do not think facebook would view that as its responsibility to determine what the people who are using its service ought to

see. >> now this is getting into my oath as a law professor to ask the hypothetical follow-up -- there is some video from the islamic state that if other users of facebook subscribe into the ideals of the islamic states want to see, you and reserve the right to intercede? works right. >> right. again, i am trying to disaggregate the question of how often the algorithm will show what is on the site, period. it is the case that facebook has community standards that exclude some content and mostly that , stuff that we view as causing direct harm, so if somebody is directly inciting violence on our site, that is precluded under our community standards. >> what i hear you saying is that it is on us. it is not meeting the standards

of inciting violence, it's not that he gets pushed down in the newsfeed, it is just gone. >> if it violates our community standards of inciting violence or otherwise causing direct harm or other things laid out in our standards, it will be precluded from being on our site. the way we enforce that is through a reporting mechanism, so in most instances we are not going out to police that. we're waiting for somebody, one of our users, to report that. >> you would not use the feed algorithm as a remedy, you would only use block it or not block it, take it down or leave it up. >> yes. >> got it. you said there was a second point about government and what it might demand, and facebook of course is a worldwide phenomenon. >> we are obviously a global service, and we have to abide by the law of the countries in which we operate. so in addition to our community standards, basically, we will respond to demands from government if they conform to the laws of that country.

now, we will not typically take something off of our site if we think it does not violate our community standards, but we may i.tp block it in the jurisdiction of the area. >> roughly but not exactly analogous to google implementing a right to be forgotten within the european portals but not elsewhere, and then the user will see a message -- "this is not available." >> right. one of the things we have done as have a number of companies , around the table is publishing , government request reports the purpose of which is to share with our users the number of circumstances in which their government has asked us to take something down. that gives the people who use our service a way of understanding the extent to which their government or some other government is insisting that content be precluded from being seen. >> can i jump in actually?

>> yes, macon. >> i am macon phillips. i used to work for the organization that governed the united states before the great facebook -- [laughter] >> how many users does the u.s. government have? >> i work at the state department now. i joined it about a year ago and prior to that, i worked at the white house after the president was elected in 2008. it occurs to me that i'm in a room with people who can answer this question that i have had for a few years now, and hearing matt talk about how tech policy is in the weeds right now and it is a good thing. i recall the great sopa and pipa debate of 2011 or whenever that was, and being in the white house and seeing this issue develop and how rapidly it developed in the public space once the internet companies started talking about it to the users. and as someone who has spent a few years in internet advocacy -- and advocacy generally -- it was something i had never seen

before. to go from five miles an hour to 100 miles an hour. once google put a link on its page, once expedia had a link at the top, and it occurred to me that these large sort of membership-based organizations that can rapidly communicate to millions of people and frame an issue for people who had no idea what it was before they saw it on this page had this great new power that could be, you know, used to advocate for policy positions when it is presented people in their interest by companies -- they are advocated by corporate incentive, even though they say they are always looking at the customer first. and i think it is good. but being on the receiving side of it, it was remarkable to me to see the power that large internet companies have when they decide to present an issue. >> is there a question you want to ask? >> yes. as the people who are probably

making those decisions -- are we ok talking about the users? when we talk about transparency reports, do we want to tell people how they could, you know, express their views on whether they like this or not? how do you evaluate your responsibility of encouraging advocacy? >> i think we had someone here from reddit, ok, we have a campaign manager from reddit. >> michael decrement with the internet association. we are a public policy trade association represent public policies. if you are watching in 2025, we are also doing drone policy. [laughter] >> a bit too late. >> i think that is an interesting question. looking through the political lens, all politics are local and the approach we take with issues that we bring, we want to make sure that elected officials see our companies and our users

as a constituent interest. if you're a senator from a big agricultural state, you care about the farmers and the crops and you may not have a google or yelp based in your state, but all of your constituents and voters care about the internet and they care about internet issues. they are using facebook, google, trip advisor, yelp, other services, and they care about what happens in the policy. that is what you happen with sopa and pipa. if they see a threat to the services they are using and the platforms, they are going to speak out. >> macon is saying with an association like yours, you have a usual lever to pull. a letter signed by all the company sent to the relevant committee chairs of the president of the administration. there is a special lever, "break glass in case of emergency," which has changed the homepage of google, put the funereal

shroud around the wikipedia entry, and the users here, and i hear macon asking how frequently, under what circumstances will that lead? >> the great thing about the internet is there is a lot of competition and the user is king, so it is not always top-down where the user is saying you need to care about this, it is what matters to users, and competition on the internet, unlike probably any other part of our economy, is a clique click away. it is easy to click from one site to another, whatever is interesting to you, so our company and our industry is very responsive to what the interests of the user are. >> trying to think what might be the next issue where you way to would break glass, pull the lever, and rally directly -- would it be over government surveillance? >> i think that is an important

issue. joel made a good point on his transparency report, something that users care about and our companies and our industry have been leaders on shining the light on government practices and standing up and defending their users. the platforms are all global, so it is not just about users in the united states but about users around the world, and it is something that out think our companies have shown real leadership on. >> yes, lorelei. >> i am going to give an institutionally empathetic respective on capacity. >> tell us who you are. >> my name is lorelei kelly. i am with x lab. we are looking at building the next generation of platforms for public problem-solving. i work on congress and how to -- [laughter] here we go. who watches "house of cards"? congress is not organized enough to be that awful. it is an old jalopy with the hood up right now trying to drive on a modern highway. >> it is just a country legislature. [laughter] >> it is. one of the things i am delighted

about this meeting right now is to bring technology, policy, community, especially the commercial interests, into a conversation about long game policies, and not just showing up when they're mad about something. >> what would crystallize the ask you would like to make to this group? >> i would ask that you invest in a new kind of, not necessarily think tank, but a new kind of knowledge brokering, in a support system with a neighbor like technology for decision-making in the policy arena, which is not crowdsourcing, it is much more curation, much more showing up at the right place at the right time. all information is not created equally. right now, if we do not figure out a way to flip the big data revolution into a competitive political constituency for evidence, we are not going to have a legislature that makes

policy based on the best knowledge available, for example. >> let's just unpack that. the big data revolution, to be able to be used to produce evidence, you mean by that thanks to big data, there is lots more we can know about the world and about people, not just what kind of cat food they are likely to buy -- >> exactly, but they are not necessarily on ramps into the policymaking process right now that are useful or that show up at the right place at the right time. i mean, let's face it, the language between california and washington, d.c. is crazy, and hackers are artists. they are looked at as criminals in d.c., disruption of a business plan and san francisco, a national security threat in washington. there are huge capacity problems inside government right now simply apprehending -- >> is there a classic case study

where you can imagine this being applied, just to be concrete? >> i will give you an example. for the last five years, i was on the hill for 10 years, and we did not even have lcd screens or really basic technical competence inside committee hearings. what if we created a way to create data, predictive modeling or probability modeling or context modeling, inside mark ups while they are voting on amendments? so you have a way to hold members accountable for decisions they are making in the moment about the outcomes for society at large. there are all kinds of ways you can enable -- >> if i put the word "not" into this sentence, this will tell me what will change -- this is how many people -- >> it is very important to say right now it is not the quality -- congress has a huge data quality problem. let's face it. but we do not want to get into the fight about the credibility of big data as much as the quality of it, and i am fine

with: colocating the data if a committee chair will listen to it, which is from their district. it is that kind of mapping that gets to the -- it just gets into the inbox. it is really not that complicated. it is that this community, i think, is thinking that information is the answer. it is not. >> let me stop you there and turned to bruce schneier. bruce, i want to ask you crisply first, after introducing yourself, how worried should the average internet user be about government surveillance in particular in 2014? use whatever units you think appropriate. do you have a view on whether second, there is a way to deploy new technologies, new ways of sorting and searching new information to help this broken jalopy of congress?

>> i am bruce schneier, i work in security and technology and policy on a lot of these issues. this is a complicated question, and to be crisp, i think you have to be very worried about surveillance in general, whether it is government and corporate. simply because it is a new way of organizing society where everything is recorded and used and reused and saved, and the policy implications of that really have not been brought thought through. we have kind of backed through carrying a cell phone or using a search engine without really thinking about what the ramifications are. policy fixes i think are going to come not directly but from , the side. we do not really see appetite in congress, really in many countries, to attack these countries head-on. europe more than the united states, but even so not much.

i look towards some of the regulatory agencies, some of the ways you can get policy, which is informed by technology, into action that does not require legislators. i tend to be near-term pessimistic and long-term optimistic, and i will leave you tantalizing at that point. >> a lot of the companies present around the table are themselves on behalf of their users newly sensitized to maintaining a certain distance from government, securing user data. i'm curious is or anything you would ask around the table or is this pretty much the issue and they are working on it? >> right now the issue is in the forefront. the companies that are fighting surveillance want to do it themselves. google is not saying, "we do not

like surveillance." google is saying, "it is our job, go away." we need to get to the point where users want business models that don't have surveillance. when duck, duck, go surpasses google and search engine traffic, you know that we won. >> or if policy or something like it is adopted. >> or you go in through policy. we are at the point where technology can become policy and policy can become technology. >> let me ask althea. tell us where you are from, and given the posture of the couple you are working with and the place in the industry, how much do these issues of surveillance, whether in relation to the government -- i am trying to figure out what sort of request the government would make of etsy -- we need to know where that scarf came from.

[laughter] on maybe the corporate surveillance side that bruce was rather incendiary, striking the tinder on -- how much are you concerned about user rights privacy within the commerce that you facilitate? >> i am with etsy, an online marketplace, and for us the government surveillance issue is not as you implied much of an issue, we just do not have government knocking on our door all that often, which is great. it lets us not worry about that as much. on the user privacy piece, for us it is really a matter of building and maintaining trust with our user base, so when we are making decisions about how to use data internally, we just gut check ourselves. if i knew that was happening for me, would i find that creepy? that is important for us because

if we use the data we collect about our users in a way that they -- that would lose trust without consumer base, they are going to go somewhere else, so that is sort of how -- we do police ourselves, i guess. >> i once went to hormel foods in minnesota and met their bacon taster, a guy whose job was to taste bacon all day long. >> great job. >> at some point he would go you know what, it is best before today, and they would stamp the package and be like, "now we know." etsy is like, "you know, that policy, it would be best if it were not that way." >> right. >> maybe i should put it out voluntary questions before i call on someone, maybe from yelp or something -- [laughter] how broken, if at all, is the model of data gathering and usage that, in many ways, drives

the free internet? maybe less so the transactional internet, but you get the free information -- somebody has got to pay for all of this stuff. advertising has a storied history back to free television. is this model -- you just need to adjust it to deal with the occasional creepiness, or is there something fundamentally worrisome about it? why don't i put it to you, laurent? >> sure. laurent crenshaw with yelp. ultimately, i would say that at this point, in 2014, i do not think it is broken. i will just put that out there. yelp is a platform that can next connects people to local businesses that are around them, so whether it be a restaurant or a dry cleaner or wherever, you want to find out what is best in your location, you can go on yelp and look at user id's and

content -- >> how does yelp make its money? >> through advertising. basically we get businesses to purchase ad packages on yelp and if you are searching for a dry cleaner, a restaurant -- >> you have two lists, here are the good dry cleaners, and here are the ones that paid us, and they are marked. >> it is marked as an advertisement, so the user knows, and we try to do everything that we can to eliminate any sort of confusion there. at the same time, that is how we make our revenue, through that manner, and i do not think there is anything wrong with it. from our sense, it is not about collecting a ton of information about the user. in essence, it is easy to set up a yelp account, your first name, last name, initial, date of birth, and an e-mail address. anything you want to put in after that is up to the user themselves.

>> is the data you are collecting, i guess the targeting happens quite naturally. you are looking for the dry cleaner in this area, boom. are you doing targeting on the basis of inference about a user rather than just on a search? >> from our standpoint we want , to build to tell the business and provide the most useful information about who is going there, so it is a matter of how many people who might be going to that page. >> what demographics would you give them to say old people really like your dry cleaning, maybe young people not so much? quick sure. along those lines. nielsen and other companies put out various metric thing the vast majority of yelp users are college graduates, most of them are in the 25-50 range and make over x amount a year, and also generally speaking have been able to sort of show that within a period of time, like within a

week, you want to go to yelp to spend money, to buy something, so those are metrics that we are able to take to business owners, tell them why they should advertise on our platform. >> leigh, from the point of view of your company, we are about to hear about, basically plus one or a difference from what laurent just described? >> thank you. my name is leigh freund. i'm the head of global public policy for aol. it is an online media company that has reinvented itself many times. we make our money primarily from advertising as well, and i would add to what laurent said. we talk a lot about privacy at aol, and i think joel talked about transparency in terms of government requests we get. transparency for users is the we way we get their trust.

so in our privacy policy, we try to make things easy to read, we try to get people options if they do not want to be targeted on advertising. >> how many pages is the privacy policy? >> it is much shorter as of september 15. >> a provocative answer. [laughter] all of the fat has been removed from the privacy policy. >> the legalese, right? facebook, i read through privacy policies on facebook and yahoo!, and we all try to do the same thing, to give people information about the type of data we collect any type of data we use, and one of the things i think that is an important consideration is the way we the distinguish between personally identifiable information, like "i am michael beckerman, i live in washington, d.c., here is my social security and credit card information," and "i am a user who lives in washington, d.c. who searches golf equipment," hypothetically. right? we use the ladder in an aggregate form.

if i were to use personal information to target michael beckerman for an ad based on clicks and the millions of impressions that we need for advertisers, it would not be successful strategy. so aggregating all of the information laurent was talking about and all of the information about user behavior to serve them targeting advertising is i think something that a lot of the companies around the table do, but one of the things that we try to do in a reasonable way is give transparency to our users and choices about whether or not they want to be targeted. you have got an opportunity to opt out of that kind of data collection and targeting. and i think that there is always a balance in our industry -- >> i hear you -- >> -- between privacy and free internet. >> let me stop you there. let me see if we can make it a

viral sensation by turning to margaret. same idea here? >> margaret with yahoo!. we are a company that provides -- we are trying to meet users' daily habits every day with weather, sports, finance e-mail. plus one, absolutely to the comments. the other thing you are starting to see a lot of on the privacy front is an issue that the companies around this table are dealing with everyday. if our users don't trust us they will not continue to use our service. we are always trying to ensure what we are doing is something the users will be comfortable with, understand, and be clear. one of the things that companies are doing is starting to not necessarily compete on privacy but i think people are starting , to see privacy as a way to

differentiate their product and to talk to users about privacy more directly. one of the things that you are seeing a lot of contextual privacy notices and trying to make sure when you are on an app you are seeing what is happening on the app and not the yahoo! website. when you're interacting with an advertisement, you will see privacy notices about the kind of data that is informing that advertisement. on our sports website, you're seeing your favorite football team, the redskins. there is going to be a way for you to understand why you are getting that information in context. that is one of the areas where you are seeing development and trying to make that communication more clear. >> let me ask you about the point on competition. that is getting to bruce schneier's comment. you are suggesting that here as well.

if i am the average internet user, might something i am doing on yahoo! implicate something i see on aol or yelp? are there ways in which the information about me that facilitates advertising moves among the websites? is it basically go? do you glean from your users and those are not mappable on another site? >> there are circumstances where what is happening on one site is being used on other sites as well. that sort of mapping is for yahoo! always disclosed, partners we work with and have relationships with other websites. that is clearly disclosed in our privacy policy. when it is related to advertising, you can click and see who the partners are. we try to make that clear to

users because we understand that is something they would want to understand. i cannot speak to every other internet company and how they handle relationships with their parties. >> on the regulatory front, do you see anything coming from government? is this stable? the jalopy is not chasing it? >> i think the jalopy don't -- i don't think the jalopy is chasing us. >> it is a weird metaphor. [laughter] >> i think it is something because so many people use technology and are seeing the ways it is being integrated into our daily life, i think it is something everyone is paying a lot of attention to. there is a lot of attention on it and a lot of oversight, which is appropriate. whether that will lead to legislation or regulation in the immediate future, i am not sure. i think the dialogue and oversight is important.

you're seeing a lot of companies work together on regulatory efforts. i think there are best practices and things that will move forward maybe more quickly than rigorous -- regulation or legislation. it is certainly an issue we are all focused on. >> in the future, i think we will see this change from a person-interface site world we are living in and moving to the pigpen world in which you as a person with your device carry around all your data. all around you, people are seeking data about you and for you. >> the data may not literally be in the device. otherwise, i will be sad if i lose it. you are saying the authority to release it may be much more interactive rather than a one-time i agreed to that policy five years ago. it will be somebody is wanting

to know x about you right now. how do you feel about that? >> i walk into starbucks and i have my starbucks app. they know who i am when i walked into the store. they say here is your coffee you like, todd, it has already been prepared for you. >> let's check in with etsy. how is the creepy meter on that? [laughter] no coffee for you. we will get over that and you will be able to stride into starbucks. they will have a lamppost a block away. the coffee will be hot when you arrive at starbucks. >> or you will drive by the lamppost and it will say there is a starbucks right here. isn't it time for you to have your starbucks? at 4:00 in the afternoon when you search for a location, it will say, are you going home? i do think we are moving to,

whether it is deliberate or not, we will all end up as pigpen carrying our data around us. >> that may not be the best metaphor. [laughter] >> that is the creepy side of it. >> i am being chased by a jalopy. >> one thing i would add is that may be creepy to althea, but i would love it if every time i walked into starbucks my cup of coffee was ready and i did not have to wait in line. that is where the user choosing to put that app on his phone -- >> people are coming in and grabbing stuff. if you are a third party in 2014 looking at this, you are like what is going on? , if we rfid money, it is like pushing the grocery cart and it adds up your stuff because it is tagged. you could grab buckets of money

in the bank left out in the lobby. you just walk out the door and it would check you out. it would be, ok, $272. >> why would you need money at that point? [laughter] >> so you could save walking into a bank. [laughter] >> you may not want to try that in 2014. >> i think it speaks back to the generational shift and societal tolerance for those issues. remember the seamless sharing apps three or four years ago which i loved. the washington post had one and there were others. they would seamlessly share after one-time authorization your netflix viewing. by and large, users got freaked out by that and they deemphasized that. >> you are suggesting it is generational. you have young people walking in

and grabbing a coffee and old people in line. >> as our society gets more used to things, you can move the ball slightly forward. i do believe things like that today may sound creepy in five , or 10 years, it may sound -- >> weird talking about the melding of physical infrastructure and the internet out there. walking down the street, i cannot help but think to turn to you and how much you as a c.i.o. of a public entity is about keeping the trains running on time on the desktops of the employees of the city versus thinking about what role there might be in public infrastructure to support the kind of vision todd is talking about. >> i am the chief information officer for the city of boston formerly a small colony of

puritans down the road from here and now the hub of the regional economy. [laughter] it is an interesting question. certainly much of my job does consist of making sure the trains run, the computers work. that having been said, i think as a city, near where the rubber meets the road sometimes literally on the more innovative technologies being developed when it comes to things like transportation, things like lodging. we have, as an organization, a legitimate public policy interests at play when it comes to these new innovative technologies. we are less in the realm of privacy and intermediary liability as a policy matter. we do have to think about things like public safety, liability, and protection of landlords and individuals participating in

these new and innovative services. the challenge we run into and there is a shift i think is happening. we have gone from a place of many municipalities to one where we believe we have an obligation to try to support the innovation economy, to work with companies doing innovative things, and find ways to meet our public policy needs and objectives in a practical sense. the challenge we face now is there's not necessarily great models for this that do address those challenges at the local level. that is what we are struggling to do, to work with companies to make sure we are developing policies that are smart and don't just shut down things that should be given room to grow. >> how much of your concern within a municipal government

has to do with what joel alluded to, getting internet available to everybody? i cannot help but ask, how much would something like net neutrality be something in which something like the city of boston would have a stake? would boston have a view on net neutrality? >> boston does have a view on net neutrality. our mayor has signed on to the conference of mayors statement encouraging regulatory agencies to support and preserve net neutrality. we look at it from a couple of different angles. one is we are a center of the innovation economy. we think it is important for businesses in boston to be able to thrive and have an open mr. -- an open internet. would also look at it as a question of equity and ensuring our citizens -- we've you access -- we view access to affordable

broadband as being a core issue in our cities and something we have oversight into how we think about our policies. for us, we want to make sure when a citizen goes online whether they are doing business with the city, accessing educational information, looking for job opportunities, trying to start a business, that they have the connectivity and bandwidth they need to do that. as a result, we have skin in the game. >> is there a hunger to produce municipal fiber or get the city into the broadband business? >> we are committed to ensuring every resident of boston has access to affordable high-speed broadband internet. there are a lot of different ways to solve that problem. i don't think we have figured out the right answer for that. i don't think we are where we need to be.

for our most under-connected residents, there are not a lot of great options now. but we are looking at ways to encourage and increase the adoption of broadband. >> does anyone want to weigh in on net neutrality? >> i want to go back to the first question you asked in regards to internet and technology adoption within the city in particular. take the general premise of, will government break the internet and flip it around. i want to say the internet can help governments do their jobs better. that is what lorelei was talking about earlier. we have tremendous amounts of data we continue to get on a daily basis on millions of users. one thing a lot of companies will continue to do is figure out ways to package this data

that can be helpful to government entities. >> does yelp offer that for government? >> you can go on yelp and rate any general space. [laughter] >> how much are you worried about optimizing city of boston, 4.5 stars. [laughter] >> our parking clerk's office is not faring so well. [laughter] >> is there something that could be done? is it a feedback issue or a different issue? >> i don't think anyone is going to the parking clerk for a good time. [laughter] in terms of how we do service delivery, we are thinking about how we use data. some of that is about using the data we have and collect in a more strategic ways in our organization to manage, set targets, create accountability creating transparency with the

public. we are interested not only in the data sets we have but the ones that exist in the public and how we can interact with that in an effective way. for us, it is less thinking about how many stars we have on yelp but are we delivering good services and holding ourselves accountable for that. there are a lot of ways to use technology to do that. >> i am a professor at george washington university and a fellow at the shore and steen center at harvard. and thinking about whether government can break the internet, i think the answer is no because the internet as a peer to peer network is already broken and has been for some time. the notion of peer to peer network where my computer, my website, is treated equally to all others was true until about 2007 and 2008. up to that point, when amazon

put something online and i put something online, we both had to take the same path over the internet. >> now amazon writes a check or builds its own delivery network, and you cannot. >> now the vast majority of web traffic never touches the public background. -- backbone. instead of having to go through regional networks and up to the main national fiber networks and back down taking dozens of hops along the way, now when i do a google search, it is just a few hops. instead of using the backbone, there is a direct fiber connection between comcast and google. the reason this has happened is because we are all very sensitive to tiny slowdowns in latency. it is now the de facto structure of how the internet functions.

>> is this something of which policy makers should be seized or is it something see, the , system works? >> i think the real concern is less about bandwidth, which is mostly what policymakers have been talking about, and much more about latency. the single best established fact about web traffic is higher latency, waiting a fraction of a second longer between when you click the button and the page loads, it is impossible to build an online audience without having a blazingly fast site. google has spent billions of dollars just to be about a quarter of a second faster. the concern is not so much youtube or netflix. if they have to pay for more bandwidth, they will. the concern is if comcast is in the situation of being able to force everybody else to pay for

latency, that is not just about google or netflix. that is about every single newspaper site. >> where do you park that concern? is that something want to say wake up, congress, you need to do x? or is it something for which you want to invoke the industry? where do we take that concern? >> i think it has to be a concern in the corporate boardroom, the federal communications commission, the federal trade commission absolutely in the halls of congress. >> they are all listening to you. what do you want them to do? >> i think the most important principle is making sure people don't -- people and small carriers especially don't have to pay to have the same latency amazon or google does. a net neutrality focused more on

latency rather than bandwidth. making sure that if i have my own upstart online that it runs roughly as fast as amazon. >> is there anything you would ask of the supranational entities, the internet governance entities? is there a job for ichan here? >> it is something regulators in europe and around the world should pay attention to. the notion that if comcast and other -- because there is no competition for truly high-speed internet, you really do have -- what comcast is explicitly trying to do is become a market maker or essentially the model. the ability to say nice website,

it is a shame it runs half a second slower than everyone else's. >> we start making mafia metaphors. i would turn to comcast and we don't have one. let me ask among the barons that have the billions to not have this be a problem, are you guys basically sitting pretty? are you concerned about the future of the infrastructure that delivers bits between you and your customers? joel? >> of course we are concerned about it. my guess is most of the companies around the table are concerned. we have on net neutrality taken the position through our association that it is something the fcc needs to address and preserve. i agree with matthew that latency is a huge issue for users, particularly in the

developed world where most people have access. they are now to the next stage of wanting access as fast as possible. other parts of the world, that is not the issue. only about one third of the world has internet connection. the bigger challenge in huge parts of the world's is to get to the first step, which is access, to get them online at all. that is something we are focused on. >> how do you think through the natural possibility that when you get them online, you will get them online in a mode that says we will give you facebook wikipedia, a few other things we curate? anything else, let's wait until you can pay for it. how do you think through that form of what i gather is a non-neutral net you are providing at no cost? how do you think through what

that would look like to somebody? is it a good thing if somebody thinks the internet is wikipedia? >> about 85% of the people in the world live within wireless coverage. only about 1/3 of the world is online. there is a huge delta that needs to be filled. it is not an infrastructure problem. it is an awareness problem. what are the benefits i can get from being online? it is a cost problem that they cannot afford data. one of the things we in cooperation with governments and other companies are trying to do is figure out, are there business models and ways to address the awareness and cost issue? one is by providing some free basic services.

about a month ago, internet.org rolled out an app in zambia which provides basic services. facebook is on there, so is wikipedia, so are a number of maternal health organizations. >> that is the curated stuff i was referring to. >> things that are important to get to the people in that country. we will see how it works. so far, there is good interest. that is a way to started -- to start addressing the access problem. we think that is a good thing. >> it almost suggests a path from no internet, non-neutral internet is not such a terrible alternative path to neutral internet. >> i think there are issues we are properly focused on in the united states and other areas in the developing world that will be important in the developing world as well. there are threshold issues.

you've got to get them online and to see the value of connection. that is something we are focused on. >> i will give philip kent and opportunity to weigh in. >> i am the last person on earth who will defend comcast. i am the recently retired c.e.o. turner broadcasting. [laughter] i do think it needs to be recognized that these companies have made a massive investment in infrastructure. it is not a public resource. they are entitled to make money on it. they have to respond to the marketplace. i'm going to voice a bigger concern that we should have about companies like comcast. they have to respond to the marketplace. they cannot afford to have people not be able to get to certain sites. they roll their eyes when people say to them you're going to

discriminate. >> that is true even if they are the only broadband game in town. >> well, we will see. as a citizen out of the industry, i am frightened about the implications of their growing size. we spent half an hour on privacy. nobody mentioned the cable operators. these new generations of set top boxes are capable of obtaining and keeping and using all of this private information. if you have a new generation set-top box, every show you watch every minute of the day. nobody talks about that. they talk about facebook and yahoo! i am amazed at that. >> getting to the reality of internet in 2014, many people would be saying television cable? all i need is broadband. what the hell is a set top box? is it the name of the game for a company like comcast is

ultimately cable where broadband is the loss leader? >> they make more money on it now. there is a higher margin. because of the strength of programming companies like espn, margins have gone down. that is how they started. the potential of what these boxes can do good and bad, good for advertising and bad for privacy. something i am amazed there is not more discussion of. >> we are almost out of time. i want to give the handful of people who have yet to weigh in a moment to say something. together, we who have not spoken, leaving out myself bring us in for a landing. is there something we have missed? is there anything we have covered for which there is something vital you want to add? john. >> i come at it from a news media perspective and echo some of matt's concerns.

it remains the case that media organizations, no matter how maligned they are today with business models as having trouble, provide a huge amount of important information in the united states. i fear in a metered internet situation and a non-neutrality situation, we could lose a great deal of that civic lee -- seve -- civicly important information. >> is there anything you would ask of government? write us a check like a national endowment? >> public spectrum for the public good. maybe a big media merger tax. we have thrown around the idea of nonprofit fast lanes or some

version of that. >> get c-span faster than ever. [laughter] latency on the agriculture committee. i should not be saying this about c-span. [laughter] >> alex jones, i am the director of the media center on public policy. a couple of things in the news today that bear on this. one is the lawsuit against yelp in san francisco that charged effectively that yelp with shaking down advertisers and threatening them with lower rankings if they did not buy advertising. that was totally thrown out. yelp said we did not do it. but the point is the court said it does not matter whether you did it or not. you can do any damn thing you

please with that information. it turns the issue of a company's ownership of data and what they do with it and how they use it entirely into a first amendment issue. >> we have another panel coming up. are there things we could imagine companies subscribing to? maybe we don't need a law preventing it but something that would say we will never do it and sue us if we do. >> as i understand this decision, that is the argument and what the court bought. >> a company can make it so that they are sueable. they don't like it but they can. >> from yelp's perspective, there is never amount of money a business could pay to influence the overall. >> if i had a small tablet of wet cement and a stylus, would yelp be willing to write into that tablet a commitment to that through 2025? >> it has always been our commitment since the company was founded.

>> every day, the farmer comes to the chicken and feeds it. [laughter] >> the court didn't even have to get to the point of addressing whether or not the claim we made was true. >> that is alex's point. that is what alex is saying. i'm asking, can you imagine the company promising for the future it will resemble the past in that way? >> generally speaking, i would say most companies have an ethos they were founded on and follow. that has been one of the core ethos of yelp. >> we are not going to move a car office lot today. >> exactly. >> but it is something you might be willing to consider. it brings us full circle to the beginning of the panel with joel pointing out we might get rid of stuff under the aup, but we are not messing with the feed.

that is at least what i heard you saying. one might wonder, could that amount to a commitment of some kind in the future or not? obviously, we are not going to move a car office lot today. those might be interesting to think about to bridge the gap alex is invoking. >> even though yelp and other companies would not do it, they would argue in court for the right to do it because they have first amendment rights. that is the way they are interpreting them. i think that is something that is going to be a real issue. >> why not establish a reputational stake in something? i don't know if google regrets it, don't be evil. that is a way of saying come at us public, if we let you down. even in our ways that are not legally cognizant. >> google has ways of looking at this issue. the right to do what you want to with the data you collect is an interesting question the courts will have to deal with. >> alex, thank you for that intervention.

wonderful. adam, let me turn to you. we are overtime>> i just want to say that we have a new startup in political engagement that we haven't launched yet. the dominant marketshare leader changed the world, get in early. >> thank you, adam. [laughter] the total spirit of the startup represented here. catherine? past. nancy? . nico? >> i reserve the balance of my time. >> join me in thanking our panel. [applause] >> we stand adjourned until

11:00 a.m. [general chatter]

>> good morning, early birds. welcome to our first international playbook breakfast. we appreciate all of you coming out. welcome to all of you out in live stream land watching.

we appreciate you. we'd love to bring you into our virtual conversation. i've got my brand new twitter machine here so just send me your questions, tweet your questions at #playbookbreakfast, we'll ask you -- we are very honored to have with us the mayor of london, boris johnson, who is a mayor, a candidate, a author, a columnist, and quite a few other things youll see in just a minute. we are very grateful to the bank of america for making these conversations available. we love the range of topics of the most important views and events in washington that come up. so we have gone on the road. this time of road came to us across the pond. we appreciate bank of america has been a tremendous partner on this play d.c. boost series and we are excited about -- on this playbook series and we are excited about it. there are survey cards. this is a first on your seat. the playbook series is a success because of you. we appreciate your thoughts about who you'd like to see as guests. any changes you'd like to make us see in the format. without further delay it's a great honor to welcome the mayor of london, boris johnson. thank you so much for coming. >> good morning. good morning. rickety chair. it will be all right. >> you told me you did not arrive by bicycle today which is your usual. >> i have used your wonderful--. you got a wonderful bike tire system here which i think you may have borrowed from another city. it works well.

i didn't use it this time. why not? to my shame. next time i will. >> in london, you actually arrive at an event on your bike. >> yes. it's the most -- it's the easiest way to get around. in spite of the great efforts made to improve the traffic in london, i'm afraid ample traffic speeds increased from 9.3 to 9.4 miles an hour since i have been there. you're basically better off going by bike if you can. i love cycling. i really urge everybody to cycle to work. you arrive in an irritatingly optimistic frame of mind. i didn't go that kind of speed. piece of an elderly french onion -- you don't work up much of a sweat in london. because the climate is so temperate and beautiful. you don't have huge, huge balls of snow such as i have seen on the east coast of america.

>> last night you were at our -- your embassy in the u.s., meeting the ambassador. tell us what that was like. >> the reason i'm here just -- i'm here because the commercial relationship between london and america is the most important that we have. and we can never take it for granted. >> this is the commercial. >> it's important to get this in. what's this guy doing here? what i'm trying to remind american investors is that ours is the city where they really need to focus if they want to bridge into the european market. we'll come to that later on. it is the -- in spite of everything, we have more people in financial services in london, even than new york according to one statistic. we have more american banks established in london. we have a massive, massive new tech center growing up by half a million people employed in sin tech, biotech, med tech,

green tech, tech aztec. the whole thing. that is taking off at an extraordinary rate. we have been talking to investors in boston, in new york about how they see london. it's very exciting. lots of companies are coming over. it's about building up that transatlantic flow of investment. because in the end people could always say they want to go to berlin. and that would be a mistake. but i have to -- i've got to help them to avoid that mistake. that's my -- >> the smithsonian is looking at coming to london. how is that going? what are the hopes for that project? >> this is a fantastic project. we cannot count our chickens. did you know, 18% of the genetic material of every chicken in the world was developed in london? can that possibly be true?

if you tempted to count your chickens, they almost certainly are from london. >> check your facts. >> we are not quite there yet. what happened was the board of regents of the smithsonian, one of the greatest cultural institutions in the world. 19 incredible museums. they decided in january at a historic vote they were going to explore, have discussions with us about making their first outpost overseas in our city. that is fantastic news for london, obviously. because i think the smithsonians -- i used to go there as a kid. it's a wonderful place. the people of east london will have -- it will be part of a complex of incredible institutions on the stratford side where we held the olympics. an area of post trillion -- an area that's been derelict for a long time but now going gangbusters.

if this thing comes off, we'll put the smithsonian in with a new victoria and albert museum east will have a new ucl, big london university, big new u.c.l. campus there. the smithsonian will be an anchor tenant in a new cultural hub. an olympic-cropolis in a world nobody else uses. we are very, very excited by it. i think from america's point of view this is a no american taxpayers money deal. very important point to get across to you sharp minded political journalists here. no american taxpayers' moneys is going to be compromised by this. i hope it will give america a window on the world in the world's most visited city, which is what london s we had more tourists last year than any other international

tourists than any other city. and the risk of being pompous -- i should be pompous since i am mayor of london, it will symbolize, represent what i think is the most important relationship, between our two countries. that is the values that we have in common. which are freedom and democracy and pluralism and all those things. which are shared by britain and america. and which by the name are trivial in the modern world. they are not uncontested around the world. and they are not universal. and it would be great to have them incarnated in east london. >> one of the reasons you have those international tours is our politicians running for president all seem to want to go there. you just hosted governor chris christie last week. the governor of wisconsin, scott walker was there this

week. why is there this trend of -- >> it's not just u.s. politicians. lots of americans want to come to london. quite right, too. oscar wilde said where do bad americans go? to paris. where do good americans go? london. i may have adjusted that quote in some way. we have 55,000 american students in london which is more american students than in any city in the world outside america. >> if i'm heartland politician running for president of the united states, what do i get from going to london? >> i hope very much that you have a good time. you have -- you will find, i think, i might say, 240 superb museums as against 80 in new york. you'll find more starred

restaurants in london than there are in paris. another statistic i haven't checked recently. that was true. what happened was that was true in 2004. we did have more starred restaurants in london than paris. the french got wind of this and basically michelin the guide was told to go around in a north korean way shelling out stars to restaurants until they overtook london. we are up there. the food -- what i'm trying to say the food is great, theater scene is great. the cultural life is great. there are more live music venues than anywhere else on earth. they'll have a great time. >> they don't have a great time. our politicians seem to have a habit of saying dumb things when they are in london. it happened to romney. >> it's not just american politicians. it's not a skill reserved exclusively to american politicians.

we all have a go at that one. >> why do you think our politicians get in trouble when they go there? >> i'm not convinced they all do. give me -- >> we'll move on. down from new york. you met with all the powers in new york. hillary clinton, the police commissioner, and anna winter. >> yes. is that in descending order of influence. >> what was hillary like? >> i thought she was -- i was very impressed. i thought she was absolutely brilliant. brilliant mastery of foreign policy which is mainly what we talked about. she was extremely compelling on a large number of subjects. but one thing in particular she really wanted to get across, and that was that she thought the europeans were being too wimpy in dealing with putin. >> did she use that word? >> no, i'm summarizing

that. sorry. she did not use that word. she used a much more elocution. i can't remember it. we in britain should be less dependent on russian hydrocarbons and get on with seek alternative sources from america, for instance. her general anxiety was that putin is unchallenged and unchecked would continue to expand his influence in the perimeter of what was the soviet union. she spoke of alarm in the baltic states. i was very, very struck by that. she was also supportive of what the president is doing in a respect to isis and isil. she feels like me that there's more we should all be doing to

support the kurdish peshmerga. those guys, i don't know whether you have been following, those are the only guys out there who are really taking it to the isis, isil. >> you're just back from a trip to kurdistan, 40 kilometers from the frontlines. >> i don't exaggerate how close i was. you get in trouble over here. i was near-ish to the frontline. i wouldn't say bullets were wanging over my head. i did talk to the peshmerga. it was very, very inspiring. kurdistan, that northern chunk of iraq, which was basically created by us. if you think about it, it was the no-fly zones that we created in 1991 that have carved out this area, this oasis of comparative stability

and reasonableness. it's the one of the few areas of the middle east where both the population and the ruling elites, as it were, are pro-west, pro-american, and pro-britain. and i think they need our support. they are definitely being very effective in dealing with the terrorists. with isis. the difficulty is what do you do about mosul and how you clear that out? then there will be big problems about the boundaries of curd stand and -- kurdistan and what the final vocation of the kurds is. are they to have the state that's been denied them for a century or more? those are not easy questions. >> what was the most surprising thing that secretary clinton said to you? >> i think -- i think that -- i was struck by the firmness with

which she wanted us in britain to take it to putin. >> did she use that phrase? >> i'm so sorry. you have to forgive me. this is a brutal summary of what she said. >> what was she like -- >> an attempt to represent the word. >> not a transcript. >> do not rely on it. >> what was she like as a person? >> incredibly gracious. and charming. particularly when you consider that there was unfortunate quotation they managed to excavate from some of my archives many years ago which could have been construed as being -- she was so nice and so kind she even in that article she found something to agree with.

modesty forbids me from -- >> you had a very serious conversation with nypd commissioner about the city's security, which is one of your most important missions while you were there. >> yes. absolutely. before i get -- one other thing that hillary clinton and i discussed, on the foreign affairs side of things, is this whole european issue and where we are going with all that. it is very important to remember that there is going to be a referendum on the e.u. in britain. there hasn't been one for -- since 1975. 40 years or whatever it is. there needs to be a referendum. the people of britain have never been consulted on the issue. i really hope the people in america will recognize that this is a positive development.

and i think overwhelmingly the chances are the british people will vote in favor of staying inside a reformed e.u. but this is now the chance for the british and lots of supporters around the table in brussels to get change and get improvements in the way the e.u. is managed. for the benefit not just of europe but also of investors in europe. and i'm conscious there is a sort of -- bit of fluttering in the skirts about this e.u. referendum and what's it going to mean? business hates the uncertainty. the message i would want to get over i think it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be a successful outcome in the negotiations will be successful. it is much more important to go into that referendum -- negotiation and achieve change than to just continue staggering along as we are. because at the moment the eurozone and european union

generally are a microclimate of economic gloom that is holding back progress across the world. it needs -- it's not just the euro, it needs reform of the supply side. it needs to be much more competitive. we in britain can lead that argument. >> the worry about a referendum is it could lead to britain leaving the e.u., what is the percentage chance of a brixit? >> vanishingly small provided we get the change that we need. and that's how i see it. prime minister cameron has a lot of support and increasing support now around the table in brussels for the kinds of sensible reforms that he wants to see.

>> prime minister cameron said he will call for a referendum. >> i was agreing with what the prime minister said. there was a story in the paper saying that he wanted to try to go early and to try to knock this thing on the head and do it in 2016 if he possibly could and i was invited to comment on that and i said it seems like a very good idea, get it done. get the change. you don't need to spend months and months and months, years super masticating these things we know what it's all about, get the deal and put it to the british people. >> if the referendum were held today, the margin to stay in would be what? >> i think you can -- there's blocks of evidence about that. i think that it's -- i think about 60% in favor of staying. i was talking to a pollster the other day who said the numbers

had moved quite significantly away from an exit and in favor of staying in. but we shouldn't try just to stay in on any terms, mike. we should be trying to get a better e.u. in the interest of everybody. >> is that also your sense what the pollster said? >> yeah, the interesting thing about the european union, it's not an experiment replicated anywhere else in the world. there's no other group of countries that share sovereignty in quite that way with a single judicial system, as it were. with laws enforced by a single court of justice. it's not something america would dream of accepting. they don't do it any other countries, there's no other group or constellation of countries that has that tight, federal structure it is a relic of the war and the cold war.

it doesn't have to be that way. i do want to be, you know, i want my country to be a lead for the europe. but if we can't get the change we want, then yes, of course we've got to be prepared to walk away. you can't go into a negotiation like this without being reconciled to finding an alternative if that is really necessary. i think when it comes to it, i think the germans, all our allies in support -- and supporters in europe, will want to see britain there the thought of using -- of losing one of the biggest economies in the world if the european union would be horrendous for that group. so i think it's just -- chances are very, very, very small. >> mr. mayor, we were talking back stage about the coming launch of politico europe in the spring, led by matt kaminski, a big staff in brussels, correspondents in london and elsewhere. what are your worries about the

current direction of the e.u., and to remind our audience you're a former correspondent, covering the e.u. >> the general tendency and the untamed desire of the e.u. to regulate, i i mean, i read the other day in the "dayity telegraph" and if you can't believe the "daily telegraph," what can you believe? the e.u. commission wanted to regulate the power of british vacuum cleaners, they thought that some british vacuum cleaners were too powerful and i'm perfectly prepared to accept that a vacuum cleaner what do you call a vacuum cleaner in america? >> a vacuum cleaner. >> a rare -- everybody looked blank. i'm perfectly prepared to say a vacuum cleaner, improperly handled could suck your budgie or hamster up.

you know what a budgie is? a small, chirpie bird. i'm sure people have done themselves all sorts of injury with vacuum cleaner abuse but this should be a matter for britain, and there's no reason why we need brussels to tell us how long or how arduously to be vacuuming our carpets or whatever. that's the kind of thing that is -- dedyson brand, fab it's aic machines, the guy thinks it's unnecessary for his business. why is he being told by the e.u. how to make his -- it's total nonsense. it's unnecessary restraint on trade.

i want to deny brussels in that. >> good luck. >> you say that but there's a lot of support for that kind of approach now, the dutch in particular, the scandinavian countries, they're with us. and the germans. >> you've been a brussels correspondent, what would your advice be to someone starting a news -- >> what's it going to be called? politico? i think it's great, you should go for it. >> do you think it's a great opportunity? >> it's a great opportunity. the art is always, always to tell the news through people. it's -- brussels is very political, very die that'sic. there are lots of -- it's a fascinating story, brussels. basically, the characters are

the countries. so the drama is in the interaction between these sort of, i don't know if you ever saw a show called "allo, allo." the drama is in the interaction between these slightly stereotypical characters who generally conform to type but sometimes don't. and so it's fun. it's an amazing story. you'll have a ball. >> will you read "politico europe"? >> of course i will if you send me a copy. >> it's on the internet. >> i'm so sorry. of course. thank you, thank you, of course i will. >> we're honored to have with us several of our british colleagues, pippa, has a question. >> there's a disaffection with politicians, in our case with ethis westminster system.

you have a rare political commodity that cuts through that, authenticity combined with a dash of humor. what can your colleagues at westminster do to help? not everyone's jokes are as good as yours. >> obviously i reject a lot of the characterization you've very kindly made in my contribution. but what i think, and this is the point i was making yesterday, when we were having a conversation about cities, i think one of the problems we have got in britain is people do feel alienated and disaffected and they do feel remote from politicians. they feel politicians can't change anything or do anything. that's the key thing, i think, pip pa. and rather than look -- pippa. and rather than looking at individual political characters or whatever, i think we need to look at what the electorate gets out of politics and what their role is in setting the agenda.

and in britain now, we have an incredibly centralized system. much more centralized than the united states. our cities have too little power, too little ability to set spending goals in line with the priorities of their electorates and we need -- i think we've got a great deal more deaf lution to the local -- more deevolution to the local level, starting with cities to set their own agendas, to spend more locally of the taxes they raise locally. london currently spends only 7%, london government, local and city, spend only 7% of the taxes london generates. new york spends about 50%. i think that would go, if we had the taxes, i think that that is the answer. not the entire answer but one

of the answers. i do think british politics is in need of a serious galvanizing change like that. i think devolution, giving local communities more say making people feel actively engaged in what their cities are doing, i think that would be a help. that's not a complete answer but it would be a help. >> tim shipman of the "sunday times" has a question. >> we're all looking forward to the great american press corps taking on your jokes. not everybody here probably knows you are born in new york. unlike arnold schwarzenegger you could run for president of the united states. i'd like to ask who your running mates would be. >> did everyone hear that question? tim shipman was referring to the fact that i was born in the united states. i was born in new york. 50 years ago. and obviously very expensive decision it turned out to be. i had no idea.

the american tax authorities would come after me 45 years after i'd left the country having never earned a penny in america. nonetheless, i'm delighted to say i have now sorted out my issues with the i.r.s. and i have requited -- i have coughed up in full and there you go. i'm a massive taxpayer, both in the u.k. and in america. all i can say is i hope very much, that people will requite my generosity in america by coming to london in ever growing numbers. as for the whole idea of american politics, well, i'm wholly committed, as you know, to seeing out my mayorlity so i'm trying to get elected to ox bridge too. >> and the running mate?

>> i'll let you --, i don't know. i'm not going -- it's not going to -- alas it's not going to crop up. i've got a massive commitment to london at the moment. >> "time" magazine ran a piece saying you would be the favorite, saying friends and foes alike say his ambition will not be stated by the yen election. you are the front runner to succeed david cameron. >> well, you know, the job of the -- of being mayor of london, it gluts the ap -- appetite for power. it's the most wonderful job. the last few years have been incredibly exciting, it's been a great time to run london, the city has been -- it's going very, very well indeed in many

ways. obviously we've got huge challenges. and i need to spend the next 15, 16 months really focusing on those. one of the functions of success is that property prices go through the roof and we've now got a situation in london where many, many young people, young london people, growing up in our city, cannot afford to live near wherer that parents grew up. and they need help. we need to focus on housing, need to focus on building hundreds of thousands of homes. i'm going to just keep going with that in the next 18 months or so, however many i've got left. >> we have a twitter question, tweet us your questions at #politicobreakfast. how have the attacks in paris affected london security?

there there's no read across that we know of, between the events in paris and london. there's no implications in particular. as you will probably know, there are about 3,000 or 4,000 in the low thousands, of people who are, we think, a potential threat to our security. that's probably more than there are in new york, you don't have the issues in quite the same or indeed in washington, don't have the issues in quite the same way. i think if anything, what the paris episode murders remind us is that you just have to be continuously vigilant. one way i've changed in my ways since i became mayor of london but one way in which my opinions have hardened is i'm no longer as libertarian as i used to be about people's privacy when it comes to surveillance and monitoring their conversations.

i have to tell you, if we can bug these guys, if we can read their emails if we can stop them conspiring to do truly barbaric things, i have no problem with that. i'd rather we did that than respect their privacy. who knows whether that -- the plot could have been intercepted in paris. probably not. but i can tell you every week, every month, we think that we are able to stop guys from doing stuff. could turn out to be -- doing stuff that could turn out to be utterly catastrophic. >> how worried are you about a catastrophic snevpbt >> i think about it, obviously the whole time. it's something you have to simply recognize as a function of the modern world. we live in a time when there is a small group of people who are prone to being sucked into what is a terrifying and nihilistic ideology.

they need to be, several things. you need a strong security approach. you need to have a strong criminal justice approach. but you also need to reach out to them and you've got to recognize that the problems that they have are not unique somehow to jyhaudi. we need to demystify this group of people. fundamentally they're the same sorts of people who could get dragged into drug gadges or many other types of criminality. they lack a sense of purpose in life, don't feel that they're -- don't feel that the world holds much for them and they need to be given that sense that they can parties. -- participate. the trouble is jihadism does give them that incredible sense that there's a huge power behind them. it's an illusion, a disaster, a crutchings, but that's what it gives them. and we need to find an alternative matrix for them. something else that gives them the support they need in their lives. that's obviously what we're or

working on as well. >> a twitter question from my politico colleague ben white in new york. how is london doing in re-emerging as a financial capital to rival new york city? >> as london -- as i think i said at the beginning, london is now, i think, got more people working in financial services than ever before. so it's plainly in the financial service industry is in good health. but there is a rebalancing going on. and it's the biggest change in the london economy sense the industrial revolution. we've got more people now in the tech sector by miles than in the financial services industry and that is encouraging. i've always thought we needed to rebalance and to rebalance in favor of manufacturing, in favor of new industries. but that doesn't mean you have to attack financial services. we've got a strong natural banker, to coin a phrase. so stick with it. >> and last twitter question

this is someone we should hire because they asked the question more -- doug is back there they asked the question more precisely than we did. do you have any political aspirations for p.m.? >> no. my aspirations are to continue as i say, to fulfill my mandate in london and then see what happens and you know, i think that by the time the whole -- i once said something about the ball coming loose from the back of the scrum or something like that. which is a rugby met for. the ball shows absolutely no signs of coming loose whatever. the ball is being propelled forward by the scrum with david cameron and you know, with the ball at his feet going for the line. i think it's going to be a huge pushover try if you understand the met for. this is rugby union football not american football. much better game, by the

way. anyway, never mind. and i think that that -- i'm bound in somewhere at the back. that's where i am. and it may be that some babe unborn will take over from prime minister cameron but it isn't going to be me. >> but you wouldn't turn it down? >> as i said, i said what i said about the ball and the scrum. i've given a pretty fair commentary on the scrum vs. ball relationship at the moment. >> in addition to be the mayor candidate, he's an author. >> you don't have to do this. >> what did you learn -- >> that's incredibly nice of you. >> what did you learn from winston churchill about what people want from their leaders?

>> well, churchill, the guy made the most incredible series of mistakes. his early career was studied with dast -- was studded with disasters of one kind or another. but he always came back from them and he always stuck by what he believed. and actually, as you will discover in this book, and if you analyze all the catastrophes, you can see how he was very often onto something. sometimes he simply got it wrong. and so the big takeout from churchill is that he had the most klossal moral strength. and bravery on a scale that i think is very, very difficult for our generation to messenger. yesterday, i went to -- to imagine. yesterday i went to see the air and space museum and we looked at that flyer built by orville and will burr wright, flew 800 feet, and it's incredible to think that only 10 years after that flight, churchill, winston churchill was getting up in contraptions of absolutely

terrifying primitiveness, made of basically canvas and wood and laundry baskets with, you know, engines strapped to them he was flying the whole time he kept crashing and he kept getting up again and he -- the only prime minister in british history to have been in armed conflict on four continents. he probably dispatched probably quite a number of people in those conflicts. and he -- anyway, to cut a long story short, he was unbelievably brave and that bravery was indispensable to our civilization in may, 1914. because the pressure on church -- 1940. because the pressure on churchill and the whole of the british government to make an accommodation with evil and do a deal with hitler was overwhelming and the press was

in favor of it. the -- large parts of the government, halifax, chamber rain all say, why should we fight? remember the first world war with the carnage that had been inflicted on both of our countries was only 22 years distant. and they knew it was going to be bloody. but churchill decided to fight on. and he was only in. if he hadn't decided to fight on, then there would have been no conquest. there would have been no reconquest of europe. hitler would have had absolute carte blanche, he probably would have been able to take out russia earlier. he would have -- operation bash rosa -- barborosa would have succeeded. the americans coming in would have been smaller, there would have been no d-day landing, it would have been a disaster that

shamed our civilization. he was the guy who held out against it. it was courage, it was bravery. that's what i take from that. >> one of my fave result paragraphs in the book, your chapter, the 100 horsepower mental engine, and because you'll do it more charmingly than i will, would you read it? >> if -- this one. if you have a spare 15 minutes go on youtube and look at the intlime outtakes of churchill's only televised party political broadcast from 1951. he sit there is, gazing at the camera with utter savagery while they make him repeat his script over and over again. finally, he breaks off from being tormented by the producers and gives them what-for by reciting a long section from gibbon about the spread of christianity. that's actually true. the chunk from gibbon he

wasn't a great christian churchill. he wasn't a great christian. but i think he believed in god but he was sort of, you know he, once said -- somebody once said he was a pillar of the church and he said he was more of a flying buttress, was his position. but he, i think -- i guess the passage he started quoting was the one about how the spirit was left in the cloister and how the roman empire collapsed because of -- that kind of thing, christianity. that's what gibbon said, anyway. >> people want a leader who is relateable, they also want a leader with backbone, inner fortitude, seriousness, how do you balance those two? >> my approach to -- my approach to politics and life is to try to play my short fly -- my -- shots i have.

what shots i have i try to play as naturally as i possibly can. have you ever played cricket? >> no, sir. >> well, cricket who has played cricket? anybody played cricket? the basic thing about cricket is, when the ball comes down you have a -- you will tell yourself over and over again, i must not try and whack this ball. what i must do is lift my bat properly, advance my foot properly, put the bat on the ball -- the bat and the pad together and play it correctly. that's what you should do. but you will find when the ball comes toward you, bounces there, and seems to hang for a millisecond in front of you, tempting and beautiful, you will try and whack it and

that's what i tried to do. and quite often i'm out. quite often i'm out. >> all right. we'd love to bring you in the conversation, if somebody has a question, please just signal and we'll breng you a microphone right here. please just say who you are. >> hi, my name is lindsey wright with p.w.s. i was curious, one of britain's most revered designers, stella mccartney, has been helping make the geen's guard bearskin hat in faux fur. it's the last item that's still real fur. is this something you would support? >> i guess so. i'm also quite a traditionalist

and i don't know -- i can't remember -- this is the bearskins, they must be literally, must be made out of bears, i suppose. which are an endangered species. if stella mccartney can help save a few bears by making false bugbies, then i'm with her. i'm not going to fight that. on the other hand, if it spran spires that there's nothing that bear families like more than having one of their members, you know, paraded around buckingham palace on the head of a guardsman in bear culture that that's, you know a privilege, it seems unlikely but i'm willing to have further education on that subject. >> how are your relations with the royals? >> do you know, this is the most incredible thing. this is the single question

that i'm asked more than any other, mike. you know, what happened in 1776, folks? i cannot believe how often -- the only thing people want to know, what did you last say to them? have you met the queen? what kind of sandwiches do they eat at buckingham palace? can you name the queen's corgees? and it's unbelieve -- corgis. and it's unbelievable. what i can't get over is this is a great sovereign republic and you took it -- a big decision there when you -- in my view it's a shame because it's led to a hideous duality of my tax arrangement and would have been much more sensible and economical if we remained part of the same churchillian commonwealth of english speaking peoples, jointly run by london and wherever it was. that would be the way forward but that clearly hasn't been --

>> ok -- >> but i'm very struck, what it shows me what it realy shows me and it's been so striking, i cannot believe there are still people in my country who think that it would be sensible to have some sort of constitutional reform that diminished or -- let alone abolished the royal family. this is obviously a massive selling point for our country and long may it continue to be so. >> what will charles be like as king? >> he will be great. >> two quick questions. besides your book what's the best churchill biography out there and second what can you do to make heathrow a better airport? >> the best -- joy jenkins on the politics and matt hastings on the war -- they're the two

-- martin gilbert is fan it's aics, but if you want short reads those are the two i'd suggest. heathrow. what we need to do there is absolutely clear. everything around the -- everywhere around the world, they're going through the truly long-term, sensible, environmentally friendly option of trying to run an airport as far away as they can from the great urban center. and the trouble with heathrow is that it is right in the middle of the western suburbs of london. if you put in more runway capacity, you'll be inflicting huge amounts of aircraft noise on not just west london but large parts of london that don't yet get exposed to it. the answer is to do what they done in france and germany, holland and spain, dubai, every big ambitious country in the world is now building multirunway, 24-hour, systems that enable them to compete and

that's what we should be doing. we should be going for a 24-hour service in the east of london at the estuary site where there are very, very few inhabitants to be disturbed. that, by the way, that investment would enable us to solve, will help us greatly to solve the number one issue faced by my city, which is the need to build new homes. when you've got huge potential. you put in the links, huge potential on the sites out toward the estuary where the old docks used to be. >> the fashion forward mayor yesterday learned a new tv term. tell us the term you learned yesterday. hard out. >> hard out. yeah, a hard out. not to be confused with anything else a hard out. a hard out -- have we got a hard out coming up? >> no, we're just about there. one more question here, red tie.

>> part of the great professionalism. one thing i love about it, the professionalism, i have to say you and i are both the ben fishes of -- fisharies of the attention of professional makeup artist this is morning, and both of us had some time you know, -- >> i taosled my hair. >> it may not be visible in my case. i did that, almost every american show i've done there's been makeup and a great deal of care and attention and people saying, we're walking down the corridor, then you go on the bbc, they kick you on, no makeup, we believe in the -- there's two ways of looking at it. the round, unvarnished truth. that's us. that's us. it's round, unvarnished truth. >> what was it like to go on jon stewart? >> he's very funny. he's very funny.

he's brilliant. i'm pretty sad he's not going to be on air. i thought he was -- can we have him in britain? i thought he was brilliant. >> he's available. red tie. >> good morning, mr. mayor. welcome to washington. my name is ryan clark and dove tailing off mike's question about "daily show," this is going to sound a little silly but i wanted to put to you sir, the question if you could choose a replacement for jon stewart in the united states of america, that's a question we're all dealing with, who would you choose? who would you give us? >> from our country? >> our country, your country? >> i've got a guy for you. he is absolutely brilliant. one of our premier exports to america. we're proud of having him -- >> you're not going to say peers morgan? >> i like peers morgan. >> red sweater. >> otherwise i see a risk he could be re-exported.