[ music playing ] hello, everyone, welcome to "amanpour and company." here's what's coming up. >> tremendous numbers don't lie >> the president and the potential 2020 rivals take to texas. thousands of miles away, congress appears to compromise on the keeping the government opened. we get the border story from the republican mayor of el paso and the humanitarian face of immigration from those closest to him. plus, fears of big brother the former homeland security on the dangers of government under surveillance from china to america.

when bae coleman's career began, she didn't now know her cookbook would make it to uniworld. her cuisine is served through europe, asia, india and europe, according to bae, to travel is to eat.

welcome to the program, everyone, i'm christiane amanpour in london. prsident trump says he's not satisfied with the congressional break through to keep the government opened. house and senate leaders are giving the president some funds for border barriers, not the $5.7 billion he is demanding. speaking in the cabinet room he said he didn't expect another shutdown, also he said this. >> so i can tell you am i happy at first glance? i just got to see it. the answer is, no, i'm not. i'm not happy. but am i happy with where we're going? i'll thrilled. because we are supplementing things and moving things around and we're doing things that are fantastic and taking from far less really from far less important areas. >> so while negotiators were working on the deal in washington. the president was in el paso, texas last night on the boder

rallying his wall-loving base. he also had one eye on the democrats beto o'rourke. he ran for senate in 2018 and might run for president in 2020. as a congressman, he represented empass so. >> the president describes mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. we have the chance to tell him and the country, immigrants commit crimes, including violent crimes at a lower rate than do americans who were born in this country el paso has been the safest city in the united states of america, not inspite of the fact that we are a city of immigrants, but because we are a city of immigrants. >> el paso has become a touchdown of wall politics. the city of more than 50 miles

of fencing along the border. so what is the problem there, the mayor joins me now. mayor, well dock ba to the program. >> thank you. >> i don't know who would have thought el paso would have been a touchstone as i said in this whole political drama. before we get to that, can i ask you about the news, what you think about the compromise deal being on board security to try to keep the government opened and afloat? >> i haven't really seen anything in the headlines on the news about it. i don't know any of the specifics. i'm probably not allowed to comment. from my time in the legislature i would say increment am moving up incrementally is the way to do it. on the el paso portrayers, there

were no winners. >> you are absolutely right. we spent many of those 35 days of government closure talking to so many people, furloughed federal workers. so many people who had such a hard time getting through and surviving this shutdown. i guess you are sitting there at the nexus of the great political drama of our time. so when you had the president and a potential 2020 rival there rallying last night. what did you hear? what did you take away from everything that was said? >> i'm not sure there were any revelations from the comments of either beto or the president. i was trying to personally meet with the president beforehand to visit with him. because i've said for months that if you want to understand the border, and how you work

with mexico, you need to come to the largest city on the mexico border that has been intertwined for almost 400 years, we understand it better, we're the place you ought to be coming to talk about it. >> and yet, did you actually man to say that to him? did you meet him? >> i got a handshake. that was the extent of it. we thought we would get more time. that was truly the extent of it. >> difeel he was not trying to meet you. he knows you disagree, have you different facts at your disposal than he talks about? i mean, did you feel it was deliberate, he didn't want to make time for you because of what you said? let's play what he's actually said about you. >> and there is no place better to talk about border security, whether they like it or not, because i have been hearing a

lot of things, oh the wall won't make that much of a difference? you know where it made a difference? right here in el paso. i don't care whether the smar a republican or a democrat, they're number of crap when they say it hasn't made a big difference. >> how do you feel hearing that? what would you answer be to that? >> i love to hear that over and over. the bottom line is, i've never been against a physical barrier on the border. i think that's part and parcel to an entire process. from a strategy stand point is, we're in control of the borders, we're a sovereign nation. i've never disagreed with the president on that, all i've tried to do is clarify his comments that we were not a lawless community with high crime rates before the fence went up under the bush presidency in 2008.

certainly it is a contributing factor towards, to our safety here, but it is -- it was not the sole panacea prior to, that's all i've tried to say. i've not spoken against physical barriers of any type. i think that's a part of that whole process. you mentioned earlier there is 78 miles of fence in the el paso sector for the border control. it's not continuous. a group of the fencing that went up under the bush administration in 2008 was primarily a replacement of about ten miles of chain link that had holes in it and with forests. so really to my knowledge, it wasn't expanding the fencing. it was merely improving it. >> and to your point, i do want to dig down, it is worth

constantly putting the facts out there on the crime figures on what the ball u wall did or didn't do and how you respond to them. it was interesting, beto o'rourke talks about it being one of the safest sectors. in california, along the border, sort of making a point that actually many of the cities along the border are safer than those further inland. would you agree with that? >> well, from our standpoint, yes, from what i understand, el paso is ranked the safest city. that's according to uniform crime statistics reported from the fbi or to the fbi. so a lot of that has to do with our police force and our community policing and the things that we have been doing for many years. but the issue is related to violence when it came to our region had to do with what is with the drug cartels when they were fighting it out a few years

ago. it never came over to el pass so we have a significant law enforcement presence here. plus we have a large military presence. >> i want to put up the graph right now to tell people what you have been saying in terms of the spike in crime and the trough in crime. so we see it was very high crime rates in the early '90s. then it started to dramatically or did dramatically drop off in 2006 and it stayed pretty low and the wall was built around 2008 and it went up a bit. the crime. it pretty much stayed pretty low. so basically what you are saying and the grass show and the facts and aso was getting safer and safer and less and less crime t prefer to use the nomenclature

fence, in certain neighborhoods from an anecdotal standpoint, the residents feel safe because of that. it did the most dramatic drop in our crime rate had to occur with automobile thefts during that time frame. so you don't have that as a number broken out. but i've seen that. because we had the poorest holes in the chain link fence were coming over, stealing vehicles, driving them back to juarez and that fence had a significant impact on that so i've said from day one it had an impact on crime. it had an impact on the feelings of security in certain neighborhoods. but overall the crime rate would not dramatically drop. i feel like my job as a mayor is to explain to people outside that we were not lawless crime ridden city before the fence came in. el paso is a viable community.

it's the sixth largest city in the state of texas and the 19th largest city in the united states. we're a major player and the rest of the world needs to understand that. >> so you just said, i don't know whether you term it a petty crime or non-drug-related crime and non-violent crime. you talk about how it stops some auto theft and perhaps property crimes as well, so there was that positive as picture to the fence. but on the issues that the president talks about, whether it's illegal immigration whether it's drugs, you know, he's conjured up you know hoards of racists and murders coming over, it haven had an effect, right the wall? is there that crisis i guess i'm trying to say at el paso at the border. >>. >> well, let me state the physical barriers, according to

customs and border protection and the police do channel people and drug in certain areas. most of the drugs that are picked up illegally come through our ports of entry. so a physical barrier channel people in a certain way. but they're not the total resolution to border security. which nobody seems to fully define anyway out of walk. but if you look at the geography of texas from el paso to brownsville, it's almost a physical impossibility to put a fence from el paso to brownsville. you can put it in certain spots. but the majority of texas is private land. >> that won't work. you need more man power, technology, a combination of all of the above. i would rely on the expert that borderland and homeland security to tell us what they really need. >> do you? you sort of intimated that perhaps those in washington are not quite clear about the

parameters of what they seem to be talking about. were you surprised when the president, we understand, did off script and ad libbed about loving and wanting more legal immigration into the united states? when he said that and when you were listening to the speech, what did you think? >> well, i do think that that is something that needs to be done. i think that lottery system is not functioning at all. my former firm was trying to bring in an underwriter from loids of london for several years and the lottery system they locked out every year for three years and gave up. but when we're below 4% unemployment, we've got to do something more on legal immigration and i've also said if you are a daca or a dreamer and you serve in the military, it ought to be automatic you get u.s. citizenship if you so

desire and for the others as well. if you are already here and that 10 to 12 million group that's here under false social security numbers, but earning a living and raising their family and not involved in any criminal activities. you bet those people and you give them green cards, so that they can have legal ways of paying taxes and fought just bogus social secured numbers and anybody that doesn't pass a criminal background check ought to be deported. that's the only way we will deal with that i know we have folks that say, oh, they're here illegally, we can't deal with it. my comment is the egg is already broken, deal with it. >> what president trump said ad libbed during the state of the union, do you feel that was a part of be right backing t brea the egg, in other words moving along the road of accepting what you are talking about, that there needs to be more legal immigration and proper immigration reform?

>> president trump is a unique personality within the republican party. he's the president that we've never seen before like him him i'm not sure we'll see after him. but he is in a position to be able to do some things that i think others may not have been able to to. so i would hope he would move forward with that. he's intimated about immigration reform and our nation needs it. >> well, you are a politician, mayor. and you've accurately described the president. he's a unique operation in the political affirmament, but one that might be able to get certain things done. do you see that happening and the possibility of that happening by his hackss, by his politicki politicking, on immigration, for instance? as we have just been discussing? in other words, do you think he can deliver as you have described? >> i think if he wants to, he can deliver. yes. so it's up to him to determine that.

i would be hopeful that he would. >> right. so let's ask you again to talk about the real tragedy that we see, which is a human tragedy of all this conflation of illegal and asylum and these children and families being separated at the border and this horrendous situation does not seem to be getting any better. in fact, essentially the worse ewould like to pleas play for you the detention when we spoke actually back in june. >> we have been given no information regarding the children, where they are. all we know is they are being distributed throughout the united states, which was a surprise to come of us. we heard about them being placed in michigan, new york, rhode island, elsewhere, that's the reason we came together as a group of mayors to say enough is enough. this is ridiculous. this is not what we are about as a nation. >> so, mayor, that was in june,

have things gotten better near where you are? because there are reports that are very, very upsetting to read. i want to know in your location, have things gotten better? >> the numbers are increasing. we're getting somewhere between 3 and 400 a day. these are families. they're not being separated. the torneo shelter that was at the time up for unaccompanied minors that i visited last summer was disbanded if january. and they went off to their sponsors. as i said, we get, the word i have per day is about 3 to 400. they're processed through -- they come into empass so once discharged from i.c.e. and our ngo, the enunciation house has approximately 20 shelters it coordinates and they are here, families together. the parents are given ankle

bracelets in the process and then they go off to their sponsors. they have bus fare, air fair, whatever it is that does that, whatever they need. they're here usually 24 to a maximum of 48 hours, some as long as 96 hours. but i don't know that your viewers fully understood when cpp, cpp is a law enforcement agency and the way it was structured is that hhs would be the entity that would be equipped to take care of those that were held in detention and they've fit doing that. i think there was a 9th circuit court decision, as i'm told, that says can't hold any immigrants that are seeking asylum longer than 20 days. so they're processing them, releasing them to their sponsors. >> so you mentioned the board of protection unit and i contractor and the lpg services.

what does it feel like as i let you go's mayor of el paso that your city is being really a punching back and sort of in the middle of all of this very, very you know heated politics and to an extent fake news for a long time. >> well, i'm doing my best to try to articulate the correct story of where we are as well as explaining that we are in favor of a safe border and that is a sovereign nation and you need to control our borders, but that el paso is a viable community, a contributing community and has a close relationship biculturally and binationally. families on both side and commerce with mexico. i mean we have six bridges that have 23,000 illegal pedestrians coming north every day. i got 21 million private passenger vehicles that come north on an annual basis. we got $82 billion of trade imports and exports that go through here. i mean we're a major player and

very much intertwined with mexico, if you want to know the border, come to empass so. >> all right mayor of empass so, thank you very much for being here with us. so, with all this politicking, there are real flesh and blood people who are affected on a daily basis. the most controversial trump immigration policy has not been the wall, but as i mentioned child separation, deliberately removing migrant children from their parents who are then detained. a new inspector general report reveals thousands more were separated from their family previously acknowledged. the department of health and human service frs had too house the children and testifying on capitol hill recently commander jonathan white says he believes the policy had catastrophic implications. >> so this problem is not over even after they unify the child

with their family. right? >> the consequences of separation for many children will be life long. >> let's be clear is there a nullification of retraumatize or is this an additional traum that adds additional stress and additional harm to a child after they experience the difficulties that they experienced in their home country going through the long trek? did he add additional retraumization to that child? >> many children that is a able consequence, yes. >> so we're going to dig down now into the humanity of that fact and the law. ed laren darragh reported extensively on the border and child separation. he's joining us from el paso. mary bower is a deputy director for the poverty law center which represents immigrants in detention. she traveled also to the border.

and she is joining us from charlottesville, virginia. welcome to you both. i just want to ask you, ed, start off with some stories actually from both of you. ed, you are there in el pass so you just heard the mayor. tell me what you have seen and what have you reported on the human stories that is behind all these politics? >>. >> i think the important thing is how fluid things clang on the border. the reason why some people might try to migrate into the united states in 2018 and 9019 is biff than three or four years ago. >> that has been the challenge we have seen here along the u.s.-southern border over the course of the last month, where really we have seen the arrival of family units, families arriving with children. that is a relatively new phenomenon that you are seeing here on the u.s. southern border. because of that, there have been some law makers who have criticized the trump administration for not adapting

quick enough to dealing with the specific type of people who are arriving here at the u.s. southern border. so that's why it's led to this dramatic increase in children separated from their parents. it was a plan the administration hoped a zero policy would serve as a deterrent to mike grants coming mostly from central american companies to deter them e them from coming to the united states. even though the administration says that policy has been stopped, we heard the story over here over the course of a month-and-a-half a young girl separated from her father at the end of december. it took almost a month for that girl to be reunited with her family. these stories have raised questions to what extent these child separation cases are still unfolding. >> let me turn to you, mary bower, you deal with this from your legal perspective. there is also a humanitarian

perspective. describe the extent of what are you seeing in. the secretary general says thousands more have been separated than ever has been acknowledged. in other words the problem is worse than we thought it was. >> it absolutely is worse. what we see is family separation has evolved. it's taken a slightly different form. there are 10,000 kids detained now across the united states because of a deliberate trump administration policy and it's not as there are the previous speaker indicated, a failure to adapt. it is a deliberate and nefarious policy where the administration decided that they were going to take actions that would result in kids being detained longer

and in parents and sponsors being turned over to deportation. that's what we are seeing. we are seeing more than 10,000 kids locked up. most who don't need to be locked up. >> just to follow up on that, now that we know more and this has been the case of great contention and anger in the united states and actually around the world. are you able to deem with these? are you able to highlight these cases? is the law responding fast enough? i mean, can you get them reunited with their families? what is the situation on that level, mary? >> well, we have brought a class action lawsuit on behalf of all kids who are detained across the united states. but we know that any child who is locked up and separated from family is experiencing a traum. we know that. we know these kids will experience long-term trauma, because they are separated from their parents so we're working to reunite them as quickly as possible.

but this does not have to be. this is the result of calculated, deliberate intentional acts to separate kids from their parents and to use the children essentially as bait to lure their parents into the deportation system and that's what we are seeing play out. >> i'm going to get back to the legal remedy to this i want to follow up with ed on you know you are seeing every day these stories. ed you have been seeing them, too, on a regular basis. you have been reporting on them. give me a sense of what you see the kids the families, how they're being affected the traumas. >> reporter: yeah, i think a lot of people who arrive and i spent a lot of time in shelters on the mexican side of the border, these families who have made the long journey from their central american country homes and to get there. and many times when i speak to them, they kind of seem oblivious, not aware as to the extent of how much this is being debated here in the united states. the amount of mistakes

information that they're given e giving in their home countries and essentially lured by criminal and organized gangs that bring them through central america into mexico and try to get them into the united states. this is huge business for a lot of these smugglers that get them here to the doorstep of the united states and essentially wash their hands of them. then it becomes, you know arc dangerous situation for them. so you see a lost confusion and by and large, i have spoken to hundreds, dozens of these people over the course of my reporting here and on the u.s.-southern border for years and all of them repeatedly tell you that they come here simply looking for ate ber opportunity and in a case recently of the central american migrant, many of them trying to escape violence. they have been directly threatened by gangs in their hometown. they feel like the only course of action they have is to drop everything and run north. >> mary, from a legal point of

view and the perspective on the big picture, the president is often going to the board ir, going to el paso this evening and talking about the racists and the -- rapists and criminals and gangs and ms-13, et cetera. sort of invoking young men, middle aged men adolescents. first and foremost, who are the majority of people coming over? are they that demographic? and where are most of the illegals? are they coming through border the southern border? where is the center of gravity on this issue? >> they're not the people donald trump described, they're not rapists and murderers. the people coming to united states we are seeing debordeer are desperate people terrified and fleeing violence. they're coming to the united states.

in many cases they would like to apply for asylum at the port of entry and they cannot because of administration policies. we see that in terms of the numbers of undocumented people. the majority of the undocumented people in the united states now are actually coming in through airports, people overstaying visas. so all of the red rick from trump about who immigrants are and why they're coming and what they're seeking, it's just wrong. it's just demonstrably wrong. we know that we know immigrants are far less likely to commit crimes than u.s. citizens. we know all of that. >> we heard beto o'rourke say that the mayor of el paso, texas, talking about his practically crime-free location there in el paso. can you just separate for us what appears to be a consistent conflation of the issues? there's legal. then there's illegal. there's asylum seekers. mary, just tell us, who each

group is and how each needs to be dealt with. >> well, i think we have to act knowledge first that constant rhetoric about how he wants people to do things legally is also demonstrably wrong. right? because he's not allowing people to apply at the ports of entry. he is putting up huge obstacles to allow people to apply for asylum to be able to do that. he has taken basically a million people whoare here undocumented and tried to make them illegal by trying to terminate daca and cps. he has undergone policy after policy after policy, that is designed to attack people who are here both lawfully and unlawfully and to attack the system of immigration and asylum at its roots to make that unavailable to people. so we know that rhetoric about how people need to stand in line or how they need to do it

legally. >> that is belied by the actions of administration this administration. they don't want people to do that they don't want immigration at all. they have made that clear through their policy. yes, we need to have an immigration reform that lets 11 million or so here out of status. we need to have that kind of reform. we have needed that for well over a decade or two. but that doesn't mean that we put up a wall and deny the ability to apply asylum to people who are desperate and on our doorstep. we enacted the asylum law in the wake of world war ii exactly so this would not happen again. because the west was ashamed, it had turned away jews during the holocaust. we said never again we don't want to turn our back on desperate people at our doorstep. that's why we have asylum laws in the first place. we are shamefully, shamefully, ignoring our legal moral

responsibility here. >> let me ask you to stand on that, you see it, you report on the people. and there is this policy that the president inplemted called metering which limits the number of asylum speakers allowed to enter the united states each day and they are held in detention centers or centres on the other side of the border. meaning they have to wait month to month for their claims are processed. what is that doing at the boarder? the president claims a crisis at the border. is this a part, ed, of the crisis? is it manufacturing a crisis, if you like? >> reporter: i think, mary brings up an important point you guys are hitting on. that's the newest angle of what we are seeing in our reporting along the u.s.-southern border. right now mentioned this metering system. so people understand what it's like. imagine a group, very large groups showing up in various section of the u.s. southern

border. it's not uncommon to see 200, 300 mike grants show up in a border town in a remote area and they come to juarez, for example, they're at the port of entry, then the u.s. might have a system in place, i think it varies between which port of entry you come into. today they say we will take 15 asylum seek esser, today 12 the day before nine. that's not letting everybody come in. that's forcing people to white on the mexican side of the border and the trump administration is also flirting with the idea, i think there is a program initially put in place in tijuana on the border of california essentially forcing family units to wait out their asylum claims on the members ka side of the border. there is some talk of expanding that program on various points of the southern border. this, the critics of the administration has been what they see as a detrimental issue that will continue to put these

families and these children in harm's way. you are essentially asking people coming here and asking for a legal process, requesting asylum and forcing them to wait in these communities along the u.s.-southern border, where they are much more, there is much more dangerous situations being taken advantage of, threatened, that sort of thing. >> that is the concern for a lot of organizations that are trying to help these migrants who are arriving here in these border regions. >> can i just ask you, mary, ed, if either of you know, there have been reports recently of two kids that died in one of these centres in mexico. is it factually correct how that happened? are you worried about the happening more? >> it is factually correct. we know that three children were kidnapped in tijuana. they had been staying at a youth shelter because they were not allowed to apply for asylum. two were merd d murdered. one was allowed to escape and

bring back the message basically that children are in danger and children are in danger. families are in danger. there is a dangerous way to conduct a policy. this means that people are trapped in border cities where users and goongs and the folks that people are fleeing know people are trapped and so people are in grave danger. people have died because of the policies. more people will die unless this policy is changed. we know that that is on our hands. >> on this side of the border, let me play another little clip from commander, the commander who we heard, jonathan white from hhs. we heard him in the lead-in talking about the trawler for the kids. he talked about this policy of housing separated children, he had to enforce it. he never would have enforced this policy himself. just listen to this. >> the concern which i expressed were two.

first, that this would be inconsistent with our legal requirement to act in the best interest of the child and would expose children to unnecessary risk of harm. second, that it would exceed the capacity of the program, issues of that capacity are very important because it constitutes our ability to provide a safe and appropriate environment to every child. >> we've only got first time seconds left, ed lavandara, in your reporting, have you heard similar mistakes givings from officials who have to enforce some of this policy? >> reporter: that to me that was the first time i have heard people in an official capacity say that that was made that statement there in that congressional setting so striking. >> well, mary, do you always find it extraordinary or have you heard it before?

>> no, that was the first time i have heard that. that is the congress am statement of attempt they are supposed to be acting in the best action of children. what we see that has not been hang, just the opposite has been happening. >> mary bower, ed lavandara, thank you for joining me this evening. now we dig into america's complicated relationship with data and under surveillance. michael chertoff was president george w. bush's homeland security secretary. but before that he made a name for himself co-authoring the u.s. patriot act in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. the act massively expanded government under surveillance. it allowed the detention of immigrants, some think the supreme court struck down, now chertoff is discussing the growing threat to privacy as we hat town is u down with us and yes they touched on that border wall. >>? michael, let's start with things

in the news now and abstract up. first, immigration. you were the second head of homeland security and served under president bush. how important is a physical barrier that's at the center of all this? >> it's a very small piece of what you want. when we were in office, i think we built about 650 miles of barriers along certain areas where you distance between the border and say a major tony or a highway was very short. and, therefore, you wouldn't be able to intercept people if they crossed the border. you could probably build another 50 or so miles and find some useful places for it. but it's only a very small part of what you want. what you really need is technology, board pare troll personnel, a detention facilities for people who will be deport and it has to be integrated into a system. so the idea that you want a wall is a mistakes characterization for what the real requirement

is. >> is it worth shutting the government over? >> it's not worth shutting the government over. the disappointing thing is if you actually got the professionals toeblg, they could map out pretty clearly given what they know exactly where you want physical barriers, where you want technology, where you want drones and that would be the intelligent way to spend the money. ironically, when there is complaining about drugs coming through the country, the vast majority of that comes through the ports of entry. so if you had equipment at the ports of entry that would allow you better visibility to what is concealed in an automobile and truck, that would do much more to reduce the implication of drugs and barriers in the middle of the desert. barriers really discourage a certain kind of casual crosser. it doesn't discourage someone who is investing large amounts of money to move very valuable drugs and they want volume and

they're going to basically try to use existing transportation systems to come through ports of entry. >> even in a national emergency? >> i wouldn't say it's a national emergency. obviously, border patrol is an important federal objective. itemly the rate of crossing although fluctuating over time has generally gone down. what's really driving it now is largely conditions in parts of central america where you have, not only economic issues but have you gang violence, have you lack of rule of law and people are fleeing because they're afraid for their lives the best way to stop that is to work with the central american governments to reinstitute the rule of law to build the economy and keep the world happy to stay in their homes. >> another reason, the department of justice laid out an indictment against hauwei.

if united states has been pressuring or leverage countries around the world to fought use equipment from this telecom company as the world upgrades to 35g. what is it about it that's important? >> this is actually not new. the issue of chinese technology has potentially creating an opportunity for the chinese to exit acts of espionage or acts of sabotage has been discussed among security people for the last ten years or so we saw earlier this year an indictment of hauwei for stealing technological secrets from t-mobile. that's happened in the past that will continue to happen. but beyond that i think there is a concern that you are potentially putting the next generation of critical technology in the hands of a countries which may be an adversary if certain respects. we've published a report called freedom on the net and in the report, we detail how the chinese are using the exploits

of i.t. technology to embed themselves around the world in asia and africa and they're actually teaching some of the local governments there how to use technology to better control the populous and to suppress free speech. so we're in a situation now where if you have chinese companies that are in critical nodes around the world, are you essentially, programs, enabling the export authoritarianism to parts of the world that are free. >> how do the west counter that? is from a way that you can get the world to agree on the rules of the road? >> well, i do think there are things that we can do, eastern using multi-stake holder approach. they're under way right now. for example, i think many of the western countries do have a more or less a common set of values and could reasonably really reach agreements on some of the things we are talking about and because of the fact that these countries are still correctively, by far, the most

powerful economic actors on the globe, in the end if we do have a reset of values and agreed approach, i think that can drive the chinese to accommodate to that as well. and i'm on a global commission for stability now which has drawn people focusing on cyber issues to try to come up with some norms that can be globally accepted to have an open internet, a free internet and an internet that is not fragmented but rather is truly global in it. >> you wrote a book recently talking about the data explosion and have you kind of a simple idea in data 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, break that down for us? >> i wrote the book because i thought people didn't understand the matter in which data is being checked and how we're using news now and how it will transform the way we live. so i look back historically. if you look at most of human

history, data was basically what you said what you heard, what was written down, what was published and we were mainly concerned about protecting our privacy in the sense of our property. it was an expression hearing. every man's home is his castle. it goes back a few hundred years and the idea was your privacy is back to your property. no one can enter through your house without a warrant. when you got to lessen, all of a sudden property was not the issue anymore. it was confidentiality. could i keep my conversations private? could i keep my image private? and therefore the law started to change, to recognize we have to focus on property and now we have to focus confidentiality. my point now is, given the amount of data that is being generated, not only what we voluntarily generate but what is generated about us. the fact that it is now stored indefinitely.

it can be published all over the world. should we try to keep things hidden or secret? that ship has sailed. now we talk about who controls the data? what is your right even when the data is collected to be able to say yes or no to how it's being used? >> they're issuing autonomy. >> exactly. it's about freedom and china, china are working on a social creditor, where everything that you do will be compiled and you essentially get a rating as to whether you are a good or a bad thing. if you are good, you get preference and all kind of things like jobs and education. and if not, you could be shut out of things. now imagine that in a western society, and it might be private, where your ability to get a job or get insurance or find a place to live would be affected by whether an algorithm looks at everything you do, that's recording in some form or

fax of data and makes a judgment of whether you are desirable or not a desirable person. >> isn't that starting to happen already? if a health insurer had access to my shopping list, it could change my rates. being really healthy and maybe equals out put. it looks like you have a gym membership locking in five times a week. okay. he's not going to die, versus a bag of m and and ms, netflix bingeing. >> but that's happening now, even i published a book about six months ago and there are more stories about insurance companies saying, we want to see your fitbit. how much exercise are you getting? and they're also looking at things like, exactly what foods do you eat when you go to a restaurant? what do you eat at a restaurant. how was your sleep pattern? imagine all of this being collected and pretty soon your freedom to decide what you want to do will always be subject to a nagging fear that you are

going to be punished. there was a bbc that was on that actually took this, i'd like to say to an extreme, not that extreme about a world in which literally everybody is being raided up and down minute by minute and it makes 1984, georgerwell's distopian novel look like a kinder gat inner's dream there this is the guy that helped write the patriot act. at the time you were not in that data climate we are in today. there wasn't amazon nearly as powerful and all knowing what it is. what is the balance between giving the government the opportunities to chase down and get as much information, prevent attacks, et cetera? and that sense of autonomy that you are talking about where i still feel like i have some level of control over what i choose to share with especially the body governing me? >> well, we are right to be

concerned about the government as well as the private sector. what is interesting is that the government operates on much more constraints than a private sector. the government doesn't even dream of collecting divine information that's collected in the prime sector and before the government uses it, there are all kind of dates they have to go through, at least in the united states and other countries are actually different. so, for example, to collect content of information e-mails are being discussed over the telephone, either one. now there is a movement i think for correctly to require a warrant, even for older, not just current e-mails, to use the information, you have to go through various kind of hoops to get permission. so i do think that the government, although you can always argue about what they ought to do, it does operate under a regime where they are controlled. >> there have been so many examples where even if those permission systems have existed,

there has been such a lack of transparency that it shakes our foundational trust in the government saying, hey, if the nsa has this program, whether they were authorized or not, it seems shady, it's one more thing i have to worry about. >> i agree with you, i think transparentscy will be important. one of the mistakes takes the government made over a period of time, for example the court of opinion of the koirt that supervisors under surveillance it's kept classified. after snowden you know did his release of classified information, the government started to declassify the opinions. i think what was put out, a, was fought particularly damaging to national security. but for the first time people could see, wow the judges are really digging into this. they could see the reasoning of the court and, frankly, i think the government would have been better served had they put this out before any of this business happened. i agree, i think a lesson for

the government the you have to ask yourself is this secrecy really necessary or will we actually get more value by at least in a generalized way, making public what we're doing to what the rules are. >> a core question here is the 4th amendment. right? what is unreasonable search and cease e seizure in this new era that we are going into? is my heart rate information and my sleep habits, sitting in the servers of the third party. do i have control of that information and who should be able to transact that? >> i would guess exactly the issue we are facing. how we are creating so much different data, we have to understand who governs it. what are the rules that apply to the issue of access and that's already beginning to change. i'll give you an example. years ago, many years ago, adopting border searches, we were promulgated by the supreme court. which cross the border to come

into the u.s., border officials are able search anything you carry with you. you have a limit to what you can purchase report into the u.s. that was applied to laptops and other repository data, because you are bringing it into the understand k. now very recently the issue was raised what do you do, for example, the smart home which is connected to the cloud. so if you are able open up the phone and search the phone, you aret not only getting on the phone, are getting what may be sitting on amazon servers somewhere in the united states. it would be as if i searched you when you came into country. and the supreme court can account for the sheer volume of material that is now available on a phone or a looptop. >> i want to ask also about

upcoming elections, are there is two levels. are state systems in the united states secure enough? >> two levels, the infrastructure, that is the voting machines an voter registration rolls and tabulation. i think it's very uneasy, congress is trying to get more money, the department of homeland security is working with some of the states that upgrade their security of the infrastructure. and there are some things that i have been involved in the commission on election integrity where we are trying to promote that. the larger issue, though, is what they call information operations. it's the use by foreign governments, like the russians or even frankly by people in our own country of tools designed to manipulate public opinion and create there unity and even suppress voting by propagating stories or magniifying

disturbing stories, all to play with emotions. there are some things you can do to mitigate that, particularly when have you foreign government involved. but again, some of this is going to require the hard work and the education of the people about how to be critical thinkers. this is about to get more challenging, because we are now on the verge of what they call fakes. which is the ability to create audio and video that is completely fabricated that makes it seem like a real person is saying smchlth and if that starts to get used against candidates, for example, will you really have stress on the notion of determining what the truth is. >> what happens to our profession? >> well, a big piece of this is actually being put on journalism. how do you measure and detebt whether something is pals? how do you make sure you don't get caught up in the -- >> on the competition for again zsa? >> the competition for cliffs which drives the behavior you are trying to fight against. reinjecting an element of

professionalism and judgment in the way editorial decisions are made. i think there is an important part of preserving our democracy. >> thank you so much. a difficult challenge ahead. before we go, remember to tune in tomorrow when we will have a special program on humanity's biggest trial, that is climate change. i will speak with the washington governor, making it the center of a possible presidential campaign and i'll talk to the flafr games balog, who has devoted his life, he has a new film to human elements. thank you u thank you for watching amanpour and company on pbs and join us again next time.

♪ - this week on milk street, we do some quick asian dishes. we start with a vietnamese meatball and watercress soup, you can make it in less than half an hour; then a stir-fry chicken with handfuls of basil, it's great; and, finally, inspired by the cooking of burma, we do a coconut cashew cake, it's a one-layered cake that redefines the meaning of dessert. so stay with us for some quick asian suppers right here at milk street.