i'm not up for years but i think that i think i think you're pushing too hard on the narrative that it's that it's like a product i do think that. it's true that you need to make sure that you vote for the right person and you can't return that vote but it is a permanent forever you know in the u.s. it's four years other countries have shorter and many many places it's for a mayor a congress person it might be a year or two years but the thing that's important is. the candidate themselves you cannot use technology to make a bad candidate good you can only elect a good candidate and mystery let me push you on that you just said that four years is not that long of a time but i think what you are saying i never want to. happen big country can get through and you know like look at syria and for you know difference between life and death so a lot can happen in that period if that's where you have to make sure you elect the right president and how do you really make sure if as you just agreed that you are applying all that marketing tools to the political campaigns you're making

a jump and i think this is an important jump distinction is that even with a product we're talking about a product i can say that this is the best stereo and i can use all the marketing in the world but if the stereo sucks it doesn't matter how much money i pour into marketing i think that happens a lot with candidates where you have candidates that aren't very good and you have candidates that are very good and the people largely choose which one they want regardless of the marketing the marketing helps get the message out to a wider group so it's more especially in the us this is a this is huge is that we did not convince any republicans to vote for the president we only got democrats to vote and so in the us it's much more about turnout than it is about persuasion so using these marketing tools which were marketing tools that's exactly correct what we did is we were my people that they should go vote but if people are not persuaded from the very beginning that they have to show up at the ballot box why do we really need they don't have that all of those people especially in the world because. but it's not about persuasion once

again it's only about turnout so they already are persuaded to vote they just happen to not vote maybe they are in a disenfranchised area where they're unable to make it to the polls or the polls have been put further away maybe it's about education so making sure that people aren't lied to a lot of it is we have a very big department in the campaign that was called voter protection specifically about making sure people got in line that they were eligible to vote that they could vote in the u.s. the most important thing is turnout and if you remember the after the campaign after we won a lot of the dialogue was about how we got so many black african-americans or latinos to vote well that shows that what we did is we stepped outside of where the republicans were able to go and we there and we convinced more people to go vote these tools that we built these marketing tools were much more about reminding people to vote and sadly democrats are kind of lazy we always forget to vote now i know that you volunteered for obama's two thousand and eight campaign you were here

. in two thousand and twelve and then your previous interviews you said that you did it because you believe in barack obama what is it in his candidacy that pill to you personally in two thousand and eight it was a i mean we all remember george bush and george bush you know in some cases was good some cases bad i think more bad and i wanted a change i wanted to change from that kind of status quo and the president came in he gave us a lot of things that we wanted health care repealing don't ask don't tell all sorts of really good things i think a very positive first term except it was it was the promises he made were to two term promises and so for me it was it was successful in the first term but then i wanted to make sure that we got the job done so that's why the second term was so important and it also i think it's a testament to his gray hair is a testament to how hard of a job it is you look at all the past presidents of the u.s. they apparently instantly turn gray when they become president now interesting that he bring up the subject of hair because. any newspaper story that our resident on

the you commented on your hairstyle you know your choice of clothing your glasses your hipster look and i think president obama i wouldn't call him hipster but he looks and talks in did a little bit different from the their american president just mentioned his predecessor but i wonder if the way he conducts his policy was really all that different i think it was more centrist i think a lot of people had hoped but if you look at the voting records and you look at kind of what he said during his first campaign he didn't promise to be super left you know he didn't he didn't say i'm going to be the most liberal president in the history of the u.s. he was very centrist and i think it was one of the problems that we saw it was we all kind of put our hopes into this hope campaign individually saying this is what i think it should be about and in some cases it worked in some cases it didn't but i think that compared to the alternative it is it has been incredible now you mentioned what attracted you in president obama and i assume you were

converted to his camp in an old fashioned way i mean you saw him probably on television you read maybe some of his articles or his bokes if. you were converted in that old fashioned way why do you think other people need all that sophisticated to use of technology i don't think it's about them there's a way that conversion once again i think that it's really important to understand that the us campaigns are very very much not about persuasion and so it's really not about i'm going to go out and knock on someone's door and tell them something that they haven't heard already with the twenty four hour news cycle that we have in the u.s. specifically about politics it's very hard to find someone who who is undecided we talk about undecided voters a lot in the campaign and none of us knew any of them like we would reach out to all of our friends and try and find an undecided voter we could never find them what you did have is people who are maybe a little less interested in the. inside or

a little less interested in democrat side i think that's where the president came in flourish where after gore and after kerry a lot of us were a little bit less interested in the status quo democrat candidate just less we were we weren't suddenly you know libertarians are we certain suddenly republicans we were just kind of like. and i think that's what you see a lot with the republicans right now in the u.s. where they're not excited about some of the candidates that are excited about the their candidates holding the government hostage various things like that and so they're just kind of like so i think we're going to see in this upcoming election actually a very interesting race between very moderate i would say normal republicans very moderate a normal democrats trying to find a candidate that they can agree on because at the same time when i think about the middle america the normal not the louder you know fox news america the middle america it's pretty reasonable and they just want someone who they can agree with

and they just want someone who won't send their people to war they want someone who will have good economic policies they want all these things and we found a lot of that in the president but. nobody knows it's going to happen a lot of these things that you just mentioned about not all the promises that i made on the campaign trail but actually on the you know fulfillment of those promises and some would argue that you know that use of technology puts a lot of emphasis on the elections as if it is some sort of political transaction rather than focusing on changing the nature of the process with the use of technology i mean. the president has done a lot to do that he has c.t.o. right now todd park the previous c.t.o. as well. have done a lot to help make get more transparency to the various organizations that are in the government up to the white house but the todd park right now is the one that i'm excited about because what he's doing is he's bringing in some people from the private sector to come in as innovation fellows to help guide this change because

you're absolutely correct you can't just use high technology to get elected you have to also use it to lead you also mentioned that one of your main objectives was bringing people to the polling stations and one of the methods that you used if i'm not mistaken was to actually. you know reach out to people who didn't vote at that time and maybe you do that through you know their facebook friends or through you know some most of their values to me as somebody who was pointing to soviet union this very quickly because if you can use that to encourage people to vote you can use that for all sorts of last you know an example of this is you know how it worked so my brother lives in colorado colorado is about a ground states was very important for us. when you go to the polls they would shadow your name and so someone would cross your name off the list so the. unlike other countries the u.s. has an open voter registry that we can all see and so as

a candidate you get access to the voter rolls and you can look at that list and you can say ok this person lives in this part of colorado and then when they're crossed off you can cross them off the list then at that point we know that we don't have to go knock on their door to remind them to vote because remember it's all about turnout now with that said if arius organization could if they wanted to do the exact same thing to try and stop people from voting yes however that didn't happen but could that happen and of course but we could also get hit by meteorites and we could be hit by lightning and we could all die in a helicopter crashes you know all sorts of things could happen but. it doesn't give you any reason. to even if you were one of the first to pioneer data is that they. did is a tool and it's a tool that can be used for good or bad like all tools i choose to use data for good and we did use to data for good and so to to kind of wax poetic on whether it could be used for bad as we have the same conversation about in life mr reed we have to take a very short break now but when we come back the calabria use of technology can

help get elected but can be same technology be used to how the voters keep those elected in check that's coming up in a few moments on a well to part. her . basic needs of economic ups and downs in the final tolerable months day belong to the old saying i and the rest that life is going to be taking will be every week on a league. player in the future. is here so we hit the road to focus on new technologies.

on this month's show no parties complete with old school shootings. and we learn about the next day in the fields to live aleutian this has the potential to save lives. knowing the update. we've got the future is covered. live. live live.

live . welcome back to worlds apart from really discussing politics and technology with harper reed who used to work for president obama as the chief technology officer mr reed i know that at some point if your life you go to addicted to the so-called personal informatics tracking your way to. what have you stopped and i wonder if it's possible to develop you know some sort of application that would allow or do

they were voters to politicians performance on the yardstick that they are personally interested in you know two people editions and there's a few really good organizations that are doing this right now one of my favorites is pro publica and the united states is doing a lot of work to build software around journalism and politics to try to make sure that the people we're electing are actually doing the things and saying the things that are fact checked i think that's a really good summary of it because a lot of times especially when it comes to congress you have a lot of words that are being said and there's so much just kind of b.s. you never know what's real and so there's a lot of good organizations that are doing this excitingly it's all third parties you know there are some for republicans or independents and there's democrats and so it's you can you can really find a good amount of software and data about whether the people you're electing are doing the job that you like to do now i was following your recently over the. website fiasco and for those of our viewers why not familiar with that there's been

a major difficulty. here is health care website and thousands and some possibly even millions of people haven't been able to register and get their services now you wrote in one of the tweets that you gave an advice to the government quote focus on the user experience little wins the buz or is the feeling of progress meanwhile spend time fixing the bad hands and i think that's ultimately a red. before and the government in any country just focus on the user experience if you want to be successful we hired the first i think the first user experience full time professional on the campaign twenty eleven in the history of campaigns and because user experience is one of the most important professions that you can have in technology and the reason is because it it turns and that is functional it just works you know it works but it makes it usable so it makes it that people want to use it it makes it's open people use it they tell their friends about it and

health care doc of is so important you know it's so important to give all these people health care that has to be usable and i don't think that user experience was i'm sure it was thought about but i don't think it was thought about a lot and now that it's not working what can they do to make it so when i go there to try and sign up but i don't feel like i've failed at it you know maybe it just pops up a thing that just maybe a little more friendly there's a lot of ways to do it and it's you know that comment although it was about health care doc it was mostly targeted towards the people would be armchair kind of quarterbacks who are sitting back and kind of thinking about how to fix things but given the difficulties that the obama administration had rolling out the obama health care website they said to be one area where they experienced absolutely no glitches at all and i'm talking about the n.s.a. spying on not only the american citizens but also the rest of the wild i assume that something on this scale would require access

a lot of expertise in the fairly wide pool of talent where you personally surprised by how elaborate and sophisticated that scheme is especially given again the difficulties of rolling out a decent health care website i don't know anything about the insides of either one so it's really hard to actually compare them but i know a little tiny bit about government procurement and how to get work in the government and i'm guessing this is purely a guess that the n.s.a. stuff is just as bad. i mean because if you link about when you log in to a government web site in any country it's never good is it no but my my and why are they i mean not have expressed it eloquently is that it seems that whenever you're dealing with services that are required by people millions of people you're having and i say. to you so your question is more why is that that the n.s.a. can apparently roll out mass surveillance and not have bugs i think that i don't

know anything about either of them enough to comment really but if i were to guess i would say they probably both have as many bugs except the n.s.a. one you can log into so you don't see them because government technology doesn't work procurement doesn't work when you have these giant organizations building things they oftentimes fail and then we're able to maintain that program for quite a number of theories and you know we will keeping its secrets much easier than building software and so building good software that users can use and if you think about let's let's let's just imagine if i was to build software described by word snowden. what very few people would log into it. not hundreds of millions very it would integrate with very small number of systems or just because acting data this is all i mean so i think it's really worth comparison but the question you ask is interesting but i think the answer goes back to procurement who is building these things and the problem with health care doc is that the people

building them have maximized their talent on getting a contract not maximize their talent on getting technology don't seem to be focusing on the technical side but in one of your previous interviews are currently are saying that one of the most exciting things for you about president obama was how he proves he's values into the you know how his values that reflected in the people he hire is that you try to you also build those values into the way you conduct the campaign do you think he's values are maybe also reflected in the massive surveillance operation that is going on we don't know any specifics about the n.s.a. stuff which i'm not for by any means however we do know that it started pre september eleventh. so since it started that long ago i don't think that the entire program is based on the president's values now the question is and this is a question that i put to anyone is when we're talking about defending against terrorism which ultimately i think is it's

a catch twenty two right because you don't want to take a program away that is saving people and creating a safer environment but at the same time you know i truly believe that we all have a right to internet freedom i believe we shouldn't be surveilled except but it's very hard for me to say there should be none of that if it is in fact creating making the world a better place so the question i have for anyone is how do we prove that that either it is working. because if it's working the conversations suddenly very different and. if it is working my worry then is scope creep because we have a data when it comes to mass surveillance has not necessarily played well when we look at history and my worry is that you know what the scope creep is my worry well . leads me to my next question in one of your recent all pads in the new york times you said that they've done things doubt elections but we now need to work to carry

out transforming the government and i wonder how far do you think that process should go it's one thing to build a good campaign or a functioning health care website but would you be in favor of for example of a digital democracy a way in you know in all sorts of subjects i think that i am a big believer in hope and so i think that we could we could take a very negative view of many of these things and we could say yes if we offer if we allow everyone to comment it's just going to be terrible but i don't think that will happen i think that could be very positive i think that adding more technology allowing more people to participate will be positive and if you look at what the internet has done all over the world worldwide. it has democratized access to information and so the fact that we can that i can post a blog and you can comment on it my mom can comment on it and some young person in south africa can comment on it but it's not just about commenting it's about deciding what do you know we're talking to but we're not seeing them are examples i

mean that's social so let's get to that point we're not at that point now we can't use the internet to do digital democracy why not. the technology is not there to look at a registration of it and all of that we can have an id digital age you can house those usual elections once every four years but aren't you worried about digital i.d.'s i don't know i'm asking you i'm not so i think we can get there but i don't think we get there today because i don't think it's going to work today because i don't think that the establishment of all can. want that but in principle do you think it's even possible not just for the americans but for democracy in any other country to actually get people involved in that process on such a substantial level yes because it could make politics totally dysfunctional or could make it work for a much better. i mean i think that there's this there is a very i think in the us we we come from a different place when it comes to data and the internet and we don't have

a lot of the aggressive historical cultural history that that that shows how data can be abused and so when we come to do now we know what we don't mean sorta but we don't have any no one sees their own cations in the us is it because people are just not and formed and therefore they simply don't care no i think they don't care i really don't know i don't understand it but if people don't care and you give them all god's power in making those very consequential decisions can you imagine where it's going to lead all of us not just your country but they were asked as well i mean i can't i can't comment on it because i mean i don't know right with but i do know that i am i am a little disappointed in my peers in the u.s. because many of them don't care as much as others do and there's a lot of people who do care like you there's a there's a group of people who are standing up doing a lot of documentation a lot of that but i do think there are opportunities for the internet to continue

to democratize access to everything and so we can we can create a world where we're democratizing access to all the good things where we can create a world where it's only fear being driven by fear and i choose the positive right now i know that you are and in favor of the monetary of the internet for everyone but i wonder if you think that's really an achievable goal at this point of time because there is a lot of digital inequality in the world some countries that far had taken a logically than others and i wonder if you can really and sure that. when you put it where you make a list of all the countries with fast broadband the united states is not number one so i think that there is a lot of digital inequality in the world i think there's also a lot of general inequality in the world and i think i would like to increase you know i would i would hope that by giving. more access to more information more access more education more access to early childhood education etc that we can create a better world for everyone and you know i mean obviously you know we they also

people also need water so i mean there's a lot of problems in the world but that need to be solved i personally can help solve technology well you can solve technology for political campaigns and hopefully the way you change the politics but you mentioned some of the reservations about americans and holland formed or involved they are and while the ferrous do you have any of those reservations money you are allowing at a candidate of your choice to take it to take power because you're very adversarial about somehow i allowed the candidate. for the best candidate that we had which i supported one hundred percent and there's many choices that the government has made that i don't necessarily agree with but there are a majority of the toy choices that the government's made that i do definitely agree with and so do i like everything no do i like almost everything yes do it my happy that i have friends that are in afghanistan. you know do i hope that maybe that will make the world

a better place yes. could i have made a different choice sure but i think i made the right choice and so we can go in the circle where apparently i made the wrong choice for you and i don't think it's going to get anywhere because i disagree well you're entitled to your terms regardless of my opinion but i guess my point was that you know going back to the n.s.a. problem program we are dealing with your country is the leading democracy and well then obviously the fate of different me you may be. somewhat dependent on who is elected in the united states so if you felt so passionately about him back down obviously. entitle see him to some sort of responsibility even though i don't say that in an adversarial way i think it titles me to some responsibility and i'm not i i'm not claiming that i think it's important to note as i said that this program started well before the president came into power and so the response that i have is to make sure the best person is the is the in control of this of this power and

so if i am if i'm constantly guessing myself then that's not that's not like being a leader you look a leader so that you hope that they will do good once they have that power. and of course i can say you know i wish things would be different like when the patriot act happened in the early two thousand and i was very frustrated you know when all of the surveillance obviously started when i got outed in two thousand and six or two thousand and eight very frustrated when edward snowden revelations about yes of course very frustrated that doesn't mean that the president is suddenly about president it means that the president has more responsibilities than we thought and so i hope that he makes the right choices and i trust him to do so well mr and thank you very much for your perspective and if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on the well.

i don't. tanya. well tell me how you are my little grandson. i don't like i don't like. being cut off. so. that the spiritual side is destructive. i try to try to preach that it was a sect but it's dangerous and she had to believe it was a story she had lost her mind. you know you she will come back i know it was and i will wait even if it means i must wait. until my

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incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of them with their. area. how do you operate dylan piggy i'm going to most good sports such. as ruth i'm not an olympic hockey mom much a. week. by fire. little.

today's headlines and a roundup of the week's top stories for you live pictures there from independence square in central kiev no peace on the streets of the capital as the opposition lol an offer to head the government of ukraine amid intensifying riots across the country as west. syria's government and the opposition hold their first talks since the start of the civil war it's been hurled by diplomats as a major step forward. two things that will mean stand have to leave and we have to plan for peace of mind we can't give up as bullets fly overhead we visit a maternity unit in syria where mothers and doctors have chosen life in the face of the destruction that surrounds them. and deadly clashes across egypt and terror attack.