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About this Show
U.S. Senate
San Francisco, CA, USA
Comcast Cable
Channel 17 (141 MHz)
North Korea
United States
South Korea
United States Senate
Michele Flournoy
Linda Schwartz
North Koreans
Greg Nojeim
Borrow a DVD of this show
U.S. Senate
April 4, 2013
12:00 - 5:00pm EDT
businesses thought they would have next year that they won't have because of delays, do these people have legitimate complaints, and what is the white house plan for dealing with the glitches that are going to be happening as this gets implemented? >> it's a major piece of sweeping legislation. there are going to be glitches. and both at the white house and also through kathleen sebelius' office at health and human services, we're working very closely with the business community and trying to figure out if there are unintended consequences, how we can address those unintended consequences. we think that the successful implementation is going to be very challenging, but that's why we're spending so much time planning and reaching out accordingly. one example, we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with folks from the pharmacy industry because pharmacists are very trusted, and they're going to be on the front lines. and one of our responsibilities is going to be standing up these exchanges around the states as
well as the federal exchanges and getting the enrollment going. and a lot of the people who we want to be the beneficiaries of this enrollment may not know what they have to do in order to get enrolled. and so figuring out creative ways of marketing those exchanges is something we're engaged in a lot of dialogue right now and always open to suggestions. it's going to be a real grassroots effort to register people and making sure that they have access to the benefits of it. and i think our view is that this is going to improve the health of our country, we're going to be able to offer affordable health care to everyone. but it doesn't mean that it's not going to be without challenges. and so for small businesses we have a very aggressive outreach to them to make sure that they actually understand what the requirements are, where the waivers are available, what the potential benefits to their employees would be, and overall we are absolutely convinced that it's good, it's good for the country.
but there will be an intensive outreach effort that's, as i said, both through the white house and through hhs to make sure that people understand what the opportunities are here and that if there are glitches that we can administratively address, of course we want to address them. >> okay. we have time for one more because -- yes. there was somebody back there. i'm sorry, yes. >> hi. i'm margo carrington from the state department. >> hi. >> it was very useful to hear everything you had to say. but i was also very much struck in 2010 when the white house held a forum on workplace flexibility. and you touched on the importance of that topic just now. with the yahoo! decision recently and, clearly, a lot of the other challenges that you're currently trying to handle, are there any plans to try and move forward on that agenda specifically? >> yes, it is. and it's interesting, at the
time that we did the forum on workplace flexibility, both the president and the first lady participated in it because they both care so much about this issue. as a matter of fact, one quick story. the first lady, when she was interviewing for a job at the university of chicago medical center was at a time when sasha was just a baby. and, of course, the babysitter didn't show up x. she called and said, what do you think? she said i think i'm just going to take her with me. and i was on the board, and i knew the president. and if i said anybody would be willing to have you bring a baby to the interview, it's going to be mike. and she said, good, because if he isn't, it's not the right place for me to go. so back to the earlier point about making sure. and so sasha went to the interview. fortunately, she didn't cry. first lady got the job, and mike rear done now is i had really great judgment. [laughter] was that a great move. but what is really important is we did a study that demonstrated that a companies that far
flexibility actually have a greater productivity and profitability. and so we need to make a business case for it. in addition to it being the right thing to do and good for not just women, but for families and communities in the country, but it's actually good for business. and so one of the things that we've been exploring through the council is how can we hold up the best practices both within the federal government as well as within the private sector? and there are companies out there who are doing amazing things, and we have demonstration projects going on within the federal government too because it isn't a one size fitteds all. you really -- fits all. you really do have to look at the needs of your business. a yahoo! might decide they want everyone to come into work, and that's the culture that the woman ceo wants to put in place, and another company might decide, you know what? we can have all kinds of creative ways for flexibility. i think part of our job is to highlight those various options and to use the white house as a way where people can see the
options, highlight them, showcase best practices in the hopes of really getting this conversation going at a national level. and more and more companies are appreciating the business model and why it is so important. >> well, thank you. and i know you have to get back to the white house which is, unfortunately, where -- >> this is so much fun. [laughter] i could sit here and talk to you guys all afternoon. >> so much more fun than whatever you're doing much. >> yeah. have i gotten in much trouble? i think i've been okay. >> despite my best efforts. [laughter] thank you very much, and thank you so much, valley. >> thank you all. thanks for coming. [applause] >> and we'll have more about women in poll techs here on c-span2 tonight with booktv in prime time. beginning at 8 eastern with mary robinson on her book, "everybody matters: my lifegiving voice." at 9:25 we'll hear from jennifer lawless, author of "becoming a candidate: political ambition and the decision to run for office." and later at 9:45, kim galt dison "the secretary," a journey
with hillary clinton from beirut to the heart of american power. and in about a half hour over on c-span, we'll have part of our live coverage of the society of american business editors and writers' spring conference. speakers include aol ceo tim armstrong, federal reserve vice chairman, janet yellen, and former reagan white house budget director staved stockman. it -- david stockman. 12:30 eastern. and tonight on c-span we're opening our phone lines to get your thoughts as we discuss health care for u.s. military veterans. the treatments available and the costs involved. beginning at 8, former air force flight nurse linda schwartz will talk about the challenges facing veterans returning from war. here's a quick look. >> my concern as a commissioner is that i have veterans who have come home, we have worked the system to try to get them the disability compensation and care that they need, and somebody has come along and told them all
they have of to -- they have too is sign this paper, stop your va benefits and you, too, get another tour to iraq and afghanistan. and so the idea that the troops are not keeping up the needs of the troops that they're recycling because they are not meeting their recruiting quotas, this is something that will be coming home to roost, and we have no idea what the far--reaching effects of these multiple deployments not just, not just on the military member themselves, but on the family. families. one million children in america have had one or both of their parents deployed since 9/11. one million. and they're not in dod
schools, they're in your school system. and teachers have to become aware also of some of the important parts of what a deployment means on the family. let me just say that america is really in a good position right now. everybody is thinking about in this and concerned about it, and that's wonderful. after vietnam, this is great. but the importance is this is a game-changing moment for health care, for veterans in america. because you as the private practitioners, you as the community people, you are going to be the first line of identifying who these folks are. and unfortunately, the va does not take care of families when i say this yet. because if you have a health care system designed by congress for veterans, bringing in the
family just doesn't seem to be politically prudent at in the time. >> you can watch all of former air force flight nurse linda schwartz's remarks tonight on c-span beginning at 8 eastern. and then live at 9 we'll take your calls, facebook comments and tweets as we look at federal issues from a national perspective with our quest, patricia kime of the military times. and if you a veteran -- if you're a veteran, join our discussion on our facebook page. we're asking about your experience with access to health care and the quality of care. go to facebook.com/c-span. >> actually, it's really significant that this mound has been preserved through all these years. at one point there were probably about 30-40 of these mounds around the salt river valley. and only a couple of them have survived. most of the mounds were much smaller, about a third to a quarter of the size of mesa grande and its sister mound
which survives also, pueblo grande. so a lot of those were destroyed. and these two grave mounds did survive. and it offers us an opportunity to study the hokam, learn about their lifestyle and hopefully learn something about how complex their social and political organization was. i've always thought with archaeology one of the great things that we have about archaeology is that when we look into the past and see what people did like the hokam building these canal systems here, i think it gives you hope for the future. because if they could do this in the desert with digging sticks, what is it we can't do? >> this weekend booktv and american history tv tour the history and literary life of mesa, arizona, including a look at the great temple mounds built by the indians between 1100 and 1400 a.d., saturday at noon
eastern on c-span c-span2's booktv and sunday at 5 on american history tv on c-span3. >> the constitution project yesterday held a discussion to re-examine the requirements established under the 1986 electronic communications privacy act. with the advancement in technology and wireless communications, lawmakers are considering updates to the law that will lay out new requirements for government surveillance. one example of that is a bill announced recently by senate judiciary committee chairman patrick leahy and utah republican senator mike lee. it includes a warrant requirement for e-mails older than six months. this is an hour and 45 minutes. >> okay, i think we're going to get started. i'm sharon bradford franklin, senior counsel with the constitution project, and i want to welcome you all and thank you for joining us for today's program.
is privacy a thing of the past: how technology has outpaced the law on government access to electronic communications. i want to thank google for hosting us here in this great space and for providing us with a wonderful lunch. and, again, thank you for joining us. so the constitution project, for those of you who are not familiar with us, is a constitutional watchdog based here in washington, d.c., and we bring people together from across the political spectrum and work with them to develop consensus-based recommendations for policies that promote constitutional safeguards. we have a criminal justice program that works on a variety of criminal justice issues and our rule of law program which includes the work of our liberty and security committee. that committee was formed shortly after september 11th, and its mission is to make sure that we as a nation safeguard not only our national security, but also our civil liberties. and like all of the constitution
project's committees, it's comprised of people from all across the political spectrum, represented all three branches of goth, academics and other experts and work together on a variety of issues. and in recent years a number of issues that the committee has taken on involve areas where technology is really getting out ahead of the law. and we want to make sure that our fourth amendment safeguards and really all constitutional safeguards continue to apply in the digital age. and so one of the topics that we have looked at and the topic of today's panel is the electronic communications privacy act or ecpa. now, ecpa as i'm sure most of you in the room are already aware, regulates the circumstances under which the government can gain access to private electronic communications, and that includes e-mail, it includes documents stored in the cloud and cell phone location information. the law was passed in 1986, so
it is now over 26 years old. and for people, at least from my perspective, that's really quite young. but for technology that's really an eternity. and when we look at what the state of play was in 1986 and what the technology was that congress was seeking to regulate, we didn't use e-mail the way we do today. there was no such thing as cloud computing or storing a document in the cloud. of we had some cell phones, but they were huge, they were cumbersome, and most people didn't own one. so today we do, fortunately, have pretty broad recognition that ecpa needs to be updated for the digital world and that changes need to be made. and we're starting to work toward developing some consensus on what those kinds of reforms need to look like. but exactly where that needs to go, what the scope of change and the nature of changes needs to be is a work in progress, and that's where we want, what we
want to talk about today. so part of the effort to reform the electronic communications privacy act has come from the work of the digital due process coalition. and that's a coalition that now has over 75 members. it's organized by the center for democracy and technology or cdt, and greg nojeim is on today's panel, and he'll give you more details about the coalition. but basically it includes a wide array of sad coe sat i -- advocacy groups and a wide array of technology companies including google. the coalition has come together over four principles for reforming ecpa. we're going to focus today on two of those which are probably the broadest and easiest to get a handle on. one of those says that law enforcement should get a warrant before it can get access to the content of electronic communications, and the other one we're going to focus on today calls for a warrant before law enforcement can get access to cell phone location information.
so we're starting to see some movement on these issues in the courts and in congress toward changing the law. in the court, most notably, we had the decision at the end of 2010 coming from the sixth circuit in the war shack case, and the court there held that law enforcement needed a warrant in order to obtain access to the content of e-mail and held that the provision of ecpa that allows access with just a subpoena was unconstitutional. but we're going to turn to today's panel, we have a great panel here today to talk more about these issues and more about where this is going. you have full bios in your programs, so i'm not going to give lengthy introductions for each of the panelists, i'm just going to highlight what they're doing now, their key background for purposes of today's panel, can we're also not going to have the more traditional opening statements. i'm going to direct a series of questions toward each of the panellests, you know --
panelists, you know, going back and fort and through the panel for a while, and then toward the end we will, of course, open it up for your questions from the audience. so, um, want to tart a conversation -- start a conversation with greg nojeim, senior counsel at the center for democracy and technology. and as i mentioned,cdt has coordinated the digital process coalition, so i want to start by asking greg to tell us more about the coalition, and also if you could explain a little more in detail about the principle calling for a warrant for location information. >> thanks, sharon. thank you very much. and thank you, constitution project, and thank you, google, for making in this event possible. my name is greg nojeim, i'm with cdt. we're in nonprofit organization based in washington, d.c. dedicated to keeping the internet open, innovative and free. and part of our agenda is to update the electronic communications privacy act. gosh, it was about six years ago
that a group of ecpa officionados came together at cdt to try to figure out what should be the reform agenda for this now-27-year-old law? we started out with about, i think about 15 proposals, and there were maybe six groups and companies represented. and as, over a three-year process we whittled down that 15 or so proposals into four, and our numbers, the numbers of groups that supported those four proposals grew exponentially. so right now ddp, digital due process, includes companies and organizations as diverse as apple, at&t, ebay with, facebook, google, microsoft, twitter, and among the groups, i
mean, you never see these two together, aclu and americans for tax reform. freedomworks and the american library association. electronic frontier foundation and the chamber of commerce. it's grown to be quite a large coalition reflecting, i think, a very broad consensus. and recently heritage action center signed on to an effort called digital fourth which is kind of the lobbying branch, if you will, of the ecpa reform movement. we came up with four proposals. the first is that law enforcement ought to have a warrant in order to access content. right now the law says that if the content is more than 180 days old and is held by an electronics service provider like an isp, it doesn't -- law
enforcement doesn't need a warrant. it can get it with a subpoena. and information that you store remotely so you can come back to it from wherever you are, that too is available without a subpoena. we said, no, there should be a straight warrant requirement for all this. we also said there should be a warrant requirement for location information generated by the operation of a cell phone or other mobile device. i'll talk about that a little more in just a minute. there are two other recommendations, but i think we're going to focus on the two that i just mentioned today. on cell phone location, every few seconds your cell phone is telling a cell phone tower or towers here i am. if a call comes in for this number, send it here to this phone. and the providers of the cell phone service record your proximity or the phone's proximity to those towers. law enforcement is interested in
the location of people wore subjects of -- who are subjects of investigation. and one of the issues that was not resolved when ecpa was first adopted because, as sharon said, so few people had cell phones was that, was the standard for law enforcement access to that information. so in the absence of a standard in the law, the courts -- which are getting these cases now pretty regularly -- have been charged, be you will, with coming up with what the standard ought to be. and they are not consistent. some courts think that the standard ought to be a warrant for location information generated by gps. others think the warrant requirement ought to apply i for realtime but not stored location information. from our perspective the standard ought to be a warrant
no matter how the information was generated, by cell tower or gps, and a warrant regardless of whether it was accessed in realtime or accessed from storage. thank you. >> thanks, greg. so i want to turn next to david leiber who is privacy policy counsel for google, and i want to ask you if you would elaborate a little bit further on the ddp principle calling for a warrant for content in terms of what that means and how that would change existing law. >> sure, thank you, sharon. and i do want to thank the constitution project for sponsoring the event today. i can't speak for the other panelists, but i'm particularly grateful for the 25-foot commute over here. [laughter] it was awesome. so, simply stated, you know, the ddp members and google certainly believe that there should be a bright line, you know, warrant for content rule. er respect i of the -- irrespective of the age of the
communications, the means or status of their storage and access or use by the developer in the normal course of business. as many of you probably know and what greg was alluding to, under current law ecpa makes distinctions that truly do not comport with users' reasonable expectations of privacy in 2013. greg was alluding to the 180-day rule, so communications that are under 180 days, law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain the content of those communications. on the 381st -- 181st day, law enforcement theoretically only needs a subpoena. in the past, the department of justice has taken the position that even for communications less than 180 days old where the recipient has opened that communication, it's no longer subject to the higher procedural protections that ecpa affords. so there wouldn't necessarily be a warrant requirement. that sort of e-mail content could be got at by a subpoena. nobody who uses our e-mail
service or other e-mail services are thinking about these types of distinctions when they use our products or services. and just last month in testimony before the house judiciary subcommittee on crime, the department of justice acknowledged for the first time that there is no principle basis for making some of the distincts ecpa currently makes including the 180-day rule and the distinction that's been made between opened and unopened e-mail. and i want to pause there, because i think it was a significant and pivotal moment for ecpa reform. there's been a lot of debate. you know, this is a very sort of important principle for those of us of who have supported updating ecpa. but there's now sort of an emerging consensus if not a consensus on the notion that the distincts that ecpa currently makes simply don't comport with users' reasonable expectations of privacy. so i think going forward the
question is what do we do with that? we, i think as members of the ddp and certainly in our individual capacity, think that we should codify that consensus. and i would submit that it would be a mistake at this point once this consensus has been reached to start whittling away at that warrant for content rule. and potentially reinforcing some of the distincts under current laws that don't make sense and/or introducing new ones that would similarly confuse users and lead to some of the same problems in terms of administrative feasibility after ecpa. so, i mean, it's certainly going to be interesting going forward to see how that transpires. >> thank you. so i want to turn now to lisa cone, legislative director for congressman dell men et, those of you who signed up may have noticed we originally were going to have heather sawyer who, unfortunately, is in the -- well, unfortunately for our purposes -- is in the middle of an investigation and found herself with a deposition she
couldn't get out of, and lisa, hankfully, a-- thankfully, agreed to step in. her boss is, as she will tell us, is one of the lead sponsors on one of the bills to reform ecpa. so my question to you is if you can give us a little bit of an overview of the state of play, particularly focusing on the house. >> yes, i'm a new arrival to the hill which makes me a little bit newer to the conversation than heather has been, you know, working in the committee for years and years going back a long time. so i came into congress, um, as a legislative director to a new member, susan dell men ney, who is from washington state, and has a background in the private sector. she has been involved in start-up companies, she helped found drugstore.com. and so her issue is really doing our part to keep the law up-to-date and to do our best
not to do any harm to the law by creating standards that won't be able to evolve. because what we may pass in 2013 or 2014, um, needs to make sure that we can anticipate what technologies we are not thinking about today. so when faced with kind of the growing coalition of folks that has brought, called attention to the issue on privacy rights and needs that aren't addressed in the current law, it was really kind of an easy answer to say, well, no, the current framework is not justifiable, and there's really no reason to say, no not have a warrant standard here. and not just for the stored content in e-mails, but as well as for geolocation information. so she became a cosponsor of a bill. it's the online communications ngo location protection act. representatives lofgren, poe and my boss is the cosponsor of that legislation. and i expect that there are also other pieces of legislation introduced on both the house and senate side. the gps act that representative
chaffetz introduced last month has a good number of bipartisan cosponsors, and there are also bills on the senate side. i can speak a little bit more to the house developments and last month's hearing, i know david already spoke to this, but i think it gave, um, gave us reason to have a lot of optimism that the committee chairman goodlatte expressed interest in convening a series of hearings on ecpa, so there's going to be a lot of consultations with stakeholders. the first hearing was good to have the department of justice testifying to there is merit to the standard that we need a warrant for stored e-mail content. so that was really hopeful. i think it remains to be sign -- to be seen what kind of stakeholders, we know that law enforcement is going to present some information and issues that we really need to take a careful look at x. by no means is the legislation that my boss has cosponsored not open for conversation and consultation
with those stakeholders. so i'm really, really pleased to be here today to continue that conversation. >> thank you. and so now i want to bring our final panelist into the conversation. he is a former deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division at the justice d., so he can't be our official current day justice department spokesperson, but i do want to ask jason to give us the law enforcement perspective and the reasons -- well, the reasons why from a law enforcement perspective you would agree with or have concerns about both the requirement, proposed requirement for a warrant for content and a warrant for location information. >> okay. do you want me to do pote now or just do content? >> if you could speak to both, we'll get more in detail as we go forward, but if you could give an overview of now. >> so dave and greg, i think, did a good job of alluding to what some of the distincts are in ecpa that when it comes to content that don't, i think the department has announced don't
make a lot of sense. but the landscape of the rules as they exist now are even more complicated than they alluded to. not only is there a distinction based on the able of the e-mail and whether it's been opened or not, there's also a distinction between whether the provider is a public or not a provider to the public. so the chart that the department of justice uses to try to explain to people what process applies to a given request for e-mail is multicolored and has more boxes in it than you can count. and if your statute needs a chart to explain it, it's probably not the model craftsmanship that you'd want it to be. the courts have actually made that even more complicated because the distinction that the statute makes between open or unopened e-mail applies everybody except california where with they have decided to treat opened and unopened e-mail the same. and in the case that changed the landscape dramatically by declaring with certain limited exceptions a provision that
allows for a process less than a warrant to get content of stored e-mail is unconstitutional. effect effectively, because the major providers started applying it as a general rule from 2010 on, the rule has been effectively in this country warrant for content. the, it was, as david alludes to, a very significant thing for the department to make the acknowledgment that it did at this hearing on march 19th that the 180-day rule and the distinct between opened and unopened e-mail is not a meaningful one. but the department didn't have to go as far as it did. you know, the department went one step further. it said not only are those distinctions no longer of any vitality, but that we could live with a warrant content for public providers, and that is important for reasons i'm get to in a moment. when i left the department in september, and up until the day i left, there was a consensus emerging that the 180-day rule and the opened/up opened
distinct really had to go. but there was strong support for trying to preserve a two-tiered system of process. we now have this three-tiered system of process, subpoena with notice or a warrant. and there was support for trying to preserve at least one option where you haven't yet achieved probable cause. and where you would have to give notice to the user. so that the user had an opportunity to challenge that process. in fact, i think it was last spring or summer greg and some of his folks at cdt ask and i spent two and a half hours together trying to hash out whether there was any viability in the post-worst shack area of preserving some sort of search warrant with no notice option. and i think it's become increasingly clear over time that it's harder and harder for the department to argue against a warrant for all content rule when we've, effectively, been living with one for almost two years. so it was a very significant thing that the department went one step further beyond saying
these distinctions need to go, but saying at least as public providers a warrant requirement is appropriate. i think that that's, as aalluded to, a reflection of the reality in the courts and the political landscape, the political reality as well. worschach changed the judicial landscape, and you don't have to be an astute leader of political tea leaves to see there's a great deal of momentum on the hill for changing ecpa in such a dramatic way as to institute a warrant for all content requirement. so i think the department deserves a lot of credit for taking that step, but i think it e flecks the reality that the department and its prosecutors are facing. i think that there are two important caveats to the position the department took at the hearing. the department's position, as i understood it, is that the department can live of with a warrant for all content requirement for mix providers, for the googles, for the yahoo!s, the microsofts with two
caveats. number one, there are a bunch of civil regulatory agencies that conduct investigations for which e-mail is just as important as it is in a criminal case, but based on the way their statutory authority is constructed, don't have the ability to get search warrants. the ftc, the sec, i think it also applies to some congressional committees. if congress were to adopt a warrant for all content b requirement, it's important to carve out an equivalent for those civil investigative and regulatory agencies that can't get a rule 41 warrant but still need access to e-mail to do their work. and the second caveat is the distinct between public and nonpublic providers. as the public providers a warrant for all content requirement is appropriate, but the department has suggested that congress should consider making the statute only apply to public providers and not apply to private, like, private employers who provide e-mail to
their employees. the statute in some important ways including in the positions that govern voluntary disclosure of content make a distinct between your employer who can provide content of your e-mails to law enforcement and anybody else, for that matter, voluntarily, and the googles and the yahoo!s and the microsofts of the world who can't. and the department has suggested that for corporate employers who provide internal e-mail networks for their employees to require a warrant for that content as well for these closed networks, um, it would create a situation where if a corporation was being investigated for sort of criminal activity, an e-mail that had been printed out and placed in a file cabinet the department would be able to get with a subpoena. but if it hadn't been printed out yet, the department would need a warrant for it. if it was an attachment to an e-mail, the government would need a warrant. so the d.'s suggestion is that -- the department's suggestion is that should with
with -- is that should be carved out entirely. >> okay, thank you. so, greg, we're going to come back in a little more detail a little bit later to the justice department testimony and areas of agreement and disagreement. but first i want to just follow up a little bit more on some of the things we did touch on in the first round here. and if you could sort of round out the picture that lisa was able to provide by telling us about the state of play on the senate side and the bills that are pending or maybe even expected there. >> so thanks, sharon. the major bill in the senate was introduced on march 19th by senators leahy and lee. it's h.r. 607, and it would require a warrant for content. it just deals with the content issue. and just it answers the doj concern about what we call the corporate -- >> f607. >> oh, sorry, yeah.
[laughter] the corporate e-mail issue. i describe it this way: if an investigative agency is going to a corporation and it's seeking the corporation's records as part of its investigation, it should be able to go to the corporation and tell the corporation, get us your records no matter whether they are in a file cabinet on premises, whether or they are stored on your network or whether they are stored on a third party's network for you. get us your records, here's the subpoena. as opposed to the the justice department going directly to the third party with the subpoena. why is that important? that's important because when justice or another agency goes to the third party with the subpoena, the provider turns over everything that's in the account. the provider cannot be expected the make determinations -- to make determinations about relevance, about privilege that
the target of investigation would be able to make. so the theme of the leahy bill on this corporate e-mail issue is if you're going to the provider to the third party, you've got to go with a warrant. if you are going to the target, the corporation under investigation directly, we're maintaining the subpoena rule. and i think he does a very good job of drawing that line, and i think it works out pretty well many that legislation. in that legislation. senate side there is a counterpart to the chaffetz gps act. it's the wyden/kirk gps act. it's the same piece of legislation, s. 639. and it would require a warrant for location information regardless of whether it's stored or accessed in realtime,
regardless of whether it's generated by xps or -- gps or by cell tower location. >> thank you. david, i want to give you a chance, also, to talk more about google's participation in ddp. we don't often necessarily see a company like google on the same side as the private advocacy community. often that's the opposite sides of a debate. so if you could just explain a little bit why, why is google a part of ddp? why in this issue do you find yourselves very much in sync with the privacy advocates? >> i just think this underscores a point we have been alluding to before which is that there is broad, a broad spectrum of support both on the right and the left for the principles that we're espousing. so, you know, there may be various disagreements among consumer groups and trade oh,s and companies like -- trade associations and companies like google in terms of commercial privacy, but all of us recognize the gaps that exist under current law. and all of us believe in the
fundamental prescriptions that we, that we need to make to close the gap that exists between where the law is and where consumers' reasonable expectations in privacy lie. we think it's great that ddp has been growing. just in the last six months, there have been a senate number of new companies and trade associations that have joined. there's obviously been the formation of the digital fourth group which is, you know, a very interesting group of strange bed fellows that might not coalesce around different sorts of privacy issues. but i think when you look at the list of ddp members, you look at who's a part of digital fourth, you look at who's sponsoring bills in the house, in the senate, it's very different maybe than it was five years ago. there's broad bipartisan support for this reform. and so that's obviously something that's, you know, that's great. we were original members o. ddp, but we've really tried to focus, i think everyone who's members
of ddp, is focused on broaden the coalition because ultimately we think the principles we support are those that end joy widespread bipartisan support. >> thank you. so, lisa, h.r. 983, the bill your boss is lead sponsor on, it pairs both of these issues even though some of the other legislative approaches separates them out. and i think you had mentioned -- speaking yesterday that that's something that was important to your boss. can you speak a little bit about that approach? >> i think, um, she -- i think the view is that as a pragmatic kind of practical application of the law we're looking at data that is owned by these third party providers, and whether it's gotten through a geolocation mechanism or through an e-mail service provider, it is data that, um, we need to really be very cautious about when -- [inaudible] can be compelled. so i think it's a natural point of it. i think there is a little wit more -- a little bit more
understanding and awareness about the e-mail problem, and more of the case law is really kind of -- there's a uniformity in how that is dealt with. but in the area of geolocation, it seems as though there's more discord, and the case law is not so uniform, and there's actually a greater immediate to legislate in this area to provide some consistency. so to fair two issues together, i think, is a good opportunity to educate on both of the issues and to provide the same standard and say these are identical, these are data that these third parties have, and we are going to apply the same standard to compel disclosure for both. >> thank you. so, jason, i wanted to get you to focus a little more on -- >> sure, sure. >> partly to give you the chance to flush out that answer, but also you mentioned earlier that in part on the issue of content is sort of post-worschach, at least the justice department basically said there's a de facto warrant for contact standard. on location we don't have a
comparable position under ecpa, but we do now have the decision from the supreme court, united states v. jones or the gps tracking case. and that case, the majority of the supreme court decided it on fairly narrow grounds and followed a trespass analysis. and, you know, the fact that the officers hate actually physically installed the device on the suspect's car was important to the majority's analysis in staying that was a fourth amendment -- in saying that that was a fourth amendment search. the actual installation. but we had five other justices in two separate opinions that we can add together to get five was the majority who explored in the two separate concurrences a republican p expectation of privacy analysis and indicated that under their -- [inaudible] a warrant would be required for the use of this kind of very powerful electronic surveillance technology that could track suspect location even in a public place. but that hasn't carried forward as far as we know to the justice department's practice so far on
location information when we're talking about cell phone location information. so if you could explain that. >> yes. i'll flush that out. and i think it's important to do so to understand the difference and the different types of location information. and greg alluded to this. the situation if courts is a -- in the court is the a mess, and i agree this is an area where legislation is really important. as a general matter, i think everybody here would agree that clear rules are good for everybody. they're good for providers, they're good for consumers, they're good for members of the public, they're certainly good for law enforcement, and we don't have that at all when it comes to location. the department makes distinctions between cell tower information and more precise gps-type information, and within that another distinction. cell tower information, as greg indicated, is the information that's generated for the provider so they can connect your call or complete the transmission of your text message. they are not, those records are created by the provider, they're only created when the call is taking place or when the text message being transmitted. that is when the phone is in
use. and they maintain those records in the ordinary course of their business so they can provide you with cellular service. they're not nearly as preis ice as gps. they reveal which face of the antenna is closest to where you are. the range of the antenna varies widely depending on whether you're in a dense urban area or rural area. in some cases the tower that serves your call might not even be the tower closest to you, you may have been shuttled to another tower. and unlike gps, they can't place you within a building, a house or certainly a room. there's two types, historical, what cell towers your phone is hitting off back in january on a given day or given woke or perspective which is what cell tower's europe phone's going to be hitting off in the next 30-40 days. generally speaking, the closest thing we have to uniformity regards the standard genre in the courts in this country for historical cell tower information is that the
government has to show around take late bl facts. there's one circuit that's held that's a floor, not a ceiling, but for the most part you have to show specific facts. there's a split among the courts in this country, in some cases within magistrates within the same district or circuit over what to do about prospective cell tower information. there is no clear legislative authority for the government to get prospective cell tower information. so we have cobbled together authority from both 270 3-d and from the penn register the act and have used for years what's been called the hybrid order. back in 2005 or so a couple of magistrates wrote opinions in which they held that that legislative authority was unclear. and then in the absence of clear legislative authority supporting the use of this reasonable suspicion-like standard, they were going to require a warrant based on probable cause. and those opinions spread like wildfire. and in district cans throughout the country, including the one i was practicing in at the time in maryland, almost overnight you
went from being able to get prospective cell tower information with reasonable suspicion to not being able to get it without a warrant, and i'll explain in a moment why that's important. for precision information location which is the information we get from using the gps technology in your phone, historically as far back as i can remember, and i was a prosecutor for 15 years starting in 1999, as far back as i can remember, we have been requiring the use of a warrant to get that. that may be a surprised if you air just about any show that's ever aired on cbs, but that's the rule. you can't just get it by being jack bauer and punching manager on your smartphone. you have to get a warrant to get gps information from somebody's phone. that has been pre-jones, and that's been the department's guidance. jones affected, of course, tracking devices on vehicles. sharon has heard me say this, for what it's worth best practice when i would teach prosecutors how to get a xps tracker -- gps tracker on a
vehicle, the best practice was to get a warrant. even if you're slapping it on, because if the cargoes into a private space, you don't want to have to turn the device off. you want to be able to monitor the signals. and whether or not they're in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. and the only way to assure you can do that legally is to get a warrant. i still think that's the best practice post-jones, in fact, with even more vigor, i would say that was best practice. jones left open the question, the opinion is sort of sloppy as sharon alluded to, although i'll take credit for calling it sloppy and not you, the rationale for the opinion is a little bit unclear, and they left open the question of whether the search that's represented by the placement of the tracker on the car is one that requires a warrant. or whether it's, there are other categories of fourth amendment searches like you probably have heard of like a stop and frisk where based on reasonable suspicion an officer can pat you
down if they have reasonable suspicion to believe that you're engaged in criminal activity and that you may have a weapon. that's a fourth amendment search, but it's one-half -- one that the courts have held that you don't have to get a warrant for that. by the same token, for 20 or 30 years there's been an exception to the warrant requirement for searches of cars. if law enforcement officers have probable cause to believe that the car contains evidence of a crime, they don't have to go to a judge and get a warrant to search that car, they can search the car based on their assessment of probable cause. now, if they're wrong, that evidence is probably going to get suppressed later. but based on the fact it would support a warrant, they can search the car without a warrant. and even post-jones, since jones left that question open, we now immediate the lower courts to fill in the answer to that question. and the government's position in this third circuit case is reasonable suspicion should be enough because it's analogous to a stop and frisk, but even if probable cause is required, it should be subject to the warrant
requirement, and if you can search the interior of a car for evidence of a crime based on probable cause without a warrant, one could argue you should be able to put the tracking device on the car which is much less of an intrusion, also without a warrant. so the rules in the post-jones era are trackers are somewhat in flux because the opinion was so unclear. now, why, why is the department much more resis tax to a warrant for all location information requirement than for content? it really boils down to the notion of building blocks. prosecutors don't start their cases with probable cause. prosecutors build up to probable cause by using less intrusive investigative techniques based on lower burdens of proof. and they collect that evidence, and can they compile that evidence, and sometimes that ed allows them to rule out innocent people and to focus on people they believe are guilty and then to put the pieces together to then be able to go to a court and say now i have probable cause to get a wire tap or to do a search warrant or do something more interesting.
cell tower information is a critically important building block. before i came to the department and oversaw the computer crime and i.t. section, i was a violent crime prosecutor in baltimore which is a city that has had its share of violent crime. and i can tell you electronic evidence in general and cell tower records are critically important not just to cyber crime cases, but to murder cases, kidnapping cases, the kind of stuff that was my bread and butter. and as i said, i was in a district that almost overnight went from reasonable suspicion standard to probable cause, and it virtually shut down our ability to use that as a building block. and it was critically important in a lot of the murder cases i prosecuted and supervised. so in our view and the department's view, and i think it's been the department's view for a long time and i think will continue to be, failing to distinguish between the different types of location information, failing to distinguish between historical and perspective, between cell tower and precise, and requiring a warrant for everything without distinction would impair the government's ability to bring
many different types of cases successfully from identity theft in cyber cases and white collar cases to murder cases and cases that affect people's physical safety. and it's also important to recognize that there are plenty of situations including emergency situations where location information, the government obtains location information without a search warrant where there's no reason to think a crime's been committed, missing children or kids who are missing, you're not sure if they're abducted or not. there's not necessarily probable cause to believe a crime's been committed, and the government gets that information in an emergency situation. so in a warrant for all regime, it would be important to preserve those emergency exceptions as well. the last thing i'd say is the third party doctrine which at least one of the justices, i think it was sotomayor, wrote an opinion saying jones ought to be the beginning of a national discussion about -- i don't want
to -- >> i'm going to go to a question. perfect selling segway, thank you. >> okay. >> but let me -- you want to respond on something first? >> i do. >> all right, i'm going to let you -- go ahead, and then i'll get back to the third party for all of you. >> let the issue be joined. let's join the issue right now. the is your location over a 60-day period prospectively or relate prospectively -- retrospectively, is that just a building block of an investigation, or is it something more? we think it's something more. that you have a privacy interest in your location over such lengthy periods of time that the justice department just isn't recognizing. here's what i think of a building block. a building block is who belonged to this ip address on this day at this time? where do they live? how do they pay their bill? those are kinds of subscriber information, that's a building
block. he's another building block under the statute. who did this person e-mail and who e-mailed them? that's also a building block. but when it comes to something like your location over time, that is a different matter to my mind and i think to the digital due process group. finish and one other point about location, it is not the case, it is not the case that gps is always more precise than is cell tower location. increasingly, cells are becoming smaller and smaller, particularly in urban areas, and nowadays cells can be one floor of one building. one floor of one building. you can't get that precise with gps. these are called phanto cells, and they now outnumber the
larger cells, the ones that you see when you're driving down the highway, you see these big towers standing up. there are increasingly small cells that will increasingly locate you even more precisely than gps. >> okay. so now you've got me -- before we get to the third party doctrine, i think some of what this is getting at in this debate is also what was going on in jones, getting our heads around what is the reasonable expectation of privacy mean in the digital age. pleasure and so historically there was this notion that you had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. and as for the location, i think it's maybe -- you may want to comment on this -- b harder for somebody to get there. this is reasonable expectation of privacy. but then when you're talking about these very powerful electronic surveillance tools and following somebody 24/7 and in the case of the jones case, 24/7 for the period of a month, does that then get us to a place where even in a public place
you're violating someone's actual reasonable expectation of privacy? perhaps the content of your personal e-mail it's easier to understand that you might have an expectation of privacy in that. is that some of what you think may be going on? if anyone wants to -- >> i'll let jason go because he wanted to respond. >> i think the way i would respond to that, first of all, neither of us is as much of a techie as we wish we were, so i think we've long ago agreed the disagree. but on the other issue greg raised, because this is to our third or fourth panel together so we have this whole routine down, i don't think the government is saying, i don't think the department has ever taken the position that there is no interest in location information. is that a privacy interest that the constitution recognizes, or is it one that can be protected by a statutory standard that is somewhat less than probable cause? right now, as i said, the standard is specifically and articulate bl facts. now, in some districts, and this is one of the larger points that i hope you take away with, just
as important as the standards that congress writes are the way those standards are applied. i've been in two different districts, and i won't name them, you can read them in my bio and figure out which one i'm praising, which one i'm criticizing. the standard for getting a pen register is that the information is rell -- vel vel rant. all you have to do is certify as a prosecutor that the information is relevant and material to a criminal investigation. in the other district i prosecuted, you have to submit the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation, you know, maybe 15 pages single-spaced. it's my equivalent of a dissertation, replease with facts -- replete with facts only to have a judge say, no, that's not enough. there's no justice in that. there's no justice in having different standards apply to the same defendants in a courthouse and different standards to different defendants within the
same federal system. so just as important as the standards we write is the way those standards are applied. now, the standard, the specific facts in my experience is a rigorously-applied standard. and back when that standard was raised to specific facts in 1994, the privacy community embraced that change. from, basically, a subpoena standard to reasonable suspicion as protected of privacy providing a high degree of protection. and provided that standard is faithfully executed by prosecutors and applied by judges, it's anything but a rubber stamp. so the question is not do you have a privacy interest in your his to haval or prospective location, the question is that something that is such that the fourth amendment protects it and the warrant requirement or some exception to the warrant requirement would apply, or is it something that is still significant but is less significant than the fourth amendment territory such that congress can protect it with a lower standard? >> okay. so now i'm going to bring us back to the third party
doctrine, and actually i'm going to turn first to lisa and david, although i'll give you all a chance to talk about this. so for those of you who are not necessarily in the weeds on these doctrines, the third or party doctrine is something that the supreme court recognized in the case called united states against miller in 1976. and it came up in the context of banking. but the basic notion, and i'm summarizing here, but the basic notion is if you as an individual turn over your private data -- in that case financial stuff -- to a bank, then you're basically losing your fourth amendment privacy interests in that information. you've consented to give it to the bank, you've shared it, it's no longer your private, protected information. and so the government can then go and seek it from that third party without you having the same traditional fourth amendment safeguards in place. and that doctrine has been criticized in more recent times in the digital age including by the constitution project and also some other folks because in
today's -- the notion being that in today's world you're turning over your information constantly to all sorts of third parties to have your phone, to have your e-mail and so forth. and, in fact, in the worschach decision from the sixth circuit, they distinguished the case of e-mail from banks. but i want to get the panel to weigh in on this because it can raise issues in this context if you were going to go into the courts, and because we're talking about the government getting this informationing from a third party -- this information from the third party, from the vieder. that's what the debait is about. so, lisa, just with the doctrine out there, the obvious question is does that change the strategy, and does that put more of an onus on working with congress and more -- because you're not burdened necessarily in the same way that you would be going through the courts, and how does that affect the analysis there? >> that's a really good question, and i think the job of
the courts versus the job of congress are different in that respect, and it's to the benefit, i think, of the assessment that congress can conduct when having these hearings. you know, the demands of the constitution are something that the courts will work out on a case-by-case basis. they're going to look at the specific, unique set of facts and one gps device put on one car in one situation and what the probable cause or what the level, um, of articulable facts and what relevance that has in those situations. but i think when you have congress reviewing the broader issue, you can look at, of course, how the courts are interpreting what the constitution demands and look at that, but you can also look at how this impacts our nation's competitiveness and the industries that are the third party providers. and i, you know, would turn to the googles and the wireless carriers who would be able to speak more to that issue, but i do think, um, we want to be thinking about other sets of
issues that maybe don't come into play. so being able to be in congress and take a broader assessment of what the state of play is and how often location data is being disclosed, that's not something necessarily that, um, a court can review in its constitutional analysis of a specific case. so we can take the broad view, and i think it will be important to hold hearings and figure out, and i think there's a lot more data. p.m. p portfolio p.m. ..
bank or with eithe with a thirdu must not insist that private. you are giving up that interest. from your perspective, thinking about your users, is it your expectation users feel once google has access we're getting of our privacy interest, does that make sense from that perspective? >> we don't believe that the third party doctrine diminishes, argues the fourth amendment and the content. it's something we ought to hone in on in the case you had cited, united states, deposit slips and checks i think, bank records. and the of the case, smith versus maryland it dealt with numbers that were chronicled by 10 registered.
in both of those cases the court referred back to its cap and talk about the sanctity of conversations. meaning communications, content. were careful to distinguish these two cases. this is something that was expounded upon in the first decision, and also the second washout decision when the court was focusing specifically on e-mail service providers and i think what the court was saying, echoing what the supreme court said about this is that content is different. and that simply because service provider merely has access to communications, that doesn't extinguish or diminish the privacy interest that users have under the fourth amendment in terms of the privacy of their communication. and the court focused, too, on this issue of processing for viruses, spam, malware and even child pornography. that's an argument that was raised.
these providers are performing these functions. users are on notice that the content, that the content is not sacrosanct. therefore, their expectations to privacy are diminished and the court rejected that argument. what the court did say is there might be circumstances if there is a blanket policy of monitoring, auditing or inspecting the content of the communications that is performed not an automated way but by human beings or administrators that under the circumstances when people were on notice, that serving in the case of corporate now that their expectations of privacy might be diminished. i think the courts have been pretty careful in mitigating between content and non-content, and notwithstanding a third party doctrine i think argues others have very significant fourth amendment interest in the privacy of the content of their communication. >> grade, i want to turn to you. mention the war shack court
distinguished a doctrine with e-mails, but let me ask, do you feel the existence of doctrines means that it is better, more productive to seek change in standards through congress, or equally to the fourth because that may be able to continue to distinguish that away? >> so, pick up the phone, make a phone call. to make the call you have to entrust your communication to the phone companies. and yet there's a warrant requirement to intercept a phone call. write a letter, put it in the envelope, send it through the mail. you have trusted your communication to the postal service. law enforcement needs a warrant for that. it makes sense in the digital age that when you entrust your e-mail to your provider to get it to somebody else, there ought to be a warrant requirement for that as well. there is a significant advantage though in having congress erased
any doubts about whether there is a warrant requirement or not. first, it erases the doubt which is a very good thing instead of having the courts go through it. but it also gives congress a chance to think about what jason was saying earlier. to think about what are the exceptions that we are going to have to the warrant requirement? current law includes exceptions like for emergencies. and the gps act and the other location-based bills, including, include exceptions for missing children, and they are going to need an exception because our time when you want law enforcement to be able to locate person without needing the warrant stated. advantage of having congress to do that is they can think about
is exceptions and legislate them after debate, rather than having to go through decades of litigation to get to the right place. >> jason, from a law enforcement perspective, would you support revisiting third party doctrine? >> look, let me say, i'm glad greg came down because i agree with like 99% of what you just said and i agree with 100% of what david said. the distinction is critical to me between content and non-content. just as if you store your personal belongings in a u-haul story center if you like to retain a reasonable amount of privacy in the content of your belongings, even though they're stored with a third party. i think users to send e-mail through google or yahoo! or microsoft believe quite recently that they retain an expectation of privacy of content and their communications. when you talk but a third party doctrine, the content noncontent distinction is important.
second and since i sort of just the construction of the jones case i will praise it in a way. justice alito had a great line in which he said that these kinds of line drawings, this kind of bouncing between privacy and public safety, not by the courts. but i think the way the law is developed when it comes to sales at locations and the way the law developer comes to content illustrates that this kind of line drawing, these kinds of trade-offs that we have to make in our society between individuals privacy and public safety and the needs of industry, the need to have an innovative dynamic and free internet. those lines, courts are not equipped to draw. drunken case-by-case is not helpful to anybody and result in confusion. i think this is a case where this screams out for
legislation. greg gave some examples of sort of everyday transmission of content to let me give you samples of every transmission of noncontent location information. before you all arrived here, you forgot it today maybe you made a phone call from a landline at your house which is your most protected space constitutionally. you into an atm machine and took out some money. you went to the bank in wired money be doing to the store and eroded check. he went to starbucks and paid with a credit card. you signed into a three times and she came into this building. all of that information is, i'm not suggesting it nearly as complete a picture in real time that you might get from gps and so forth but all of that information is information about your movements today during a three-hour period. all that information is noncontent information held by third party providers that the government can get with a subpoena. not reasonable suspicion, just a subpoena. that's been the case for decad
decades. but to get the location of the cell tower image of us an apology me three months ago, the government needs specific facts. to build attractive phone with precise location ability, the government needs a search warrant. the take away is that content information, or noncontent location information when it comes from your cell phone is already more protected than all these other types of noncontent information that you give up as you live on the grid as we all do. that's not to say the standard is adequate and my view is it is and the more important thing is the standard be applied. but the third party doctrine is so ensconced in our framework of laws come into privacy laws, that we forgot a situation which electronic information about your location, the government has to meet a higher standard. it's up to congress to decide whether that needs to be made
even higher. than all the ways we provide third party records about our movements and other transactions to third parties. it makes done some of you to know that the government can send a subpoena to your bank and find out everything financial transaction you've engaging in the last five years and issued an order to the bank that they can't tell you about. provided you're not giving bank fraud, you probably are not worried about that. but that kind of inflation is a camel from a third party to a third party doctrine as it's been interpreted certainly in the context was guided by the courts or by congress, that would have a crippling effect on the ability to investigate crime. the fact is we communicate information about what we do and where we do it, how we do it from the moment we leave our house to the moment we return. and while i agree that electronic trail that leads from our phones is more invasive and should be subject to a higher
standard than these other examples i gave, they are still not content and content deserves the highest degree of protection. this noncontent information relates our cell phones i think is absolutely deserving of fire protection than the credit card transaction at starbucks this morning but is not deserving of this undertaking content which is truly the most protected area. we say, what we write, we communicate to that is deserving of the highest degree of protection. >> i want to go back to the panel one more time and then i'm going to open it up to questions from the audience. but turning back here to greg, i did want to ask you a bit, talked earlier about the doj testimony last month, the head of office of legal policy's talking about possibility of a board for content standard. i want to ask you if you would highlight some of the key areas of agreement that you saw in the
testimony with what they are seeking a some of the key remaining areas of disagreement. >> where we agree is that the distinctions in current law that make it so the e-mail older than 180 days old is subject only to a subpoena standard, that doj reached a statue to say there's a distinction between open and unopened e-mail less than 180 days, that those distinctions make no sense today. we agree. we agree on that. i think where the one major disagreement -- i'm sorry. we also agree on what i describe earlier as a corporate e-mail issue, when the investigators go directly to a target of investigation seeking its records for a civil investigation. they should be able to go with a subpoena, subpoena the rest of the corporation. where we disagree is when the
civil investigative body is conducting their civil investigation and they want to go to the provider, to the third party provider with a subpoena to get your records, or the records about a corporation under investigation. what doj testified was that they wanted a huge new exception for the civil investigations so that they could go to these third party providers and get your information from that. that i think is going to be a nonstarter. i just think that wind through. first agrees all those issues about the provider nine on what's relevant and what isn't to the investigation, and just turning over everything. turn over all the employees personal e-mails in response to that request. it's a huge privacy problem and it's a huge business trade secret problem, too. you don't want your secrets,
hopefully you are not throwing with a third party but you don't want your relevant information turned over to justice or to another investigative body. and it creates one other problem that the doj witness was not able to answer when she was asked about it. sometimes investigations can be civil, and criminal at the same time. that they conduct a parallel investigation and sometimes they're just conducting a civil investigation that could lead to a criminal investigation. under doj's proposal, they could start out simply, get all the information with a subpoena and then just dump it over to the criminal side and evade the warrant requirement altogether. >> i'm not going in order. jason, you always spoke a bit about the doj testimony and your reactions butterworth as you about one particular piece there. the office of legal policy said
that, expressed some approval of the notion with caveats that experts should require law enforcement to obtain a warrant based on probable cause to compel disclosure of quote stored e-mail and similar stored content information from the service provider. my question is, this phrase similar content information, should we understand from that likely in the cloud? i know you're not speaking on behalf of the department officially. >> all electronic forms. text messages, facebook messages, all those things should be deserving of the same degree of protection regardless of what actual communication was used to send them. that's i interpret that. >> addressing the work for content standard. thank you. so i wanted to go switch topics a bit and ask david and lisa more about transparency which is a topic that somebody alluded to earlier. david, i believe google released
the most recent version of its transparency report trying to help show the scope of this issue in january. it's been doing this since 2010, and just last month microsoft has now published a similar type of report. so if you tell us more about what the transparency report show, why google is making a point of doing this. >> yes. we released the first of our testers reports in 2010, and we were certainly gratified to see him company like microsoft, lincoln, twitter, dropbox, sonic nihcm all issuing their own versions of the transparency records and building upon some of the work that we have done. over the three plus years since we first released our transparent report the government requires for user data issues to google in a, context has increased 136%. we recognize governments have legitimate needs for the day. but we also think it's important for our users to have
information about the volume and types request that we receive. and the circumstances under which we might push back against some of these request. our posture in terms of how we respond and what we provide when we get these sorts of requests. we are hopeful that our transparency report is going to inform the broader debate about, by providing real data behind it. you were alluding to come in 2013 alone we have been focusing on how to make this better. some of the things that we've done i think were in response issues that have been raised. we are always interested in hearing from the public about ways we can increase transparency in terms of government requests. on january 23, for the first time we provided data about the types of requests that we were receiving using the grace legal processes that are payable to government entities. the second half of 2012 we
disclose 60% of the quest we received through subpoenas am a 22% were through search warrants under many 10% were court orders that included other legal processes that were more difficult to categorize. and then on data processing debit 28th of january, we issued a detailed -- what is google thinking when they get a request, how do they handle request? what type of data do they provide? what are the circumstances under what they won't provide data. then granular data about the types of data we might disclose that's related to gmail depend on whether we got to gmail or search warrant, or a court order. and then most recently on the fifth of march we disclose albeit in broad strokes the number of national security letter requests that we've received, and the number of affected user accounts. that some i think we're going to be publishing on an annual
basis. going forward, we are looking for ways to improve the way that we communicate to our users, you know, about this issue and to give an understanding to the broader public about what this issue means and its implications for updating ecpa spent lease, i wanted to ask you, to what extent can congress play a role here, more reporting, getting a better handle on the scope of how much of these tools are really being used even under current law? >> i think it's going to be in a port in question for the hearing to bring witnesses to an to hear out what the practical application is of the current framework because it's not so clear from the text of the statute how it's being applied right now. so it really will be important to assess that. so i think that's something that naturally is right for hearings. and i think that this is a careful balance of what we are asking industry, third party
providers can and will have to kind of have that conversation about what elements will be important for requiring government when they receive disclosures. so i think it's really exciting that there is a bipartisan interest in having that conversation, and i think that the series of very we will see in the house and senate will be fruitful in that. >> just want to piggyback something that was said to i think the reports are great and i agree i think it's great other companies have followed them closely. it to look at the data from those reports, i think they're useful in a number of ways and inform the debate. one way celts were put in perspective what it is we're talking the. microsoft report that came out last month reflects among other things that law enforcement request from the united states at all levels of u.s. law enforcement at state local federal, and overpriced like .02% of all users of microsoft services. the last data and look out for
google from 2011 enterprise like .0058% of all registered google users have their accounts affected by a law enforcement request to many u.s. law enforcement agency, local state or federal. by contrast 100% of the american and overseas internet users are at risk from identity thieves. and criminals that threaten the privacy of her time there on their computers. i think as lisa said is no absolute you pick any decision we make him any line that congress draws in greeting asking for content and location information and related issues will have some corresponding trait of. in the stands are really high, so they're very protected private person very protected privacy they will have an effect on public safety at someone because they will be cases that can't be made. in some cases there will be cases against privacy related criminals, people who create botnets, people who steal identity that will be able to be
made. so truly protecting privacy means when congress draws these lines, they draw the in a way that is protective of privacy but also protective of the needs of public safety authorities to do the work they need to do to get the criminals who threaten privacy. there's a similar trade-offs and i don't want to their off-topic for more than eight seconds but they're similar trade-offs in consumer privacy. there's bolded this is a majority of americans don't want to contract the internet but there's several -- separate data, like getting ads that are relevant to them on their smartphones and the like having internet services like google that are vital to the ways we live that are free. and like the other services and online tracking makes possible. there's cognitive dissonance there. so even in making the consumer privacy space, the lines we draw, the rules we create that the relationship between providers and consumers, will have an impact on the free and dynamic internet.
there's no absolute. this is all about balancing very important interest that everybody shares the everybody wants to look safety. everybody wants privacy everybody wants free and dynamic and innovative internet and once our providers like google and microsoft and others to thrive. there's not easy solutions, no easy place to know where to draw the lines. we would have drawn them a long time ago stack in limited fashion, we have a one on one balance here between trade-offs on law enforcement and privacy. certainly -- we are talking under what standards should law enforcement get, not that law enforcement can, but if you can make may be increased the efficiency by focusing in on the real bad guys was the our meetings instead of showing that's the appropriate target or getting this information. so yes, there are trade-offs, but pushed back lived on the one on one notion that you either protecting privacy or --
>> the practical consequence of in some cases it will be true in every case but there will be cases where the standard is place at such a high level that some of the building blocks that you know would be able to use less process to get evidence, older content or evidence that would allow you to build a probable cause, you won't be up to get because you will be required of probable cause in the first place. i'm not saying it's bad. i'm saying there's consequences to will replace the lines and that there are cases that will not get made. criminals that will not get caught. and there's no way around that. >> we have to work harder. okay, someon so want to open tho questions from the audience. i have two interns in the audience with microphones. we are being filmed. to request a few. raise your hand and i were recognize you and have the microphone brought to you. but when you do get the microphone, please identify yourself and please actually ask
a question. >> him i'm bob, a privacy consultant to want to ask about the third party doctor. we have a statute that overturned the third party doctrine shortly after the lowercase and that's the right to financial privacy act. and the reason few people know that it is because it's an extraordinarily weak law with very low standard, information has to be relevant to an ongoing investigation. that are extensions for state and local government, for the cia, the sec. so the log really has very little content. and so i want to ask questions of different people. jason, if congress were serious and considering changing the third party doctrine, what other kinds of exemptions do you think that law enforcement community would ask for? into greg, i would like to ask how can you argue to overturn the third party doctrine in the
interest of privacy when all the third parties take all the information they have about individuals and sell it out the backdoor to anyone who wants them? >> me i? >> go for it. >> third party doctrine is a constitutional doctrine, and i think it's here for now. part of congress' role is to fill the gaps with a third party doctrine has created. and we see ecpa as one of those gap builders. it needs to be strengthened. it needs to be updated. as for the ability of companies to disclosure information without your permission, not part of the third party doctrine because third party doctrine is a constitutional doctrine you. we are advocates of a baseline privacy law that would put restrictions on that. we are under no illusion that
those two things are easy to accomplish. we think that are both difficult, and that they ought to be tackled separately. and that's why ddt is focus on law enforcement issues. there is one kind of overlap, bob, that it wanted to talk about for just a minute. and david alluded to it just a second ago. one thing that i did see in doj testimony two years ago that i did not see in the doj's testimony this year was the idea that if a company is using your communication to figure out how to market to you, that that ought to be a reason to diminish the level of statutory privacy that attaches to your communication. they argued that two years ago
they seemed to have dropped that argument this year. and i think that's an important change also. because where it goes, i mean, you know, you are typing up your gmail and you get ads that are relevant to what you're typing in your gmail. way that argument goes is to make it so that the communications are unable to law enforcement with a subpoena for content. so i think another change that we ought to focus on, and, frankly, hold them too, is the idea that that kind of business model does not defeat your constitutional or statutory privacy rights. >> i think just on that point, i think like the storage unit at a storage facility a sample is helpful because the manager of the storage facility as the key and can get into a case of
emergency. bob, your question is a tough one to answer because it's not so much a question of exception, because the kind of information, kind of third party information, i rattled off five or six examples what an ordinary person might do during the course of the day. one was a financial transaction, one might've just been party a place that i security camera, signing into building, all of those sort of broadly defined our transaction records that third parties maintain. they're not record of course that the user has any control over. these are private papers of the company, fedex, starbucks and credit card issuer. they pertain to the personal transaction that that cup is supported you. and they are not records that you the customer has ever had any control over. if congress were to try to
legislate a new standard to govern third party doctrine, then the question on sort of the floor would be you make more distinctiodistinctions that arey made among different types of third party records. right now there's the broad university you get by subpoena, there's the more limited universe of third party records related to cell phone and internet usage that require a higher show me. or you make of the distinctions besides just a few broad distinctions but if congress were to abolish the third party doctrine in some fashion and say that all third party records require a search warrant, i think that it's not a question of carving a credit card records or bank records or fedex records. and i don't say this, i don't think i'm prone to hyperbole. i think that that would shut down investigations of every type of crime i could possibly imagine. because from white collar crimes and murders, those records, not just because they establish
location but because the established activity. who you're connected with. who you wired money to. who you are calling on your phone. hoosier associate with. those records are as critical to establishing who was innocent of crimes and who is suspected of being part of a criminal to you can prove that they are. so it's not a question of picking a piecemeal. the question really is are the protestations we make now between cell phone internet third party records anybody else, is that distinction still valid and if it is do we have a high enough standard for the cell phone internet record relative to the subpoena stand for everything else. >> other questions? right here in the front. >> allen butler, the electronic privacy in electronic center. i would be interested to hear your views on whether after jones there is any principle reason to distinguish between prospective and historical records on privacy grounds, not
statutory ground? >> do you want to start? >> i will let you start. >> so, jones, the holding was, there was trespass so that's not really relevant to your question. the five conferences that sharon was talking about is relevant. and you look at justice sotomayor's concurrent. she sang i do think that this third party doctrine serves us well in the digital age. she is a wise latina. [laughter] i think she, she got it right because it's not serving as well in the digital age. and a leaders conference was, he kind of started but i think it was a big question if his concurrence was the majority opinion, which is how many days, how many days of tracking
triggers the warrant requirement. and a lot of people don't know, this case was moving up, the lower court called it the mosaic theory where you're pulling together different pieces of data to create a picture of this person's activities. i think when you look at it objectively, it shouldn't matter whether the tracking is prospective or retrospective. when we are looking at this, one of the advocates of making a distinction came around when he thought about his own activity. he said, you know, i go running pretty much everyday. i take pretty much the same route. if you look back on like 30 days of running activities, you would know where i was going to be for the next 30 days at a time when
i go running. and ultimately came around and said, these two kinds of data are equally revealing, and we have to have a warrant for both. >> so let me ask, answer with a question. this is not the only area of the law, even cell phone research along with the law makes a distinction from historical perspective. so, you can get, i can get -- i can't anymore but the government can get your transaction records of calls you made on your cell phone for the last 30, 60, 90 days with the subpoena. but to get your calls going forward, who it is you're going to be calling this moment on for the next 30 days, they have to get a register which is a higher show them. do you think that there's a distinction in terms of your expectation of privacy and your activity between the stuff in this thing which is who you been calling for the last 30 or 60 or 90 days or he will you're going now which could be used to develop a picture of your movement going forward?
i'm carries, is that a distinction in your mind? >> i think that it's tricky because it depends on the view of the privacy of phone detail records which i do think is lower than location. but i do see exactly why the prospective historical as any principled basis and the privacy interest to i think it's more of a practical distinction. >> that's there that think the way this law has evolved, as a general matter a higher degree of intrusion the high degree of evidentiary burden the government has to me. so for the lowest level which is you're calling records for cell phone, for historical patents, the government can get a subpoena. but if they want to know who you're calling for the next 30 days they've got to get a register which requires more. except in one of the chicks i was in. if you want to do more than that, they want to get your cell
site location they got to do more but if you want to get gps, they've got to do more but if you want to find who you're talking to, not who you're talking but which were saying, they hav had to get a wiretap wh requires even more. there's these degrees that are made at various stages of intrusion but i think the point that greg ray's is right on. the hardest question in jones is when does the period of monitoring become so invasive and pervasive that in the courts be would require a warrant? i'll tell you this is a former law-enforcement officer that's an extraordinarily challenging, this is an extraordinary challenge it before law enforcement officer who are seeking use these techniques. that's why post jones is yet another reason i would do the best practice is get a warrant and you don't have to worry about it. because when you start out doing your tracking, these slap on truckers have a battery life anywhere from 48 hours to seven days depend on the technology. you have to replace them.
but he may start of your investigation think he will track the guy for two days and the next thing you know it's three weeks or four weeks. at some point you crossed the line into pervasive monitoring territory. so it's a very difficult, a very difficult doctrine to apply in practice for cops and agencies. >> so, that means congress, they could legislate that answer rather than having the courts figure it out, you know? but jason was talking about the phone records. interestingly he now is the opposite. doesn't make a lot of sense. historical e-mail to from information, they have to get an order based on, the intermediate level. government and material and the intermediate level. but if they want real-time who are e-mailing and he e-mailed
you, it's near certified relevance, which is a much lower standard. they don't have to show specific facts except in one district that jason was practicing in. it's kind of not accurate to say that the statute always requires a higher standard for real-time versus stored. >> that's an excellent point. that's an anomaly and one that i think should be fixed also. >> by raising the standard for real-time. >> that's a topic for next week spend. week's been. i think that is another illustration of how this law is sort of been put together in a way that -- >> do you want to weigh in on this question? we are good, all right. other questions? over here. >> i want to thank everyone for all of your insight.
it's been great. migration is kind of moving forward now that we've delved into this, we see there's a lot of different distinctions and a lot of distinctions are based on technologies today. how do we update ecpa so it makes sense? but so that we are not in the same position in 10 years or 20 years? because it's my understand when ecpa was first enacted in 1986, i could probably barely walk, but there was a congressional intent to protect what communications at that time should have been private. i think that intent was there. but moving forward, how do we ensure that that happens with location via, whether your tracking from a cell tower or from a gps or from your nike fueled and? i just feel like technology moves so quickly that that
distinction makes sense today but it could be irrelevant in two years. >> i think it's a really difficult question comment and when it comes about in a variety of areas when you're talking about regulating, the space of internet or technologies, think about some of the intellectual property issues of the day. think about cybersecurity and the we face today might look very different as things evolve in the next two years, not even 25 years. and so it is something that i think requires a really cautious approach to legislation and i do appreciate that because i think no one wants to design a new copyright law today that will be outdated five years now or to design an updated ecpa that needs modernization a game in 2015. so i think it will be incumbent upon members of congress were to legislation to make sure that it remains somewhat broad enough and definitions are not too
finally narrowed so that it rules out potential future content that we are not contemplating, cell tower that will evolve to track our location differently. i think it will just be a need for a very careful process stack you want to account for the stack -- for example, cell tower location to become more and more accurate by using technical in which. i wouldn't make a distinction between gps and cell tower for exactly that region -- reason. >> i think there's an important role for congress to play in its oversight function, revisiting these issues on an annual basis. holding hearings so they can understand how technology is developing a new challenges that might be created when ecpa is updated. to understand how these changes in technology might not be
keeping pace with the law. we are hopeful that the changes that we are looking to enact will be ones that will withstand the test of time, but there's obviously particularly in the location space, some incredibly tricky and difficult. it will be advances in technology, and those advances i think are going to call for higher standards. >> okay. my name is mason. i'm with the national association of criminal defense lawyers, and i the question, in the location context and a lot of the votes we've seen there've been exceptions for consent to use location tracking information. so i'm interested in now doj would do the content of consent. consumer protection issues affect we're all dealing with third parties that require
provider contracts, and some also interested in what david has to say about that issue. and isn't the type of consent where we say, my car is missing so i can send to you using gps to use my car? or are these boy played contracts will all agree to it or to receive the technology and we say the consent is to share all of my information? >> i'll talk about law enforcement perspective. consent is a time-honored exception to the war in requirement in any number of context. search your house or search your car, you know, be on the exceptions i noted earlier for cars. we will serve your office, personal property. you can even consider wiretap wonderful. the critical issue from a legal point of view when prosecutors introduced, tried to introduce and court evidence they obtained pursuant to the consent is the consent is knowing and voluntary. they have the burden proving it was knowing and voluntary. the consent form isn't something
to scroll through like i agree at the end. it's got to be written superglue language that is witnessed and giving up of consent, the way the consent was explained to the way the consent was given is documented in the report and there's an extraordinary effort, a federal level made that the consent was clear and knowing and voluntary and could be relied on. and it's an important feature of all those different bills that have it, that they retain that as a critical exception. >> would just to say the person could consent to disclosure of the content in terms of surface, or disclosure of the location to law enforcement in terms of service? you know, that 65 screens on your cell phone that you're supposed to read before? >> i think it is under 60 screens. no. i do want to speak for the department but i think given how the painstaking efforts that long for that goes through to establish consent when we rely on it to do searches or to other law enforcement techniques where
we are relying on consent, i think it would be some law enforcement consent or much like the one we used to do searches in the context where it's just clearly a claim which are consenting to. it would be typically one page written in language that my eight year old can understand, and although he's very smart but he might be a bad example. it wouldn't be terms of service. i find it hard to believe that any prosecutor would go to court and say they could rely on that. i don't want to speak for the department on that. >> it's a different -- difficult question to answer. there's a distinction between implied and expressed consent. if you're using a website or using a service and there's no sort of sign-up process but it is a link for the term of service for the privacy policy, sort of implied consent. it's different i think maybe when you are looking at examples weather is explicit or affirmative our optic consent where the issue has been put before you. try to think of an example off
the top of my head but so for location information with google and and what phones, the time you start up your phone your given that choice. you opt in if you're going to share location information with google, you opt in to that. i do think, but then becomes more challenging because you can withdraw that consent and there are real challenging issues here. merely because you consented to hearing that location information with an entity does not mean you're necessarily consenting to that information and its richness and robustness being shared some point there down path with law enforcement. it's a really propagated issue i think. >> i think we're time for one more question, if we have any. yes, one more over there. >> my name is dave mcclure. i'm with the urban institute. i wanted to follow up on the question about how you keep any
revisions to ecpa current when technology is changing so quickly. and thinking that there's so many points of demarcation and there's 180 days public-private, and there seems to be agreement that not all of these already reflecting what we want in privacy protections right now. and then adding to that, that there's so many questions of how much privacy do you expect for the different mean for things like that but what are some of the more concrete measures that you think would be helpful in updating ecpa that you could see progressive? you mentioned the transparency reports and possibly some discussion of how location data is disclosed and how that there is across different agencies, different providers. but what are some of the things like that that you could actually measure to aid in the updating of ecpa? >> i'll tell you one thing that ought to be there that we don't have, and that would really aid
in the updating of ecpa is data about how it's being used by law enforcement now. each year that the wiretap report that gives out information about how many wiretaps were placed by federal and state and local law enforcement. and it tells you where, what the crime being investigated was. it's quite granular. there's nothing like that in terms of disclosures under ecpa. there's no statutory requirement to do that. so in a sense, congress, i think they will legislate but they are going to be legislating based on partial data, just the data that's being disclosed voluntarily by the companies like google, microsoft and the others that david mission. i think we need to have more visibility about exactly what demands are being made by law
enforcement. and what kind of -- really a better picture about the surveillance. >> on that point, there's a similar requirement for pen register which is under a different piece of the statute but nothing for other type of ecpa process but i think greg is right to the way it works, when a wiretap is order, they can't speak to stay of local. a federal judge has to send a form to an end to here in d.c. called the ministry the office of the courts. among the function is to compile data from every, all my for districts in the country about the frequency with which wiretaps are issued. and under what circumstances. the easiest way to issue a required summer to that this magistrate judges typically signing search warrants and our assigning orders and issuing pen registers and imagine it will have a similar form or the digital is a graduate district or charter some reform that the judges for wiretaps to all the data can be compiled by the
ministry of office and congress can get from there. since greg brought up state and local, i said there's some differences about how ecpa standards are applied. my experience in baltimore is that there is, and i think this is replicated in many other states as well, is there's tremendous inconsistency in the way the ecpa standards are by between the federal system and state and local system. "the new york times" did an article, you may remember it, greg, a year or two ago in which using foia data he wrote about the frequency with which stay a local on fourth and officers are for syngenta pakistan state and locals, working location information on cell phones and other information that is governed by ecpa with less than ecpa process but i will never forget the first day a cop in baltimore brought me cheapest bid on cell phones with which cops had opinion data on cell phone said he compiled% of the state court order asked them to
show me the order and it was a one paragraph or and that can show me the it was like two paragraphs. and it was shorter than his answers. we made every effort to make a stop to that because number one, i can't edit is that a federal court technically, that's in violation of the statue. we need to make clear in whatever revision takes place that this is the law of the land. and is all of the length and there are not difference has to be applied if you're a local cop or a local law enforcement officer that there's plenty of authorities for congress to regulate his patient from and nationwide. so my unsolicited advice to congress would be to make explicit that this applies to state and locals as well. >> criminal justice generally, in two weeks the constitution project is having our annual awards dinner on april 18. we are celebrating the 50th anniversary. invitations are out on the table if you haven't seen it already. i hope you all join us for that
event as well. if he would not join it again in thanking our panelists for a wonderful discussion of ecpa. [applause] >> all this week on c-span2 we're featuring booktv in prime time. booktv each night in primetime this week here on c-span2 year stack earlier today undersecretary of state talked about women's struggle for a called in air world. here's a look at some of what she had to say.ppress >> some points i learned in the
course of talking to someone from this region is the first is not only women who are raped are finally. men and boys can express the same thing. survey not in the sename number. secondly, there is still some taboo which is what you were alluding to. the hardest thing is to get men and women to talk about thesen t sexual issues, sexual violence , of rape. and it's not just the arab world. i was recently in delhi shortly after the terrible bus incident. and i was with young people at our american center in delhi,te and teenage and early 20s, boys and girls, and asked them what they would like to talkan. about. and they said, can we talk about the rape incident? at first i was surprised. but sadly, they said would've
trouble talk about this at home with her parents and grandparents. and we're not really sure where the lines are. the young boys in particular said, you know, it's just not a comfortable subject at home.blet or in school. so unless we get dialogue going, you know, we are so focused on changing laws and legislation ag police officers and reporting and implementation. it is sometimes getting young people to have a conversation where they can express their confusion about where lines are and what is allowed and what it means. promoting dialogue is one of of publicul tools diplomacy to wrestle with hard issues. sometimes the plastic waste -- sometimes the best place is in he reader, and a reading of a
--sometimes the best places in aviator -- the >> you can watch all of these remarks later today on the c-span networks. or anytime at c-span.org. >> tonight at 8 p.m. eastern over the c-span, the issue of health care for military veterans. the treatment of able and the cost involved. we will begin with remarks from former air force flight nurse linda schwartz who oversees the connecticut state veterans affairs department. than live at nine we will take your calls, ma facebook commonsense weeks as we look at veterans issues from a national perspective. again, that's honor containing network c-span. >> they had a very political
marriage, much like john and abigail. and so she would lobby in the halls of congress. she was always very careful to say, my husband believes this, and my husband advocates that. but she herself was doing the pitch. and one of her husband's opponents said he hopes that if james were ever elected president, she would take up housekeeping like a normal woman. and she said, if james and i are ever elected, i will need to keep house nor make butter. >> one of the liquid active and influential first ladies, sarah polk, but also look at her successors and will take your questions and comments by phone, facebook and twitter. verse ladies, live monday night at nine eastern on c-span and c-span3. also on c-span radio and c-span.org.
the "columbia journalism review" yesterday hosted a discussion on the media's coverage of racial issues. the panel of authors and journalists focus on immigration and address "the associated press" is change. removing the word illegal to describe a person. this event held at the museum in washington is just under 90 minutes. >> i'm thrilled about this. i was very thrilled when cindy contacted me to do a package in a new format on race, social mobility. and what i mean by new format is before this review cover story, we did an online forum. ..
>> we have gene policinski, we are thrilled. he is a great guest. and also we have farai chideya who writes for "the wall street journal" syndicate, and then we have a longtime filmmaker and author's new book, you have to read this new book, bird of paradise. it is such a fascinating look at
american identity is from everything from family history to dna. it is absolutely fascinating look at the diversity within the diversity of america. this package is one where we cover a lot of territory. first i want to turn to you, gene policinski. >> just don't we start with some very basic numbers to give us a broad perspective on where things are in society and within journalism. as reported recently among newborns, it has gone down for the first time in our nations history. we were expecting between 2043 in 2050. the census bureau kept moving that number around. in which no one single racial
group is 50%. we are moving towards a diverse society like we have never seen before. hawaii, california, texas, they already have reached that point. where there is no single 50% plus group. 11% of counties are actually in that already. we have watched the nation change in this fashion. sometimes outside of the headlines. it is reported in some newspapers but not on others. poverty among african-americans have fallen between 59 to 27.6%, nearly three times the poverty rates among whites. older white people had invested and sprung back more quickly as
the market cannot. we see a lot of economic disparity even within the economic period. i will go through all of these things, but let's turn to journalism. in the 2012 survey, the new one will be coming out in june. last year was in april. but the convention move by a few months. the loss of employment was 5.7%. that is in newsrooms and online. the reports that those losses were stabilizing compared to a for a five-year period, in terms of total loss and loss of people of color. but we will wait and see what happens. because it does seem that there has been some additional layoffs, we will see how this impact everyone. in radio and television, the numbers are actually increasing for 2012 for those who identify
themselves as minority group members. if you take a longer look at the picture over time, the numbers have declined. then we have seen rather high-profile changes in he who is visible on those networks and programs. radio is among the more positive that we see employment up each year. and it is an interesting picture of this dynamic and change even if the country becomes more diverse. you can say for sure that the newsroom across the board, those numbers are not keeping there. >> yes, this is a great place for us to start, gene policinski. one of the reasons that we link coverage of race with coverage of class is because they are so intertwined. there has been a slew of articles recently to talk about
is journalism just becoming a playground of the elite. and people are not making necessarily the most money, which leads to them repackaging other people's work. so how do we keep a diverse newsroom? and people are looking for internships, there is a disparity. i hosted a recent college graduate in my house for six months because she had grown up in foster care and she is african-american and she wanted to be a journalist and there is no way that she could be an unpaid internship. that was a the way that i could give away to my own community. and i don't mean the black community, i mean the journalism community. >> yes, it is soon to be an
extinct group, i think. [laughter] >> the numbers certainly show it. >> it's a really great point. one of the things which i struggled with around the circle in which i belong, one was a series of postings on different blogs about when you should actually blog for free. what is the price and content and the value of content. and the supply that has certainly altered it. the other was opposed by a female journalist about why she left the news. because people have been reading news for decades. the organizations that we belong to, you know, ethnic journalism organizations, they have now
increasingly had to start reshaping memberships and programming people. so it has become a conversation now. where it is really only starting to hit home now that young, white journalists can't get jobs. when they graduate from schools. that sounds a little harsh, but that does seem like what we are doing. >> yes, i have seen documentary film making happening in journalism. it is only people that can afford to actually do it for free in the creative artists, they are the ones that are doing it. i sat on panels for my last documentary film and i was often the only person of color on the panel. and then when you travel and you see what is happening in this
world, it is always, you know, the children of white people in the american middle class are having these jobs. and then you have societies that somehow become dependent on seeing those images of people. it is a very organic thing that has multiple repercussions. you know, when i was reading some of the articles that you talked about,. >> so how you really feel? >> i am inspired. [applause] >> when i was reading that stuff and rereading, i kept on doing in my notebook. i kept writing the word gentrification. and i felt there has to be a biological diversity not only people that are being covered, but people covering. it doesn't matter that you are latino or black or american. you have to have a socio-
culture within that you don't see. >> some people argue otherwise. one of the comments on the online version said that we cover communities of color, doesn't really matter. and i think the make he makes a compelling case that yes, it does matter. you know, i would just like to say that we have our little devices and you can join us on twitter at #cjrdiverse. that is our hash tag. you know, i remember the invasion of the bodysnatcher, one day we will all be having that experience. [laughter] so can you explain a little bit more?
>> "philadelphia magazine" wrote a cover story. it was supposedly the ruminations of a white philadelphia resident that had a lot of the population, including the mayor covered, and some of these -- some of them were black residents and black journalist in philadelphia. they got a ton of publicity. there were at least two forms that were held on the topic. but it raised some of the issues that we are talking about, including the fact that the media in philadelphia, particularly the print media were very diverse and "philadelphia magazine" itself had no african-americans on the stack. there was a black woman on the business staff who said that
this is not right. but it raised the issues that we we're talking about in terms of diversity. one of the things about the previous questions, and that is one of the reasons for this diminishing diversity was a lack of will by the people in power. giving people the power to hire and fire. we have the supreme court, for example, pull back further on affirmative action. people talking about this is as a racial society and all of these things that sort of diminish by the urgency for diversifying our journalistic staff. at the same time we had the census bureau's talking about what you raised. and apparently this other thread here about post-racial, we were
worried about it tomorrow. this and that is the bottom line -- you know, without weighing the facts. >> i think that is 180 degrees wrong. we are talking about this post-racial depiction. and then we are also talking about an industry that decided the classified ads were for ever their problem. >> then we came up with a sparkling idea that if you give your content away for free on the web, maybe people would be so enamored that they would give it away for free. but then they fail to recognize there is an audience that is increasingly diverse. increasingly expectant of people who can talk to them in the exact opposite of that story in the magazine was. being irrelevant, being insulting, bad journalism, there
is a host of things. >> so from a free press standpoint as well. i'm very concerned. because that aspect of the media watchdog, it goes away along with circulation and what have you. we cannot afford to miss this third opportunity to do the best thing for the business. that is to recognize who our audience really is. >> yes, people are so risk-averse. >> one of them is what gets examined publicly about race is generally one-dimensional. and looking, i can't even read my own handwriting. looking from the perspective of people of color.
what gets examined publicly is generally one-dimensional and looked at almost exclusively and is boosted to people of color. >> that is not only true, it is a little insane. but this is what i mean by this. about gentrification of journalism. how many comments as this article have? six or 7000? you have the white establishment that has a larger platform to it. to look at o'reilly and all the others. how many people do you see having the same color of platform? >> this is getting to the heart. i do think in this bizarre world, you can see the coverage.
that quote shows a misperception of coverage about people of color and the perception of people of color. as we discussed, ethnic identities and racial identities, they have been intermingling ever sends the neanderthals met homo sapiens. once you talk about actual intermingling with cultures, it has happened for the millennium. but some people were perceived not to have different statuses. but many have different statuses. so the quote you raised brings this idea of a power media industry can sometimes receive a
racial narrative as coming from a place that doesn't. just because you talk about black and brown and asian and native americans does not mean that that is going to be led by a diverse group of people as we are talking about. >> there are a lot of different things even in that single quote. the first thing that strikes me is strong evidence of the degree to which we are entering as americans, we are encountering this nation from the other side. that there is this perception of a need to be on the playing field of race, not just as the background. actually affirmatively, racialized and whiteness, if you will. so it is not the first of such
articles to come out of philadelphia. there was a story a few years back written by a forbes contributor but actually encompassed this. a lot of people that are journalists by self-definition, they were placed into the pool. this is not a bad thing. >> except for the free press. [laughter] >> yes. but this guy was a consultant who predominately wrote about this in undecided to jump into the conversation about race by running a kind of cover called if i were a poor black child. >> oh, goodness, i remember that. >> it was viral in a negative sense. again, not written by a staffer or writer. but it corresponded. because it came out under forbes, it sounded like it was
from a perspective of a white resident of philadelphia. >> yes, you can really spend a lot of time with this. >> his position there was not dissimilar from not of the author that we are talking about. it came to conversation about race and looking at it objectively from the outside. we can have greater insight that is where both of those articles have a light where we can really see it. >> yes. >> the last one is i don't think you necessarily have to be of color to write about the issues.
but we have correspondents in other countries for generations. one of the things you're required to do is live in a country, learn the language. you know. even then. >> i think all of these points are excellent. one thing i want to do to contextualize this is, you know, there was an assumption in the piece about what a poor black kid should do. but everyone has broadband at home, which is not at all the case. particularly in the lower income homes and rural homes. it is the assumption that we bring to the table. part of what we bring to the table is this timelier in where assumptions are being deconstructed. that america is a european country or a european run country that is being
deconstructed. also that the news media -- the very question if the news media is an objective authority is being deconstructed in a different way than it has been in the past. that has always been the question. are they really objective, and now we have this prism of different online outlets, people re-blogging, fox news, msnbc, seeking out very different territory. >> very quickly, we are seeing this sort of thing. we have this within the public sphere. in truth, up until about the 1920s, it was a product and a prayer. so now that we are truly reaching this point, we are
seeing more diverse religious groups and we are also watching the fights going on. and maybe it is because things have become this approach to reality a little bit more. we will see these intense differences in dispute. but we also saw within the media, we always talked about these issues and it was organizational and institutional. that is a huge factor. individuals -- everyone can be a reporter. by self-definition. that is changing this discussion in a way that we have never been able to conduct because it has always been how do we change these laws and ownership of institutions. all of a sudden people can reach out from one desk or one computer. that is still to be seen.
it is a different change in the very nature of how we diversify and how do we reach out and when we hear back. i am excited in a way that we have never been able to get back to communities. it is all not as directions that are going out. we need to listen. >> yes, social media is actually calling some of that. and over overrepresentation by people of color, for example, on twitter, which is very interesting. getting to the question of resources, you know, anyone can jump in. we would love to hear from you, raquel cepeda, because your view about the documentary film world is important. anyone can be a journalist. they can. but the resources are still important. if you don't have the resources to amplify your voice, you will be drowned out.
so increasingly, i see a lot of journalism funding venture capitalism. like investments in this combined platform. this kind of entrepreneurial journalism world. >> okay, i think when we talk about this, you have to debase yourself. and you have like hip-hop, which is like -- to me, this guy is doing no better than what this man wrote as far as the article in "philadelphia magazine." so he has a magazine profile and he gets a lot of hype. meanwhile you have citizen journalists that are out there.
and i saw the tea party rallies and things i thought were really good. but it was just one person talking to another and we got to see how to ask questions now and try later. you know, really seeing how it is totally remorseful for putting barack obama in office the first time. so that is very hard to see, that we may not get the funding, for example. >> is for people who don't understand, it is a rather demeaning website that uses have
caught as a marketing tool, it uses hip-hop. >> yes, i saw something not only just don't go to that site, but i saw on the news that a young man was stripped of all of his close in jersey city and whipped by other black men. and we complain about the movie "django unchained." really, he makes money off that website. >> that is a great reference. let me just point out some positives in the documentaries. this book is about the history of the united states.
recently, it was turned into a film. it had not gotten widespread distribution, but it is nonetheless out there in the film -- it talks about how all these immigrants who are hispanic came in the united states in the first place. and a subject that is missing from the immigration discussion. the point that it has made is that a lot of the reason why these people from these latin american countries are in the united states is because of actions the united states is taking in those countries. to diminish the quality of life there and force these folks out of it and into the united states. i raise that want to make two points. there are some documentaries
that need people on the other end of the media to publicize and make full where of them. with with with with with with but also, doing some thing like that requires resources. and the proliferation of social media. good reporting with prior resources. and that is something of the fact that remains. the other one i saw recently was on pbs. and they spend a year, i believe, at an alternative school for 180 days, something like that. >> yes. >> frankly, i was not enamored and watching another special about what it's like in a school, but this one sort of sucked me in.
and it took this school reform out of the theory and the viewpoint of what is actually going on in the schools and what the teachers and the students have to deal with. and it gave you a much different point of view on that whole issue. i'm not giving anything away now, but what happened in this documentary happen on two separate nights, it was that the teachers and students had to deal with all of these cultural issues. what is going on at home, what is going on at the neighborhood? it was a tremendous achievement just to get to the school. the teachers made that very clear. but what happened in the documentary was that after how
you have to score so much on the standardized tests and certain students were pulled out from the principal and school before they had a chance to complete the process of getting these kids to the point where they could do well. so spending a year or so requires resources in a school. i have to emphasize again the journalism class resources -- social media is not a substitute substitute for good reporting. that is something that i want to point out. ..
change the people who administer the funding. >> that's one way. i don't think it would be too happy about that. [laughter] >> you argue, the same tools and the same technology platforms that are to a certain extent level the playing field in terms of who has a voice. also offering opportunities to change the rules of funding. i think the biggest challenge that we are seeing is that as anything, you have to find to the crowd is. the kind of things that get crowd funded our things that have the very idiosyncratic niche individuals behind the.
if you look at the world, if you putting a printer, you can get $50,000 tomorrow. but you're trying to do an investigation of something that is obscure in a different way, focus on something beyond your average dick -- geek post engine type it will be much more challenging. i think that's what we're seeing in some ways is a discomfort some. that's occurring at the transition point between ipod and. one is this notion of, the establishment of media to some combination of public and crowded media. we're looking at a transition from the use of center out platforms to more level peer-to-peer as two directional types of media. then we are again looking at
that between a majority-minority society, to one where we are starting to have to think about terms like minority and whether they make sense. it's almost comical to say that minorities now outnumber white people. at what point do they no longer become minorities? >> struggled with that were trying to prepare this preparation. wait a minute, there's more than 50%. it's more of a historical term of art. >> will just have pluralities. didn't used to the new pluralities but i do want to say -- >> there's also a generational gap. i was talking about, more people have seen it anything you talked about on pbs. what's going to happen to pbs if they continue to market the way their marketing, just to the generation of documentary film lovers and social media kids
who, then, pbs doesn't speak too. the truth is it's going to make it harder for us to make film and it will make it easier for people that want to base their communities and spread untruths to create their own production. >> i just want to briefly bring up an example from my own career where one of the things i loved, is talk to people who are from all backgrounds. when i see all, i mean i admit claims people in the parking lot during a blizzard. i will go to great lengths to have some interesting discussions. i think it's important, one of the resource issues for me as a reporter who loves field reporting, giving the money to field reporting is so hard. i get an independent radio documentary project with wnyc, went to the tea party rock, talk to people. i stay in touch with some people
i met. i think also what happened is when the money dries up for field reporting, we become disconnected from each other. groups can hate groups, and individuals can hate individuals. but once you start actually writing a new and individual i think in common ground with some of the clans people. i don't mean about race of course but just they love their families. they cared for the families and the thought active racist was the best would take care to filter on some fundamental level getting out in field makes you understand the motivations that enable people to think that their actions are right. all of us think we're doing the right thing but most people don't think they're doing the wrong thing. it's about part of our job is to unearth human nature and it's really hard at this time. but if you want to thank them if we're moving it, essentially, america'america' s becoming more diverse. the media lesson. so what kind of iceberg and how
can steer a bad instead of crashing into? >> there is that sort of neck and neck race i think. the institutions that have resources, and this really directing generational, gender, race issues. at some point this mass media that has provided resources, that has funded in so may different ways the kind of journalism we admire, either it wakes up to this new reality of the audience or it will fade away. and i don't know what -- we do see -- nothing right now sort of individuals on the web as institutional power to really do what a lot of organizations a lot of organizations can do when you're willing to do it. but we are so much in a transition zone. i don't know when that will come out. i have to constantly remind myself that the web is what, 15 years old? it's a sprightly teenager at this point. it doesn't know where it's going. it's still find its own way.
i worry in terms of the free press ability. so often just as an example, there's the argument local newspapers and others to use to cover institutions at the local level are gone but there's a blogger at the blogger is interested in maybe street paving or neighborhood. when that street is paid or it goes away, that person goes with your there isn't the institutional memory. there isn't that continuity. so long with all the other challenges is this idea of continuity. at least is an institutional memory of what's come before to improve our, to build from, and i do know where we're going with that as we become this sort of more interest in lenzi lands latest something or other. look at the research devoted to that. i'm sorry. >> i see this, i go nuts. why? >> while we are bringing that up, i hate to slam someone for doing their job, and this was --
the taylor swift in "vanity fair" was so dribbled. it was like taylor swift is upset that people talk about her love life, even though she talks about it all the time. it's like, okay, that's a blurb. now we are done. the story itself was incidental. but you're right. >> my feeling is, and i know we're in the museum interested in extent as a result in kind of their tribal belly of the beast in terms of the cherishing of the collective memory and institutional status of the traditional press. one thing went to be aware of is a lot of this collective use and conscious is not -- it's not as good as what it's supposed to be doing as we had hoped, right?
one of the things we do see, because of the desire to put standards in place, because of the privileging if you will of the with covered news in the past, a lot of the standards that reflect what good journalism of our journalism to come out of the world where the new judgment was being made in a very different can of social economy and i think we still see that. there's the kind of classic rap if you will on american journalism, is that in the pursuit of balance we actually lose actors. >> we over emphasize the points. >> and also the whole notion as you get less right or other kinds of partisan conversations around different topics, the more extreme one or the other side gets the more likely your to have that middle balance sheet and way.
when you talk about race, that becomes more so. the notion of who is an accurate person. is very complicate as we find. because you're of a certain race you're expected to be an expert on being that race, right? and even those of us were journalists and to deride to a certain extent, of being required for the race a little bit too frequently. it's one of those conundrum. if you're not doing enough, not from that position the normalcy for it or perhaps someone who was less qualified, and if you do then you find yourself in in a small set of people who are required to carry that message wherever you go. >> i want to switch is something that we got on our twitter feed. again that these cg are, and this is from cat chow who -- i
can tell if it's a name or a clever -- probably both. thank you. so basically the move away which he wrote about what you, so you can leave as author, the move away from illegal immigrants, that was a huge fight that was brought up at the journalism association by groups like applied research center which puts out call lines. tell us about the shift in newsroom policy that you tracked on the. >> yesterday "the associated press" announced it was changing its style book entry on immigration. and the reason why "the associated press" style is important is because that is considered the stuff produced by many newsrooms. budget of newsrooms in the united states. is easier than creating your own
style book. everyone uses associated press. so they decided they would longer use the term illegal immigrant, or illegal alien, or any illegal as a noun. and they would instead use people, people first and so you would refer, talk to people who are in the country illegally and used terms such as that. this has been a fight that's been going on since the 1980s, and language is political. and that's why, what's interesting to see the response do, after all this time, to what these critics have been saying. we see the same thing going on with pro-life or pro-choice, and affirmative action versus racial
preferences. and same-sex marriage versus gay marriage. and these are people who are advocates for all those causes, like within immediate for their turn to be the preferred term. so you know it makes people -- so for "the associated press" to decide that being illegal is not the first and foremost thing you should do about someone but you are a human being first is an achievement. >> isn't that crazy but that's an achievement in 2013? as i'm sitting in listing a kind of think of something like really cool and profound to respond to the statement, but especially because i'm latina and, therefore, i represent every latino in america -- [laughter] [talking over each other] >> i cannot find like something profound to say to the. i think it's ridiculous that we
are even having this conversation. stack that brings me to point i really wanted to get to that i think jeff your point about having to represent your race, gosh knows we could go on and on about that but what he thinks would happen? i will start with you. as we begin to surface the identities within these groups, like, for example, i'm half african and half black american. so even my ethnicity, all of our ethnicities, but mine is next in a way that traditional, like there's now a lot of writing about the admixtures within the black community, african, caribbean, et cetera. but give us a perspective on the book from your book bird of paradise on what you learned about the latino community, and then broaden it to how you see coverage of latinos changing. >> a lot of this stuff that's in part of paradise i couldn't get placed elsewhere in the media because people don't want to talk about or they can't wrap their heads around the idea that
the new world was th put in then republicans have something illegal in order the very essence of being american is going to be an american you should try to be latina. you tried any light as much as you can. because the first european settlement, said the demand and the colony that it is today. that's where the first boatload of slaves came in and the american indians, slave trade jumped off as well. and all these things happened there that the god who we are today. and yet we come your and all of a sudden you are a legal or your mate if you like your not part of the so-called american dream, which i think needs to be debunked. maybe that's a separate panel. >> or three. >> exactly. to me at the end of the day it's a very holistic thinker i see it starting with ethnic studies and starting in its infancy. when you go to school and start to learn about history and that
your people are primitive over that they're savages. they are original illegal '80s, the european scanner with freedom loving and loving the freedom. you have children that you see in the statistics dropped out of school, becomes disinterested, feels like they are invisible in society. and have now journalists, writing about the same people, for example, during standing. they also write about them as if they are invisible. so i think i'm not as hopeful about the future of this discussion of race because i don't think there is enough biological, social cultural even with the races, the people that are writing about is within which is, within whites, everybody. i do think there's enough diversity within our group forest have a really good, thorough and thoughtful discussion. >> jeff, maybe, you know, you can speak about asian americans
or about everybody -- that's all right. everybody here has like a hashtag. >> i have mongolian birthmarks that have ancient ancestry. >> your book goes into -- [talking over each other] >> based on from which he found out about your dna evidence, we can switch your tag to everybody. binding, just how do we, i mean, part of the struggle is we did have like black, white, asian, latino, native american. and now we're finally teasing out a little bit more of people's countries of origin, how that affects, like the korean american community is different than the many different communities with chinese-american communities, different, all these cultural differences. are we going to get to the point where we can understand anymore? what will it take for us to get
there? >> a side note on the whole sort of illegal immigrant thing. again, i know this is sort of a step that you mention native americans. every time i see work illegal immigrants i think to myself certain native americans have a certain perspective of what illegal immigrant means, given the history of america's born in. but there really does speak to where we are as a culture. these terms are to a certain extent of art, in terms of the moment. snapshot of what the context we live in calls certain things from the perspective of what are the dominant -- at the top of the social economy food chain at the current moment. what i think, when we talk about, i'm not a subscriber to the notion of the journalist as kind of the gatekeeper of truth and so forth. but i do believe journalists have a specific responsibility
and specific capability of at least having really, really good bs filters, which means you have to be diverse. which means you have to have a diverse pool of people to speak with when you're not entirely certain you got it right. that skepticism, a sense of being able to tell win, even if you're not of the store, that the story isn't quite right yet. it's something i think where trying to lose a little in the pace of news that we've got into. that i think is where we are right now, especially with the cover of race. i don't think that we can survive as an industry if we try to say that the only way this can cover a certain thing is if they have a certain background, a certain specific context from which to speak. because that is what it's all about. it's about telling stories that matter to a broad race of
people. not purely one-to-one customized perspective. at the same time, i think that the take away from this really is that in this discomfort zone, for journalism to evolve it needs to incorporate different types of journalism, that there isn't the sort single standard journalism that fits all occasions but if those people were making these chechens especially need to be able to filter and appropriately allocate resources and deliver and distribute news into the right channels based on not just their understanding of what you've is now, but what news is becoming i guess. >> sort of a quick round of. i probably attach more importance to the change only because it comes with a sort of better late than never. and it does matter because it does get a tone right from the start when you read that story. although i think i understand to
some degree why, where were you 50 years ago, over native americans some years ago. in terms of the language i'm reminded, in the words of george carlin one year, he chose to, and it is wonderful with on language. and identifiers. which he posed the question of what do you call a white person from south africa that integrates to the united states? he's an african-american anthony did a whole 20 minute spent on that going into all sort of ethnic description. he pointed out some invalidity of any of those labels. because what does it mean? i'm hoping that we increasingly see that being diminished in our society, looking more people both from a journalistic standpoint and from really the selection. i think you put your finger on the next challenge, and that is the people making the decision about resources or coverage or funding, are they waking up?
are they suddenly realizing this new world that is after? maybe it's been about which increasingly is in the face. if only to monetize, the self audit, to push sales, to do circulation. i just keep thinking every year we're going to see this suddenly lightbulb go off when they say it's the right thing to do but also into the economic thing to do, or, you know, i keep waiting for the big neighbor just associating it step-by-step. at some point we have to recognize this diverse aspects of our society in ways that we've never done before. >> i'm going to go to questions. i see one in the audience and there will be -- i see a few. but richard, any thoughts before going to questions? >> well, a lot of thoughts were running through my mind. >> a lot of ground really fast.
>> let me just say this and. that is, the success of journalism will depend on the success of society. and that's why stories about education and and standards of living and those kind of things are important to journalists also because where are the journalists going to come from? they are going to come from places, from people who have been well-educated, who know how to spell, cannot account and i to speak well. and those things are delivered in an equitable fashion throughout society. you're not going to get the journalism's in that newsom. so that's one of the things that's going wrong. the other thing is that the issue of diverse coverage and
who tells the story is also important because i don't believe that a lot of these issues have to be don't live in isolation. telling a story about the environment can be a diverse story, depending on the frames of references using each story, the sources that are used, the examples that are used to and if this is woven through the entire news operation, that makes for more diversity. so i think some of you may not want to read about what's going on in a toxic waste dump in a poor neighborhood, might want to get a glimpse, my kitty cling o that by reading about something else that happened and use that as a reference point. so diversity comes in a lot of forms, but the important thing is that it is there, woven out
the news product. >> i could not agree more. let's go to questions. i see one right there, the lady in the black and white top. could you give us your name? >> my name is -- i don't think this is on. my name is jane hall and i'm with continuing journalists. i used to work for shelby and they teach at american university. gene, i just want to pursue a little further without being to craft, this economic argument. i saw in the latest pew story that people are actually noticing cutbacks and sang their canceling the descriptions because -- i hear people saying that about news organizations. so that's when economic argument, the brand. but let me just be crafty. i have friends were under a lot of pressure at the network and newspapers, and if you're given a choice to cover a toxic waste dump for that wonderful story
about osha that was just in "the new york times," the cd are part of rarities to hear from somebody, she's white but she's not somebody you normally hear from. was the economic argument you make in terms of branding or something purely crass about why should they cover for people? why should they cover people who are not? that tim is, cases got to be in a very craft weight if this is going to work. >> i think we've gone through this period of infatuation with eyeballs and analyst telling us the shallower the coverage, the broader shallower coverage. think about the internet. when it came out it was this toy. we all got under and we thought it was fun to find 6000 references to ruby news. then it became a tour if we're looking for ruby nails we went. now it's becoming a necessity. it's gone far beyond that. what's happening in a short
period of life of the unit is news that matters but things that are important are coming back to the floor. bit of water per telling sites that are really successful. news that matters, news account. i can't tell you why people are not recognizing it. ijc this race between oblivion, new strings are down, circulation numbers are down but people are turning off to these institutions that i think have to exist. i just hope that the sense of getting back to news that matters and news that reflects communities take over for the economic model finally implodes. on a day-to-day basis i pray we don't it's going to happen the right way and it's not going to happen. but i think that's a very pressing question because it really i think says what about the news that is valuable to all our diversity, the valley of people, news that count? and diversity to me is such a
spread within a rationale for a free press and the survival of a great -- a free press but it just has to occur. i'm going to be even more apocalyptic than your question suggested i see the whole thing going away if we don't as an industry become more relevant, more important and focus on news that really matters to a bunch of communities. it's the fact that there are still toxic waste dumps 50 years after we found -- founded the epa, or whatever. then all of those communities why doesn't the story get out? i've got one foot in the tar pit i know, but i still think people want news that's. they want documentaries that teach me. not just entertainment. the economic rationale to me, maybe we can just stop for a day summer and really write news accounts and see what happens. >> if i can i will jump in because, you know, i think about this all the time because some of what i do is entrepreneurial,
and i have to actually look at raising money and numbers. but i also look, i think it was, this may be going a bit afield, but stay with me. having worked at abc, after some people in the room here with us who also have, when he companies owned by a larger entity, it sometimes gets held to standards that don't suit. so i felt, and this is my opinion, i felt that if he was being held to disney standard in terms of the amount of revenue it was expected to generate. news is not going to generate the same profits as entertainment. i mean, just in general. i think a lot of times music is helping entertainment, particularly tv news, held to an entertainment standard in terms of the revenue expected to generate. news was not doing badly by news standards. it was that we change the standards that news was judged by in terms of profitability. and then got into a fear and panic cycle which is meant that over time, for example, the
demographic of network news has become older and narrower. and there is now a gap that either can or can' can't be fild depending on different manifestations to reach down demographically and out diversity wise. but i think part of the issue was that a lot of different news entities were part of larger companies not just entertainment companies but other holding companies that didn't really know how it worked, didn't know the profit margins, one person said to me that a 7% return is about right for helping his company. ..
>> we talked about when there is this decision-making process and how we wake up to this stuff. a lot of those decision-makers are white. i am a white person in a majority black city dealing with inequality. you have to go out on a limb to do these issues right. as a white person come you have to make yourself vulnerable. how do you get the decision-making to confront this
, and make the discussions relevant. >> okay, who would like to tackle back? >> i can't speak to that question. >> that is okay. yeah, whoever wants to talk. gene policinski or whoever. >> the overall point of making yourself vulnerable as part of the process is really important. >> i think it is by having people in the newsroom who tell you about these things the main know about. there is education going on in the newsroom. the worrying part is the decline in numbers. there are fewer people. if we are losing this and it is a declining factor. especially when we go out and
say, look at this, from an economic standpoint. you know, you just look at that. the things we were doing 20 or 30 years ago. journalistically, i am not adverse to saying that there is no revenue there. our numbers are going to be race, gender, at capacity, etc. you begin to think of the arguments. and there is an economic argument to be made.
you have to see where coalitions and groups need the power. >> we have a question here in the front row. >> okay. >> just one second. there are certain platforms that are not inherently channelized appropriately for certain audiences. >> can you give us a more concrete example of what you mean? >> okay, while we talk about newspapers, whether or not there is a generation of young people of color who are reading
newspapers by default. the answer generally speaking are newspapers in the right place and the right price. are they making available the right kind of distributions and distribution models. they are writing privately for that audience. obviously there are three papers that have longed in various cities that have become somewhat successful. most of them have websites. >> i live in crown heights brooklyn, which has been
considered a lower income neighborhood in some ways. it is going through rapid gentrification. i just moved there three years ago after living in a high-priced neighborhood. it would've been nice to have it before. because there are really smart people who live in that neighborhood so i think there our assumptions. let's go to the next. >> okay, yes. i would just like to applaud your question about how to relate to these other folks. i can't remember his name, but he was the head of asme.
and it was in this area. and he was talking about the diversity of this newsroom, and he was saying that, you know, i just love having people who are not like me around. because as a journalist, i thrive on that. that is part of being a journalist. you should have people like that around you who just love learning about new things and different kinds of people diversity, again, displays a range of talents. >> okay, so the 93 years that we have been around, it has been
covered very well by the newspapers. we have looked for a place and fries, the press has become this mentality of our work. how do we work with the press to promote our other issues? so when i reflect upon my 12 years as director of the organization, have to stay that those are the best relationships i have had with journalism have been with white journalists. the alchemy of the relationship has been quite different than with minority journalists. bob herbert would be the one exception. i often approach this in the way of how can i move the ball forward on the issues that i care about.
how can i make policy change. an understanding of complex issues. unless you have a journalist is going to cover this story over and over again, you don't always have that red national security reporters are quite good. >> i just want to ask you a question. why do you think you have, in general, a more constructive experience. was it because they were in the right position? >> as with race issues, it is a different journalist each day covering immigration in housing and employment. i'm not focused as much and i want to make sure that we are
covered in our cases are covered. so my question to you is for those of you in the journalist world. so it seems like in the puerto rican community, we need journalists who are going to cover our community so we can develop a rapport and get to know those communities. >> they have the luxury of covering a more diverse thing. so i think that is kind of a microcosm of what we see in society. where white communities have more social capital. because other ones that are on staff, they make money, they
have the real estate and journalists of color get the honor to be able to and they get rotated out because there are so many that they can allow. >> he held onto his column for a long time. but he has been under pressure for years. >> i used to hear stories about that all the time. so you deal with different kinds of, you know, this is something that we have talked about before. >> by the way, david gonzalez writes beautifully about puerto ricans as well. >> exactly. and he is absolutely amazing. >> [inaudible] so this is something that we have been exchanging correspondence about. i think there is something interesting about the fact that
the proxy for journalist who actually have a kind of cover, strategically as a conflict is white journalists. that is really what you are saying. it is not just the color of their skin or their weight, but the unique individuals themselves. more than not, these particular statuses of being able to focus on a concern in a way that allows them to overcome things like national security, it occurs the credibility and the ability to actually judge me for actually having an assignment. when i talked about with richard is they haven't often been able to sneak in. or they can even talk about race without it being part of this.
this is when they are op-ed contributors and no longer held to the standard of a report of the day. and that is one place were you where you seeing faces of color fewer and fewer. you know, i'm a columnist who is happening to write about these areas of interest and being able to do so. this after many years of covering those things. it is a complete happenstance that i have been able to do so. i have never actually gone through the middle of being in a newsroom, gone through a general assignment and let others to have the accrued not a social capital, but newsroom capital as well. and the fact is there is no room to do that. >> that is another problem that goes back to these
organizations. as we increase this. if we give people opportunities. there are pathways as you move through. where you have that chance to really spend time. those are gone. there are probably that many people now full-time covering this in america. they parachute in, they have a lot of things later on. it's just that we don't get any of this. there is this loss of this systemic ability and again, i am hopeful that as we look at this which came apart as they were excluded, maybe on the social media side or in the new media side, we will see people be able
to stake out that territory again with some funding source and at least there is an audience to begin to attract people i don't see it coming back for a long time if at all. there are necessities about that expertise and they have a multiplicity of voices. right now we are really at an impasse in terms of this. >> one caveat that you said, it is true that a lot of those talk about race. but they also hear from their editors and readers that all you ever write about has to do with this or not. so there is a counterpressure also. >> i fully acknowledge that. and i care about it myself. but the fact is, it is less
about these pressures and more whether or not there and the other sources for this to be publications. we are finding those who are still able to speak and even have a little photo. it is almost a safety zone. >> okay, we have to get ready to wrap up. >> is a very brief comment. because then they can, they can put those in there. why don't you have any sources of color in this story and etc. it holds people accountable.
>> okay, i am going to take both of your questions back to back and there are a lot of different people who have questions and you first said that this is part of everything. >> yes, i am john welsh and i'm a cultural critic and it starts from particulars. as i go to events around the area, i find despite the priorities that are emerging, if i go to busboys and poets, there are 90 blacks in the room and i am one of three others. i go to the writers center, it is all white. occasionally a black person shows up. we need to stratify ourselves and like those with light.
>> i am struck that i have heard the word race a lot. >> yes, you are good. not the word class or social mobility. who i think now are approaching 25% of all the wealth and 25% of all income, where these topics sort of overlap a little bit? >> yes, thank you for bringing that up. we do have a very robust situation. we go into great depth of social mobility issues. and we didn't funnel into that. the three questions are any thoughts on how social mobility and the changes in social
mobility have effected, you know, journalism and i love the question about how to we reclaim sort of that town hall space of news? >> basically by having more diversity. social and political and gender and everything in a management position. >> yes, absolutely. >> we haven't raised a couple of questions about this. you know, things like this hegemony in some ways of trying to be a journalist. you can't just earn a living in this way. and that is increasingly making it more challenging to ensure that there is this fair and accurate coverage and as many of
us who end up being journalist have any rate, we come from press backgrounds or so forth, where our own social things become more challenging for us to provide a full dialogue in issues related to what this means and whether social mobility is diminishing. we do need to have that type of diversity. and i would actually argue that in some ways, despite this working-class kind of blue-collar journalists, you know, that really doesn't happen so much anymore. the news media especially where
people who are print journalists are said to be on tv and etc. it is more of a cultivating perception around what types of individuals can use this. they have to articulate and be presentable and so forth. and those often translate into issues as well. >> thank you. >> i was struck by the fact that when i got into journalism, if you look around the average newsroom, where people have trouble getting a car loan. it was very different than. it is something that i haven't thought of in years. jesse jackson said something that i just remembered. he said that he was really educating me and, you know, it
is difficult to perceive, but race will be the easier question but it will be economic issues that will be the tougher thing. this had to be 35 years ago, but i think it has been an undercurrent in the civil rights movement. it is probably really just now going to come to the floor. we are still struggling with these racial issues. but i think it may be the bigger challenge. >> okay, yes, where to begin. we are talking about the march on washington in 1953. and during the civil rights movement there were decisions made to talk about is public policy as the driver of economics. and that was the civil rights
movement that had a range of people in a range of approaches. the urban league was instrumental. there were jobs, business communities, others had the photo registration. what we remember about that time by the public policy and that part of it was economics. >> that is a great place to leave it. the full server of history. remember that race and class have always been intertwined. and class and journalism and race and journalism have also been intertwined. you know, we got here after many years of struggling with american identities, race, class, we will keep pushing. i think that is one thing that we see it. nobody here is shy. everyone here is passionate.
there is so much passion left amongst us in the media for tackling these issues. and i want to thank everyone here with us in the room. the columbia journalism review and everyone on the team. in the museum. it is wonderful to have all of you here today. i would like to thank you all. [applause] >> all this week on c-span2, books about women in politics. beginning at eight eastern p.m. with mary robinson. and then at 9:25 p.m., author of becoming a candidate. political decisions to run for
office. later at 9:45 p.m., the secretary, a journal of hillary clinton. and on c-span tonight, we would like to get your thoughts on health care for u.s. military veterans. the treatment available and the costs involved. beginning at 8:00 p.m., linda schwartz will talk about the challenges facing veterans returning from war. here is a quick look. >> when you have the chief of the army get up and say, i have. >> host: stress, it is okay. if you think of it as a natural reaction to an abnormal situation, a natural reaction to an abnormal situation. we are trying to get you
information about it. it can manifest itself in so many ways. but it cannot prevent you from dealing with the symptoms that you are having. >> you can watch all of her remarks tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern. and then we will take your calls and facebook comments as we look at issues from a national perspective with our guests. if you are a veteran, you can join the discussion right now at our facebook page. including access to health care and the quality of care. >> it is so important to remember central banking can't control everything that goes on in the economy.
and so writers like us, it is very important what they do and they do shape the course. that being said, they have finite powers that they can use. and they can say we are going to put more money in the economy or less money. it is a lot more complicated than that, as we know. but to think that everything that has gone wrong is their fault, to think that everything that has gone right is like this. we had strong growth in 2000. to blame allen greenspan and the federal reserve is probably overstating things. >> the creation of central banks on "after words", sunday at
9:00 p.m. eastern, part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> this morning on "washington journal", we looked at recent threats against the u.s. and north korea's nuclear ambitions. secretary of state john kerry is scheduled to visit north south korea next week. >> host: joining us now is michele flournoy, secretary of defense for policy under the obama administration who served from 2009 until 2012. secretary michele flournoy, are we mobilizing the war right now? >> no, absolutely not. what you are seeing on the part of the united states is a regular set of exercises that we hold almost every year. i think that there is a desire on the part of the
administration to signal our strong support and are willingness to support our defense commitments and so forth. but actually not. i think of anything right now, everyone is wanting to try to tamp down the tension on this. >> host: are these tensions different than in the past? >> guest: they are and they aren't. you know, we have seen cycles of provocations before. from north korea and the previous leader before that. we have a new and young and experienced leader in place who is right now very worried about consolidating his own internal power. so in some ways playing two constituencies in north korea. but also inexperienced in terms of knowing how to manage this. the worried is because this
could be potentially miscalculated. >> does he have internal bureaucracy that has been in place for a while? >> i do not think that we know fully. we know that there is a strong party, but the military has been extremely important especially making them feel him feel like he is their man and so forth. so we have seen a cycle of publication. a military that likes to do some chest beating and likes to be a strong leader. i think that is what we are seeing now. >> do we have contact with the north korean military? >> guest: i think at this point no. there have been efforts in the
past. but enough has disconnectedness. they are not answering the phones. and again, we just don't know whether this is a temporary measure to try to get the attention of the west, to get us to focus on needs and their demands, or whether this is a fundamental change. >> what is the role of china in all of this? >> china is very important in this equation. the strongest relationship is with china. china insists with economic development. to the extent that anyone who has any leverage, they are working to influence north korea's behavior. in the past they have been willing to use that leverage and very tactical ways to store of tamp down tensions.
i think now what would like to see is a more strategic role to help the north korean leader understand the limits to the provocation. there are limits to the bellicose behavior because he is risking instability. >> host: are their chinese troops in north korea? >> guest: not to my knowledge. there are lots of exchanges and economics across the board. >> host: do the chinese feel threatened in the pacific in general. >> guest: i think the chinese greatest concern in north korea is for instability. their worry is having thousands of refugees poured across the borders. that is the situation they are trying to avoid. whenever tensions ratchet up and instability looks more likely,
they tend to get more engaged. that is certainly what we would like to see more of right now. in terms of u.s. presence, i think that they have a dual point of view. on one hand they understand the historic u.s. role in the region. they appreciate that in some ways. on the other hand, they don't really want the united states to put more forces in the region to develop our alliance systems further and so forth. they feel that that is a counterbalance in some ways. that is the perception. >> michele flournoy, she is our guest. phone numbers are up on the screen, if you would like to dial in and continue our
conversation about what is happening with north korea right now. you're welcome to. yesterday, chuck hagel spoke at the national defense college and here's what he had to say. >> they have nuclear capacity. they have missile delivery capacity now. as they have ratcheted up the dangerous rhetoric and some of the actions they have taken over the last few weeks, it presents a very real and clear danger and threatens the interests of our allies, starting with south korea and japan. also threats that the north koreans have leveled directly at the united states, regarding our base in guam. threatening hawaii, threatening the west coast of the united
states. we take those threats seriously. we have to take those threats seriously. we have had measured responses to those threats. >> guest: i think the secretary is absolutely right. the united states has to take seriously their requests from north korea. i think the president and the secretary have ordered prudent action to increase our defenses. sending additional resources into the region. we do not know exactly where this is going to go. we don't know whether it will be
miscalculated in some way. it is very important to reassure our commitment to defense. >> host: the u.s. could make a preemptive strike on north korea if they had good reason to be there could be an attack. they had the right to take preemptive action. here is the representative last night. >> i think we are not at that point to be having that discussion. we have to take many steps of action or reaction down the road. one of the challenges is this city of seoul is so close to the north korean border. and if we were to go down the
road, we did have very large numbers of civilian casualties immediately. i think we have to be very i think we have to be very careful. i am not saying that that option should be ever off the table. but i think that we certainly don't want to go there. my reading of this crisis is that you are seeing a new north korean domestic set of constituents. and secondly trying to get the attention of the west. to come to the negotiating table so that he can get some aid or assistance or benefit for his country and exchange for something on the nuclear front.
>> guest: i think we will eventually get to negotiations. we got into negotiations with north korea. we will provide them with a system to stop doing something on the nuclear program. in a couple of years later, we will start doing it again, and then they will come to us again and say, don't you want to pay to stop doing this again. we don't want to keep buying the same hoarsely get out of the barn. for the conditions of negotiations, we have to ratchet back and we need calm things down in terms of rhetoric. and then i want to come to the table seriously with a plan.
>> host: karen, you are first up with your question. >> caller: thank you, i appreciate you having me. let me just say that regarding peter king, there are a lot of intelligent people, but peter king is not one of them. my third question is mr. rogan commented about russia and china and feeling the need to maintain a sort of status quo in north korea. i was looking to see if you could elaborate on that. my second question is the actual citizens of north korea -- are they in the dark as we are led to believe. >> guest: those are both great questions. my sons is that the population in north korea has not been
given access to the outside world. they have been fed a steady diet of propaganda and it is a reality according to the state. something most people don't believe that they really know what is going on. in terms of russia and china, i mean, you could make an argument that it is in their strategic interest that it is a peaceful resolution on the north franklin slot and eventually the end of hostilities and korea and so forth. china seems to have a number of mining concerns that are very inexpensive for labor as far as north korea goes.
citing both countries are most concerned about change that would bring instability, particularly china. so they tend to take a tactical, short-term perspective to try to manage the status quo. what remains to be seen is whether that will be viable with the new leadership. >> host: does north korea have the right to defend itself against foreign threats? in this program. >> guest: i think the nuclear program is first and foremost about survival. i think every generation has pursued a nuclear weapons program in order to maintain hold on power. this would be the thing that would guarantee them a chance to bargain their survival.
this is not about legitimate defense concern. south korea has given up a nuclear weapons program. it is a peaceful program. and there is no one directly threatening the north koreans with aggressive action or with nuclear reaction. >> this is from yesterday's wall street journal. the obama administration is being pressed to produce its own nuclear fuel, including what nonproliferation experts say could trigger a wider raise funds in the middle east. >> guest: the general view is
that countries develop their own field cycles. and the more places there will be for material to fall into the wrong hands. so i think what the administration is trying to do is move people towards this international cycle where countries are able to buy nuclear fuel for a civilian purposes, medical purposes and what have you. in a safe and insecure psycho. frankly, the united states should be pushing back. and the truth is we have extended our deterrence and we have made it very clear that our arsenal also covers our commitment as an alliance to
them. and our deterrence is they are determined and they don't need their own separate arsenals. >> host: edward from fort myers florida. you are our guests. >> caller: thank you. greetings. i was stationed within ninth calvary in 1961 and 1962. that is when the president of south korea left with the treasury and we had martial law for some time. we need to realize that north korea is an army with the country. south korea is a country with an army. one of the main sources of income for north korea is the counterfeiting of american 100-dollar bills. one of our missions in 1961 and
1962 was to grapple and cut off into south korea with currency and by trade secrets or whatever. so we understand that they are an aggressor. we have an imposter of defense since the 1960s. the north korean special forces would come across our lines and steel options and in lieu of killing the enemy, they were going and stealing -- >> host: okay, let's hear from michele flournoy. >> guest: thank you for your
service. our online system is very much -- the cycles of provocation have been started by north korea especially in international relations. especially when it comes to north korea, what we have called upon him to do is come back into compliance.
>> have you been to north korea? >> i have not. >> have you been to the dmz? how close did you get? >> it is very strange. >> how close did you get? >> it is kind of in a no man's land that you can see through binoculars the other side. it's an eerie feeling like you're stepping back in time. it really is kind of a strange time warp to be there. but it is also a reminder that this war never really came to an end. it has been at a halt and applause. and i think that is eventually what we want to talk about. >> how did you get involved and defense policy? >> well, i was very drawn to international relationships when i was a student.
and when i came out of graduate school. this increases the tensions between the u.s. and the nuclear weapons field. so i got into this whole issue and so forth. i started off in the think tank world. >> and currently, michele flournoy is cochair of the board of the center for a new american security. a think tank that she founded. she is a senior adviser at the boston consulting group. >> guest: that's right, i'm working with them. >> caller: thank you for listening to me. i have a statement that i would like to make. i am not smart enough to sell
all the worlds problems. but i do know that we are now looking at kim jong-un. the americans here are held hostage by the sequester in the budget. government is not spending money on defense. he did government defense work because of the sequester. we knew something like this would occur again. we are not spending money like we showed on defense. it doesn't make sense to me. especially when we rise up out of the ashes and i feel that we
are at an unfair advantage. >> guest: i think we are in a very volatile environment. there are still many challenges to u.s. security around the world, u.s. interests, allies, continuation of al qaeda and terrorism, with what we are seeing in north korea. and the instability that we see in the middle east and so forth. so i think that today, you have a u.s. military that remains the strongest and most ready and most capable in the world. but i think one of the key questions that we have to debate as a nation is under budget and how much is enough to spend on defense. and how do we make sure this goes to the capabilities to defend our interests instead of two have wasteful business practices as a whole.
i am very sorry to hear about her husband being laid off. i think we are going through a very profound period of adjustment as defense spending comes under budgetary constraints. >> how significant was the speech by secretary haeckel yesterday on changing priority? >> i really applaud what he said. he laid down a couple of key markers. one is as we contemplate how to get our economic house in order, which is key to starting national policy, it has to be on the table. it is 50% of our discretionary spending. so we must anticipate these resources. so we need to really go after the defense enterprise.
personnel costs, that are out of control, these are key areas before we start cutting more modernization and capability. i thought it was an important speech. he laid down what he intends to do a secretary. and it is important for the american people to understand. >> host: we have a tweet. how does japan's military and china's military effect is? >> guest: we have had tension in asia. even development of common
systems and so forth. very close relationships. i think we are keeping japan very much in the loop. and we have supported closer relationships between japan and south korea, helping them to build a cooperative relationship. >> host: is their historic distrust. >> guest: there is some distrust. but i think there has been much greater openness and discussion and they realize that in virtually every situation that they will encounter going forward, they will find themselves to be allies. >> did you ever speak with the north korean military officials? >> i did not. i was not one of those people. >> did they ever come to visit
the pentagon? >> no. and i was not invited. >> okay, was this one for the state department more so than defense, china being the key? >> this is an interagency effort. in my experience, there is a very strong core group that includes the national security staff, representatives from the state department and the pentagon, this is a policy where elements of the u.s. government are absolutely critical. we are sending a clear message. we have seen secretary kerry weigh in on this. not only to the north, but reassurance to the south. this is a team effort. >> it is significant. i think it is another important
symbol that we are focused upon. we are here, we are standing by our allies, and also, we are here. the united states is going to make good on its commitments and do everything possible to tamp down the tensions on the. >> host: on a republic online, we have our guest. >> you have well articulated this consensus over the past couple decades regarding china's role in to north korea and the missile program. china shares the concerns of the world regarding the behavior. but is relatively powerless to do anything about it, the collapse of the north korean regime. given china's leverage, it is difficult to understand why china could not inoculate or
control north korean behavior because the regime obviously does not wish to commit political suicide. an alternative explanation is that china has seen strategic interest in this program. because it has given china the opportunity to play the role of responsible international stakeholder. and it is part of every negotiation. so given the participation in the past, and the testimony of secretary panetta last year, do you not see that china is playing a different game from what we are targeting to a? >> host: thank you. >> guest: china does not control the actions of north korea. but they are certainly powerless. and i think that the united
states needs to engage them administration has done to try to use the leverage that china does have. you know, what they will see is more and more u.s. and military capabilities displayed to the region in support of south korea and support of japan. we need china to weigh in with pyongyang and try to reduce these tensions. i think we have a new leadership in china that is pragmatic and focused on maintaining stability so it can focus on domestic challenges. and i think that we need to engage them as much as possible and press them.
>> guest: secretary flournoy, why does south korea need to get permission from the u.s. to require nuclear material. it is u.s. policy and reasons for animosity. >> guest: they have made certain proliferations under this. so the agreement that we have with them is under the agreement that we have mutual observations, including these issues. >> my question is about civility. what happened is the soviet union and the cuban missile
crisis, we have had so much propaganda in general. we just can't go back. what do you think will happen if the new leader just doesn't know how to handle that situation. >> guest: the seeds of instability have been there for a long time. i remember my intelligence briefing back in 1993. predicting the potential crops of north korea. much of their population is starving and they have no economic development. there is no real political participation.
but they have been there for a long time i would not underestimate this regime for keeping hold on domestic unrest. but i do think that if kim kim jong-un overplayed his hand with his provocations, there is a risk for miscalculations. >> host: we are spending most of this morning's "washington journal" talking about north korea. we are talking with michele flournoy and former defense undersecretary for policy. she worked for the obama administration. coming up next, we will be talking with an ambassador who served in south korea. ..
to strike potentially, and our base infrastructure in the region. they have a lot of hardware. i think the estimates are that there are elements of the ground forces that are ready but that they would have difficulty in terms of logistics and sustainment in any kind of prolonged conflict.
i don't think anyone believes that they would ultimately be successful or they to launch aggression. the problem is even if they were defeated ultimately by the south koreans with the united states and others in support of, there are very high casualties on both sides and obviously no one wants to see that. >> this is a chart and it shows different sites in north korea, underground nuclear test sites. it has missile sites come suspected kunkel weapons sites. what's our intelligence about this area? >> i think the united states government has a pretty good sense of how the nuclear program is laid out. many of the kunkel and biological weapons sites and so forth. i think, you know, probably an even in terms of the exact
nature of the extent of certain elements of the program and so forth but we'd really have the best picture on the nuclear program and what is disturbing here is that they seem to be pursuing that not only on the original path of the plutonium within but now also a weapon derived from the highly enriched uranium. bell says 74 per seventh of adults think that is capable of launching a missile that hit the u.s.. that's a pull from 2009. do they have a missile capable of the u.s.? >> we don't believe so at the moment. they are trying to develop a long-range missile system and obviously the worry is if they were able to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile and other nuclear weapon to go on top of that missile we would obviously be very concerned. i don't know anybody that believes they are at that point now. but you have seen again as a
precautionary measure the secretary recently ordered the increase of our national missile defense system to increase the number of interceptors from 37 to 44. to be able to handle any kind of threat from north korea or another state like iran or so forth. estimate of the independent line, michelle was the guest north korea is the topic. secretary flournoy i have a question about a call that came up before the open end of the line before the guest people were calling with their opinions and a woman spoke about a situation in 1993, 1994 some sort of agreement the united states had with north korea to cut back on the nuclear proliferation and activities we were supposed to provide them
with oil, alternative energy sources, probably wheat food, i don't know, television, who knows, great things. and this person, this woman that called in said that the united states reneged on what we were offering. so in fact was our fault that they were pursuing things. what is the truth of that? >> guest: i don't think that's accurate. i feel it's true we've had several rounds of the six-party talks that include not only north korea but also south korea, the united states, russia, china, so forth and there's been several points at which we have reached several points that trade, some kind of assistance from the west or
steps for north korea to come back into compliance with their nuclear obligations under the non-proliferation treaty. every time the north koreans have failed to hold up their part of the bargain so my reading of the history is that each time this has occurred at some point along the way they've gotten off the path that we have agreed and started a cycle of provocation. so i am not familiar with any episode in which was the united states that reneged on a deal. >> host: from the "the washington times" this morning want to get your reaction to this editorial. shoot look shoot is the title of the editorial. at the white house can put aside a global warming hysteria, nuclear proliferation among the rogue states is the worry that president obama isn't persuaded to leave he has been making sleepy time choice is not long after assuming traces he sold the bush administration plan to
boost the number of ground base midcourse interceptors at fort greenly alaska from 26 to 40 concluding north korean threats were exaggerated only now has the administration been jolted awake to confront the reality that mr. bush was right. what we find in the intelligence at the time is the north koreans have expanded the number of setbacks in their program and the program wasn't moving at the same pace. and we were trying to free prioritize missile defense efforts towards the more eminent threats and the medium range sets to the nato allies in europe to basing facilities in various regions and so forth.
so what you say is not international defense. we get the program that have 30 interceptor's available and ready and was more than enough to handle any threat from either north korea or iran should the program's accelerate faster than we anticipated while really building up the missile defense systems against the regional threats which were much more imminent threats and there are so they were never left defenseless. we always had a national defense system the was sufficient to the threat as it was involved in. now that you see additional resources and progress in the north korean missile system, they finally got the missile to launch the satellite into orbit which is one of the steps on the way to the program. i think it is only appropriate that we now say okay they have made a little bit of progress on
the full realization of the capability to use of the defense of the country in terms of the mission to the commission defenses completely adequate. >> host: in misery, democrat thanks for holding. you are on the washington journal. we have a couple questions and statement. i have a son and he has five children were there. he's in the air force. but tight but evacuation do they have for americans leaving the area? >> host: go ahead and ask your second question.
>> guest: the second question is not a question of whether he is on stable. it's not a question of what is he going to do, it is when is he going to do it. are they ready for this action on the nuclear bombs. there is one that can hit the west coast and this conflict in stories because i've heard there is want that can hit the west coast of the united states and she's not sure or doesn't think they have the capability. >> host: have you talked to your son, are there any precautions being taken that he has discussed? >> guest: like i said, he is airforce and a lot of what they do is secret, so he is unable to
tell what they are doing at this present time. i haven't spoken to him personally. he got an e-mail that he hasn't called back. we haven't spoken to him accept through e-mail. >> host: thank you. >> guest: on the nuclear capability nobody believes that north korea currently has missile that can deliver a nuclear weapon to the continental united states. they have crude devices and so forth but nothing that can be tough to beat kaput on top of the missile that can reach the united states to face of this would be absolutely clear on that. i do think that the defense department and the president are taking these threats seriously.
they have moved the assets into the region including to protect guam. if they saw additional mobilization of resources and readiness on the north korean side, i think you might see corresponding actions, defensive actions on the part of the united states and in the area the was vulnerable to the north korean missiles. i don't think anybody reading the crisis has ever reached that point. you do see dependence being moved out of harm's life for if people are really worried about that threat. >> host: josh predicted we would see in reaction, another action, another reaction militarily, do you see north
korea being aggressive in the short term? >> guest: i don't think they will do anything to take the crisis into conflict. i think we are trying to tamp down the country. but if north korea were to miscalculate and the provocation that actually and americans would see a response in the last series of provocations by his father we should do extensive collaborate planning with the south and anticipating all kinds of scenarios of what is the south do immediately what kind of alliance response with the support of the united states follow and so forth? so they have fought through a lot of different scenarios and the options ready for the president's to consider showed that occurred. but again i think every mehdi on
the west on the side of south korea and the u.s. is trying to ensure that we don't go down that path if at all possible. >> host: mashaal flournoy has been our guest on the washington journal, former undersecretary of defense for policy. we appreciate your time this morning.
former u.s. comptroller spoke to the conference about taxes and the automatic budget cuts. talking about the federal reserve i share a lot of concern he has there. let me talk about fiscal because as i said before which is tax and spending as i said, right now, defense is the only game in town trying to pop up the economy and the housing market and a lot of people including the u.s. government and
realistically they are going to probably continue to do what they are doing right or wrong until there is a grand bargain. what is it going to take? the truth is if you look at what has been done so far, they've been treating the symptoms, they haven't been treating the disease. for example if you look at what happened at the end of the year, we've raised taxes on people making over $400,000 a year or couples over 450. raised capital gains and dividends for people making over 200 or 250 come added on the new rate on top, didn't transform the tax system at all. we have an abomination of the tax system very few people can prepare to leave to prepare their tax is not because i'm a masochist just to show it can be done and the fact is we need to dramatically streamline and simplify the tax code. what did they do with the sequestered? we need to cut the defense spending and other non-defense discretionary spending but not in these across-the-board of
meat axe approach and what are they not doing? they are not addressing medicare, medicaid, social security, 1.1 trillion in tax preferences that represent back door spending that aren't in the budget or aren't in the financial statements and the authorized. you know, they are not dealing with the drivers of the problem which are mandatory spending and outdated tax system and get health care is the fastest growing program cost but the biggest risk to the budget is interest cost and as we said before on interest, you get nothing for what ever you are paying for interest paid for past so i believe what has to happen is we need to reach a grand bargain that focuses not on balancing the budget we are not going to balance the budget the way the government calculates the balanced budget is a bad joke any way. what we need to focus on is something that is more difficult to manipulate debt to gdp and
after world war ii we have over 100% of debt to gdp we took it down to about 30 at the time you came in to me we didn't pay off the dime of debt. we in this fiscal discipline for the most part. we grew the economy with policies that came down, we lost our way and we regained sanity for a period of time and since 2003 that is the year things spun out of control. things had been out of control we have to focus on not to balancing the budget and getting the gdp down we need to recapture control of the budget and we can't have 2/3 on autopilot and growing. the only two things that shouldn't have an annual limit you have to pay what the market says when you have the real market and the other is i think we can reform social security to make it solvent and more savings oriented. we know the demographics, we
know the numbers and therefore you don't have to have a budget for that but everything else you have to have a budget including health care. we are the only major industrialized nation that doesn't have a budget for health care. not even the countries that have socialized medicine. so we need to recapture the control of the budget and spend more on investment and young people and things that work and less on seniors and consumption. we need to phase in the problems with social security and medicare but that's okay we can get the medical compound in working for us you have to talk about who is eligible for what and when and at what subsidy and reform the tax system to make it simpler more equitable and generate more revenues. i'm happy to give the details if you want and they are not doing any of that so basically what they are doing is claiming they are doing a lot when they are doing nothing. today is april 5th the president
was supposed to submit a budget the first monday in a feb. he still hasn't submitted a budget leading from behind again. it's unbelievable. >> people always like to ask me how did you come across the story. people always ask that and what happened a lot of times you find a news story while you are supposed to be working on something else which can be a little frustrating at times and that is exactly what happened to me. i was doing a little internet research one day and this is the
photograph i came across and was on a department of energy website and the had put up a little newspaper for one of the department of energy facilities and this newsletter said this month or something along those lines. there seemed to be a beautiful vanishing point at the end of the room and i looked at these machines and i was so sucked into it and the women looked so lovely and the of the mice posture and the 1940's hairdo and a says these young women many of them high school graduates from tennessee were enriching uranium for the world's first atomic bomb however they did not know that at the time.
the president of emily's list a political action committee to getting pro-choice democratic women candidates elected to office spoke about the role of her organization and the current makeup of congress. speaking at american university law school on tuesday this is one hour and ten minutes. [applause] >> thank you so much for that incredible introduction. thank you, professor. if i was wonderful and to the symposium and american university washington college of law, which i just found out and i should have known was founded by two great white men. i should have known that was the
case. thank you for joining us today. my name as you heard stephanie schriock. we've been focusing on creating a culture of women's leadership and has become the nation's largest resource for women running for office. women's leadership in our country or lack thereof has become quite a popular topic of conversation these days. now in fact, jennifer right here at american university just released some new research that found young women were 20 percentage points more likely than men who have never considered running for office. 20 percentage points. and now we are hearing people asking if women are leaning in
the enough. so why is there a gender gap in leadership? at the end of the day all of these conversations tend to come back to the same questions. is the problem the choices that women are making or are women facing system a limits to the choices they can make? i'm here to tell you that no matter what the original source of the problem is, you can fix both of those issues by having more women in public office. not only do women in political office serve as role models for other young women and girls to follow in their footsteps but today create a country that is more conducive to developing women into leaders and emily's
list we recruit, train, support and help elect democratic women to office up and down the ballot across the country. that may seem like a simple proposition. women are running today, winning today, but that wasn't always the case and it's still not happening at the rate we need it to. emily's list began in 1985 because three years earlier a woman was running for the united states senate in missouri and she was really close in the poll and was coming to look for some help in the final weeks. she was looking for $50,000 to run a week of television in the entire state and i can tell you if you ask claire mccaskill right now, today that much money
would get you about today's of television in st. louis. so harriet went to the union, she went to the political caucuses, she went to the party and they all had the same answer and they let her run out of money and they let her lose by just 26,000 votes less than 2%. so a group of women decided we are never going to let this happen again. and they came together to build a network to finance democratic women candidates, and that group became emily's list. they began by supporting a social worker turned congresswoman in maryland and they helped her become the first democratic woman to win a seat in the united states senate and
we haven't stopped since. our impact is growing but we still have so far to go. the united states ranks 77th in the world and the percentage of women, 77%. even iraq and afghanistan have a greater percentage of women in office than the united states. and today in 2013 our congress is less than 20% women. it's clear that we have work to do and no one is going to do it for us. as a young woman on honored to take on this challenge for the next generation. i work every day to make sure women have a path to leadership
and politics because i know it isn't a fight that we can take on our own. let's think about this. men have been building leadership networks in this country for safe to hundred 50 years. women have only been building those networks and have had the opportunity to do so in the last 40 and only in the last 30 years have we made changes in law to open doors and break down the barriers across the american society in law and business and journalism and of those networks start in rooms like these. they start by getting involved and supporting each other when we take on challenges and opportunities and become the
backbone of each venture and when we build our sisters up, when we recognize that all do better when we all do better that is when we make progress. our mothers and grandmothers broke down doors for us so we could get a seat at that table. now, our job is to grab our sisters by the arm and bring them through those doors together because it's not just about taking a seat at the table. it's about taking half of the table. that's what emily's list does. so much progress has been made for women in politics just in my lifetime and in yours. think about this. so, emily's list was founded in
1985. barbara mikulski became a senator in 1986. nancy pelosi became the first woman speaker of the house in 2007. hillary clinton became the first comment to win a state presidential primary in 2008. these women ran into the one in our lifetime and in my lifetime, because i have a few more years on you, we've tripled the number of women who have served in congress, tripled ..
the 113th congress has the greatest number of women ever. and i can proudly say that 59% of those women are emily's list candidates. but we are still only at 20%. and we still face challenges. i love to tell the story, when barbara mikulski was first elected to the senate, i'm serious about this, there was no women's bathroom in the united states senate building. seriously, she had to go to the office building across the street to go to the bathroom come and had to ask them to build a bathroom in the united states senate. that was in 1986. just to make this clear, we have
mtv before the was a woman's bathroom in the united states senate. and this year senator amy klobuchar of minnesota announced that the women of the senate have made history in an unexpected way. there was for the first time a traffic jam in line for the women's bathroom in the united states senate. [laughter] so what true. our numbers are growing. but men still outnumber us in congress come in the courts, in the corner offices and in corporate boardrooms. women still earn less than men do, doing the same job. and that's an issue that republicans of stonewall, ignored, called a nuisance. said we will get back to you on the. and there are still politicians out there who are trying to make it harder for women to fight for fair pay. and that's to their detriment.
emily's list polled independent women photos after the last election, and 70% of them ranked equal pay as the most important issue. and these weren't democrats and these weren't republicans. these were independent swing voters. it's easy, it's easy to sit in rooms like these and think that these issues affect other women. not us. you know, that's just what the women of "newsweek" thought. so about 40 years ago, the women at "newsweek" had to see the magazine for the chance to be a writer. so until that point, and women that "newsweek" had been relegated to lower paying jobs doing research, clipping stories, checking facts. they could write it i love this part. they could write but they had to
hand their work over to a male colleague to get it published. and only the men could be reporters and editors, and only the men got the by line. so the women gathered their colleagues together in secret, and started with just you and those who became a dozen, and those thousand became 46. and those 46 women hired a future congressional delegate, eleanor holmes norton as their attorney. and he became the first women in the media to seal for employment discrimination under title vii of the civil rights act. they sued and they one. but their story, like so many others quickly faded away into the history books. that was until 2010, when three young women also working at
"newsweek" w rediscovered it whe they were writing a piece on fairness in the workplace. rediscovered it. and as the ready count of the women who came before them, who worked so hard for so little credit, they saw how much had changed. since the days when women in the newsroom were actually called news dollies. but i also saw how much had changed. they talked to their colleagues and their similar frustrations echo in decades later. men had written all but six of the previous year cover stories. and more women have joined the ranks of the magazines masses, but still only 39% of the leadership positions. and here's the thing, because we are supposed to be living in a society where these battles have been fought and won.
it can be harder to push for equality today than it was in the past. and it's not just equal pay. there are still men trying to legislate access to our health care. men who left last congress and without renewed in the violence against women act, letting the typically bipartisan bill expire for the first time since 1994. it's pretty clear to me a lot of members of congress had the wrong priorities. and the easiest way to solve that is to elect new members, new women to congress. because i don't know about you, but women have had enough playing defense. we aren't satisfied with holding the line. we want to be on offense. we haven't been on offense for
centuries. we still move, when president obama stood and said, the most evidence of truth that all of us are created equal is a star that guy just still, just as it guided our forebears through seneca falls and selma and stonewall. there's a reason that list started with seneca falls. women have been true leaders in the fight for equal rights and equal freedom. and our fight didn't stop at seneca falls. and after the seneca falls convention, it took women 72 more years to get the right to vote. it took another 46 years to ensure that women would have access to birth control.
and eight more years after that to make sure women could always have access to safe and legal abortion. and as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of roe v. wade, we've seen much, much more progress. now, in those 40 years we've seen the gender wage gap increase. we've seen women be, the majority of college graduates, increasing the number of women ceos of fortune 500 companies grow from two, to 21. so 40 years ago a woman had never been on a major party's presidential ticket, or on the united states supreme court. almost every woman who had served in congress was filling the seats of her deceased husband. and now today, we have a
congress with 98 women, the greatest number in history, and we have fought hard to get there. we have earned our seat at the table many, many times over. and now, now it's our time to take our place at the head of the table. now, history has shown us the key to progress for women is getting more women involved in the fight. we need more women to run for office, to lead corporations, to be law partners. and we need to give them the training and the confidence to do so. now, i was lucky. my coaching started at home in montana with a mom and dad who made sure i had the confidence to compete to win, and toulouse. and i was.
i was surrounded by strong women who let me try new things, and guided my values and gave me strength. and i found mentors and networks. strong women at girl scouts, at church, in school, and a town that new that it took women and men working together to survive really cold montana winters, and bad union strikes, and devastating mine disasters. with all that it really took off who open up opportunities for all those women, laws that i took complete advantage of. i don't think there's a better example of advancing women's leadership than title ix. title ix, as you know, a limited gender discrimination in school sports and opened up so many doors for girls in this country.
and not only does it advance women's leadership, but the very existence has women's leadership to thank for it. the legislation only exists because of the tireless work of late congresswoman of hawaii. so i, as you can do, got some height. i played basketball for the dubuque high school bulldogs. that literally was an opportunity that my own mother didn't have. and playing sports for me taught me how much fun it is to win, and a really do like to win. but it also taught me that you can learn a lot when you lose. and in the world of electoral politics i have to admit i'm reminded of both of those every day. sports also taught me that, that loss, political or athletic, is not the end of the world.
just the end of the race. and it made me less fear to take on risk and take on challenges. we need women and girls in this country to feel like they can take on risk and try bigger things. i also saw firsthand the importance of good coaching. getting the right advice at the right moment can change everything. i see that when talking to women about running for office or getting ready run for office can or think about taking the next step in their political career. and at emily's list we're always getting ready for the next class of women candidates. and we are really making sure that we have future campaigns ready to go. and we've trained, last cycle, 1300 women to run for office around the country.
and, in fact, we've already started training in -- for 2014. we trained everyone from grandmothers to college graduates, and from coast to coast. and at emily's list, we have the network to track these back back -- back these women. here's the deal. we recruit and train democratic women to run for office. we help them staff up their campaigns with good strong teams. we provide the political know-how. we turn out women voters. and we use our nationwide grassroots network of women, and yes, good men who were with us in this to raise the funds they need to get the ads on television and get things on the ground. i've seen that network in action. one of my very first races i worked for this wonderful woman
named mary, who is running for congress in minnesota. and she was a emily's list candidate. i've got together, i still remember going to the police office every night to pick up a box and sitting in the campaign office and opening up envelopes with contributions and notes from emily's list members from all over the country. and they were checks for $5, $50, maybe more. from women i had never met, and from places i had never been. and those checks and those notes said, we're with you, we believe in you, we've got your back. over 28 years that network, our network of grassroots owners has done very big things. now, through direct mail and
online support we have helped fund the campaigns that have since 19 women to the united states senate. 100 women to the house of representatives. elected to 10 governors and hundreds of women to state and local offices. and the emily's list community has now more than 2 million members, and that group of donors helped us raise $52 million to help women candidates in last year's historic cycle. they made the winning difference program running across the country. one of my favorite stories is about this emily's list donor, and it started about 25 years ago. she was this young mom living in texas, and she got this letter from this group of women who thought it was a good idea to help women get elected, and they asked for a little bit of money and she said this sounds like a
great idea. so she wrote a check and gave her first political contribution to emily's list. i think it was for about $25. about two decades later, that woman decided to run for office. and emily's list was the first place she turned to, because she knew what emily's list stood for and what our community, our network could do for candidates. i'll tell you, we stood with her every step of the way. and that woman who wrote that $25 check so many years ago, i think you may of heard of her, her name is senator elizabeth warren. that's emily's list. i haven't been at emily's list, but i've been in the business for a while as you heard, and i have seen a lot of poll. i've been backstage at some concession speeches. and i've helped make a few
opponents give up. win was managing campaigns, i did manage some pretty close ones. i ran this brutal campaign for a dirt farmer from big sandy montana, population 712. o. i'm proud to say is now known as senator jon tester. and i also got the call when al franken wanted to run for senate in minnesota. and while you may remove or senator franken's victory ended up coming down to 312 votes. yes, 312. i know because we counted them all. [laughter] it was a very, very close race with lots and lots of attorneys involved by the way. i know i said was one of my first, but really the first campaign i ran were my own. these are serious.
campaigns waged in the very competitive political environment of butte high school. see, i ran for kleist -- class president many times. and i lost many times. so i decided i needed a new plan. so my junior year, i thought i should run for student body president. because it's not just my class voting but the entire school. so i set out a campaign plan that solely targeted freshman and sophomore voters. and, this is key, i even got the younger sister of one of my opponents to join my campaign. and i won. and i learned my first campaign lesson. never underestimate the power of a younger sister. there's a sister, and then there's the sisterhood. we leveraged that sisterhood
every day at emily's list, and we were to elect more women to city council, to state legislatures, to congress, the governor's offices all across the country. and we do it for a good reason. democratic women have been the most progressive voting bloc in congress for the last 20 years your these women aren't just voting on progressive issues. they are the driving force pushing policies that will truly make a difference for women and families across this country, and have. from the environment to equal pay, from title ix to access to women's health care, it's clear the democratic women have had a lasting and profound influence to our legislative outcome. their impact is felt every day by an american families come and their leadership changes the conversation at those negotiating tables.
senator kirsten gillibrand of new york has a great story about when she was serving on the house armed services committee. and so when they were talking about military readiness, she and women like gabby giffords asked about supplies and personnel, obviously. but also asked about dental health programs are returning veterans, and support for military family. they changed the conversation. and that is a trend that goes back to the very first woman who was elected to congress. so in 1916, jeannette rankin, a fellow montanan, i'm very proud, was the first woman to win a seat in the united states house of representatives. and that, by the way, was three years before women had the right to vote nationally.
before she was ever elected to congress, she was a suffragist and she was a real champion for women's rights. but here's the thing. her campaign was really seen as a novelty. and even her own fellow suffragists were very concerned that a loss would roll them back. but she wasn't scared. she took this on. she was well-known. she was a hard-working, she knew it was the right thing to do. and she won. and when she was elected to congress, she fought for the creation of the committee on women's suffrage. and when it was created she was appointed to it. that would be a problem i would think if she wasn't appointed. and when the committee reported out a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote
nationally, it was jeannette rankin opened the very first house floor debate on the issue. and she looked around that house floor, that floor full of men, and she said, how shall we answer the challenge, gentlemen? jeannette wasn't afraid of a challenge. her goal in congress was not to just further herself, but it was to bring even more women into the political process. because she knew what we all know. that women's bonuses -- women's voices add more to the conversation. see, here's the thing. there's a place for any other interest in politics. there's a role for each one of you in my story.
and this is not an either or situation. you can do this, and you can do anything else you are passionate about. in fact, you must, you must. democracy depends on us to take responsibility for our community. as women working on expanding this 40 year old network that we have, it rests on our shoulders to bring each other to the table of power. some of you may run for office. some of you better run for office. but all of you need to join me in this cause. we have to capture opportunities for women as quickly as they
arrived. when there's an open seat, i will tell you, emily's list is the first what they're looking for a candidate to run. and we have to be the first. because it's not as easy to find these women as you might think. and because men, no offense, guys, they don't need to be asked to run. in fact, there's this great record of research that found that 55% of men who self-identified as unqualified for a public office had still considered running for office. 55%. women just don't, we don't work that way. we just don't work that way. women, the same research found, need to be asked a multitude of times before they run for office. it could take even up to seven times to be asked to convince
somebody to run. so, consider this your first ask. and when you see your smart, well-qualified friend, and think oh, she should run for office, asked her. and then asked her again. you need to take on that attitude, no matter what field you are in. because i will say this. if we don't throw each other's names into the mix, no one will. don't think that it just happens. so, how shall we answer the challenge? we will answer this challenge by working together. this is what our male counterparts do. this is the 150 euros network that they have built.
working together. and it doesn't mean, it does not mean a woman is always the best person for the job. that's not what i'm saying here, but it does mean we have to think long and hard about which one of our sisters could be. that is what emily's list does, and it's my challenge to each of you. because there is nothing holding us back. but there's also no latter up for us, except the one we build ourselves. and the one we build together. the women, the women at seneca falls learned that. the women at "newsweek" learned of that. jeanette rankin learned that. i learned that. they knew that when faced with systemic problems, you can't
look to someone else for help. you have to look in the mirror. nobody handed these women the chance to make a difference. nobody guaranteed them a fast-forward. they banded together, they went out and they fought for it. it takes courage. it takes courage to file the lawsuit that will attract the nation's attention, and it takes courage to run for office. it takes courage to do things when the path forward doesn't seem obvious. especially when the path forward doesn't seem obvious. stop waving for the pass -- the path to seem obvious. and please, don't wait for the seventh ask. we have to strike out on in untraveled path, knowing that in
hindsight our journey forward will seem obvious. and you've got to find the motivation in the fact that with each new road we pave, and we make it easier for the next women to take it. because progress isn't made by an individual. and progress isn't about advancing yourself and letting the next woman face the same hurdles on her own. it's about making your way up, and then reaching back and help the next women do the same. because i know this. if we want a woman president and a congress that looks like our country and feels like it belongs to us, we can't just
hope that it's going to happen. we have to be willing to make it happen. we owe it. we owe it to the women at seneca falls, and the girls at butte high school. we owe it to every woman who came before us, and every woman that's going to follow. there is hard work ahead, but i know we are up for the task. in every field we must strive together to move forward together. that, that is how we build our network. that is how we move our country forward. and that is how we answer the challenge. and i am so glad, so glad, to have all of you in this fight
with me. thank you so much and i really appreciate being here today. thank you. [applause] [inaudible] >> i would be thrilled, absolutely. >> no questions? i know that's not true. [inaudible] >> i've been getting your e-mails for some time now. so it's nice to put a face with them. nice to meet you. ..