increased awareness about government surveillance practices has changed the way society understands privacy , values and respect for the law, leaving individuals and companies uncertain about who has access to their private information. Now more than ever, we must work together to ensure that major reforms are taken to maintain the free and open nature of the Internet as we know it.
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Michael Petricone: Christian, thank you very much. I am delighted to be here, thank you for coming. This is a special group that we have today. I do not know if you've ever watched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions where you like the Rolling Stones, and they are up there with Nirvana. Then Jack White jumps on stage. Can Run D.M.C. Jump on the scene. Today we have that as equivalent privacy panel. We have just a bunch of really remarkable, incredible panelist. And we'll have a good interactive discussion. I will try very hard to keep moving the discussion and just stay out of the way
Michael Petricone :. Let me show you very quickly. First, we have Marvin Ammori, it will not be in order for you to raise your hand. He is an activist, he is a scholar, he is a writer, he is an internet defense team of a man. He advises companies like Google and Dropbox. It currently has articles in Slate, Foreign Affairs and Harvard Law Review at the same time; which is quite a trifecta.
Then Christian Dawson. You all know Christian, COO of Servlnt. One of the founders of i2Coalition. I just want to say Christian, I am hoping that everyone in this room is a member of the i2Coalition. If you are not, you should be because I see what Christian did in Washington every day. He did a great job of representing this industry. As Christian said it started after PIFA and SOPA when Christian realized that one of the problems we had, one of the challenges we had is that the vast majority of members of Congress do not really understand how the Internet. And if you do not understand how something works, it's really hard to care about him. It helps set up the i2Coalition. Their mission is to help educate the Congress on the industry and how it works. It has to be done a fantastic job so please support him in the i2Coalition.
Greg Nojeim, Senior Advisor of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Renown expert on national security, terrorism and 4th amendment protections. Then we Michelle Richardson, it is legislative counsel with the ACLU. The ACLU is a fantastic group. I have to renew my membership. You should too. It focuses on transparency issues of national security and government. She was also the lawyer of the Judiciary Committee of the House.
Amie Stepanovich is the Senior Policy Advisor to Access Now where in his on words, it works hard to keep the government out of your life. This is a good thing. She also co-chairs the prestigious Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference.
Finally, Ron Yokubaitis is an Internet pioneer who founded one of the first fifty ISPs in the United States in the day. It is an old internet lawyer from school. Again, a true pioneer of our industry and is now CEO of Foundry data.
Let the discussion. The title of this panel is Snowden a year later. I will make a request of the panel. I think Snowden, himself, is an interesting guy and you can discuss him and his motives and who he is and him personally. Much of the debate centered around him as a person. I think that while it is understandable, it also removed the debate on exactly what our government is doing and what the response should be. Snowden so important, it is an agent, right? It is a radical transparency agent. The real issue is our government and the actions of our government. I will ask the panel to do over the next hour is to the best of your ability does not mention the word Snowden and instead focus on equities. This is what the real issue is all about.
Let me start by Amie. Just look back one year, how can we here? What have we learned over the last year on the US government's surveillance practices
Amie Stepanovich course. I remember some years ago, I advocate freedom of Information Act request against the NSA. The Freedom of Information Act allows you to go to government agencies and request documents. We were talking about their authority to cyber security, about their monitoring activities. And all this was that we would get more huge wall. We hit a wall. The NSA would say no, then the courts would say no. You just had no window in the activities of the National Agency securities whatsoever. Last year one of the things that we have been able to carve out using one of these documents helped someone anonymously disclose, is this window in the National Security Agency's activities and an idea of what monitoring activities are underway and how these activities are illegal. To what extent these activities go beyond the limits of what we want our government to be doing. Without naming many, many programs that have been disclosed and I think a lot of people on the scene spent a lot of track time, trying to understand how they are set. I think the big thing we learned is that the scope, size and the extent to which our government not only spy on people in the United States but also around the world
Michael Petricone .: Michelle Marvin - anything you want to add to that? What specifically is our government that we did not know last year that perhaps we should be concerned about
Marvin Ammori: I took some notes on what I can give the couple and then you can fill out if you wish. This morning I decided to look through "What we know now that we did not know last year. I'll give you some examples of some of the programs we just know that we can rely a little discussion. What we know is that the US government collects records of the person who calls for almost all telephone calls in the US Let me know if I get hurt details here. They are engaged in the upstream collection directly from carriers. They collect information on a target of the investigation even if the target is not in the emails. They determine that a target is only 51% with presumption of whether or not a person is 51% foreign or not. If you are abroad, they can just spy on you is the idea. They assume that you are abroad unless they positively identify that you are not in certain circumstances. Despite the lax rules of an NSA audit showed they violated their own rules and more than two thousand political times of the year - about twenty seven hundred times. They, perhaps, destroyed evidence that the head of the NSA, perhaps incorrectly makes a senator during a hearing stating that there is no program in which they collect data on millions of Americans. We believe that the top lawyer for the government to deceive the Supreme Court on the NSA's activities into an argument before the Supreme Court. They also intercept millions of images and use facial recognition on them. They collected two years of cell phone location data as part of America a pilot program. They have a program they call muscle where they draw in the lines between the data centers of Google and Yahoo, perhaps other companies. They have a program that Bullrun mine encryption. Including standards that undermine the somehow agency national standard, NISS and to pay a company of ten million dollars for potentially back doors in their encryption technologies. And they also have to avoid certain rules, apparently share data with the eyes of governments Five. New Zealand, Australia, Canada, U.K. and the United States to be able to share information about each other's citizens. If you want, sixty-five things you learned in the last year are due to Snowden. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a blog for this where you can read them and weep. This is what we now know from other
Michelle Richardson :. I think the sum of thirty thousand feet is definitely what we have learned since 9/11 all these changes in the law have taken surveys on the basis of suspicion. They will not suspect after a bad guy and build a case for him. They collect everything. If it is digital and it is collectible they get it. They do not believe you have the rights to this information and it can be used for all different purposes against you. Here's how these programs are booming. This promise that somewhere in these data, we will find a terrorist or criminals and it will make us safer. Ultimately, this was not the case. A year later, many congressional hearings, there are no concrete examples of how domestic spying, in particular, has never been a terrorist
Michael Petricone :. Can we expand only a little bit because before we dive into the implications of all this, I have to ask. the primary responsibility of a government to its citizens is to keep its citizens safe. Our government says that these programs are not like them, are necessary to stop terror and keep us safe. Why? How would you react that Michelle or why not start with Amie, then go to Michelle
Amie Stepanovich :. One of the programs that Marvin had alluded is that the NSA undermines the encryption standards and I want to focus on that for just a second. What they do is they actually do less sure everyone in line in order to preserve their own supervisors. The encryption standards that we all depend on to protect our communications, banking, our emails, basically all you online have been messed with the NSA behind the scenes in a way that not even the body fixing encryption is aware and said they have no idea that the NSA has done or why, to make it easier for them to conduct surveillance. This idea that they are trying to make us all safer is undermined by their own programs and their own surveillance operations
Michelle Richardson :. There have been a number of terrorist attacks in the United States since the Patriot Act adopted or FISA Amendment Act. As the Boston Marathon, right? All monitoring and we have not taken before. They shot at Fort Hood. We find, in fact, in a number of these incidents the shoe bomber, underwear Christmas Day bomber, these guys, we got advice on but nobody ever ran because we are so concerned by big data. We have all the guys in a room with a computer pulling down all our phone records instead of putting the power of man to capture suspected terrorist in a way that is proven to work.
Christian Dawson: I'll tell you one thing. What we have seen reports now make both Forbes and The New York Times on potentially billions of dollars arising from the US economy as a result of these actions of the NSA due to a lack of consumer confidence in the cloud of the United States and the belief that the United States cares about privacy. I ask that this does not make the United States safer to have a weaker economy and have fewer jobs
Michael Petricone :. Greg
Gregory Nojeim ?: One of the things that was most surprising to me was in the revelations was that companies know when the government made demands on them and they must meet these requirements. The law requires that they return data in response to these requests. What really struck me is that in addition disclosures that came through the front door - the NSA was essentially tapping the companies themselves. He went out the back door intercept the flow of data between corporate data centers they had located to provide a service that was best for their users. It really struck me that they were using executive authority to obtain these data instead of passing through the front door and saying, "We have a suspicion about that person. You must return the data "
Michael Petricone :. I think it is a good summary of what we know Yes
Marvin Ammori.: Can I just disagree on a point
Michael Petricone:. Ok
Marvin Ammori: Not really disagree, but a clarification
Michael Petricone: .. course
Marvin Ammori: Although it did make us safer, it is a kind of compromise. This compromise class between freedom and security. Our founders gave us the Fourth amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure probably realize that probably make some people less safe. It is a compromise in a free society . You can move all the way to a totalitarian police state, have added security, but we chose not to go in that direction. Just wanted to say that even if there were some examples of terrorists being taken we always want to ensure that the compromise is worth it
Michael Petricone :. I think it is a good summary of this knowledge yet. Let me change the subject. Given this information, let me go to Ron, what has been the impact of the company? The impact on your business practice firms and others in the hospitality industry and why
Ron Yokubaitis :. The practical impact is that it was five years ago, we were tired of talking to people and being watched as nuts. Of course we are from Texas, so we're a nut from the right wing. You are a lover Alex Jones he is a very interesting man. Nevertheless, we talk about it and people would go, "You're being watched. AT & T is surveilling you. Verizon survelling you and you gave them permission to your length of service. You may need to be a lawyer for Telecom understand the words, but you give them permission. of course, since we do not have an open Internet, we have an Internet monopoly, you had no choice. but what we did, recognizing the reality, "what we going to do about it." We have put the company in Switzerland. Because you're not going to buy from us, good Europeans. Because they understand. We, Americans can be dodos and believe that our government, "Hi, I'm from the government. I am here to help you. We will regulate the Internet and give you transparency, "and all this yammer. We were going to sell encryption to people. We in Switzerland. Now we are in one hundred and seventy countries. The world wants. Mr. Snowden woke everyone until you can run on the Internet you can not hide If they want you, they will do you -.... Osama bin Laden they surveilling us all the time what will you do about this? We in Switzerland and now they will have to talk to a Swiss judge. Not me. talk to the judge
Michael Petricone :. Christian, let me come back again . same question, the specific terms, how businesses are being affected by hosting this what happens
Christian Dawson: I can tell you a little more my business and that the numbers are a little staggering. Our company has been around for nineteen years. Historically, we have seen more business from outside the United States than in. At about 60% of international business and 40% of US-based companies. Last year 70% of our business was US-based company that you talk about a dramatic change in form 60% of our business is international usually 30. I firmly believe that this can be directly attributed to what is happening with the NSA revelations and frankly how the world is in marketing around these revelations
Michael Petricone :. Just to have an idea of the room. How many of you represent companies that host or data are cloud providers? Put your hands. Good, keep your hands. Now, how, with your hand, if your company has lost a client or a special occasion because of government surveillance practices. Ok, that's a good number. Greg and Christian, are demanding customers? What do customers want? Do they want better protection? Do they want insurance? Are they simply pull their data off and put it in another place
Christian Dawson: We are really lucky if a client tells us what they think. Customers can move their business in two mouse clicks. We have really anecdotal evidence on a number of things like that. But when the big like that, the form of 60% to 30% of international trade we feel like, "Yes, they are really demanding more privacy." More transparency about how their data is managed. We try to reinforce to the plate and give them
Michael Petricone :. Ok, we'll talk about what happens in the legislative responses DC, legal answers. let's start with Michelle. the Congress is now actively considering legislation to restrict the power of the NSA. most prominently the law on freedom USA and other measures such as the Act on amendments to FISA. can you give us in terms of lay men, a preview of what they would and would they solve the problem
:. Michelle Richardson of course. this bill was presented the . last fall is now passed by the House with bipartisan support - Many cosponsors. He started in a much broader form, right? To deal with many different revelations, but it was narrowed and this is what remains. The phone program will continue in a much smaller form. All laws in foreign intelligence statutes that allow the government to request documents and digital information without a warrant, right, this is not the content, but all the data stream and stored records must be based on selection conditions. These are not narrowly defined, but the idea was that you can not go to a company and say, "Give us everything literally. Each download from one day to the NSA. "We will come to you with a sort of request and it becomes to ensure that all groups wanted. We wanted them to focus on specific people. Maybe you go out, a ha, to see their associated, but not more than that puncture all. It leaves some things to be desired. We would really like, say exactly the term selection. It sounds like a name, an account number an installation. something much more specific. I think one of the things that bothers me most with revelations is that they misled the courts. the courts are permitted things that Congress and the public never considered. Even the ACLU got worked up about it. So now we have to be incredibly specific about what we need. There is no mandate, perpetual secrecy mandatory progress. it must be targeted. it is now in the Senate. It will be in the committees of intelligence and judiciary and we ask them to be much more accurate. Back to the idea that you start an investigation with a seed and you go out there, but there are bigger grabbing all the data
Gregory Nojeim :. One of the important things about the law is that it does not address your problem, Christian. Your problem is that if you can not get foreign clients because they are concerned about the security of communications they have - and this bill is not. He really treats domestic use of these authorities. For example, the program that allows the government to target a person abroad because they are a person abroad. That's all. This is the norm. It is not affected by this bill. It will not be useful for companies that want to give assurances to those who are abroad
Michael Petricone :. Friend and Marvin, let me just rephrase the question. The law on freedom, as now, the answer here and if not what should be done? Amie
Amie Stepanovich :. course. I think the US Freedom Act, as it is currently out of the house must be strengthened. It does not allow some of the terms we use in D.C. It does not allow bulk collection, necessarily, you can not win everything, but it allows the bulky collection. As in, you might be able to set and get all 305 Miami which is highly worrying and I think it should be narrowed down. And I wanted to touch base - it is actually another moving part by Congress, not USA Freedom that I want to highlight just because it might be of interest to people in this room. I started talking about cryptography and encryption standards. In fact, when this revelation came out NIST, which is the only acronym I promise I will use, it is the standards body in the United States on encryption, said they did not know and could not legislatively not know because, by law, they must consult the NSA on encryption standards. They should get feedback. There is now a proposal that has passed the House Committee that will hopefully be on the way to the floor of the house, saying that NIST does not have to consult the NSA. They hit this requirement of the law is a huge step forward and means that the NSA, in small part, will be taken on encryption standards. I think we will see much more movement on that front. Accesses have pushed for greater use of encryption by enterprises. We actually Golden Frog as one of our supporters, saying that more information must be protected
Michael Petricone.? Ron
Ron Yokubaitis: Yes. Following the remark by Amie. The encryption standards are already compromised as soon as you talk about it. The surveillance state is going to work and break it. What is the one thing we do and I encourage, I was talking to LinuxFest last week. It was a response to one of the connoisseurs of the audience. It was a rather high dense environment geek. What about "Come together and agree on certain standards and open source? My feeling was that simply serve it on a platter.
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