 Well, thanks everybody. My name is Cindy Cohen and I'm the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I want to thank you all. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. And you guys are a very select group. We announced this event and it sold out within about a half hour. So thank you guys are all both you're all very lucky to be here and quick on the draw. Which I appreciate. I don't know whether they're the Beatles or the Stones, but we are very excited to have Alex and Nicole here with us. Which one? Somebody said, yeah, one of each. I actually think we've got a member of the Grateful Dead at the time. But I'm really delighted to have these two with us tonight. They're kind of two people of our community who've gone into the belly of the beast and lived to tell about it. So let me introduce you to who we have here. The non-token woman is Nicole Wong. She was the Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer, focusing on Internet Privacy and Innovation Policy for the first two years of the Obama administration, I think, her year around that. In the middle. In the middle, sorry. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Nicole served as Twitter's legal director for products and Google's Vice President and Deputy General Counsel. She frequently speaks on issues related to law and technology, including five appearances before the U.S. Congress. Nicole chairs the Board of the Friends of Global Voices, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting citizen and online media projects globally, friend of BFF, and also sits on the Board of Witness, an organization that promotes the use of video to advance human rights. She currently serves as advisor to the School of Information at UC Berkeley, the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative, the Democratic National Committee Cybersecurity Advisory Board, and boy, do they have work to do, and the All Right Stonebridge Group. She also serves as an advisor to several technology companies on privacy, regulatory strategy, and international development. In the middle, we have Alexander McGillivray, also known as AMAC, to those of us in the Valley. AMAC's bio is fun. It says he's curious about many things, including law, policy, government, decision making, the internet, algorithms, social justice, access to information, and the intersection of all of the above. Alex was the U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the last two years of the Obama administration. He was before that Twitter's General Counsel and the head of Corporate Development, Public Policy, Communications, and Trust and Safety. Before that, he was deputy general counsel at Google. Can you sense a theme here? And created the product counsel team there. He served on the board of the Campaign for Female Education, USA, and was one of the early Berkland Klein Center folks. He's also certified as a first grade teacher by the state of New Jersey. Yeah, I know. And I think most famously was a junior associate on the Streamcast-Groxter case that we took to the Supreme Court. And in that regard, spent several days in a warehouse in L.A., climbing through servers, working with EFF on a very important case. I think that's the most important thing on your body. Thank you, Bo. This is something I really wanted to do because we have such a wealth of information, I think. And I think out here on the West Coast, sometimes we really feel like it's a crazy world out there, East, and we don't really know how it works. Or if we do, we might be a little wrong or off. So I want to ask a few questions, and then we will have time for questions that you guys ask. I think everybody was given little cards when you came in. If not, we can get you some. When you've written your answers, just raise your hand. And my two colleagues here, Amola or David, will pick them up and deliver them up to me so that we can do audience questions in a kind of easy way. So my first question for both of you is, and we'll start with Nicole since you went first. How did you get to D.C.? Like following the yellow brick road or something. So you get a call. Like I'll just tell you, like the logistics of it, you get a call. They say, this is the White House. We'd like to talk to you about a job. And that is the moment where your knees buckle and you sit down. Like I literally, I can remember sitting down in the front steps of my entryway at my house because I was walking downstairs. And they're like, just a moment. And I sat down and then proceeded to hear about this job, U.S. Deputy CTO and tried to figure out like, well, what is it? What does it do? I spent a lot of time talking to other people about what it meant to be in the White House and the Obama White House. For those of you who don't know, the CTO role was created by President Obama. And so he was the first one to recognize that we could use someone in the White House who understood technology and technology policy. And he had a number, the CTOs would have a number of deputies, I served as one, Alex later served as one, who would cover different portfolios of issues. For me, it meant like, is this a job worth having? Is this the right thing for me to do? Is it the right thing for my family to do? Because I got to lift up my family and at the time I had a fifth and a seventh grader and take them to D.C. And there were all those questions. And let me go, I'm going to go a little bit off track, but it's to answer the question of what did I do? Or why did I go to D.C.? I am the great granddaughter of immigrants. My family had gone back and forth from China to the U.S. in the 1800s. My grandfather actually lobbied for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which Trump now seems to be turning the clock back on because it had abolished national origin quotas and we seem to be drifting back into this area of national origin. My family actually could not buy a house in California until the 1950s because of the racial covenants that were in existence and so much of the residential properties in the state. And this is a long way of saying, when I got that call from D.C., the month before I got the call, I had delivered a eulogy at my grandfather's funeral, where one of the things he and my grandmother taught us was, you are a citizen of this country and you have a right to participate in its government. And if you get the opportunity, it's your responsibility and your privilege to serve in it. And having delivered that eulogy to like several hundred people, including the great-grandchildren and my own children, I couldn't say no to going to D.C. I had to walk the walk. I would say that's the reason I went to D.C. It was deeply personal and it was absolutely the privilege of my life to be able to do it. So, Alex, I don't know if you can beat the grandfather story because that was a good one. Yeah, I went mostly because Nicole told me it was a good idea to go. So, I was born in New York to Canadian parents, kind of an immigrant, but the bigger thing I would say is I think a lot of us have been really, really lucky with the types of opportunities that we've gotten being a part of this space and a group of people that are so much in the vanguard now and have so many different opportunities. I kind of felt that way growing up and then growing into the work that I've gotten to do. And so it was more like I've been really, really lucky I should do something that would help other people get lucky. And then the other story I would tell just because Nicole talked about her call, imposter syndrome is real. I will tell you that it exists all the way up until you get the call from the president of the United States. I had been applying for the job and they had gone radio silence. So I was like, oh, I'm not getting the job. I'm, you know, like going to come back to San Francisco. That's great. And then Todd Park, the CTO called and said, so the president is going to call you in three hours. I need to know your answer in two as to whether you're going to take this job. And for me, the thing that was most, and I, like I say, totally thought that I would not get the job. So if you're ever having imposter thoughts, know that everybody gets them, know that you're wrong. Then the other thing I would say is like the reason why I took the job was I sort of thought a lot about impact that you could have. The amazing thing about this job is you're kind of in the center of everything and you can make very subtle changes in very small ways that have a huge impact in terms of people's lives. And that the opportunity to be able to do that was a little bit too good to pass up. And so I talked to some people I called Cindy to ask her, her advice. And it was just, I was just so glad to be able to do it. The last thing I forgot to mention is it's just awesome to see so many friends and so many friends of EFF. It's great to be back in San Francisco. You don't like it's in the water here in a way that it just isn't anywhere else. So thank you all for coming. And also a few empty chairs. So if any of you who are standing want to come, there's a few seats. Come on in. So this is the kind of the central question and the one that maybe want to get you both together and ask you this, which is, what's the most important thing for people in tech to know about how DC works or doesn't work? What was the biggest lesson you learned? And what skill did you have or develop that ended up being the most helpful to you? That's kind of three questions. I think I've worked in the valley like the late 90s on internet stuff. And I think that a lot of the time that I had here, we were pretty dismissive of the federal government, right? They were usually an obstacle or more likely just irrelevant or antiquated in a way that we felt like we could ignore them. And I think that that is changing in part because of the nature of the technologies that are now coming out, ones that head directly into regulatory spaces like self-driving cars and drones and things like that. But I also think it's incumbent upon us to start engaging. And I think that the technical talent within government is getting much better. So that they actually do understand when you talk to them about the sort of sophisticated areas of both technology and policies that implicated. The thing that I think I didn't fully appreciate is that there's a tendency to see the government as a monolith, like the government's position is X, right, or the laws are Y. And you don't really think about the differentiation between agencies, between people within agencies. So the lesson that I learned going to government was actually there is not alignment on a bunch of the issues that really matter to us. That you can find people within government who fully understand and agree with you on certain things and then maybe stronger voices that you have to overcome. And the trick is, especially when you're working within the government, is to find your peeps and say like, ah, you and I need to work together. And we need to convene a table where we have voices that will be heard. I did that in part during the time that I was there. I think Alex was actually much more successful in convening places where technical talent had a strong voice at the table. It's so hard to follow Nicole because she always says the thing that is so true. Government's made of people. That's more than anything else. That's the lesson. But I'll tell a story about the technical talent thing, which is one of the, I did a fair amount of work with the national security folks. And we were analyzing this problem that was really an internal to government IT problem involving servers and chip manufacturers. And the, we were trying to get to the bottom of the technical details of the thing. And I walked into the room, tiny bit late, way under dressed, and these are also skips. So like there's no, you can't bring any of your electronic. So already I, for me, like without my phone, I feel way out of place. You walk into the room and there's this table. And government, it's a lot of like there are people at the table and then there are people who are not at the table. And it really is different. It's almost rude in government to speak if you're not at the table. So who's at the table is a big deal. And sometimes they put up like little tent thingies to give you the name plate of who's going to be at the table. And so I walked into this room where we're supposed to not be talking about the policy stuff. We're supposed to be just getting to the bottom of what the technical issue is. And the people at the table are all policy people. And sometimes they had brought their techies and put them, excuse me, on the wall. And so the first thing I do when I walk in is, okay, everybody, everybody stand up. And if you don't know the technical details at a technical level and are able to explain them in English, please just take one step back and allow some people from the wall to step in the table. And first of all, there was an audible gas. Even though I ranked every single person in the room, but DC is very hierarchical, which can be great if you're in the right place in hierarchy. So there was an audible gas, one person stepped back. Sadly it was a DOJ lawyer who is the most humble, nice, good guy and actually more technically sophisticated than anybody who was sitting at the table. So he stepped back and we managed to get one of the techies to come to the table. But there are these structures that really make it hard. And so one of the things that Nicole was referencing is we created this thing called the tech policy task force, which was a lot of the decisions get made by policy councils. So there's a national security council, there's a domestic policy council, there's a national economic council, and who gets a seat at those tables becomes very important. And so we were constantly kind of begging to get at those tables and the dynamic there can be you're begging to get at their table and they're setting the agenda and doing all the paper and all the rest of it. And so at one point the chief of staff of the United States of America was like, well, why don't we just create a table for techies and we'll put more than half the people there. We'll be people who are actually technical people and the other people can beg to be at your table. And so then that's completely changed the dynamic because now when the national security council says to you, well, maybe we'll include you in that meeting. We'll see. You can just say, OK, if you don't want to include me at your table, that's fine. I've got this other table and we can both send a memo to the president and my memo is going to have a whole bunch of technical people on it and yours is going to have a whole bunch of like policy people on it. It's kind of a technical issue. So let's see what we can do. And it really changed the dynamic and it was in part because of the amazing work that a bunch of techies had done within government before we got there. But that type of change is happening and I don't think we fully adjusted to it. But there's plenty of good stuff that will go along with that. I would say, by the way, that that is not singular to government. Like we, when I was there, we would also do convenings of like industry and ask for like technical advice about what's happening in the street. And you try to, you know, you try to like invite the right companies on the cutting edge and they would always send their policy person who did not actually understand the technology. I would say the talking points that the technologists had given them, but they were not actually technologists, which was infuriating. And so a couple of times I tried to call meetings where I'd say like, I don't want your policy person. They could sit at the back of the room or escort them in through security, but I don't want them talking. And that actually had the same effect of like flummoxing them because they don't know what to do. Like white engineers aren't here. They're in Mountain View or they're in Santa Clara. And I'm like, then get them here because it's the White House. And we've already talked to the policy folks without them. So I think it's both sides, right? It's government, but it's frankly the private sector does the same thing. And the publics, I mean, I definitely had, you know, big foundations want to do a thing about how we get more tech into policy. And I looked at the list of people who they talked to and there wasn't, they called me and I'm like, no, there are people at EFF who are technologists and they are not me. So I talked to them and that, no, they wouldn't do that. We call that at EFF sometimes we call that the geek to geek protocol. You've got to get them in the room. So of course we're in this current moment now. So what are you talking about? Isn't President Obama still the president? No, because you still have a job. What do you guys see looking ahead under Trump? Are there things that you can see maybe that we can't see because of your experiences? And then of course the kind of the, are there other things we should look for in terms of trying to figure out what the tech part of the policy is going to look like coming out of the new administration? Thank you guys. Yeah, I think to start with the one of the things that was the sort of foundation and building block of a lot of the progress that we achieved was that there were people who had come in to do essentially service delivery to try to make government services better by having more sort of current technologists in doing them and also by kind of like taking some of the shackles off of the government technologists who hadn't been allowed to use the more modern method. And that like make government services better. That's a bipartisan supported issue that's still going gangbusters and knock on wood will still happen and not be used for bad purposes. But that the thing that gives me a little bit of optimism for the rest of it is that one of the reasons why technical people were asked about technical policy issues is because they had saved the government's bacon on these implementation issues. Right. Once you save health care I gov. People want to ask you about other stuff. And so I'm a little bit hopeful there. I think there's lots of stuff that I hold dear that is being threatened. Everything from technical issues like network neutrality to non technical issues like are we in open country or closed country. Are we a country that values diversity or not all of those things. The piece that may not be as apparent on the outside is one of the changes that has happened is a change in procedure that has changed the number of people the number of steps and the type of process used to come to decisions and to launch things like executive orders and not only not only has the number of people and the diversity of that viewpoint shrunk in a significant way but also the the types of people who are at that table has changed. And a good example is the National Security Council where you now have a really a political person in Steve Bannon, who is now a part of the National Security Council as a decision making body, which is not the same as what happened in President Obama's time. And then you have significant National Security Council business, like the immigration EO that is does not is not brought to the Council so never even gets to that decision making body. And that to me, that's scary. I feel like there's like a things I know pre Trump and then like, I don't know anything post Trump. So I, I served on Hillary Clinton's transition team so we were actually getting ready for a transition well before November. We were identifying technology and innovation people who could go into agencies and figure out in each of the cabinet level agencies like what's what's the best possible thing we could do from a technology standpoint. So like every time I hear another transition story from the Trump administration I go through another period of mourning and PTSD. But having said that right like there are a bunch of things that the Obama administration left behind that stand. So the Congress passed the talent act, making a permanent presence for digital services and technologists within federal government to deliver to the to the American people. The US Digital Services, which was part of the CTO's office, and it's now under the General Services Administration is still there appears to still have support. And the notion of having really smart technologists figuring out better ways to deliver services to the American people. That's there and totally bipartisan. There are questions around people who decide to continue to serve and we can go to that question but but but it's there. And I think that's really important. I think that like, what do we do with the Trump administration what should we worry about. It's the circumvention of a process, right and continuing to get the input that people need to make the right decisions and I don't. I can't read that one. What do you think from the again that you may guys might not be good at reading tea leaves but what would be the three issues that that we work on at EFF that you think we ought to be watching closely. In the next year or so. I think that the seven or two question is huge. I do worry about this shift in how courts are perceiving what is overreach in surveillance, because it seems to be the factual matter of what is easy to get versus what is narrow and supported to get is is conflating in some of I think some of the court judgments right now and and so I don't know how many people are here from private sector companies right if you build it to be easy to get. We have an issue around courts feeling like well it's no big deal to do that search or to see that thing. And, and I worry about that drift. I do think for both the EFF ACLU folks who are here. I think we ought to open a dialogue with private sector, particularly the smaller companies which may not have full time lawyers in them. About what they should be looking for what case do you want to bring what's the fact pattern you want them to be looking for so that we can open up a dialogue about when we put up a fight. And I think that the community right now is really open to hearing those types of ideas. Well I have a success story about that which is you know a few years ago I met some folks from Cloudflare and told them that if they ever got a national security letter they should call me and they did and it took several years but now I can announce or we've been announcing a while ago that both Cloudflare and Credo Mobile have been clients of the EFF and fighting back against the gag orders on national security letters and that came from doing exactly that and from being really you know pushy maybe about making sure that companies knew that if they got something and they wanted to fight that we would stand with them and so hopefully we can keep doing that as we go forward. I just add encryption to that list I think that will come up again. And then the other thing I would put on it is the one of the great things about the this moment that we're in is that it seems like more people care about the government than they did before. More people care about being involved both in terms of political involvement and just moral involvement like having conversations about morality with each other which is awesome. In particular the EFF gets to reach in a voice that is really really respected a ton of people in the engineering community and I think the engineering community as it becomes more and more and more powerful within society is also going to be able to exercise that moral and political muscle. So I look forward to the EFF doing even more to get people energized and involved. Thanks. One last question then we'll go to the audience ones. So if someone is thinking about going into government, what should they expect to do all day? I'm not going to ask the other question which is should you go into government because I don't know then feel right but it doesn't feel right to ask the question. But what is your day? What is your day look like? I think we should come back to this because I think there's a real question about going into this government. So I think it's fair to talk about but and he blogged about it. So, you know, it's totally open. You spend a lot of time under fluorescent lights in windowless rooms. You have crappy technology like literally the worth I mean 1995 technology. In, if you're really lucky, you are surrounded by folks who are the most devoted public servants and patriots ever who could be making a ton of money in the private sector and instead decided they would forgo that to be able to do things with the American people. I have never been so inspired by some of the folks who went through furloughs and being craft on by the public and taking all kinds of risks in order to be able to deliver those services. And so I think that that's that's also a part of why you put up with not necessarily as good food as you might get in some private companies with no stock or anything like that. We also I think I think there has been some change since you left on the technology front. I was walking around with an iPhone and a surface. She's not necessarily 2017, but certainly is more than two. Better than my Dell latitude. But the other thing I would say is like there's a lot for me it was like I was in meetings all the time. But meetings and then the walking around establishing relationships, building relationships, getting information through relationships, all that sort of stuff. But there are lots of people in the federal government who spend the majority of their time coding. There are lots of people in the federal government who spend the majority of their time counseling and doing stuff like that. It really does depend a lot on the job. But certainly in the White House, you spend a lot of time in meetings in awesome rooms like the Roosevelt room. That's really one of my favorite buildings. The one right next door to the White House is just where the offices are. It's gorgeous. Okay, so then what's the other question then is should people go into government in under this administration? You wrote about it. So my short answer to that is yes, there's a ton of really good stuff to do in government still. And just to give you one example there, we've got a librarian of Congress who is incredible is totally revitalizing that place. When she was ALA president stood up against the 215 program. When she was head librarian in Baltimore, kept the libraries open during the riots. She is awesome and that stuff is great. And there are thousands and thousands of people like that that you could go work for and do work that would have meaning and impact and change Americans lives. And a lot of that is nonpartisan. A lot of that is not part of the Trump agenda one way or the other and is very much worth doing. I found it really hard and this was a conversation we had before I went in and it's a thing that I found interesting at companies too. To try to think through when you're part of an organization, how much of the organization's decisions and things that they're doing actions are your actions. So I picked the library of Congress because they're kind of really far away and away from the center of government. But it's certainly true that if you're working on something that is doing bad, that's you, right? That's part of you and it's part of how you should think about your ethical obligations. But what about if you're not part of that thing but somebody else in another division is or someone else in an entirely different agency? And what about particularly for me when I was doing this calculation, it was I was part of kind of the senior management team. And so how do you be a part of a senior management team that is doing things that you strongly disagree with? And I don't think you can be. I think it also really depends on the personal circumstance. There are people who can't just up and quit a job because they don't agree with their boss. And that's just true. And so if you need the job, you should definitely take it. And then the last thing I would say is this whole question reads wrong to people who are career civil servants in government. For those folks there, they like look at the Silicon Valley folks who asked this question and they're just like, I don't understand. Like I've been in government for 20 years trying to improve the way the Veterans Affairs Agency services veterans and make sure that they get health care. Like I disagreed with a bunch of stuff that the various presidents did during that time. My purpose is to serve the American people. And why do you entitled Silicon Valley person think that you get to like just work with people that you politically agree with? And you know that that all share your values, right? Like and the amount of diversity within the federal government is just amazing. Like it diversity of viewpoint diversity of everything received color of skin and I think the whole thing. So this idea that we have that you can that your job should also be with a boss that you agree with on almost everything. That's for a lot of federal government workers who have been career civil servants. That's just not how they see their world. And I think the federal government would be a much worse place if they saw their world that way. Because we would have a federal government that changed every few years. And a bunch of people who knew nothing about anything would be coming in and replacing people who had been doing good work. And so it it's a it's. Your story reminds me actually of like, so there were two terms that I learned when I first got to DC. One is I was the Christmas help. A seasonal worker coming in and leaving at some point during the administration, right, which I took slightly offense to but okay. The other one is that the career civil servants are the B team, meaning they will be there long after you're gone. Right. Right. And so like, there was a moment where I'm like, that sounds like a challenge. But now, but now I appreciate it. I think that the people that I've and Alex and I both have friends who are wrestling with or making decisions to stay or go from the current administration. There are some things that you can do in government like Alex was saying, where the good isn't was is totally clear. If you are helping rebuild the VA system so veterans get their benefits shorter than 137 days, which with the current average, that is a good. And if you keep working that problem, you will actually alleviate human suffering. That is huge and nobody ought to be diminishing something like that. On the other hand, if you are working in the State Department and thought you were working on a process to expedite refugee systems, but in fact you are now in a an extreme betting program. That's a different thing. So, so I think that like each and every person that I know of is wrestling very personally with what is their role in this policy ecosystem and the technical capacity they're bringing to bear. There is, in all honesty, and another nuance to that, which is, if I make this system work better, am I ensuring even a minute longer of the Trump administration than there needs to be. And I think some people are actually wrestling with that as well. It's complicated. That a question. Yeah. So I'm going to switch to employee. Questions from the audience. So if you now's your time write them down get them up because we're going to go through them. So here's a good one on topics of interest to you and in your sphere of activity. What would the Obama's administration have done differently if it knew that Donald Trump would be the next president. You were closer to the end time. I don't think we thought I don't think I honestly don't think we thought about it that way. President Obama was a constitutional law scholar and activist. So his view of government power included governments that he might not agree with. I don't think there was anything. And I'll think about it some more if I come up with a great idea, but I don't think there was anything that we would do. All the stuff that we worked on that we cared about, we tried to make permanent. That would have been true even if we thought that Clinton was next. You always try to make the thing as permanent as you can. And certainly we were also not, there was never an idea that, oh, but you can trust us. So we don't need any stop to our power. I don't think that that ever was, I certainly never heard that. I wish that had gone out to the Justice Department because I had eight years of briefs that said that. Yeah, I don't see, I'm not sure the Obama administration would have done anything differently. I do sort of mourn, as I was saying before, for the lost opportunity. Because I think that the Clinton team was so ready to continue advancing a lot of the technology and tech policy initiatives that had started under the Obama administration. And so totally separate from what Trump's actual policies are or not, he wasn't ready, right? So there was no team to catch a lot of what had happened in the Obama administration. But it still doesn't seem to be a lot of resource to take on some of the things that had been started. And so I worry about those initiatives dying on the vine. What do you think is the biggest overlooked tech privacy issue in the public sector? What do you wish Obama had paid more attention to? Biggest privacy issue in the public sector. I don't know if they, so one of the things I worked on when I was at the White House with a report on big data, it followed the White House's review of its signals intelligence program and the use of metadata. And at the conclusion of that review, the president actually turned to the folks at the CTO's office and asked us and a number of other agencies to do a study of the policy implications of big data. And the question was like, so should we stop? Like, at that point, we had already invested $200 million in federal research grants for big data initiatives, right? We were already trying to promote big data uses in the commercial sector and elsewhere. So the question was like, well, what does that mean? There were a bunch of things that came out of that report from a privacy standpoint. I think we still have not gotten enough good thinking on how to think about algorithms and data and the accountability of the use of algorithms over data. And that continued in the artificial intelligence report that came out under Alex's time there. What was more important than the privacy issues, frankly, from my time there was the understanding that the data issues that we're dealing with are not merely privacy issues. One of the things that was really interesting in the study that we did was we would ask people, and we did three academic conferences and met with over 100 people at the White House to try and get a really good sense of what was going on. And you would talk to people, so what's the privacy issue you're worried about? What's the thing you're thinking about? And they would talk about privacy issues, but if you scrape the surface, they say things like, I'm worried that I'm going to be denied opportunities so that someone else is going to get because of what the data says about me. I'm worried that I'm not going to get the same insurance rates or the same credit scores. And the questions they were asking were actually not privacy questions, but fairness questions. And so the thing that I feel like we haven't really gotten a model to think about yet is how do we handle the data and fairness questions in conjunction with the data and privacy questions? That's very true. Yeah, rather than give the same answer more poorly, I'll just go to the next question. What do you think will happen with the CTO role under the new administration and what are the priorities that you think the new CTO should have, assuming there's going to be one, because I think that is kind of a big question. So I think there will be a CTO and in part because it's just it's not like the technology questions are going away. And in part because it has US chief, it's at the White House, it's like a it's a pretty awesome role. So someone's going to want it. But what should they focus on? I think there's a ton of stuff that is a continuation of the work that was already done, particularly like the as Nicole said this this algorithmic and big data question is unfinished. The impact of some of the artificial intelligence and automation on jobs and a whole bunch of different ethical and legal questions is not something that was there. There was a moment where Secretary Fox, Secretary of Transportation, who had been confirmed in 2013, said something like, you know, my confirmation and are all around that no one ever asked me a single question about drones, I don't know why autonomous vehicles for really like computers and software at all. And then, you know, fast forward to 2016 and the Department of Transportation, like that's what they're doing that stuff. It's sort of like software has eaten whole agencies in a way that just wasn't there. So you've got to increase the technical fluency, and the ability to do privacy and cybersecurity and all the other types of analysis that we do in all of these different agencies. That's definitely something that still has to happen. And then the last one I would add to is, I think we've moved very much into a place where a lot of the stuff that is important to us is not no longer held by us, which means our ability to speak now goes into somebody else really has the keys to whether we can speak, right, whether whether I can tweet is really Twitter's decision at the end of the day. And whether my information goes to the government or somebody else is really this other entity's decision and I don't think we have a we have done a great job of really coming to grips with that either. As a society in terms of how our legal doctrine because third party is still the way we think about a lot of these requests. Oh, it's not a request to you therefore it doesn't really involve you. And that's I think we got a long way to go there as well. Hopefully something that's CTO. And harkens back to the start of our conversation about a seat at the table right like as a tech community, we ought to be pushing hard for a real technologist to be in the White House because sometimes it's only for their personal integrity that they would not let a policy get made based on completely fabricated senses of how technology works. Right, like, just as a matter of like, one day I have to have a job after this administration so I'm going to stand for the principle that the physics of technology is this right. And so I think, even if you wanted to stop the strength out of out of this administration, you would want someone to be that seat at the table. So that was the second question, which is would you recommend somebody go in and be in the CTO and CTO's office under the Trump administration, because those jobs do seem to have a mix of the things you've been talking about that would be good and bad. For me, I wouldn't unless the person had enough agreement with the agenda to do it. You're too close to the president, hopefully. This is a kind of an AI question. Do you see the executive branch or the POTUS 45 using Cambridge Analytica to bolster support for his administration or defeat his opponents? Mercer's. Yeah, but that's Cambridge Analytica, right? Yeah, I just didn't. I just used that name because I thought more people would know it. So I don't know because I haven't done the data analysis that one would need to do to figure out what's going on. What I would, what I can tell is that it seems like this administration learned that the campaign doesn't stop as you start governing. And so I certainly see them being more campaign oriented than certainly was true at my time at the end of a two term presidency, right? So network neutrality, who are the people against it and for it? Do they know why they are against it? You mean the people in the government? I think they mean in the government, yeah. Who should we be watching in the government if we're concerned about network neutrality? Let me rephrase it a little. Well, Chairman of the FCC has said that he's against it. That's pretty important. Yep. And there's certainly lots of people who are against it. Many of them worry about the FCC believing that the internet is within their jurisdiction and some of the other things that the FCC has done within regulation. That's, I think, the argument that is substantively most coherent from that side that I have heard. But a lot of it is just that controlling the pipes would be a useful thing for some of the business models of some of the folks. And the other thing I would say is there are probably people who are more expert on that neutrality in the audience than I am up here. But that would be my two cents on it. How do we find friends in the White House or the executive branch? From here in Silicon Valley, I think that's actually something we struggle with. There's a really good Pete's on the corner of 17th and Pennsylvania. Do you want me to say something? Yeah, sure. Okay, now that I've started with the joke, I don't know. I think there are a lot of technologists who have a more libertarian conservative bent. I would start with those folks, but I think it's hard. I think a lot of the companies are doing this dance right now. A lot of the advocacy organizations are trying to figure out whether they pick battles or don't pick battles, whether this administration is just like a lot of other administrations that they really didn't agree with, or whether this is something very different and certainly like I'm in the camp of it's something very different. But I think people are trying to figure out whether there are things that they can do that would be helpful to America that would be seen positively by the administration that they could very publicly do to make those first orbiters a friendship. And I think other people have thought about this. I think the folks who are still sitting at USDS are friends. They're technologists and they believe in technology and robust technology to serve. So to me, even though they may not be political appointees, they understand the working in whatever agency they're sitting in. And that is useful as a matter of just understanding lay of the land. And half the battle in DC is figuring out where centers of power are and where vacuums of power are. That's always been my experience. If you can find someone at whatever level who can actually make something happen, that's your friend. And quite honestly, there are people who are super junior, but because no one above them has been appointed yet, they have a lot of power and can make things at least at an operational level happen. Yeah, that's a great point, especially on the careers. And a lot of them are also open source contributors. So you can like see them and meet them and contribute to their projects. There are people also at the Tech Transformation Service, which is at the GSA, which is a companion to the US Digital Service, which is within the White House. So there are a lot of techies out there that are very approachable and our career people have been there for them. So an easy way to find them all? I think so there is now an open source repository for federal government code. It is not fully flushed out yet, but you can go to code.gov. You can also go to the USDS GitHub and the 18F GitHub. Both just do those searches and you'll find that there's also a White House GitHub. You can find people that are doing things that you're interested in. A lot of them are on Twitter and you can find lists of feds on Twitter. And then there are like conferences where more feds go. But also, feds are starting to get out to conferences again. And so you can often invite feds to your conferences in a way that is useful for them and will be a good future. What are the top three gray areas you encounter? It says complex of interest or gray areas, but I'm not sure complex of interest is. Conflict of interest is much clearer to me than it appears to be for this administration. Gray areas, I don't know if this is exactly what you mean. For me, like who owns leadership on something tended to be a gray area. And there's a process like how does stuff happen in the White House? An enormous amount of energy is put into driving consensus from all the various stakeholders across government. So in the big data report that I worked on, and I know Alex's team worked on the artificial intelligence report. The number of other agencies, I think ours was something like 17 agencies all got to read our report and we got feedback from all of them. That had to be incorporated and massaged and negotiated, right? Like that to me is one of those things where somehow the government works even though it's entirely cumbersome. I was at a conference where Waldo Chiquita noted a lack of ethics training or code of ethics in the technology community. And the example he gave was the creation of a Muslim database. How can we encourage ethics among the government tech folks? I am less concerned about this in government than I am outside of government. And I'll tell you why. In government, what I have found is that a lot of the technologists who are in government think a lot every day about the morality of what they're doing, particularly in this time of change and opportunity. There are people who are worried about it, right? And they talk amongst themselves a lot about the morality of the types of things that they're working on. And that's part of how they even think about their prioritization of tasks. One of the wonderful things about the federal government is you don't really have a lot of competition in terms of what your purpose is. It's just make life better for the American people. There's no like, also we've got to get ad revenue and engagements down on this button. So there's like this one thing. And what I found at least is that the conversations about the morality of what the engineers are doing are happening all the time. And I do not witness that as much in the private sector. And I'm a lawyer, so I don't witness it as much in the legal profession. But I'm really optimistic about it because all the engineers that I know have a very strong moral sense. It's just a question of whether they apply it all the time to understand that a particular decision has moral consequences. But my again, my experience in the federal government is that there are people are really think about that a ton. Because there's no other like the only reason you do something is if it's good. At the engineering level, I mean, I think the political level right might be different. And I think actually that comes to your point on like, why would we be more concerned about the private sector? We saw that with sort of the disclosures that happened with Edward Snowden, right? Like the private sector is harnessed by the government when the political aspects of it suit them. So the question is, for the private sector, have you thought through all the ramifications of how you are categorizing and keeping data on people. And with the knowledge that it may be accessible to government, it may be demanded by government. And that is less about the government, the engineers in government, who I do think are talking about the morality of it. But in this administration and with the policy vent that they have, whether companies have built their systems to be able to live with that. That's interesting. I mean, because of course, somebody built the upstream facility, somebody built all of the general store, the NSA's huge collection of data that they go through. I mean, I guess I'm wondering, you know, how you square that with, A, the reality of some of the things that government has built, some of which is harnessing private industry, but a lot of which was not. Or maybe contracting with private industry to build stuff for them. There's three categories really. Yeah, because I think that I worry a lot, not so much about the individual integrity of the technologist, but about their ability to say no. I mean, the chain of command questions, right? Yeah. So I don't know. It's also like push back a little. Some of them would make a very different decision about what is moral and not moral in weighing particularly the national security issues and civil liberties issues. And then we might make or that I would make, right? And so I think that the reason why I was reacting that way was the question was really like, how do you get them to think about the morality of what they're doing? I think they are. How do you get them to have the same exact morality as we have? Good luck. Right, like everybody's got different morality and we haven't convinced everybody to have ours, right? So that's that's how I guess I would, the way I would square it is I, you know, again, I, I don't see a lot of people saying like, you know, this thing I was doing was evil, but my boss told me to do it. It's more like this thing I was doing was going to save lives. And that's. I think the morality is informed by their mission, right? And part of our problem is that the missions of the agencies are very narrow so that you're not thinking about, well, if I do this for national security purposes and saving lives, that actually messes with the rest of the ecosystem that I should also somebody should also be accounting for and in an agency you you aren't accountable for the rest of the ecosystem, just your mission. And so so I think bringing to bear that other part of the conversation ought to be the executive branch's job probably. And the question is whether that will exist. Did you find being in the administration or DC generally to be constricting on your idealism? Why or why not on idealism? I actually think I was more. Well, okay, let me back up. I'm a few years out so like maybe there is colored glasses over there and give it there were many days of huge frustration, like huge frustration like, Oh my God, my tax dollars go for this kind of bureaucratic DS are you kidding me. But on the whole, I think that I was fortunate to work with a lot of people where I was more idealistic about what government was trying to achieve. And then when I sat here and thought of it only as an obstacle to what the tech sector was trying to achieve. I think some of the frustration is like, Oh my God, that's horrible. And some of the frustration is at least during the Obama administration, the process that Nicole was talking about in terms of driving to consensus with a whole bunch of different viewpoints and stakeholder perspectives meant that you rarely got to do the thing that you thought was the ideal, because everybody else had their input and you had to figure out a way to get your thing together and try to get it out to launch. So that was like a also frustrating but you know again trying to try to incorporate that diversity of views. What's a policy area where your view changed after being in government. We're both stubborn. I, so I will say one, I came in the government thinking that basically in every single situation, if you put me in a room full of national security people, I'd be like you shouldn't do that. I'd be like but why not we're going to do it. And what I found was there were a bunch of situations where I was like we got to do this thing like lives are at stake. And they were like well hold on a second we can't do that because of this law or that law. So in that situation it was usually because the patchwork quilt of different pieces of like duct tape and things we took from something else that is the civil liberties protection in this country. It fits together a bit weirdly and sometimes the laws that have that are really really important and protect our civil liberties have unintended consequences in how they fit into a different domain. And so there was this project in the United Kingdom to try to rethink national security and civil liberties from kind of the ground up that didn't really produce in the end a wonderful thing but is a good it was a good thing to think about. And for me like that was one of the things where it seemed like there were a bunch of places where I couldn't see the civil liberties benefit of this particular instance where we were saying no you can't do that. I didn't think that would be the case I didn't think there would be one of those. And then there were a bunch more cases where I was like we really need to not do that and there wasn't a good civil liberties like block to it. So I think, and this is probably my own limitations from from when I was working in private sector right I think I thought of civil liberties work as what you guys do here right defending my civil liberties online. And when I went into the White House, I actually got an opportunity to work with a really wide range of civil rights groups that range from, you know, people seeking racial equity or gender parity or, you know, educational equity. And, and what struck me is how technologically behind they were in advancing their own missions. So I think that the change that I had after being in government is like, Oh my God, how is it possible that like, there are so many civil liberties groups working to advance really important missions on behalf of marginalized communities that are not using the technological tools that are not grabbing hold of data from the census to make their case about discrimination or low income housing or education assistance like how is it that we have failed them somehow to put real assets behind and resources behind their missions. And that was a real, like I just hadn't thought about it in my life prior to being in government. What are the three most disturbing uses of privately or publicly collected data that you can speak of? And what can we do about them? Say that again. It's a hard question. What are the three most disturbing uses of data? I assume that the government is making that you can speak about. And what can we do about them? Maybe another stumper. And this is not at the federal level. It's some of the local police departments that are using predictive policing tools. I'm really worried about that. I think that is a very dangerous weapon in the hands of people who don't actually know what they're doing. So I think that's one that I'm like, wish they had a better set of models for that. Folks know what predictive policing is. So it's just, it's where the cops put into a big data algorithm, what they do all day and the big data algorithm spits out where they think crime is going to happen. And so it ends up being a predictor of the police, not a predictor of crime, because it turns out the police only see about half the crime that happens. And a very slanted part, half towards certain communities and against other communities. So if you add, you know, it's the big data version of garbage in garbage out, right? Bad data going in slanted data going in. It comes back out and spits out really dangerous things that end up making it worse, especially for the communities that were already worried about being overpoliced and underpoliced. My 10 seconds. On the flip side of that. I'm not biased at all. On the flip side of that, there's a lot of decisions that when you do the data analysis of what are the criteria that are used to make those decisions that they come back extremely, like not like the racist and classist. My good example of this is bail decisions that currently the algorithm seems to basically be if you're poor and a person of color, you get a high bail and don't get out of jail. And having more data analysis, not necessarily data collection, but certainly data analysis, data use could actually improve that situation with Nicole's caveat that you have to really have somebody who knows what they're doing. So that you don't just create a better way to discriminate against them. But we sent a ton, a ton, a ton of people to jail who are not at any risk of offending, but happened to fall into certain categories and sending somebody to jail is extremely predictive of them. Eventually, maybe not that time. In fact, usually not that time being convicted, but spending more time actually doing something that eventually and going to prison. I don't love what's happening at the border right now with checking people's social media. I'm being told that I'm talking about the give me your password so I can check your social media or ask you questions about your profession. You know, that sort of stuff that's sort of absurd to me, but that is wrapped in a bunch of just political decision making that are not technology related. But EFF is looking for plaintiffs for cases around, especially devices being seized at the border, demanding a passwords and those kinds of things. So we have actually, you go to the website, there's a place where you could submit stories and we're looking for some test cases. We've got some good stories already, but watch this space. There'll be more on the device part, the part where they Google whether you're really an engineer or not might be a little tougher for us. Outrageous. For a young attorney, do you have any advice on how to achieve what you have achieved? It's been so long since I've been a young attorney. I don't remember anything anymore. So, so I do sometimes get asked the question like how did you get to where you are total happenstance. Like, I thought I was going to be a dolphin trainer when I was in fourth grade and that didn't work out. Here's, here's the best way I've been able to put it. Follow what you love, because that makes you passionate and energized every time you get into the office and people read that. As a manager of a lot of people, I've seen that and completely evident when you are dragging yourself into the office versus when you are excited to be there. For me personally, it's always been really hard to see what the next thing will be. And so part of it is always keeping your eye on the horizon about what looks interesting to you. And the corollary to that means you have to be prepared that when the tide of opportunity comes in, you are ready to sail. And I think that that means staying up on the things that are most interesting to you. Being connected to people who are doing interesting things that you're passionate about too. That's how you hear about cool new opportunities, it's how you expand the ideas of what might be interesting and how you make sure you're ready when that comes in. Yeah, and to give, I completely agree with Nicole, mostly I was just lucky, but to give some sort of operational advice, two things I'd suggest is when you figure out what you're passionate about, start doing it at least somewhat in public. So like if you're passionate about 702 and surveillance, start tweeting about it, start writing blog posts about it, analyzing it. I'm going to embarrass Derek Slater there because when I first met Derek, he was like a high school student who had a blog about copyright. And I had been reading it quite happily for a number of years. And so then when I bumped into him, I was like, wow, you really care about copyright and seem to be really intelligent about it and how I've been using your stuff. So like this is great, let's work together. That is something that's relatively new that you can get into a niche community and prove your value without actually like having a job or a high school diploma. So you should do that. And then the other thing is you should work for EFF and other people like EFF who have way too much amazing work for the number of people that they have and are looking for help on stuff. So really early in my career, I had the amazing luck and good fortune to work for the Internet Archive on behalf of EFF on a DMCA exemption, which was amazing. And exactly the type of thing I was passionate about at the time meant that when later a DMCA case came up at the firm, I was the only one who actually had experience doing it because I had already done it through EFF. So you can get these opportunities to do stuff that maybe you're not quite qualified for, but the alternative was just telling Brewster, hey, you can't do that. You can't have that, which Brewster does not take well to. So we can give it to this guy. I did not sign Brewster up with a bad attorney. This is an awesome attorney. I just want to say he's being modest. But there are plenty of places where you can do that and EFF is a really wonderful one because they have great attorneys who can also mentor you and critique you. But definitely getting involved in that and then doing the social events and all that sort of stuff is fun. And having some other skill also I found really useful. So finding a cross-disciplinary thing to do. So if you're like really into biology and law that's useful or if you really know how to speak Spanish and also you're a lawyer that's even that's good, like the lawyer and is very helpful. EFF has definitely hired people off of their tweets as well. I know and if you want to do volunteer legal work for EFF, Amol is our lawyer volunteer coordinator. So check out him or me or any of the lawyers who are here tonight about that. I think we'll just have a couple more questions. So if you've got last questions, go on and bring them around. Well, here's a question. I don't know if you guys know the answer to this. But some are seeking working at the national level to be maybe a lost cause for a little while. Do you see any other opportunities to do good work maybe at the state level or somewhere else that you could comment on? Yeah, usually. I would absolutely go to the state or even the city level. If you are interested in like internet of being smart city type work, which is super cool and has all kinds of crazy privacy issues involved in it. Go to a city, right? Oakland just started its first privacy commission. That's going to be amazing. And could be a model for how we start thinking about what would we mean when we have cameras and sensors and audio in cities. So I am actually a huge fan of this notion of like, let the federal government do whatever it's going to do. But the action has been drifting this way anyway. Things are much more. Some of the most progressive things we could do can get launched in the city that's receptive and frankly really needs to help and we'll have the biggest impact. And then add to that nonprofits and other organizations, particularly on the like make tech services better. The government has its thing going, federal government has this thing going on. Code for America is a great organization if you're interested in more of the state and local, but also a lot of nonprofits need technical help. And it's a really great place to plug in and to help them and to do good stuff. All right, well, I'll ask the last question. I am very proud that you guys are both my friends and my longtime colleagues, but you're also supporters of the FF. And so I thought I would give you a chance to say why other than being friends of the work and frankly like a lot of the work that I have done on behalf of the private sector and tech would not have been half as good without the work that you guys have done. The input that you give us informally and formally and partnering litigation or being adverse to us and litigation matters so much in helping private sector find its north star. And for that I'm incredibly grateful. And for me it just I have not always agreed with the FF, but often I do. And even when I've disagreed with the FF, they always are coming with the real facts. They're not there. It's always based on a truth. And maybe I disagree with where they're taking that truth. But I particularly particularly when a question is technically complicated. I think the FF does a tremendous job of making sure that the technical people are at the table and helping make the decision of how to go forward. Even though it is an organization that has plenty of lawyers and lawyers can be pretty bossy in that way. So that that I really value for me about that I never going to go to say like oh they're just doing that because for political reason or they're just doing that because like someone's mad at somebody else over here. They do things because they're based on real things real stuff that they know and their views on which is great. Well thanks everybody thank you for coming and thanks for all your questions. Special special thanks to Nicole and Alex for giving us their time. I also want to give a big thank you to Cloudflare for hosting us in fact they're recording it. I also want to thank Tiffany Amundsen who organized the event for us tonight and Aaron Jew who did a lot of work on it as well. So thank you all for coming and I hope we will see you again soon.