 All right. Hi, I am Dave Moss, and this is Kate Tamarello. We are both on EFF's activism team, and we have been sitting in front of our computers for a very long time, starting at 6.30 AM Pacific Time, a hazard of living in California. And the reason we've been doing that is we have been watching Senator Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing. If you're not familiar with Senator Jeff Sessions, he was tapped by President-elect Trump to head up the Department of Justice as Attorney General. And that means he has to go through a rigorous vetting process by the Senate Judiciary Committee. And this year it is a two-day affair. Yesterday he went the long haul and took lots of questions. And then today we have assorted panelists who have been discussing him. Kate is one of our resident DC experts, and she has been following along and doing a lot of our live blogging, which you can find on EFF.org. I believe it's at the top of the page today. So Kate, what were we expecting going into this event? Sorry, one last thing before I get into that. We're experimenting with YouTube Live here, so you'll notice me moving the camera a little bit, and we might be having some problems with audio. We'd like to try out some of the new methods for reaching out to our community. We've done a lot of Facebook Live, and today we wanted to try YouTube Live. Anyhow, now back to the questions. So what were we expecting to hear? Yeah, so obviously the Justice Department touches on a ton of issues. Not all of them are kind of our core issues, although a lot of them are. So I think we were hopeful that we would hear some of the topics we care about being brought up. And we did. But obviously a lot of the hearing went to things like voting rights and violence against women and sessions background legally before he became a senator. So a lot of the hearing was about crucial issues that we don't closely follow. And every once in a while they touched on our stuff, which was exciting. What's an example of one of the things that he touched on that we found interesting? So I think especially interesting to anyone following the surveillance debate was Senator John Cornyn, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, asked about in one go a slew of privacy issues. Everything from section 702 of AFISA, which is a lot of online surveillance, to things like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to national security letters. And unfortunately that exchange was pretty limited because it was mostly just Cornyn talking about the need to advance national security in ways that we are kind of troubled with and sessions pretty, I think he only said I will. I will take those concerns into account. It wasn't a super substantive back and forth, but it obviously put him on the record, kind of supporting a lot of the things that we're worried about. It seemed like a lot of the time Senator Sessions did tend to dodge questions. Today, Senator Klobuchar kind of complained a little bit then when she had asked him about what he would do to protect journalists, that she got non-committal answers. And what she had raised is that Senator Sessions was not supportive of the Free Flow of Information Act, which is the Journalist Shield Law. And we had some issues with that legislation as well. We had worked on that and there were things that we didn't like and there were things that were better. But she'd also asked him about Attorney General Eric Holder's 2015 memo limiting when the DOJ can access journalist records and whether he'd be putting journalists in jail for doing their job. And Sessions said he just basically had to do more research on that, which I certainly would have liked to have heard more commitment to free press from the Attorney General. But sometimes you don't get what you want. Yeah, I think we saw a lot of Sessions kind of not disavowing, but trying to walk back from positions he's taken as a senator and say, well, like as Attorney General, my job would not be to decide what the law is. That's Congress's job. My job is just to enforce the law, which I think maybe intentionally misses kind of the nuance of being Attorney General, which is that you get to decide what your enforcement priorities are. And so there's a lot of leeway in terms of what you make a priority and kind of which laws get enforced more fully than others. But he was very hesitant to comment on any legislation that he had supported or opposed or would support or oppose and kind of just focused on following the rule of law as Attorney General. Who are some of the senators who really brought up issues related to privacy and civil liberties during the hearing? So obviously, Klobuchar kind of talks about the free press, which is really interesting. Senator Linky brought up this idea that Trump has supported sometimes in the past about creating a registry of Muslims in this country to kind of keep track of who is where and what they believe and even the idea of strong, extreme vetting to make sure that people from countries with high terrorist rates are not coming into the country and sessions did not, he said that he thinks that it's okay to use religion as a factor when determining if someone should be admitted to the country which is obviously troubling from a first amendment perspective. So, yeah, Senator Linky was definitely very big on that. You heard kind of bits and pieces here, but a lot of people focused really on the, you know, sessions legal background and a lot of voting rights stuff. What kind of, I mean, to what extent did Senator Sessions agree with some of the statements Trump made versus, you know, did he try to distance himself in some cases? Yeah, that was interesting. So he, you know, the nice thing about Senator Sessions is that he is a senator and so we have his whole voting record to look at in terms of what he's supported and opposed in the past. Not everything that he's supported or opposed perfectly aligns with what Trump has said and he I think had to walk a careful line of trying to, you know, appeal to his colleagues on the Senate who know about his voting record and not directly contradict, you know, the president-elect who may very well soon be his boss. So, you know, if you look at the allegations that Russia was involved with the DNC hack this past year, Trump has obviously been, you know, very critical of those allegations and I think that kind of changes daily, but he certainly has asked some questions about whether or not Russia was involved and Senator Sessions has worked closely with the FBI and had to say, you know, I think that they did honorable work and if they, I'm sure they reached the conclusion they reached on the merits and, you know, not say that Trump was wrong in questioning the FBI, but also not throw the FBI under the bus. So he had to walk that line pretty carefully. Were there things that we had hoped had been brought up that just weren't addressed during this hearing? Sure, so kind of one instance that one example that I work on a lot is Rule 41. So the changes to the search warrant rules that went into effect December 1st and effectively let law enforcement get access to an untold number of computers wherever they are with one warrant. That is something that is overseen by the Justice Department and the Justice Department kind of led the charge and asking for that rule change. It would have been great if lawmakers had brought that up and tried to get some kind of solid commitments out of Senator Sessions if he becomes Attorney General to report back to Congress and to kind of, you know, ideally issue guidelines about how that new aspect of search warrants is used, but things like that, we didn't hear about at all in the hearing. So, you know, as Attorney General, just for people who aren't necessary, we have a lot of overseas viewers who, supporters who don't necessarily understand what the role is of the Attorney General. What does the Department of Justice cover? What don't they cover? I mean, the Department of Justice covers a lot and I think that's why you saw, you know, 10 plus hours of the hearing yesterday. They deal with, you know, the Chief Law Enforcement Office in this country. So at the federal level, they kind of are in charge of all things that touch on law enforcement. That includes the FBI. That also includes like the way the federal government works with state and local law enforcement offices and, you know, deciding to, you know, enforce, for instance, like marijuana laws, if this came up a little bit with Sessions where it's, you know, if in his state of Alabama, a certain strain of marijuana is legal for certain purposes, but it's still illegal at a federal level, does he choose to enforce the federal law and, you know, kind of overrule the Alabama law or, you know, how does he handle that? So the Attorney General really is in charge of a lot, covers a lot. Yeah, so we're talking about the DEA, you know, I mean, there are certain things like the DHS and ICE, I mean, ICE and Border Patrol, those come under the DHS, which is a different department, although he was asked a lot of questions related to immigration and particularly policies that he had voted on when he was in the Senate. But DOJ is, you know, the FBI, the DEA, you know, if it's a law enforcement organ, a lot of times it comes under the Department of Justice. They also make a lot of opinions and, you know, there was a lot of issues that came up about to what extent he might recuse himself from certain cases that may involve people who were, you know, on the campaign or involving opponents on the other side of the campaign. And I found that interesting as well. He did seem to express that he would take it on a case-by-case basis, not totally closing off the idea of having independent counsel, but that was another area where it was a little non-committal, I think. Yeah, he did commit to recuse himself with anything involving a Clinton investigation about Hillary Clinton because he'd kind of been so vocal about her when Trump was campaigning and he was supporting Trump. But there are definitely other things where, you know, if somebody brought up, what happens if the FBI finds ties to Trump or his campaign or his affiliates or whoever and Russia in relation to this DNC hack, are you as Attorney General going to prosecute Trump or Trump's family or Trump's business associates? And a lot of that's obviously a big hypothetical, but Sessions was kind of non-committal and said that he would have to see where things go and he hasn't talked about Russia publicly, so therefore he's not obligated to recuse himself in the same way he would be with Clinton. But yeah, you're right, a lot of the talk about recusal was pretty non-committal from him. So procedurally, what happens at this point? When they finish up their hearings today, what happens? So the Senate Judiciary Committee has to vote on him and then the full Senate will have to vote and he only needs a simple majority and Republicans have that simple majority and I think we saw in the hearing that Republicans are very hesitant to be critical of Sessions or, you know, in any way kind of cast him in a negative light, which makes sense, because they've worked with him for years in the Senate. So, you know, at this point, it's, I think, looking good for him. And yeah, they just need 50 votes, they're doing votes to pass him in the Senate. Do we know when he would assume office, if approved? I know that the Trump people have been super eager to get folks in when he's inaugurated. In terms of timing, I think that depends a lot on, you know, if the Senate Judiciary Committee decides to, when they decide to hold a vote and then how quickly they can move into the floor. It's probably also worth noting that, you know, across the country, there are U.S. Attorneys who represent various districts and do the day-to-day prosecutorial work of the Department of Justice. And at this point, you know, when one administration takes over, a lot of them start to leave. In fact, I think most, if not all, sort of leave. Who gets to appoint those U.S. Attorneys? I mean, actually, I've never followed the U.S. Attorney's appointment process. I'm not super familiar with it. But obviously, they all go through the same confirmation process, you know, that they do. So there'll certainly be a chance to kind of vet them on that level. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. I just wanted to sort of check whether we have any questions that came in. We apparently have not, but that's, you know, what happens when you experiment with new technology. Sometimes people have questions and they don't. But, you know, feel free to hit us up on Twitter and keep following the live blog. This video that we're recording right now will be available on our YouTube page, along with lots of other videos that we tend to make. And hopefully, we'll do more video sessions like this in the future. We want to thank you for joining us and I want to thank Kate for putting in some long, long hours to make this possible. It is quite the journey to the live blog hearing. Anyhow, thank you very much. And I'm gonna go ahead and shut off the live video. Thank you so much.