Looking Ahead in 2018 -- Talking Tech w/ Nuala O'Connor & Chris Calabrese
With the new year's optimism also comes numerous policy challenges to our digital rights and concerns about the ways technology and the internet might be adversely affecting society. Host Brian Wesolowski previews the year ahead with CDT’s President & CEO Nuala O’Connor and CDT’s VP of Policy Chris Calabrese.<br><br>More on Nuala: https://twitter.com/privacymama<br>More on Chris: https://twitter.com/CRCalabrese<br>More on our host, Brian: bit.ly/cdtbrian<br><br>Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori, BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
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Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye.
C. T. T.
We are recording whenever you're ready. Okay. Give me just a second since I'm hoarse.
Okay. Welcome to CDT's tech talk where we dish on tech and Internet policy while also explaining what these policies mean to our daily lives. I'm Brian Wasilowski, and it's time to talk tech. It's a new year. And at CDT, we are filled with optimism about the ways technology can help enhance democracies and enable individuals to live their very best lives. But with that optimism also comes numerous policy challenges to our digital rights and concerns about the ways technology and the Internet might adversely be affecting society. Joining me today on Tech Talk to preview the year ahead is CDT's president and CEO, Nuala O'Connor, and CDT's VP of policy, Chris Calabrese. Welcome, Nuala and Chris. Hi, Brian. Thanks for having us. Are you gonna inspire us with thoughts of, visions for 2018?
Yes.
If you saw them, you could see they are very much pumped. So let's start with the policy challenges first. What do you both think will be the biggest tech, debates of 2018? Dula, you wanna take that one first?
So thank you, Brian. Thank you, Chris. Good to see you both. Happy New Year. We have been talking a lot about this at CDT. And 2017 really kind of elucidated the debate over technology's role in society from two ways. And I think Chris is gonna talk a little bit more about the election and the year that 2018 will bring. But the question on my mind is, you know, is tech a force for good? Is the tech industry a force for good? And is it an an enabler of democracy the way we want it to be, which is very name of our organization. Right? Democracy and technology. And I think the the good and the bad have both been over stated. It reminds me of a conversation we had when I was at the Department of Homeland Security and everybody kept trotting in these new technologies and saying it was gonna save lives and make the country safer and do all these great things. And the reality is tech can be a force for good. It can help people's daily lives as you've said. It can help improve outcomes in education and health care and and in national security. But we also see over promising and under delivering. And I think we all we at CDT wanna be a voice for reasonable approaches to technology and rational thought about technology, and also not overplaying the the doomsday scenarios either. Right? That that all is not lost. All is not bad. Tech has the tech sector have employed a lot of people and brought great things to people's lives and, you know, I think each of us are users of technology in our own ways, in our own homes and cars and schools and workplaces. So I think we're gonna continue seeing this debate about whether or not tech and in particular big tech are good things for society. And we're gonna hopefully keep an open mind and help people make good choices.
Right. Yeah. It's it's funny. I think of 2017 as almost like the year that big tech and and technologists in general went, oh, crap. Not everybody loves us. Not everybody loves our stuff and our technologies. And a lot of that came out of the election. People saw things like the Russian interference with the election. People saw the way that hacked emails influenced how, you know, the famously John Podesta, Clinton's campaign manager, his emails were on the front page of the paper because his email account had been hacked. And people were suddenly seeing the potential damage and the concern. And so it's interesting that we now come around to 2018, which is, of course, a year that has another election. And it's the first election since we've seen all of the problems with Russian propaganda, with concerns over, not necessarily voter machines, but certainly voter lists being targeted by the Russians. And one of the major issues that I think is gonna run through this entire year is what are we gonna do about it? What is tech gonna do about it? Mhmm. And that means everything from better cybersecurity so that we don't see these, you know, hacked emails. It means better security for voting devices, and we're working a lot on that at CDT. It also means things like more privacy for voter information. We've seen hacks and breaches of, for example, the Republican campaign committee's internal voter information. That's very private and sensitive stuff. And then finally, the real challenges we face as a society when it comes to free expression. Right? We value free expression more than just about anything in The United States, but we're really worried when we see the Russians trying to interfere Mhmm. With our elections, trying to use Facebook or Twitter to influence who wins a US election. I mean, how do we draw those lines? How do we think about how how those technologies are gonna be used? All of these things, I think, are gonna come
to the fore this year. Alright. Well, that's great. Let's dig down a little bit on both of you brought this up. You know, certainly, tech's perception, Silicon Valley certainly took a beating last year, in terms of kind of public image. Do you think you've kind of both said yes that this will continue a little bit in 2018? How can tech companies change this narrative? I'm sure it has to do with changing some practices, but what what are some things they should be thinking about?
So I think we are mindful of
the role, especially of big platforms, in creating community. And building on what Chris was saying about free
platforms in creating community. And building on what Chris was saying about free expression, I CDC has been committed since its founding frankly to free expression above all else even above other other values. And, you know, we so we applaud the Internet and creators of community on the Internet as places as Chris always says, and I'm gonna give you credit for this quote, not since the printing press. Right? Not since the printing press has I don't know if Chris deserves credit for that quote. I heard that before. I know. I just heard you stole it from someone else. You're gonna have to go find out and give them credit. But not since the, you know, the dawn of the printing press has there been a wide scale technology that so enabled voice. And it too was a very disruptive force at the time. And so we need to think about how all speech is elevated. Right? And so your ability to shout at me on Twitter might be silencing my speech. Why is your speech more valuable than my speech? So what are the policy choices? What are the best practices? What are the internal norms and standards? I mean, this is work our free expression team has been doing for decades on what are the takedown policies? What are the community standards? What are the things that the the creators of community online can do? And that really hearkens back to our future speech, event last fall where we had community creators on all sorts of size and scale talk about the way they elevated and created equality and created norms, that promoted and valued speech of all kinds. I mean, discourse is hard and we see that, you know, in the campus speech debate, in the political speech debate. It I think we do need to think about how we talk to each other both online and off. But what I would call on on the companies and the platforms and creators of community online to think about the unintended consequences of the policies they create. You know, who when you're valuing one one type of speech, are you devaluing or or marginalizing another? And I think it's it's gonna be a hard year and and as as Chris points out, there's already I think a great deal of soul searching on the parts of companies and the moment of, well, we're big enough industry now that that actually we are having an impact on the democracy, on the economy, on people's daily lives in all sorts of ways. What is our social responsibility, is the question I would ask people in the the tech industry. What is your corporate social responsibility in the digital age, and what are your responsibilities to your individual customers and users, human beings, who use your services?
I mean, Nuala is my boss, so it's not a surprise that I agree with all of those things. But I do think that we are now we had the moment last year, and this is the moment when top to bottom in corporate governance or in corporate structures, it's becoming, okay. What are we gonna do? As Nuala said, corporate social responsibility is an idea that's existed for a long time. It's not one that has necessarily penetrated as deeply to tech, where in some cases, technology companies tend to think of the products they produce as a social good. And therefore, we don't need to do other things. And I think now we we have a kind of a twofold. We have actually, you do need to, you know, do some kind of social socially act in a socially responsible way just as a company, and you have to make sure that the technologies you produce are also used in the in the best way that they can be. So both of those things, I think, are moments that will have to be grappled with by these companies this year. And, you know, to their credit, we're starting to see steps in that direction. We're starting to see, you know, every advertisement that you see is being stored or political advertisement that you see is being stored by Facebook so that they can be looked at later and see if there, you know, there was an undue influence. Google is starting to create a new type of email account that they call advanced protection, which is, like, the most protective email account you can have if you're a a senior government official or somebody who might be a target of hacking. And so so steps are being taken, but I think it's clear that much more is gonna have to be done. And I I think that companies are really just putting their thinking caps on when when it comes to these issues. Can I build, on that a little bit and go in a slightly different direction, one that we haven't covered all that much? But there was some Are you gonna surprise me here in New York? Yeah. Totally surprise me. I do it. And it well, we're we're we're we're on tape, so you may or may not hear this part.
Just I think today I was reading on Facebook, you know, one of my favorite tech platforms, the article about kind of the tech parties, some parties that have been happening in the in the West Coast. And and taken in context of the me too moment that we are in this country, it makes me also think of kind of the larger theme of not just acting responsibly and socially aware, creation of technology, but creating environments within companies and within corporate structures that reflect diversity and reflect the kind of values you wanna see in larger society and realizing that you have a responsibility both to your employees as well as to the end user. I mean, I think I can say that with some confidence because I feel like we've created a great space here at CDT that is truly inclusive and speaks to, you know, norms of of equality and democracy and free expression. And, and I think, again, in context in light of this me too moment that we are having in this country, I think that the industry the the tech industry in particular, since that's who we're we're talking about today, needs to think about how it's building systems and structures internally and within the industry to elevate, more diverse voices, to elevate people of color, to elevate women, to think about what kind of workplaces and workforces because that workplace and that workforce will create product that reflects the values, the norms, the needs, and the desires. I mean, I used to work for more than one tech company and so without naming a particular name, an engineer observed to me, you know, listen, we've created this great product for kids partly because a whole bunch of us were having kids and we needed a product that spoke to our experience as parents and what we really needed to have happen with this thing. And, I just thought well that was kind of an moment for me. Like as people have different experiences in their lives and different use cases for the technology in their daily lives, the products that they create. It's kinda like the app culture. Somebody said, yeah, many apps seem to reflect the life of the urban single person who needs to get food at this hour or their dry cleaning at this hour. What about the needs of the senior citizen who is maybe have a limited mobility? So I think, you know, Czech really wants to talk the talk and walk the walk of being inclusive,
hiring and starting to create environments within corporate structures that are inclusive is a really good first step. Yeah. No. That's a great point. And I would agree with you. CDT is a great work culture. So well done. Everybody has to say that because I'm in the room. Ryan also works for NOOVA. That's true.
Well, we have a women friendly workplace. I guess, hopefully, we're hopefully Happily works with NOOVA.
So let's pivot a little bit then. Obviously, when you're talking about tech and the inner Internet, you're always talking about new and emerging and innovation. What are some new emerging innovative things that you expect to pop in 2018, either on the policy front or on just new tech issues that we should be paying attention to? Well, I I mean, I think that
we're certainly gonna see we've already talked about the election, and that's that's an area that's that's really important. For CDT, I think we're looking a lot at machine learning and artificial intelligence. Those have become buzzwords, but we are now entering a reality where we have both the processing power and the amount of data necessary to actually take these huge pools of data we have and draw non obvious inferences from them and build tools to use that data in ways that we might not expect. The obvious examples of these, for example, are Google Translate. People sometimes don't realize, but Google Translate is really an exercise in machine learning. It's computers knowing how to translate text to different languages. And that's a huge success, and I think we're gonna see more of it this year. And with it, we're gonna see some challenges. They'll probably be unexpected by just the nature of the fact that we're gonna go in directions that we don't see before. But we're then gonna see these permeate every aspect of our lives, whether it's something like driver's driverless cars or something like that's CDT is also very interested in, like, student privacy and the effect on kids that we have when we're putting so much more information online and doing so much more learning online. So I think that we're undergoing a revolution. The Internet is a really young technology. It's about 25 years old. And so if you analogize it to electricity, for example, you know, we're in about the same point that we were with electricity in the mid nineteen twenties. We have a long way to go. We're gonna have Internet and a lot more things, and it's gonna affect a lot more parts of our lives. And we're only seeing the beginning of that acceleration this year.
And just, again, building on because I agree equally with everything you said. We are very accrual in this in this environment. It's the automated decision making. The opaque automated decision making about people's lives that is both a great enabler of efficiency, but also a a possibly very injurious experience if inherent biases are embedded in the decision making. So our goal at CDT will be to scrutinize emerging technologies to ensure that they are used to the greatest democratic effect, I mean, greatest equality creating environment, and to ferret out unseen inherent biases, which is hard because you have your own as you're looking for those questions. Right? And I think this builds on the work that's been done in our privacy and data team and the digital decisions project looking at, kind of gender and race inference and how you know, again, if it's if it's intended to find kids at at risk situations in early elementary school to help them get additional resources to keep them in school and improve high school graduation rates, terrific. But if the same kind of technology used in public schools is used to, increase and and reinforce inherent biases in the system based on class or economics or race or or gender or biases in the system based on class or economics or race or or gender or other categories, that's a problem. You know, it's a particularly problem when used by the state because the harm is so kind of ubiquitous and permanent, but it's also potentially harmful in the content you see online in in a private sector, in a commercial setting as well. So, these are these are hard things especially because they're happening so fast and the decision is in minute time and based on as you point out, Chris, non obvious inferences. What's exciting is you could think in the credit scoring, you know, area for example, not looking at only the traditional ways of looking at credit or credit, you know, opportunity which might be marginalizing certain, you know, opportunity, which might be marginalizing certain, you know, economic or or other categories. But it could also be used to, you know, to reinforce
inherent biases in our in our economy and that's that's not a good thing. So we've got we've got our work cut out for us Mhmm. Mhmm. In a lot of different industry sectors. So let let's focus on that work a little bit. We've highlighted on it or touched on it a bit with, you know, just different things that CDT is focusing on. You obviously both are drivers of the strategic planning at CDT. What are some things that, people who know CDT but maybe, you know, know us kind of in an old way might be surprised as part of our, twenty eighteen strategic plan? What what gets you most excited about what we're gonna be doing next year that maybe some people might not think, oh, that's a CDT thing?
Well, I mean, I'm excited about all of it because, you know, no. It's it's it's a really we're doing a lot of of very exciting work. I mean, this is a fun space. The future is now. Right? We're talking about things that, like, the Internet bubble kind of in the late nineties kind of promised. Right now we're a full twenty years later, and we're actually having all of those things. And in a lot of ways, we're we're sort of living in this future that we we imagined when the Internet started out. So, certainly, elections are gonna be a big deal for us. That's a relatively new area, but we have our chief technologist, Joe Lorenzo Hall, is an expert on voting machines. That turns out to be a really useful thing to be expert on in 2018. So we're gonna use that asset. We're gonna we're gonna think about how the entire ecosystem of elections from the collecting of voter rolls to the actual registering of ballots, you know, how that can be secured to make sure that we don't have a that we have a election system that we can trust and rely on. And that's gonna be an exciting thing. We're also gonna see some really top Supreme Court cases this year. There's at least one case that's gonna decide whether, you know, police can track your location without a search warrant, which is a big deal, not just for location information, but all the other information collected by third parties. It'll what what should the standard be for that? There's another very important case about, you know, how data can move across borders and what the rules should be for if I wanna, for example, collect information that's stored in Europe, but I might be able to gain access to. Mhmm. And there's a third case even that the court has not decided whether it'll take, but it may dealing with the net neutrality rules. The old net neutrality rules, the one that ones that were adopted by, the Obama administration. If those rules are upheld in the Supreme Court, even though they've now been supplanted by Trump administration rules, there's a very real scenario where the Obama rules are upheld. The Trump rules are then actually struck down, and we do end up with an open Internet regime. So there's a lot going on both at the court and also in, you know, in in in congress. And so I think we're excited and interested in in all of these areas. Very cool. You're right. I am excited about it. I'm all my favorite, like, picking among your children.
On one theme, I would say going really high and kinda esoteric, but really important to this year and to this time we're having in this country, but around the world and that is drilling down on democracy that, you know, people say you don't talk a lot about the d and the CDT. You talk more about the t. Democracy is I'm gonna say it. The democracy is in peril both here at the in The United States and really around the world. The question of is it a viable organizational structure for society and for community? I'd say yes. Perhaps I've been brainwashed by our my public schooling here in The United States but, I do think it's the best of all the alternatives. And, we need to to really commit as individual actors, as civil society and and call on our friends in the in the corporate sector as well to think about whether their actions are supporting and promoting the best principles of fairness, of equality, of free expression, of individual dignity and privacy in a democratic system. And I think CDT has a unique voice as experts on the technology side of it, to talk about and think about those issues and Chris has highlighted those already especially in our voting technology and cybersecurity work, but also in the automated decision making and in the kind of work we're doing even in the state and local level. I think that's something to highlight people may not be aware of, is our work on, helping states and localities in this country think about privacy legislation, but also privacy regulation, the task force in New York City that's thinking about, automated decision making that we're we're working with. Those are, I think, important and and kind of bubbling up from the ground level, people thinking about how technology is used used in the daily lives of citizens in this country and and elsewhere. On the and kind of building on that kind of really local level, looking at technology and things like schools, looking at technology in in your, you know, daily work life and how decisions are made about you by governments, by private sector actors that affect your ability to get credit, to get, you know, higher education, to get access to information. I think all of these, as as technologies become more and more infused potential. So these are big potential.
So these are big, big issues. Yeah. It's a busy year ahead. So I'm gonna now ask you to to give me a moment of hope. You know, what what about the next year should we be hopeful about? I mean, there's that wasn't all dark. It's just a lot of challenging issues that, CDT is grappling with as are a lot of other organizations. What makes you most hopeful about 2018?
I think all of the things we've been talking about, the election, cybersecurity, the Me too moment, the increasing voice of women, the increasing voice of people of color and and many, many organizations and groups online. The Internet is still a great enabler of organizing, of, reaching out to people who have similar interests and and situations to you, of reaching again across hopefully even across party lines to create community. I think we will see I have a great hope for what we're gonna see both in the elections and in the dialogue around democracy in this country. And I think that the Internet and Internet enabled communities will be essential to making change happen.
Great.
I mean, that's a better answer than mine, but I should've let her go a second. I should. I mean, I continue to keep my eye on how much technology is improving people's lives. I mean, how much we rely on our smartphones and use them for all kinds of different things, how we're beginning to see the rise of things like driverless cars and actually seeing technology helping people. And I think that will not just be sort of you that will be the entire society, whether it's someone who's blind, maybe able to get behind the wheel again at some point in the near future. I mean, that's an amazing change. So this, I think, 2017 necessary course correction for technology. It's not that technology isn't good. It's that it's also bad. And so let's not forget that. Let's mitigate that so we can go back to kind of the pieces of technology that we do love and we do use every day. That's great. And can I make a shout also to,
because I've talked a lot about the responsibilities of of of corporate America and corporate actors in this space in general? There have also been some moments of incredible courage. And I mean, not just looking at Tim Cook and Apple and their stance on encryption and on protecting the privacy of their users, but even little companies like DreamHost that that stood the ground, you know, against government intrusion and to protect the privacy of people who are organizing perhaps even unpopular or simply contrary political speech in this country and elsewhere. And I think you're seeing that repeated over and over again. And And and this is not again, technology is not only the tech sector anymore. Technology is an enabler and a tool of really every industry sector, financial services, education, health care. And I think, you know, Chris is right. We are ultimately techno optimists in this organization. We are also techno realists.
Yeah. Alright. So fat last question here. What do you have any resolutions? I'm not talking about, you know, kind of your your personal ones. More of your tech resolutions or tech enabled resolutions.
Well, I've got two, my, my sorry. And I wrote them down to me before I just give this to you. Are you tracking on them already? So my first one was to read more outside of my bubble to look for new sources that are not the things that I would typically read, and I think we we all need to do more of that. I don't think it's enough, but I think it's a start. The other thing I'm gonna do, and this is a little bit of a of a luxury, but I think sometimes it's cheaper than we think, is I'm separating my devices, my personal and work devices. So I'm you know, I purchased an inexpensive tablet that will be my watching TV, my surfing the web that doesn't have my work email on it. So happy about that. But that way, it's like, you know, the work email comes in at 09:00 at night. You don't have to see it necessarily till the next day. But if you're on your phone for for fun even in the
email comes in, some suddenly you're out of that that space. So that's my real These are good ones. I might steal some of those. I was gonna say, I jokingly you know, I'd give you a hard time about that, but I totally respect that. That. When I was in the government, I had you had to have separate devices and it was such a healthy boundary. So building on the theme of boundaries, we've had a very difficult conversation and a very that's putting it mildly in my house about putting down your cell phones. And at the end of the day, everyone in the family is now required at 09:30 at night to plug in their cell phone on the kitchen counter Wow. And go to bed with an old fashioned alarm clock. So again, this is ironic given what we do all day, but I think it's actually incredibly important. And I've seen this again with my friends in the tech sector and elsewhere about setting boundaries and limitations on the intrusion of technology into your daily life. So at 09:30, and believe me, there were some belligerent teenagers in my house this weekend. I can't even tell you some of the words that were said. But every there was a nice little row of phones on my kitchen counter last night all plugged in.
And we all had to learn how to use really old fashioned alarm clocks, which was kind of fun. Everybody got a good night's sleep. I'm very proud of this. I bet people sleep much better now and bring bring those paper books into bed with you then as opposed to that cell phone. My one, a, kind of data hygiene one, I had went through my phone and deleted all the apps I have not been using. That was a really good one. I stole that one from, I think, the New York Times, but I did it. And I felt so much lighter as I'm like, wow. I don't have clutter on my, my iPhone top anymore. So that's a very, very good thing. So all good resolutions, a very exciting year ahead. Thank you, Nuala and Chris, for joining Tech Talk. A pleasure to have you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Chris. That's it for this episode of Tech Talk. CDT clearly has a very busy year ahead. And as a listener to this podcast, you no doubt wanna keep up on the very latest. So go ahead, subscribe to our e newsletter, which you can find at cdt.org. And you should also follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Happy New Year, everyone. Thanks so much for listening.
