SESTA, Privacy as an Art –– Talking Tech w/ Emma Llansó & Jared Moore
Host Brian Wesolowski sits down with CDT's Free Expression Director Emma Llansó to discuss whether SESTA is a case where good intentions to address a serious issue create a policy that will do more harm than good. SESTA, simplified and analyzed.<br><br>Then Brian talks with University of Washington graduate student Jared Moore, who has created a multimedia art installation that is aimed making people more aware of some of the ever-present privacy risks in our connected world –– by making them a bit uncomfortable.<br><br>More on SESTA: http://bit.ly/2yHb0sL AND http://bit.ly/2hwYVC9<br>More on Emma: https://twitter.com/ellanso<br>More on the art installation: http://bit.ly/2xyKB2G<br>More on Jared: http://bit.ly/2wlsZ6e<br>More info 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.
Top Keywords
- sesta 0.014
- trafficking 0.013
- section thirty 0.011
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- liability 0.008
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- content 0.007
- intermediaries 0.006
- criminal 0.006
- website operators 0.006
- installation 0.006
- internet 0.005
Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye.
See. Tea. Tea.
There is some momentum in congress to find legislative solutions to stopping the very real problem of online sex trafficking. This is clearly a good goal. But unfortunately, one of the proposals gaining the most traction could undermine speech online and is unlikely to solve the problem. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or CESSDA, had a hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee recently, and the House is planning a hearing on similar legislation. CDT's director of free expression, Emma Lanza, was at the Senate hearing and joins us to talk about the free speech ramifications of the proposed legislation. Welcome back, Emma. Great to be here. Of course. So before we talk, SESTA, just for folks, this is, of course, related to section two thirty of the Communications Decency Act, which came up a ton at our recent awesome future of speech online event. Video's coming soon. So quickly, what's section two thirty? I know we've talked about it before. And just, you know, so people know, how long has CDT been, you know, a supporter of section two thirty? Sure. So CDT has been working on section two thirty since it was a gleam in Wieden and Cox's eyes, back in 1995.
So this, this law came up, it came into play back in the mid nineties when congress was really first taking a look at the Internet as a, you know, open wide open medium for all kinds of speech, and they were deeply concerned about the ability for minors, for people 18 to access pornography representatives, Cox and Wyden came up with the idea of section two thirty as an alternative to the original CDA that would, put, alternative to the original CDA that would, put, really heavy, compliance burdens on host of third party content to ensure that no one 18 accessed pornography on their sites. What section two thirty does is ensure that, website operators and other intermediaries are protected from liability for third party content. So for user generated material that the websites don't have a hand in authoring or creating. This was a really, really key protection to get established in the law. Before section two thirty existed, you know, in the early days of the commercial web, website operators faced the risk that if they did anything to moderate content on their platforms, if they were, you know, filtering for swear words or if they were, just having terms of service and saying this forum is about financial topics and not about political topics, that they'd be treated as a classic editor of the the speech that they were hosting. That you know editor we see have editors in all sorts of mediums whether it's television or books or newspapers. But online, the scale of content is so huge that a website operator, you know, simply can't take that same kind of editorial care over every single piece of content that's put on their services. So if they're liable for that content, they face potentially enormous legal risk for having an open platform that allows people to post their speech. Section two thirty helps, get rid of that problem, right? It helps ensure that we can have open platforms for speech where people can, you know, find any number of different websites, social networks, forums, blogs, comment sections on newspaper pages, where they can post their and opinions and the host of all of that material don't face getting hauled into court over what their, their users post. Okay. So this has been just kind of fundamental to how the Internet has developed over the past twenty one years since section two thirty has been, in action. And the kind of the breadth and strength of this law has one enabled a huge explosion of, you know, access to information and opportunities for speech online. And it's really what's allowed the internet industry in The US to develop as robustly as it
has. Alright. And Emma just did that with no notes. That's how she knows that, like, cold. We can get it at 3AM. It's like, oh, well, back in 1995. Here we go. Alright. So let's get to to SESTA now. So why is SESTA I mean, obviously, it has to do with, as we just said, you know, section two thirty. Why is it a a threat, do we think, to broader speech online? So SESTA ends up creating
three new types of potential liability for Internet platforms and expanding a fourth. Internet platforms and expanding a fourth. So all along, ever since, the section two thirty was passed as part of the 96 communications act, it has not applied to federal criminal prosecutions. For the past twenty some odd years, DOJ has always been able to bring, criminal prosecutions against website operators or or other intermediaries if they think that, the website operator has violated the law. So, you know, that's always been the case. One of the things that SESTA does is expand what is covered under the federal criminal statute that prohibits sex trafficking, in ways that could make more intermediaries potentially criminally liable. And it does this in some technical ways that I won't go into too much detail on but basically it sort of raises the risk that if you are a website operator and you've reviewed material you know somebody's flagged a post to you and you've decided no this doesn't violate our terms of service there's nothing on its face that that makes us concerned about this and you don't take it down the mere act of continuing to host a particular post or an ad with knowledge that you know you've seen the actual content you know you're hosting criminal prosecution Mhmm. If it turns out that material was related to a trafficking venture. You know, some of this has to do with what are exactly the knowledge standards that apply for different types of behavior under the statute. But in standards that apply for different types of behavior under the statute. But in general, it's this sort of what SESTA does is create this risk that a very risk averse website operator might wanna avoid entirely Right. By just sort of deciding to take down material that gets reported to it, on a very broad basis rather than even have the faintest hint of possibility of criminal prosecution. But there's a couple other things that SESTA does. And this is where, you know, we talk about really, really changing the original balance that, section two thirty struck, when it was enacted. SESTA would enable state attorneys general, to bring criminal claims and enable civil litigants so you know just private parties to bring lawsuits against website operators seeking damages related to trafficking claims section two thirty very clearly preempts state law enforcement actions, whether criminal or civil. So, you know, all along the kind of the balance that congress had struck was that, you know, there will be this potential for criminal liability under federal criminal law but the kind of the whole broad array of 50 plus state and territorial legal systems, with different ways of defining crimes different kinds of civil recovery statutes that they might describe in state law intermediaries on the internet you know will be shielded from having to figure out how to comply with 50 plus competing legal regimes they have to focus on the federal standards and state prosecutions are just preempted entirely by 02/30 so SESTA would really change that dynamic it would open up a number of new potential prosecutions you know states or intermediaries would have to be kind of aware of and concerned about potential legal risk coming from any state prosecutor, and civil litigants, you know, around the country. And that's, you know, that again, that's, it's that threat of liability, that threat of getting hauled into court. And in particular, you know, it's important to emphasize the risk of a lawsuit that might actually have no basis to it you know I'm not and here I'm not at all talking about sex trafficking victims bringing claims I'm talking about the people who look at the how the law works and things oh okay that's a way that I can get this website dragged into court you know I disagree with what they say I disagree with what they're hosting and all I need to do to really really give them a hard time is make some claim about hosting sex trafficking material and drag them into court
and see if, you know, just how far they're willing to go to, to defend against these kinds of claims. And we've seen stuff like that before and, obviously, that's something that maybe a major company could deal with. But if you're a startup, if you're a smaller company, even just the threat of a law suit, I would imagine could be something that's a major concern.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you are thinking of, you know, an average startup who's got less than a $100,000 in assets when you're just a couple of people and an idea for an online platform. There's a very real risk that successfully defending a lawsuit still bankrupts your company. Right. Drives your service out of business, drives you offline. So having the potential for these kinds of suits written into the law would totally change the game for for startups and you know new platforms new services entirely and it also just creates this general incentive for all intermediaries big and small to respond to the and it also just creates this general incentive for all intermediaries, big and small, to respond to, you know, allegations, even totally spurious allegations of apparent sex trafficking activity, just respond to those by taking that material down. And that creates a really powerful tool for people who are out there looking to censor ideas and opinions of all kinds. Having that risk of liability hanging over an intermediary's head is you know it's gonna be a really really powerful incentive and it's hard to imagine a platform that hosts thousands or millions or billions of user posts a day, deciding, nope. We've gotta go to bat for this one post that, you know, because we're Sure. Concerned that the assertion that this is related to trafficking isn't totally justified. Right? I mean, that's just that's crazy. Right. That's that's such a challenging kind of,
you know, incentive balancing for for a company to do. I just I'd be surprised if there was responses other than, you know, when in doubt, take it down. Yeah. So you obviously went to the senate hearing as I mentioned before. You know, you had highlighted some questions you hoped to her. I mean, obviously, as you're talking, you know, I'm sure people are still thinking, yeah, but this is sex trafficking. Like, we really need to do something to solve this. And I think everyone at this organization would agree, like, this is a problem, and we we'd like to see a solution. But the questions that you raised, I thought, were really important ones, in a blog post. Check it out at cdt.org. You know, is this do is is there proof that this might actually address the real issue that they're trying to address? Did that get did that come up at all at the hearing? Did you get anything from that? I mean, so there certainly was some discussion of it at the hearing. I don't don't know that,
anybody on either side really kind of made headway with the the people holding opposing views. But no, the the the question certainly came up. And, you know, one of the things that professor Eric Goldman, who is one of the, the witnesses, testifying, and he's, you know, probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about section two thirty and how it works and what effect it's had on, on innovation and the Internet in The US. He was really stressing the point that SESTA could have the totally unintended consequence of discouraging good faith moderation efforts that, website operators currently do. And this is in part because, you know, going back to that that question of knowledge that that SESTA, you know, puts forward that if a website operator knows that a particular post, exists on their platform, that's what opens the door to potential liability in all these different ways. And that very fact means that, you know, especially for a smaller site that has doesn't have the resources to do extensive, content moderation, or have, you know, a whole team of lawyers ready to review, posts that get flagged as related to trafficking to decide what they're gonna do. The easiest answer for that kind of platform might just be to try never to have knowledge of what they're hosting. So, you know, you have your, here upload your files here. We're what they're hosting. So, you know, you have your here, upload your files here. We're never gonna look at them. We're not gonna, you know, engage with your content in any possible way that could create a liability risk for us. And that would mean that the active efforts to you know review review posts when they're flagged to them try to identify you know our known trafficking rings using our sites, you know, any of the things that, a lot of platforms will do today, are taken off the table because doing that kind of moderation actually engaging with the content on your site is what could open the door to liability. So that would be a really horrible unintended consequence of, of changing the liability regime. But it's it shouldn't this shouldn't come as a surprise to people who are supporting the bill because, you know, what they're looking to amend two thirty, and two thirty has this whole idea of, encouraging good faith moderation baked into it right from the start. It, you know, it very clearly says that website operators who do good faith moderation, looking at, you know, excessively violent content, indecent content Sure. Or otherwise addictive or
online harassment. I mean, the incentives to do that, you know, would seem to go down as well. Exactly. Yeah. And so two thirty as it currently stands
is very clear websites are never liable for third party content that they, you know, don't author and, you know, underlines that with this other provision saying intermediaries don't somehow kind of take on liability for actually doing moderation. But because Sesta puts all of this liability on intermediaries, hinged around knowing about specific pieces of content, that protection that they currently enjoy for moderation, would really pretty much evaporate. So that would be a really, you know, a really unfortunate consequence of this bill but there's also I mean the reality of the internet is that even if a there was some magic button you could push that made sure that no one under the jurisdiction of US law was hosting any content related to trafficking that would not keep trafficking ads from being viewed and interacted with inside The United States right because it's a global internet right people will find other sites to host this kind of material the sites sites that DOJ or state attorneys general can't reach and that's it's a really unfortunate fact of the internet that criminals will be able to find some sort of
safe harbor for, you know, whatever kind of of content they wanna do. And we saw that, I mean, very recently just too with some of the the sites that went down, some white supremacist sites that were taken down and suddenly popped up on a .ru domain name. And you're like, oh, there are still still places that will host that sort of content. So even, you know, that is a example that, you know, just pops to mind right now. One of the witnesses at the hearing kind of
framed it as, you know, well, in a in a it's a game of whack a mole like sort of acknowledging that this was a game of whack a mole but that all we needed was more hammers. And which I guess kind of might work if you're like at an arcade and the game of whack a mole is circumscribed in how big it is, right? It's only got a dozen spots for the holes to pop up but that's not the internet, right? The the internet is this in lots of cases wonderful place that has limitless potential for different sites and services to show up. But that you have to take that into account when you're thinking about, you know, trying to stop criminal activity. What do you do when it moves to sites that are hosted outside of your jurisdiction but still accessible Yeah. Here. It's our beautiful, wonderful thing that can sometimes be super ugly.
So there's also a house moving in the bill that's similar. Are there how similar is it? You know, is that do you you think that's gonna gain traction too?
So there's signs that the the house may take up, representative Wagner's bill, that actually predated SESTA, was introduced earlier this year. And so the house judiciary committee may be holding a hearing on that bill. That bill is actually even a little bit broader than SESTA and could cover not only, sex trafficking crimes, but other kinds of, child exploitation crimes, I believe so that it may be even a little bit broader and go a little bit more expansive in some of these different kinds of liability than Sesta but I think it's certainly something to watch very closely. You know, both sex trafficking is obviously a horrendous crime and it's not surprising that in both houses, these bills have gotten a lot of bipartisan support already. You know, we're we're doing our best to talk about what the unintended consequences of these bills will be. But there is certainly a lot of momentum around, around especially addressing this kind of online piece of the sex trafficking issue. So I think it's certainly something we'll be continue to work really hard on, you know, just trying to get good information into the hands of members of Congress about what these bills will really mean kind of in the broad scope of things. But, you know, it's it's certainly, going to be a
a really intense and and passionately fought issue. Sure. Sure. And you can understand the passion on that side. Well, we'll go ahead and leave it there. Thank you, Emma, for always working on this one. It's, as we said, it's a tough issue to work on, but having the right questions, asking the right questions, and certainly, you know, wanting to find a a true solution to the problem and pointing out where this may not be the solution that is the right one is helpful. So thanks for joining Tech Talk, and, of course, we'll have you back again soon.
Thanks so much.
I've got nothing to hide. That's a far too common refrain from people when asked about government surveillance or the privacy of their web browsing habits. Well, a researcher and visual artist wants to challenge that. At Vanderbilt University's Wondery, a center for innovation, Jared Moore of the University of Washington shares his art installation, VU Exposed, which is aimed at making people more aware of their digital privacy. We have Jared here with us to talk about his multimedia art installation. Welcome, Jared. Thank you. I appreciate being here. Well, it's great to have you. So first, what exactly is VU exposed?
Yeah. At a high level, it's an installation, like you said, that attempts to inform users of a space about about how their information might be used or exposed by the title online. But quite literally, it's a collection of old cathode ray tube television computers, each of which contains a browser window like Firefox showing most of the websites that people are visiting on the local Wi Fi network. So how does that work? So
does it show, like, if I were to walk in as someone, it shows what's on my phone, or is it more of a collection of kind of everyone's?
Yeah. Well, I can give you an example situation. Oh, okay. Cool. If, let's imagine that a user enters the space. It's sort of like an atrium. She sees the screen and the tagline come connect to our Wi Fi, see your screen displayed on ours, and connects to the Wi Fi to Wi Fi and visit a page like CNN on her browser, that page, per phone, for instance, will then show up on one of our displays. But if there were also also other people there at the same time, it distributes the various web pages on the screens, in the installation.
At a certain point, there are more web pages being requested than there are screens, so there's some, load balancing. So So you have a little bit of say in terms of it's not a complete violation of privacy because you walk in, you kinda give your permission, and you get to choose what you browse. So it's not like a, oh, let me dig back in your history a little bit. Or is there that element to it? Because that's where I'd be like, I'm not going in this room. This could be crazy.
Yeah. That's that's a really important consideration. At at a certain level, I do want to scare people. The point is to prompt them to try to think about how might my information be used online. Sure. Is consent actually required in, conducting this sort of analysis? The answer is no. I actually force users to consent to a certain terms and conditions on connecting to the Wi Fi network. But a malicious network attacker or government surveiller
or Internet company could be doing a similar analysis much more easily. Yeah. So and I think, you know, the TV screens, it just sounds like if you walk in and visually see your phone on a screen, that's so compelling when you think about, you know, the set of eyes that could be on that. So even if it is just CNN, you know, anything you browse. I mean, my Google searches, some of them are hilarious, especially after a cocktail or two. So, cocktail or two. So, I mean, those are not things that I would want want broadcast in any live setting, but it's important to think about it.
That's a really good point. You can look at, for instance, there's work out of, research at Princeton that looks at certain medical terms are really valuable for ads Sure. Because they're they're slightly rare. And so for instance, WebMD, a really popular medical site is unencrypted, which means that Oh, wow. Anybody, the stream, can view that network traffic. So for instance, if you load WebMD on your phone when using that installation, I can see the conditions that you're researching. And that is an attempt to allude to the information that, for instance, your Internet service provider might be able to learn about you and then could, depending on the legal mechanisms in place, sell to advertisers
for instance. Wow. I didn't realize WebMD was, unencrypted. So you said a little bit earlier, you know, you you do wanna scare, you know, visitors a little bit. What are what's kind of your broader goal with this exhibit? What are you really hoping to accomplish? And and also, how are you know, I'm sure you've seen some people kind of go through it and respond. How are people responding to it?
Yeah. So I don't know how to solve the quagmire that is the intersection of our of our expectations of
information is used online. That's what you have CDT for. We're working on it.
Exactly. Yes. But my hope is that my installation is a push that it allows people a moment of thought in, in their ability to think about how their information might be used online. I don't care so much about the specific vulnerability of I'm browsing the web and the web pages that I'm visiting are showing up on a screen. I care about what we don't know. Like, what kind of pieces of our information are less, easily understood. People are wary about this as I've seen them interacting with the exhibit. They're kind of, a little uncomfortable. And that is the intention of the project. And I hope that when prompted, they follow-up on resources that allow them to advocate for themselves and learn more about these issues.
Cool. So this, as I mentioned earlier, it's in Nashville. Great city. Is it are you planning to travel this anywhere else, or is there an online place where people can experience VU? I mean, I guess that's Vanderbilt University exposed, so maybe not. But VU exposed, will it be anywhere else?
Well, we anyone can visit the website for the setup for the project at jlcm00re.github.i0/viewexposed. It's there's a video of a user Oh, cool. Interacting with the exhibit. I have a a lot of explanation of how the project actually works and opportunities and resources, for people if they're interested in being more involved. For instance, I link to CDT.
Great. Thank you.
Of course. I'm not sure if it will if I'll continue to do this, I might talk to some of the people locally at the University of Washington to see if they're interested in me creating another information of this exhibit Since I've already done most of the work intellectually to create it, I could easily make a second one. Cool. But I'm I'm not sure.
Okay. So when did you first become interested these issues? I mean, you're you're getting a master's in computer science. You know, obviously, this is a computer science related and art installation at that too. So how did you get involved in privacy surveillance and then kind of package it all into this multimedia stuff?
Stuff? Yeah. I've I've always felt a degree of unease, between the the with the gap of expectations and the realities of technology. But it wasn't until I took a class last year on privacy that I really began to understand that the size of that gap and the minutiae of the problem. After I took that class and I began began to become part of the research on in privacy, I think that I found my calling to a greater degree. It allowed me to have that that type of descent with which I view the world in a constructive way and think about, like, how can I advocate and help people, with this significant technical understanding I have, but also a desire to empathize with, those for whom we are developing technology?
That's great. It sounds like CDT should hire you when you're done with your masters. What what it was that you want to do and, you know, once you're done with your degree, do you kind of have a sense of where you wanna go, things you wanna explore? This isn't an interview. I sound like I'm interviewing you in terms of a job. Maybe it turned into that. Right?
I'm mostly I'm interested in continuing to explore this advice that I've been talking about. I have peers that are super knowledgeable about these issues, and they're trying to develop technology that effectively aligns the role of the common user. But I I I want to understand those people. I'm sort of an anthropological backing towards technology. And I would do this I'd love to do this in any setting, either in a PhD or fellowship or any group of intellectually stimulating peers. Awesome. And particularly focusing not just on broad privacy, but on, the targeting of marginalized groups by states. For example, like the Mexican government use of spyware technology to track journalists. Mhmm. I think these populations are at particular risk, and thus deserve a a lot of attention.
That's fantastic. No. And agree wholeheartedly. Well, Jared, thank you so much for joining Tech Talk. If you are in Nashville, be sure to check out Jared's v u exposed installation
