Tech Policy & Trump, Obstacles for Broadband –– Talking Tech w/ Chris Calabrese & Natasha Duarte
Host Brian Wesolowski sits down with CDT's VP of Policy, Chris Calabrese, to overview the landscape for tech policy with the new Trump administration, based on what we know now. Chris highlights what CDT's transition priorities and perspectives are.<br><br>Secondly, Brian brings on Natasha Duarte, a Privacy & Data fellow, to discuss what the recent broadband privacy win in the FCC means – both now, and with several looming obstacles ahead.<br>More on the FCC Broadband Privacy rules: http://bit.ly/fccbroadrules<br><br>More info on Chris: http://bit.ly/ChrisCal<br>More info on Natasha: http://bit.ly/cdtnatasha<br>More info on our host, @brianwez: 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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- information 0.010
- providers 0.010
- sensitive 0.010
- privacy 0.009
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- internet 0.007
- tech 0.007
- trump 0.007
Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk. Bye.
CT. Tea. Two, three.
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. Well, the election is finally over and frankly, few of us predicted the outcome correctly. Despite the shock, now it's time to look ahead and think about the future. What should the top priorities for president Trump's administration be when it comes to tech policy? We'll talk about what CDT thinks should be on the agenda. And there was a big win for privacy recently when the FCC announced strong privacy rules for broadband providers. We'll unpack those new rules and talk about why they are such an important step forward for all Internet users who care about their privacy. President Trump. That will be the reality come January. And on the tech policy front, what to expect from him is rather unclear based on the vague proposals he put forward when and if there were even proposals. With all this uncertainty, it's not surprising that civil liberties advocates, businesses, and government stalwarts have many concerns. Well, to help the new administration think through some priorities, CDT will be sending the administration our thoughts on what they can and should do when it comes to tech and Internet policy Mhmm. Including actions they can take in the first hundred days. It's gonna be quite a hundred days. Joining us to talk about those proposed priorities is CDT's vice president of policy, mister Chris Calabrese. Welcome, Chris. Thank you for having me, Brian. So wow. That that was a surprise result for many. Yes. But now I guess it's time to get to work. As best you can predict, how focused do you think the Trump administration will be on some of our tech policy issues?
That's a great question, Brian. It's not an agenda where there was a lot of focus. I mean, there are bits and pieces of it if you look at the website and the things that, president-elect Trump said over the course of the campaign, but he talked about a lot of issues and, as you say, not always in a lot of depth. There are certainly some things we've already seen, and and there are causes for concern. He he attacked Apple, for example, in the midst of the Apple FBI discussion. But at the same time, he also talked about the need for cybersecurity. And, obviously, encryption drives much of cybersecurity. So, certainly, our our hope is that we can help to educate the new president about the value of encryption as it you know, when it comes to cybersecurity. Some areas, unfortunately, he has been pretty clear, and and they're not positive for us. He's already said that the, open Internet order is something and net neutrality is something that Mhmm. He's likely to want to overturn. That represents a tremendous victory and an ability for all of us to be excuse me. The order itself as written represents a tremendous tremendous victory and an ability for each of us to be heard online, and have no, you know, company or business use their own control of the Internet to stifle that. So that would be a real loss if that that order was overturned, and, it's certainly something that we'll be monitoring and pushing back and and trying to to fight where we can. So, the plan, obviously, was developed before the election
was over, the the results decided. And it was certainly I would say, you know, I read it. It was, developed for a more a very traditional, you know, you kinda know the landscape administration. Doesn't seem like that's what, what this administration will be. How much have we are we rethinking the plan before are you rethinking the plan before we send it over to the transition team of mister Trump?
I mean, we're certainly giving it a fresh look in light of the election, but CDT's values haven't changed. The things that we stand for and what we believe are the same no matter who's in office, no matter who controls the White House or Congress or or the judiciary. So it's important that we stand up for Internet freedom, for privacy, for free speech, and against government surveillance. And we're gonna keep doing those, and that's what our recommend recommendations to the president consist of is is putting those values into operation. And, certainly, it's my hope that the president as will take the president-elect at his word when he said that he wanted to be the president for everyone. These are very middle of the road policies that can protect the constitutional rights that certainly the people that voted for him care about, and we hope that he can put them into practice and really start to govern for everyone.
Great. That just inspired me, Chris. I mean, I definitely think this election has made me want to come into work even more so every day and made me realize just how important, the the work that we do here at CDT is. Let's dive into the recommendations a little bit. You've already touched on a lot of them. You know, we kind of group them into three categories, I would say, in the the recommendation, which, of course, will go online once we we do push it out to the administration. So let's start with privacy and national security. What are the thing some of the things we're we're advocating for there? So we believe, of course, that we have to have,
you know, a national security policy that recognizes that security and national security isn't just about spying and surveillance. It's also about strong encryption policies. We also recognize that the current practices around spying internationally don't serve The United States well. Our allies across the world don't wanna be spied on, and the American people don't want NSA surveillance used as a backdoor to spy on them. So we've gotta rein in those practices as well. And then we've gotta do other things to update our privacy laws and update our security laws, including saying that you need a warrant, for example, to read someone's email. That's been a long standing CDT priority and something that the president could do a lot of a lot by executive action to advance. And then, finally, we need to do things like protect the individuals who are trying to maintain our cybersecurity, people like cybersecurity researchers who need, to have some certainty in the law so that they can know when they expose a security vulnerability that they're not gonna be prosecuted for it. I hope that's something, you know, that kind of security is something we can find a common ground on. Sure. I saw I saw an article,
kind of encouraging everyone to think very very critically about, you know, their encryption practices and certainly spurred me to take a look at how I manage my different accounts and my information. Even working at organization like this, there's times that you can be lax and,
not may not be time to do that. That's right. We do have to have to sort of do some self help now and think about the things that we can do as individuals to make our privacy and security better. Absolutely. So another area, of course, free expression.
What are some of the things that we're advocating for, in terms of the free speech realm?
Well, we believe very strongly in in the, you know, the Internet as enabler of free speech. Right? It's the it's an incredibly powerful tool, probably the most powerful tool for free expression since the printing press. So we need to do things to make sure that we stay, that that, you know, that that stays in open Internet. And so that includes, you know, not monitoring people when they speak online. And that's a particular concern since president-elect Trump talked a lot about looking for extremists and Right. Monitoring for extremist content. Well, what that really means is monitoring everybody online and looking for content that you don't like or you think is extreme. And I think that's really trump would be really troubling to a lot of people, and hopefully, we can pull back from that. Similarly, we've said we need to protect the intermediaries. Today online, much of our speech comes through third parties, companies like Facebook or Google or the people who provide our web services and our social media. So those intermediaries have to be free from censorship. We can't have for example, there have been proposals in the past to say we should look for those companies should be responsible for identifying terrorism content in some way. And, again, that's another monitoring obligation that would be tremendously problematic. And then finally, one thing that hasn't received a lot of attention in the campaign, but is something we think is important, is the flow of data across borders. How do we make sure that we all, whether we're the a foreign government or the US government, can get access to information that might not be held in our own country for lawful uses like law enforcement investigation. We need to have normalized those rules. Right now, they're they're up in the air, and they, they aren't serving either foreign law enforcement or the privacy interests of citizens very well. Interesting. So one other tranche of of recommendations that we had,
kind of around new or emerging technology, all those buzzwords that, you know, big data, the Internet of things, but also tech pipeline. I I think one of the things the Obama administration gets a lot of credit for is bringing more technologists, more science, more science into the White House and having them be key decision makers. What are some of our recommendations around this kind of let's call it the third group of things, innovative new uses of technology and then also making sure that those are are benefiting, you know, the broader population
and citizens. Yeah. I mean, again, my hope is that some of these things can be a little less partisan. Right? I mean, clearly, we all believe that we that technology drives growth and it drives innovation in our country, and and nobody should wanna kill this goose that lays the golden egg. And so that means encouraging technology in the government and using the encouraging the government to be more efficient, to be understand better how technology works and and use it more effectively. I I hope that's not a partisan issue, and we recommend ways the president can do that. Similarly, we think that we need to create an environment where people wanna be online, where they feel safe, and that means protecting their privacy. It means creating rules of the road so that when I go online, I'm not worried about being spied upon by, you know, companies collecting my personal information or the government. And then last, but I think incredibly important in light of this election, is we need technology to help us address inequality. You know, right now, we've got tremendous differences in our country, both in where, you know, the financial wealth of the country is going, but also where the information wealth is going, where the people are are have the ability to use technology, and that's creating inequality. It's creating inequality in who can get jobs, who has access. We need to bridge that. We need to use the technology to recognize that we can, as a people, come together. We can have that technology help all of us, whether we're rural a rural voter, whether we're an urban voter. Where we are in this country, we can come together. And so we've got some concrete recommendations for how we can begin to address that inequality in technology. And, again, my hope is that these are things that any anyone, Democrat or Republican, would wanna pursue, and they're important enough that they should be pursued. Chris, that is a great note to end on, I think. So we're gonna wrap it there. Quite the agenda for 2017, quite a different landscape. Look forward to working with you on it. Thank you, Brian. And, I think we're excited to just keep marching. This is an important time in our country. We've got important issues to to fight about and important issues to to agree about and, and pass forward. So thank you.
Think about all the personal information that your Internet service provider has about you. The websites you visit, the topics that interest you, the devices you have connected to the Internet, and when you're home. All of these seem like things things that you just might want to keep private. Right? Well, good news. In a split vote, the Federal Communication Commission passed strong broadband privacy rules that will empower consumers to take control of how broadband providers use and share their personal information. Natasha Duarte, CDT's relatively new Plesser Fellow joins us on Tech Talk to talk about what these new rules mean for consumers. Welcome, Natasha. Thank you. It's your first Tech Talk and you are following in a very long tradition of of great, Tech Talk guests that are plus or follows and just all around rock stars. How are you finding CDT in your plus or fellowship so far?
Thanks, Brian. I'm loving it. It is great to be at an organization that's so dedicated to protecting digital freedom and privacy.
So it's great to be here, and thanks for having me on. And that's why we hire someone like Natasha. Just that passion, that energy, it's such a good thing. Alright. So let's talk broadband privacy. Why are these rules such a big deal? What do they mean for the everyday Internet user?
So all of us rely on broadband providers to connect us to the Internet. And because of that special relationship, they can see so much of our personal information, including the websites we visit, the locations we're connecting from, and who we're communicating with. Because of this relationship, broadband providers have a responsibility to protect our data from being used in ways that we don't expect and don't consent to, such as selling data to third parties and using it for targeted advertising. So these rules recognize that responsibility by requiring broadband providers to tell us how they're using our information and to get our permission for uses that fall outside of simply providing the service. Well, it sound like good things. So, you know, is that the major takeaway from it that users have more control now of their data and how the broadband providers use it? Is that Yeah. That's that's the major positive takeaway. The great thing about these rules is the amount of choice and control they give to users. They require broadband providers to get consent before using their customers' data for most purposes other than providing the broadband service. And giving the user this control over their information is an important principle for protecting privacy, but also for building and maintaining trust between users and their broadband providers, particularly since most of us don't have a lot of choice about which providers we use. Especially here in DC, I have zero choice. Yeah. Okay. And, so just to get a little more specific, in particular, providers have to get opt in consent to use or share sensitive information, and that includes all of our web browsing activity and the apps we use. This is huge. The websites we visit and the apps we use use can reveal very specific and sensitive information about our personal lives. Think about some of the websites you visit. Health websites like WebMD, websites like blacklivesmatter.com, and n r a dot org, which can reveal your political and social views and associations. Broadband providers can even see the specific pages you view, on those websites.
So protecting this information is a cornerstone of these new rules and what makes them so important. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's a really good point. I mean, if you just think about on your daily life, how many different sites you go to, for so many different reasons. There's there's quite a profile that maybe one of the the more revealing things even more so, you know, than like a text so are there you you talk about, like, user consent. How do they go about getting that user consent? I suppose that's something to be determined. But I know a lot of times when we have, like, apps or something, you like, apps or something, you know, there's there's criticisms of the the privacy policies or whatnot because it's like you give consent, but you really have no clue what you're consenting to. Right. So the rules are very,
clear that, broadband providers have to, provide their customers with, very clear and conspicuous privacy notices, which is the same standard that the Federal Trade Commission uses for, companies that are collecting users' data. So they have to be clear and they can't use, confusing or misleading language when they tell users exactly, what information they're collecting and the uses, what they're using it for and who they're sharing it with. There are not there's no specific form that they have to use, and they also have to provide, an easy to use opt out or opt in mechanism. But, again, no specific, prescribed format for that. So sort of a flexible rule, although, we are expecting to see, at some point a sort of a suggested format that, may be an optional
safe harbor for companies that wanna make sure that they're complying with those rules correctly. We but we don't have that yet. Okay. Well, end of day, consumers should know that they have some of these rights to to find out how their information is being used and demand, more information when they could even if they check something and and aren't sure what it was or have more questions. So are there areas that these, rules could have been stronger? Did CDT ever advocate for something stronger? Did we get everything we asked for?
It can always be better. So one thing the rules do is they divide user information into two categories, sensitive and non sensitive. So customers have to opt in, for broadband providers to use use their sensitive information, and they have to opt out for nonsense of information. So opt out is sort of a, a lesser standard because, when the default is to give permission, people are less likely to change it. We at CDT don't think that this sensitive, non sensitive distinction is an incredibly useful way of thinking about and protecting personal information because what's sensitive to one person might not be sensitive to another, and what is sensitive on its own might be or non sensitive on its own might be sensitive in context with other information. Sure. That said, the sensitive category is very broad. As I said, it includes web browsing and app usage history. It also includes location information, health information, and a bunch of other things. So the rules still offer very strong protection even though they make a distinction that we wouldn't have made. Okay. And then one other thing, there is a carve out that allows broadband providers to use non sensitive information such as contact information to market other communication services without getting opt in or opt out consent. Those are services that are usually bundled with broadband. So, you know, a lot of people, have a bundle that includes broadband and telephone. So for example, my broadband provider could use my non sensitive information, like my contact info, my email, stuff like that, to send me ads for services like telephone and video streaming. It's not ideal to take these out of the consent regime, but this is still a very limited exception. And,
the rule sort of explained that this, falls into the realm of what users kind of expect from their, relationship with their broadband provider. Yeah. A a more expected form of marketing as opposed to a completely out of nowhere form of marketing that took a different level of detail about you. Yeah. So, obviously, you know, I just did a segment with with Chris, our VP of policy, and we were talking about the Trump administration. You know, do these rules change at all as we're looking ahead, you know, towards next year? What's are there more hurdles, or are these gonna be kind of locked in stone?
So there's a lot of uncertainty, and, it seems like we're looking at at least, two hurdles to or potentially two hurdles to keeping these rules on the book. The first is, we're expecting to see legal challenges. This happens anytime government tries to regulate an industry. And, so we're expecting that, at some point after these rules are published in the federal register, and CDT expects to play an important role in defending these rules against legal challenges. The other hurdle that you were kind of alluding to is there's a new administration coming in. There's a lot we don't know about what this will mean for telecommunications regulation, but one of the keys is gonna be maintaining the net neutrality rules that we already have. These the net neutrality order is an important basis for these broadband privacy rules because it makes it clear that broadband providers are common carriers and are subject to regulation by the FCC. Hopefully, the new administration will recognize the value of these rules for maintaining trust between Internet companies and their customers and ultimately ensuring the continued growth of the Internet.
Well said, Natasha. You know, so it is kind of a murky path ahead, but, you know, policy wins are rare. So we're gonna go ahead and celebrate this one Yes. And congratulate you on the great work you did on it. Thanks so much for joining Tech Talk, Natasha. Thanks, Brian. That's it for this episode of Tech Talk. Visit CDT's website to check out the detailed report on our tech policy recommendations for president Trump's administration. And of course, feel free to let the president himself know that you support our proposed agenda. Be sure to follow CDT on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm Brian Wasilowski. Thanks so much for listening.
