Thank you all so much for coming to spend 45 minutes with the ACLU.
We appreciate it a lot.
This year there are not Q&A rooms.
So, we hope that those of you that want to continue
the conversation will come to our table in the vendor room.
Where you can become members or renew your membership,
get our new DEFcon special edition ACLU 4th Amendment T-shirts.
We would love to see you there.
My name is Ben Wisner.
I direct our national project on speech privacy and technology.
The women and men at the table with me work on surveillance,
national security, technology, privacy, both in our national office and
in some of our affiliate sites around the country.
When we heard that the NSA had been disinvited
from Defcon this year, we kind of scratche dour heads a little.
Because since when has the NSA needed to be invited.
We had planned to do a review that we were going
to call "Year in Surveillance" and talk to you about the breadth and scope
of the work that we do on privacy and surveillance.
Then, Ed Snowden got on a plane to Hong Kong
and really changed everything.
So, maybe we should give him a hand.
(Applause) What he revealed is something that many
of us were anxious about,, knew about, had worried about for years.
Which is, that the NSA's strategy has been
to collect everything and worry about the law later.
That as technology has developed; as the cost off collection
and storage has gone down, the NSA has begun to construct
the most comprehensive surveillance time machine ever created.
then that hope that the law could be twisted in order
to justify what it was already doing.
I feel it's a cliche that the law has not kept pace
with technology.
We believe that Americans' privacy should be protected
by constitutional law, not by Moore's law.
(Applause).
So my colleagues here are going to talk briefly.
There's five of them, we only have 45 minutes
and we do hope to have time for a couple questions
to give you a taste of the kind of work that we are doing with regard
to NSA surveillance and we hope that many of you will join us at our table.
We also have one of the parties tonight
on the public crawl, Party Like It's 1986, that is ACLU humor, so we hope
to see you all more later.
And to kick us off, this is Alex Abdo
from our national security project.
ALEX ABDO: Hi, everyone, and thanks so much for coming.
So I want to talk just for a few minutes
about the prison program which was revealed a couple months ago
by Ed Snowden, but before I get to the PRISM program I want
to talk about what there was before the PRISM program
and what we were doing beforehand because it's
a really fascinating change of events in the last two months.
In 2008 Congress passed the most sweeping surveillance statute
that Congress has ever passed, called FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
And it begins the NSA and the government's unfettered access
to America's international communications.
We challenged the law at the time because we didn't think that
the fact that someone is communicating internationally means
they should sacrifice the right to privacy.
That in today's interconnected world you can't often control
the way your packets are scurried around the world, and your right
to privacy shouldn't depend on the paths they take and
the frames you choose to associate with.
We brought that challenge in 2008, and for the next five years we didn't
litigate the merits of whether the government could
collect our international communications.
We spent five years debating with the government
whether our clients were allowed to sue.
And our clients were lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees
and people who worked in areas of the world where there was significant
violence and terrorism interests on the part of the U.S.
Government and journalists who reported on those areas,
the very source of people who would find themselves
trapped in the international NSA dragnet.
And for that reason, these individuals we claimed
as our clients took significant measures to protect the confidentiality
of their communications.
Some of those ethical obligations to do so,
others just thought it was good professional responsibility.
Despite that fact, the government argued that we couldn't
sue unless our clients could prove that their communications were surveilled.
And if you know anything about the NSA,
you know that's a vicious Catch 22.
Nonetheless, the government prevailed in front
of the Supreme Court in February in a decision, 5 4 decision,
holding that the government's most sweeping
surveillance statute ever enacted is essentially immune
from judicial review unless the NSA, in its benevolence, chooses
to show who they're surveilling.
I don't recommend you hold your breath.
That all changed two months ago when Ed Snowden revealed the existence
of the prison program.
And the prison program is one verse of the implementation of the FISA Act.
It's one way the government conducts international
surveillance, but he was governed by the statute in state, and some
of the most important disclosures, what the government uses
to select its targets and to protect the privacy in theory
of Americans who find themselves ensnared in the international dragnet.
And having seen those procedures now, we know that
they never should have been secret in the first instance,
but they reveal a number of really critically important things
about the way the government conducts
its surveillance.
The government's main defense, as you can read in the news
about the prison program, is that it's a program directed
at foreigners, not Americans.
And I think that's an extraordinarily misleading
defensive program.
When the government was pushing for the passage of this Act, actually
to a predecessor of the statute, it learned that some
of the communications of most interest to the NSA were
the ones that had one terminus in the United States.
And you could imagine for obvious reasons why that would be
the case, but the government used the fact that Americans were
communicating internationally essentially
to bootstrap away their rights to privacy.
So even though foreigners have to be the target,
Americans' intelligence is swept into that.
Because the government calls the collection
of Americans' communications insignificant, you might think
they would treat them incidental and delete them.
America is allowed to keep communications
for five years in any event and indefinitely if any of a number
of sweeping exceptions apply.
One of the exceptions, by the way, is if the information is encrypted.
So ironically, as we are now seeing a push
in the industry for a greater use of HTTPS and encrypted
communications, we are actually handing the NSA more authority
to retain those communications indefinitely until a time that
they can decrypt them if they can't already.
The second big problem with the government's targeting
of foreigners is that it presumes its targets are
foreign unless it has a reason to believe otherwise, which
is a really bizarre way of going about it, if you can imagine.
So if the government has any doubt as to where you are and
they don't have any positive indication you're an American, they'll treat you
as a foreigner and targetable, and they'll retain your communications
even if they later discover that they were wrong.
So they think you're a foreigner, it turns out you're not,
but they keep your communications anyway.
And you can imagine the types of services available digitally now that
would give the government the doubt they need
about your foreignness that allow them to keep their communications.
You can think of TOR and MTM communications.
The government's defense of the prison program says
the program is supposedly limited to foreign intelligence information
which is this phrase they bandy about which has little meaning.
It includes things as broad as the foreign affairs
of the United States, which essentially makes a target
out of everyone who is a foreigner.
And we know that in part because the procedures that were
released by Ed Snowden confirmed that two of the broadest factors
the government relies on in determining whether someone
is exchanging foreign intelligence information, are one,
if you're communicating with a foreigner; and two,
if your phone number or e mail address appears in a foreigner's contact book.
And the end result of these two rules and
the presumption that you are a foreigner
is that virtually every international communication is susceptible
to NSA surveillance.
And they can keep those communications
even if they later discover that you're an American.
Just two quick additional points and then I'll hand it over.
First, the government is not actually limited
to directing its surveillance at targets.
It can direct its surveillance at third parties
to collect information about its targets.
And it can do so using ID filtering and country code filtering.
And the example I think that's been thrown out is that
they might decide that Osama Bin Laden is a target and then decide
to ID filter Internet traffic going into and out of Pakistan
as their filter and collect everything.
So the prison program allows the government
to do broad geographic surveillance in a way that ensures countless rights
to privacy are intruded upon.
And secondly, the government considers that any
extensive use of a IP range or cryptographic service
by foreigners allows the NSA to start that IP range or cryptographic.
If there's something used extensively by foreigners,
who knows what that means.
In terms of terrorists, there's not so many terrorists, we hope,
if they are using TOR.
The government might collect everything going over TOR
to allow traffic analysis and later encryption.
The irony is that those who seek to protect the sensitivity
of their communications the most are engaging
in communications that are born targetable whether or not
the government has any specific reason to collect those
individuals' communications.
I think there's an easy fix to this problem,
but maybe we can discuss that later, and I'll hand it over for now
with that teaser.
CATHERINE CRUMP: I'm Kathleen Crump.
I've been at the ACLU about eight years and I've been
primarily litigating challenges to government surveillance programs
and that length of time has given me perspective
on this.
The government has been saying if American people knew actually what
was going on with some of the NSA related spying programs
they would be outraged, but there was no way to have
an honest conversation about what was happening
until just recently when Edward Snowden showed these programs.
There's information about the programs that it can be often
difficult to figure out what the specific programs are
and what they're doing.
So Alex talked about the prison program,
and now I want to spend a few minutes talking
about the NSA's domestic collection of all metadata, why the we need
to rein in surveillance.
We know now by reporting by Edward Snowden, that the U.S.
is collecting all telephony metadata.
It's going to the secret court in Washington, D.C.
and it seems every three months it gets an order authorizing it
to collect telephony data from all major U.S.
data companies.
Every day every telephone call you make, every telephone call you receive
and how long those telephone calls last get handed over to the government.
This is true for domestic communications, this
is not about international communications,
and I think sometimes in some of the government's counter messaging
that fact is being lost.
The government has also tried to argue that metadata isn't sensitive
and that made the point, for example, we're just getting telephone numbers,
we're not getting anyone's name, but I think the people
in this room certainly see the flaw in that argument
without anyone having to point it out.
It's not just the government is getting this information,
it's that they're also storing the metadata going back five years,
so that's really a truly vast amount of information
about all of the communications all of us engage in.
So what is the government doing with this information?
Whenever the government says whenever it has
a reasonable articulable suspicion, there's a telephone number,
for example, associated with terrorism, it can query this database
to that number and track communication that hops
out three, the telephone number that calls
the telephone number that calls the telephone number.
It's sweeping data.
If a person has, for example, 40 telephone numbers in that phone,
that can sweep in as many as 2.5 million phone numbers.
This, by the way, is being approved on an individual basis by a court.
The FISA court has approved that general problematic approach,
but there's no supervision of individual pieces
of surveillance along the way.
I want to step back for a second and talk about what
a major paradigm shift this is.
As Alex said, this is about collecting it all.
We haven't lived in a world where everything we say
or do is capable of being recorded, but now that's the world we live in,
and that's exactly what's happening when it comes to metadata.
The government's argument is that it essentially doesn't implicate
a privacy interest for the government to merely collect the data.
That only happens when you look at it.
But I think having a record of essentially everyone you call can
have a real chilling effect on who people are willing
to communicate with.
The standard under which the government says what
is the government's legal argument here?
The government is relying on a section called 215
of the Patriot Act which says it is authorized
to collect information that is relevant to certain types of investigations,
generally foreign intelligence or terrorism investigations.
And on that relevance definition, the government has argued that every
single phone call all Americans make are
under that definition relevant.
Now, that's a pretty broad and sweeping definition of relevance,
one we haven't really seen before, and I think it poses
an interesting conundrum too in the area of big data.
Does the fact if it is true to understand the one piece
of data you need to understand the entire universe,
does that make a piece of data relevant?
The UCLA doesn't object to the problem,
I think it raises real problems.
One of the first orders disclosed about the court giving
the government access to this information dealt
with Verizon Business Network Services, which is pretty startling to us,
because do you know who provides the ACLU's
telephone communications?
Verizon Business Network Services.
And we sat in our office and talked
about all the people who called us, right?
All the whistle blowers who call us, seeking legal help or protection.
Everyone who calls our offices for help for reproductive services
or reporting any number of abuses, and you can see some real problems
with the idea that all of this information
is being monitored and logged by the government and
because we think that poses a real theft to the long standing right
of Americans to be able to associate with one another,
and also our Fourth Amendment freedom to be free
from unreasonable searches and seizures.
We filed a suit in the court, and we asked the court to enjoin
the government from engaging in this mass collection program
and also to delete all of the data from the ACLU in this
because we know that it's sitting in a database,
every phone call we've made for the last five years.
The court has scheduled a briefing schedule
for the going through the fall.
There's an argument in November, and so hopefully by the time we're
all back here next year we'll be able to report a little more.
(Applause).
I don't know if any of you had the privilege
to hear Chris Soghoian this morning in the Penn and Teller room.
(Applause).
I made the mistake of getting there 5 to 12, and you
all had the seats already.
So next up, Chris Soghoian.
CHRISTOPHER SOGHOIAN: Hi, everyone.
I'm the principal technologist with our technology project
and technology team.
I joined last fall.
For those of you who caught my talk earlier,
the FBI is now in the hacking business.
If you didn't catch the talk, hopefully the video will be available
at some point.
I want to talk for the few minutes I have, I want to talk about how
the government spies.
There are not enough FBI agents to follow every person.
There are not enough NSA employees to read everyone's e mail or to go
and directly acquire everyone's communications.
The government doesn't have the resources
to directly monitor every American or let alone every foreigner.
But they want to read the communications
of every foreigner and they wants to be able to collect information
about every American.
And so they have this problem, particularly for dragnet style searches,
where you want to do a key word search or you want
to do social network analysis, you need everyone's communications.
What do you do when you don't have the manpower
to collect everyone's communications?
You deputized telephone and Internet companies,
in some cases with their willing assistance, and
in other cases against their will, but you force these companies
to help out.
Sometimes paying helps to get them to agree.
One of the documents Edward Snowden
released was a 2009 Inspector General Report
of the NSA showing payments were made to telecommunication companies
to get them to participate in some of the domestic metadata programs.
$100 million goes a long way when you're buying
the goodwill of companies who are going
out of their way to help the government with its mission.
So I want to talk about the role these companies play.
Every Internet company, every telephone company has a team
of people who do nothing but respond to surveillance requests.
And I'm not going to talk about how many requests
they get because my colleague Nicky
will be talking about that, but I want to emphasize these companies provide
assistance that enable surveillance that wouldn't be possible without their help.
There would not be a 215 metadata program
without the willing assistance of AT&T and Verizon
and reportedly Sprint.
It simply wouldn't be possible.
There wouldn't be a program of monitoring the communications
of foreigners talking to Americans if the NSA couldn't get
the undersea cable operators to provide access
to the communications that are flowing through fiber optic cables.
One with a foreigner, and one end with an American,
or both foreigners and passing through the United States.
The NSA program depends upon American
communications companies.
What's good is communications have shifted
in the last few years from telephone companies
to Internet companies.
We're starting to see companies that aren't
as happy about being deputized.
We're starting to see companies that are deploying
crypto, whether it's HTPS, to protect data over the wire, or
in some cases end to end crypto, and what it's doing
is making dragnet available.
I don't think we'll be able to put the government out of surveillance.
I would like to personally, but I don't think we'll get there,
but I think we could make dragnet surveillance impossible.
We just have to raise the cost.
We have to make it difficult enough to target one person that
they simply don't have the resources to collect everyone's communications.
Crypto can help us get there.
Moving from companies that say yes to dragnet requests
to companies that only say yes to targeted requests can help too.
But I really think we need to be thinking not
about making it impossible for the government
but making it expensive.
Chris Rock has this joke in which he says
he believes guns should be legal and bullets a million dollars apiece.
And I think surveillance should be expensive, too, but right now
the cost of surveillance is too damn low.
Thank you very much.
(Applause).
NICOLE OZER: Hi, everyone, I'm Nicole Ozer, I'm
the policy director for the ACLU of California, so nice to be back
with you today.
I want to take a bigger picture for a moment
to understand just how Edward Snowden's impact has rippled
out much farther than NSA spying, much farther than the docs
he released or the revelations, or just to give everyone a sense
of just how important these revelations have been to getting out the truth
about what's really happening and ongoing efforts by the ACLU
and other organizations to really reestablish some desperately
needed and long overdue balance between government surveillance
and all our personal privacy.
So Edward Snowden's actions, in terms of giving us a sense
of what the NSA has been doing, has finally given us
all a real first information on just how often,
as Chris was talking about, that the government
from the lowest levels of police on the street to all the way
up to the highest echelon of the U.S.A., how often the government
is taking advantage of laws from the 1980s,
outdated privacy laws that haven't been updated since the 1980s from when
the web existed, from when our cellphones were
the size of bricks and no one would imagine
people would store e mail for longer than six months.
And they've been taking advantage of these outdated laws and things that
really haven't been properly reconsidered for decades to engage
in what we have known for a long time to be
a largely unsupervised shopping spree in the treasure trove
of data that online companies are collecting every day about who each
of us are, where we go on a daily basis, who we know, what our concerns are,
our habits, our hobbies, and are keeping that
for extremely long periods of time.
The ACLU first really started to sound the alarm about the sort
of surveillance industrial complex that had been growing and growing largely
in the dark way back a decade ago in 2003.
We knew for a long time that this was happening, that
the government was really reaching into these treasure troves
and largely getting at this data without a warrant,
without a judge's permission, but we never had the facts.
The government doesn't need to tell the American people how often they're
demanding electronic communications, they're being held by these companies.
Unlike the fact they have to report how many wiretaps they issue,
they're not required by law to do that, so they weren't doing it, no surprise.
And the companies weren't very interested
in telling us either how many times the government was knocking
on their door asking for really personal data about people.
They didn't really want to give us pause and wonder and worry,
are we really having sort of a three way conversation every time
we e mail a friend or pick up the phone?
So we knew it was happening, but the facts just weren't there.
The companies largely didn't want to come forward and
the government didn't want to didn't want
to give us this information voluntarily.
But post PRISM, a lot of what we had known
for a long time was confirmed.
The companies, in an attempt to actually defend themselves
against being surveilled said they had been given a back door
to the government; and to actually try and assuage the fears
of the public, many of them for the first time released transparency
reports that gave some contours of just how many demands were
coming from local law enforcement all the way up the pike.
We had some companies, like Google and Twitter,
come forward with these reports before, but post PRISM, was
the first time that folks like Yahoo and Apple and Facebook actually came
out with this information as well.
And it really confirms what we had long known, that tens of thousands
of requests are coming into these companies, you know, just
in a six month basis that is affecting 80, 90, 100,000 different accounts.
And if you think about all the information that Google
might have in a particular account, it may be tons and tons of e mails
and photos, sort of the whole range of data.
So we know from some of the reports, Google and Twitter are actually doing
a break down of how many of these demands are actually coming
with a warrant and how many of these demands are actually just
coming with a subpoena which a judge has often never seen.
And as we expected, subpoenas are sort of much take
the bulk of these things.
You know, Twitter recently reported just a couple of days ago that 56%
of the demands for the government are subpoenas.
Only 23% are warrants with probable cause.
And Google has gotten over 5,000 demands that are subpoena
demands just in the past six months that accounts
for over 10,000 plus accounts of people.
So we're finally starting to see a glimpse into how often
the government is demanding this information,
which finally gives us some of the facts to talk to Congress
about how important it truly is to update these laws and make sure
that they do keep pace with the technology that we're
all living in, the fact that we are living our lives
online, and the government shouldn't be able
to reach in and spy on that personal information
without having a very good reason and going to a judge and explaining it.
Thank you.
(Applause).
So we have one more speaker, we have 15 minutes, we probably
will have time for a couple of questions.
So maybe while my colleague Kade Crockford is speaking, if someone
of you want to gather at the microphones, we'll try
to take a bunch of questions at once and use
the last couple minutes to answer questions.
KADE CROCKFORD: I'm Kade Crockford, I work as the director
of technology in Massachusetts.
To explain what I'm going to talk about, over the past years we've seen a shift
in the relationship between the governed and
the government, and that is marked by two really problematic features,
one of them is that now we're basically guilty
until proven innocent as these bulk records collections
programs demonstrate, and the second is that, you know,
the way a democracy works is the government is transparent
and people have privacy from the government.
Unfortunately, that situation has been radically flipped, so now
the government is incredibly secretive, as we know,
about these surveillance policies, as well as even about the law
in some cases, and the government, if it wants
to know nearly everything about us, even if it doesn't have articulable
situation, probable cause, show evidence to a judge,
all of the sort of, you know, traditional American norms of justice.
Having to frame the conversation in that way, I just want
to talk very briefly about how some little brothers have
sprung up over the past 12 years.
We've heard a lot about Big Brother and the surveillance by corporations,
but also the Department of Homeland Security and Department
of Justice have over the past 12 years given billions
and billions of dollars to state and local law enforcement
to build up a robust police militarized presence.
They have done this by funding the procurement of things
like electronic fingerprint readers at state and local police departments
nationwide, face technologies, as well
as automatic license plates readers.
Can I get a show of hands how many people know what
that is?
Great, you're awesome.
We put out a huge report on this, actually, you can see it
at ACLU.org/plates.
Basically, what we found is the state and local police
departments as well as private corporations are operating
under the same methodology as NSA, they want it all, they want
to collect records of what everyone has driven,
going back even months or years.
We found regulations are all over the map.
There are only five states that have laws on the books
about this technology.
Every other state it's up to the local police departments
to decide how long they want to keep records where everyone
has driven.
Right now, as I'm sure you know, these cameras are not as ubiquitous
as surveillance cameras, but they will become that ubiquitous.
I'm sure in the next 20 years these cameras
will be on every police cruiser in urban sections.
It's a situation where the government will be able
to track our driving habits retroactively for however long
they keep this information.
So I also just want to tell you very quickly about okay.
On the license plate reader tip, private companies,
there are these private companies, one of which
is called Vigilance Solutions.
It maintains a database of the national driver's license service.
It has one billion discrete license plates, actually more than that,
those are slightly dated figures I'm working off of, and that information
is accessible not only to state and local law enforcement
as well as FBI, immigration, customs enforcement, likely the U.S.
military, but other private companies, insurance companies, repo men,
tow truck drivers.
So, you know, the corollary between the NSA's surveillance
and collusion with Google and state and local cops colluding
with companies like Vigilant Solutions
is a very serious problem, like again, as my colleagues have said,
in the vast majority of cases state legislatures have not
really stepped up to the plate to deal with.
And so that's some of the work that we're trying to do
in the states, is to pass discrete legislation that
would, for example, ban the police from retaining this data for a long time.
You know, the ACLU, Chris maybe is the one exception to this,
but the ACLU as an organization does not oppose law
enforcement surveillance if they go to the judge and get
a probable cause warrant, right?
There are murderers in the world, there are rapists.
People do bad things.
If there's evidence to show somebody is involved
in criminal activity then, you know, the judge should give
the cops a warrant to invade that person's privacy.
I personally don't like it either but I think it's
a reasonable it's a reasonable balance to strike
between privacy and security.
But we're seeing a really what we have now
is that that probable cause warrant practice barely exists anymore.
The DOJ has said to Congress that it doesn't think it
needs a warrant to read our e mails.
The DOJ has also said to Congress and to courts that we have no privacy
interest in information showing where we go 24 hours a day that
is communicated through cell site information
through our cellphones.
And I just want to give you really quickly
a very brief example of how not only the collect it all sort
of theme has trickled down to the state and local level,
but also the state's secrecy itself has really trickled
down in a really dangerous way.
And that is a case we had a couple years ago
during Occupy Boston.
Somebody decided to pick a fight with the cops and put together
a paste bin with information about Boston police officers which was
all publicly available.
This person didn't do anything illegal, they put it together in a database
and put it on Paceman.
Suffolk County didn't like that.
They sent an administrative subpoena to Twitter.
This is not a warrant, it's no judge ever sees this piece
of paper, subpoenas are just pieces of paper that prosecutors fill
out and give to companies like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook.
So Twitter is one of very few companies that actually
stands up for its users on a routine basis when
they get these subpoenas, and they do that by informing
the person who is targeted that
a subpoena has been filed, that prosecutors are seeking
information about them.
So what happened was this person came to us at the ACLU
of Massachusetts and said, "The DA in Suffolk County wants my information
and I'd like to remain anonymous," so we took the case.
It was incredible what happened after that.
You know, this is a legal issue.
This is not something Al Qaeda, national security issue, but we had a,
you know, pipsqueak, I'm going to say that,
this pipsqueak Assistant DA, right, in Suffolk County telling a judge,
you know, holding ex parte hearings, which essentially means
the government is giving information to the judge
in secret that not even our attorneys could see.
So secret proceedings.
And to this day two years later, those records are secret.
They were sealed.
The prosecutor asked that these records be sealed.
So I mean, it's just incredible abuse of power going
on at all levels of government.
And I think that's it.
There are people who probably have a lot of questions.
I would just say please support the ACLU if you have a concern
about these issues.
We are working on a range of issues, from choice
to privacy and everything in between.
Thanks for coming.
I appreciate it.
(Applause).
So so I see six people standing.
We have nine minutes.
Maybe seven.
The only way we're going to make this work is if people speak
for 30 seconds and ask a question.
If you have statements for us, we'll be at the table this afternoon.
You will not believe my ability to violate your right to free speech
if you go 30 seconds (laughter).
I'm really good at it.
So we'll start here, but really, we don't want to hear your story.
Is the mic on?
I'm Mike Daughtry from Atlanta, I was going to ask you
about the judicial decision, I'm under (Unintelligible).
It is amazing, the judicial system I find incredibly
behind and judges don't deal.
So how do you deal with the judges who don't deal
in a judicial system that's so far behind looking the other way?
Let's hear the next one.
We're going to take them all and then we're going to answer.
My name is Dana, I'm from San Antonio, Texas.
These issues come up, I'm concerned, so I write my Congressman
and my representative like, you know, I'm supposed to or I'm told to do.
Yeah.
I make phone calls, I leave messages.
All I get is the excuse me?
(speaker off microphone.) Okay.
The question is?
What can I do?
How can I get a better response than thank you
for being a concerned citizen, we'll get back to you?
I don't ever get a response?
Citizen empowerment.
Next, quickly.
So what about me?
I'm not American, I'm a foreigner, obviously I use American services
all the time.
Am I suspicious just because I'm a foreigner?
That's my question.
Good question.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
We're going to go over here.
Any thoughts or remarks on Sandra Riden's speech
and his delusions to his theoretical geo
tracking program?
Quickly, next.
2006, 2007, I assisted most of the telecommunications companies
in the country installing probes for law enforcement,
also known as Kalia.
That was all done on their dime, and I believe one
of the speakers mentioned that they were being subsidized.
I'm curious to know how we know that's being
subsidized by the government.
Come to at a us at our table, please.
Go ahead.
How can people get access to this stuff through for civil matters,
civil lawsuits?
Okay.
And again, most of these answers are going
to be provided at our makeshift A part of the Q
and A at our table in the vendor area, but go ahead.
I didn't hear anything on LexisNexis or Fusion Centers.
Come talk to me.
Yeah.
Okay.
So fellow panelists, there are a range of things you can weigh in on.
I hope someone will at least say something
about the feeling of helplessness that citizens have who
write to their legislators, because it seems we're
in a pretty unique moment where we're being heard.
Go ahead.
I will respond to two of the things.
If Senator Widener has been warning about the surveillance
for a couple years, he's been hitting the issue of location.
He gave a speech last year in which he said the word "location" five times.
If he could signal any more clearly, I don't know what it would look like.
Right now he's basically standing on a stool waving his hands jumping
up and down.
So I think there's something locationally that he's trying
to tell us about, and I hope we will find out what it is.
The question about the foreigners, it's not that you're suspicious,
it's just you're fair game.
Foreigners don't vote in Kansas, and it doesn't protect
the communications of non Americans.
That's really unfortunate.
I think if we if we were going to see change there, it's not going
to be because individuals were writing to their members, it's going
to be because companies are complaining
they're losing out on contracts in Europe and Asia.
If the Klout computing companies want to salvage their foreign business,
we need to see a big change in the law or they're going to have
to start using anti and Encrypto where you don't care about access to data.
Alex?
ALEX ABDO: Just quickly on what you can do.
A week and a half, two weeks ago there was
an incredibly important vote in the house
about whether the government was going to rein in the bulk collection
of our phone records.
Unsurprisingly the vote lost; but surprisingly, it was close, 217
to 205 votes.
And a big part of the reason why the vote was so close
is because literally thousands of people called their representatives
and urged them to vote in support of the bill that would have reined
in the NSA.
That support matters more than you know,
more than I knew up until a few weeks ago.
If you have any questions about it, you should really talk
to Kevin Bacon who has been doing some incredible work
on this and can speak to how effective it
is for to you call your representatives.
I would like to say for those of us here in California,
we know how difficult Feinstein has been on these issues,
she's been a huge supporter for the NSA, and it's been intractable
for years and years.
Couple days ago Feinstein actually said, hmmm, maybe there needs
to be some changes.
And we also saw President Obama meeting
with top legislators just a couple of days ago saying he's open
to suggestions.
So, you know, we have finally sort of started to turn the tide
in Washington, D.C.
based on the facts that members of the public have picked up the phone,
have responded to those e mails from the ACLU and have started
to meet actually with their members of Congress.
So it is making a huge difference.
We've talked a lot about sort of how we got to this point and
the problems that we're seeing, but we're at a really crucial point
to turn the tide on these issues, and I really hope that anyone
in the audience who has not picked up the phone and called their members
of Congress or stopped by our booth and filled
out the action alert, please do it, because we can change this,
we really can.
This is predictable and self serving note to end on, but it matters a lot
for you to become members of the ACLU.
And I mean it, I mean it.
You know, we have between 6 and 700,000 ACLU
members nationwide.
The NRA has over 4 million members.
If all of you who had an affinity for the ACLU were members
of the ACLU we would have a lot more voice,
a much louder voice in Washington.
I'm not saying that to denigrate the NRA for those
of you who are supporters, they're a very effective organization
in support of what they do.
We can be even more Help us about that effective.
No, no, seriously, it matters a lot to have
a large civil society counterweight to the kinds
of developments we've been talking about today.
So please come by, get our special edition DEF CON 4 Alert.
Thank you so much for joining us today.