[Music]
thank you
david olashaga
and good morning iap it's so wonderful
to see you all
my name is julie brill i am a member of
the iapp board of directors
and i serve as microsoft's chief privacy
officer
and corporate vice president of our
global privacy and regulatory affairs
organization
today i have the distinct privilege of
introducing you to our next keynote
speaker
brad smith
brad smith is the president and vice
chair of microsoft
and he's my boss
brad leads microsoft's global teams
working on the most critical issues at
the intersection of technology
regulation and society today
this includes cyber security privacy of
course artificial intelligence
sustainability human rights immigration
and philanthropy and so much more
in all of these areas brad has been a
leader in addressing how the technology
industry can both innovate
and advance the rights of individuals
the new york times has named brad the
ambassador of the technology industry at
large
in recognition of his role in building
bridges
bridges of understanding with
policymakers and regulators that are so
critical to the development of
approaches that guide our industry and
better serve humanity
in his best-selling book
which is called tools and weapons the
promise and the peril of the digital age
brad urged the tech in the tech industry
to assume more responsibility
and he encouraged governments to move
faster to address the challenges that
new technologies are creating
the continued vitality of brad's message
is well demonstrated by the discussions
all of us are having here this week at
the at our global privacy summit
as we all continue to navigate the
complex environment of data protection
and ai
and cyber security and online safety
brad will continue to encourage us to
think holistically about these
challenges and how to work cooperatively
towards solutions and with that please
welcome brad smith
[Music]
good morning
it's so great to be here i have to say
one of the great things about my job is
i get to work every day with julie brill
yeah yeah
the uh
another great thing about my job is i
periodically get to come and speak to
all of you and be part of these what are
now called summits and interact with
folks at the iapp
i joined microsoft in 1993 my first job
was in paris the iapp didn't yet exist
but i can say i remember when you could
go to an iapp meeting and you would just
sit around a table
and then it would fill a room
and now as you all attest
it literally is bursting at the seams of
a huge convention center
and
each year the issues have changed
the profession has grown
but along the way over the last two
decades i think something remarkable has
happened
you have advanced what has become one of
the great human rights issues of our
time quite literally
and it's because of the explosion of
technology
but it's not just that the cause is
critical
it's also complex
that's why we need so many people in the
privacy profession you can't protect
human rights if you can't manage the
complexity that technology has created
for the world
and in a sense where you have gone we
are now at a point where i think many
others will need to follow not just for
privacy alone
but for many other legal and regulatory
fields as well in a much more
closely integrated way
so fundamentally my thesis this morning
is relatively straightforward it's this
this decade the
2020s have created a new era for
technology
unlike the last few decades we've
entered a decade we've entered an era
that is characterized by both technology
innovation and technology regulation
and we are going to need to find new
ways to manage through this
we're going to need a large community of
people like you you will be in some ways
the foundation for it we will need
thoughtful conversations literally
around the world but perhaps more than
anything
it will take a new mindset
if the world
is going to manage this well
so let me show you what we see and let
me show you why
we think this is the case and then i
want to talk about what it will take
what the ingredients will be
in order to develop the mindset and the
capability for all of us to manage
technology through the decade ahead
the first thing is in some ways obvious
but only if you really look up and look
at the world as a whole every day
governments are creating complex
regulatory requirements for technology
we like
many companies and institutions follow
this not just in one place but every
place and what we see
is an explosion of technology laws and
regulations and proposals that is
literally
sweeping the planet
i just came back from nine days in four
countries in africa and everywhere i met
it wasn't just
on the agenda of ministries of ict it
was important to presidents and prime
ministers as well
and what we're therefore seeing is
something that started with privacy in
the 1990s
and is now
leading to a long list
of new and emerging and changing legal
and regulatory fields
cyber security digital safety
responsible ai
telecommunications competition trade
accessibility this list is not even
complete
that is what is happening around the
world
but i think it's important to step back
and not just ask what is happening it's
perhaps even more important to ask
why
why is this happening why is it
happening now why is this decade going
to be different from the past
i think there's two ways to look at it
the first is through the lens of the
present
and look at the role that technology is
playing
it really is a tool that can be put to
use to help solve any problem anywhere
in the world
as you just heard you can't manage
through a pandemic without use of data
you can't address climate change without
putting data to work
you can't
address anything effectively without
harnessing the power of digital
technology and data together
but technology is not just a tool it
really has become a weapon it's become a
weapon in so many ways and shapes and
forms directly and indirectly and
believe me 2022 has made this clearer
than ever as we at microsoft see every
day often times every hour as we are
helping the government of ukraine defend
its military and civilian institutions
from an ongoing and unprecedented wave
of cyber attacks
this is what technology has brought to
the world
and for all of us who create it we're so
proud rightly so of what we get to do
and yet we also have to be clear-eyed as
we look around the world
we have to address the problems that
technology has created
but there's another way that i find it
helpful to think about why this is
happening it's to look at this not just
through the lens of the present
but through the lens of the past
when we think about the future
in some ways
i think it all started in one place
in one year the place was washington d.c
and the year
was 1887.
what happened in 1887.
well let me take you back for a moment
to the greatest technology change of the
1800s
it was called the railroad
in 1840 there were just a few railroad
lines in the northeast united states but
as you look at this unfold decade by
decade
rare roads stretched across the
continent they helped the north defeat
the south in the civil war they
connected the east coast with the west
and by 1890
they led to a map that basically looked
like what it
had become
rare roads
had become the central nervous system of
an entire country
one of my favorite books that i think
speaks to the issues that we deal with
every day all of us in this room was
written two decades ago it wasn't about
digital technology it was about
railroads it's called railroads and
american law
and the professor who wrote it said few
aspects of american society were
untouched by the railroad he quoted a
newspaper story that said the rare road
has revolutionized
everything
if that sounds familiar
this author recognized two decades ago
the familiarity as well he said at its
peak
the railroad was the internet of its day
in the extent of its impact on american
life
and law
in fact if you just read the table of
contents of this book what you see is
the way the railroad changed influence
altered
field after field of american law and
regulation
it literally changed the way americans
checked the time it led to the invention
of the time zone you had to have
standardized time zones so everybody
would know when the darn train was going
to arrive at the station no longer could
each town
set its own clock
but it wasn't just this piecemeal change
of law after law although that is
fundamentally what took decades
to happen
there was something even more remarkable
that took place
not surprisingly the state governments
recognized that in order to regulate
railroads effectively they needed to
worry about what was happening on the
train before it got to its state and
after it left
they increasingly reached beyond their
borders and in 1886 the supreme court
said that state law did not reach beyond
a state's border so it was the next year
in 1887
that congress broke a decade-long
stalemate and created the interstate
commerce commission for one specific
purpose
to regulate railroads
that act
that year
really marked the birth
of the modern regulatory state
and so much of what so many people work
with today
is the legacy of what was created
there are cars that are regulated
by the department of transportation
there are airplanes by the federal
aviation administration there are
pharmaceuticals by the food and drug
administration there are telephones by
the federal communications commission
all while the department of justice and
ftc do their jobs as well
but what we've seen in the united states
and what we've seen around the world is
increasingly over the course of a
century
agencies that were created
to regulate specific industries
that were based on specific inventions
and areas of technology
that is the past
that almost inevitably
will shape the future
but the future is never a replay of
something we like to say one of our
favorite quotes history doesn't
necessarily repeat itself
but it often rhymes
and what's important to think about are
both the similarities and differences
and there is one fundamental difference
about the world today for digital
technology and data
no industry has ever had to adapt so
quickly to new law and regulation on a
global basis
these other industries were national
industries
the telephone was national even
something that we to think of as a
global market today like automobiles
took a long time to globalize
there were 49 years between henry ford's
invention of the model t in 1908 and the
first import of a japanese car
into america
that was a long time for regulators to
work on a national basis
today
technology has gone global and as you
all know as you all represent given all
the countries here in this room
this
is a global exercise
so what are we going to need to do
i think it involves four ingredients
first i think it's time to recognize
reality
the tech sector needs to mature
and we need to lean in
to help make a new era of regulation
work
we need to recognize that the need to
serve the common good vastly outweighs
the regulatory opportunities for
competitive advantage the press loves to
focus on a new law is it going to help
this company is it going to hurt that
company the reality is regulation
applies to everyone and there will be
only fleeting days
and very short periods of time
when one company or part of the industry
benefits at the expense of another
we all need to recognize in my view and
not just in the tech sector but across
the business community
that our common goals and the common
good and even the common bonds we share
vastly outweigh any differences in
perspective that's part of what it will
take for our industry frankly
to mature
but there's a second thing we need to
recognize we need to recognize it around
the world but we need to recognize that
most especially in the united states and
it is important not just for the tech
sector it is important for every part of
the economy
progress in a democracy
always
requires compromise
we live in an era where compromise is
too difficult to find
and there is no better case study in my
view of this than
u.s privacy law
in 2005 i came to washington i gave a
speech to the congressional internet
caucus and we were
one of the
first companies to call for the adoption
of a broad and comprehensive national
privacy law that was 17 years ago you
can just see how influential that speech
was
but just think for a moment
about where we are today
i would argue that in some ways it's
shocking
i think we need to recognize here in
washington d.c and across the country
that comprehensive privacy legislation
for the united states is not just needed
it's long overdue
let's just look at what has happened
around the world while our congress has
been frozen in time
when we look at national privacy laws it
started in france and germany and
denmark and the nordics in 1989
in the 1990s it started to move across
to 2009 it spread further by 2018 it had
reached most of the world here we are in
2022 there's more than 120 jurisdictions
around the world that have passed a
national privacy law
and the united states increasingly
stands alone
and the fact of the matter is in my view
there is a critical element that we are
failing to think about in the united
states is that the failure of the united
states to legislate doesn't stop global
regulation
it doesn't even slow it down it just
makes our country less influential in
the world
and for a country like ours that has
rightly so long aspired to be a beacon
of hope and the protection of
fundamental rights
we don't do ourselves a service we don't
help the world when we sit on our hands
and just think for a moment about the
two issues that lead to continued
deadlock in congress in 2022
one involves a private right of action
the other involves preemption these are
two issues that have been part of every
consumer protection law in the united
states for more than a century
why is it that in the 1930s and 50s and
70s and 90s people could come together
but in our own day they cannot
it's because we're not signed up
to embrace the importance of compromise
and that is part of the mindset
that we need to change
but this isn't something that the tech
sector or the business community can
work by itself to advance
we need well-informed coordination
within governments
within every government around the world
for those of us who build technology for
those of you who work with technology
and apply it to
your employer's business
one thing is clear as i said before it
is complicated
and that the more you work with
technology the more you come to realize
that frankly some things are easier to
design than they are to build
some things are easier to build than
they are to operate i love this photo
this is the plane the spruce goose it
was paid for by the united states
government of world war ii it was
designed and built by howard hughes and
in 1948 it got 30 feet off the water and
that's the highest it ever flew
we can't afford
from a regulatory perspective
or a legal perspective
to put in place the kinds of rules
that are going to make it impossible
to build the technology the world needs
and that's going to require more
dialogue it's going to require a broader
vision it's going to require governments
to think from left to right about every
technology issue and that's what we're
starting to see
that's what this white house has
advanced with a bipartisan commission to
look at the future of technology and
that is a good example of what we're
going to need
i think another of the most important
early innovations of the 2020s comes
from the united kingdom
where they brought together the
principal regulatory agencies and have
created a digital regulation cooperation
forum to coordinate among them
but think about
what the world has done for every other
industry in area of technology think
about the food and drug administration
think about the federal aviation
administration think about the federal
communications commission
the most important question for us to
think about is this
what would a digital regulatory
commission look like
what would its scope be how would it
work
would we be better served to place in
the hands of people
pursuant to the rule of law
the ability to
learn and master the facts for an
industry and craft carefully
very thoughtful rules
is that a better future than asking a
congress or a legislature or a
parliament to go on a piecemeal basis
and
change each and every law
separately and with less
coordination one should always i think
be a little nervous
in inviting a government to be more
powerful in regulating yourself
but the truth is in a world where
regulation is becoming a reality
we need thoughtful regulation
and this is probably the conversation we
need to have
in the years and in this decade ahead
but because all of this is happening on
a global basis we need a third thing as
well we need coordination across borders
we're not in great shape to be honest
look at the privacy shield
an issue that took four months to
resolve five years ago has taken 18
months this time things are getting in
some ways more difficult rather than
easier and oh my gosh
just think about as you all i think
often see
what it means to work with technology
where regulation is spreading so broadly
and in so many legal fields
i sometimes get up in the morning and i
feel like i'm supposed to go to work
with some giant spreadsheet in my head
every row is an area of law every column
is a jurisdiction that's adopted a new
law every day there seems to be another
column and that's just for one product
every spreadsheet i'm sorry every
product needs its own spreadsheet
the world will not be able to manage
this level of regulatory growth this
creation of complexity without better
coordination across borders
and then finally we need one last thing
as well maybe it's the most important
thing it is definitely in my opinion
where you all will be critical
we need people who can think creatively
we need people who can think across
boundaries we need privacy regulators
and professionals and practitioners who
recognize that even privacy itself is
much less siloed than it used to be
some of the leading privacy issues of
our time involve the intersection
between say privacy and the protection
of children with digital safety it's the
intersection between privacy and cyber
security or as you just heard
the intersection of privacy and the
protection of public health
we need
to think across the traditional
intellectual boundaries that in some
ways have perhaps
too narrowly subscribed our thinking in
the past
two months ago i took my third trip to
the vatican my first since covet and it
to me is always a profound experience
because more than anything else it
stands for a simple proposition
the world's great philosophers the
world's great religious leaders
the humanities the social sciences
all have so much to contribute they all
have so many views that need to be heard
for us to think creatively
and comprehensively the way the world
will need
in some i will say this this is not
going to be easy
i had a conversation with one of the
senior most regulatory officials in
europe a month ago and as that person
said look the fundamental problem is
straightforward democracies have waited
so long to regulate this technology that
now we need to catch up we need to go
fast and to quote verbatim this will not
be beautiful
that may be the case but
we don't want it to be ugly either
we need to make it as beautiful as we
can
and at the end of the day while i think
the challenges to doing this well are so
complicated and formidable i also
believe in a very optimistic way that
the future can indeed be bright
and i will end on a personal note
because i think my personal experience
represents
the journey
that one can take
when i was in my early years at
microsoft we faced the worst anti-trust
legal decision that any company had been
handed in decades
literally a court order to break the
company up when i became the company's
general counsel in 2002 it became my
task to try to go
enter into peace agreements not just
with governments around the world but
with companies across the industry and
it was a long and
arduous and even painful tasks
on this day in 2007 i got to stand up in
front of 200 reporters and explain why
this 200-page legal decision that had
just been handed down didn't even have a
footnote in our favor
it was not
an easy process
but we came to terms with it and more
than anything else i realized that you
can find a way to navigate through the
thicket of demands expectations
that others have of you
and when i look at my job today
i am so happy
that most of my time is spent
on very different issues
we focus on our mission on how to bring
internet and broadband access to more
people and promote skilling and create
job opportunities how to put technology
to work not just to protect ukraine but
every democracy and the most fundamental
rights around the world how to harness
the power of technology to build a more
sustainable future and perhaps most
fundamentally
to build technology that the world can
trust
starting with privacy
this is what you all represent
this is the foundation that you have
built
but it's not just a foundation to which
the world can look for inspiration
it is the future
it is a future that can be bright if we
lean in if we embrace a new mindset
and we go forward
together
thank you very much
[Music]
so thank you brad smith for that very
compelling and vehement case for
regulation and new privacy rules that
span the federal
government so
ironically
i'm with a technology company that
really aims to help organizations
automate some of that regulation and
compliance so my name is dimitri sirota
i'm the ceo of big id
this is my third time at
ipp global congress i first came here in
2018 as a vendor
and it's incredible to see how far it's
come just in the three years that i've
been coming
in 2018
myself and my co-founder actually had to
set up our own booth and technology for
global regulations compliance were a new
thing gdpr was just about to come out
um and we were really part of a
pioneering crew
and it's amazing to see today not only
with all of you
here in the audience in terms of
professionals
working and helping organizations deal
with some of these regulations and
provide greater transparency to
consumers and employees and and that but
also seeing all of the new vendors and
technologies out there that are aiming
to
help provide um greater controls um and
uh transparency around how organizations
collect and process and dispose data so
uh it's been an amazing ride looking
forward to see many more years here uh
in dc with uh with you folks so without
further ado i am going to introduce our
next panel um i'm pleased to introduce
neil richards a coke distinguished
professor in law at washington
university uh school of law he'll be the
moderator and with him will be julia
anguin editor-in-chief and founder of
the markup
and cecilia kang
national technology correspondent for
the new york times so without further
ado i welcome them thank you
[Music]
so
[Music]
hello i'm i'm neil richards as he said
and i'm delighted to be joined today by
by two of the the most insightful
articulate uh journalists working i
think working at all but certainly in
technology uh cecilia kong and julia
anguin um i thought to start things off
uh it'd be interesting to hear about the
different perspectives that our two
journalists bring from very different
organizations the new york times and
and and the markup so i'll start with uh
with you julia uh how did you get to be
running the markup and what is your beat
uh or what is that the mark of speed and
then i'll ask the same question of
cecilia
sure it's so great to be here by the way
i've been coming to iapp for
so many years and
it's amazing how many people are here it
used to be a couple hundred people in a
hotel lobby if i remember correctly um i
am a technology journalist and i um i
grew up in silicon valley and actually
thought
that i would go into technology and i um
i
wanted to go into software but then i
fell in love with journalism
and flash forward i was at the wall
street journal i think it was around
2008
and i realized that
the industry that i covered software was
um
had changed you used to buy software in
boxes it was shrink wrapped and you paid
money for it and all of a sudden it was
free
and they were doing something with your
data that seemed weird and i was like
what is this new i really thought of it
as a what is this new business model
that's out there because it seems kind
of creepy and so i started a series
there called what they know at the wall
street journal about privacy and like
what was happening with your data
and
i eventually i thought it would be a
one-year series and that's uh 12 years
later and i'm still on the same story
essentially
i i did three years of that
investigation at the wall street journal
then i went to pro publica and then i
eventually felt that there was just a
need for there to be
a newsroom really devoted to this
particular question of the world of i
don't like to call it privacy i call it
the data exploitation market um and so i
i felt like there needed to be some
place that really specialized in writing
about this and so i founded the markup
which is a non-profit newsroom and if
you haven't been to our website it's
themarkup.org
and we write about all of the issues
that technology enables privacy being
one of them but we also write a lot
about algorithmic biases and other
ways that the world of digitization has
allowed policy decisions to be embedded
into opaque black box systems that you
can't examine and i think that that is
all enabled by
the incredible massive collection of
data about us
that builds and empowers all of those
systems and so we have a newsroom that
is half
engineers and half journalists and so we
take a very technological approach to
our coverage using advanced techniques
to examine this world
so that was a long answer
[Laughter]
so that's a great answer and i i love
the way you describe um
this term that you you you just
mentioned data expectation market um
instead of privacy
because i view a lot of my job
as just telling readers what's really
going on you know as a technology
journalist and i think this is
and that question the answer to that
question has really changed over time
we've seen a real evolution in
technology reporting and just to back up
i'm a technology reporter based in
washington for the new york times and
before joining the times about seven
years ago i was at the washington post
pretty much doing the same thing for
about a decade so i've also been
following a lot of the same stories for
a long time
and i can humbly say we're still
figuring it out and we're still trying
to tell you what's really going on and
just to flash back to an anecdote that
that i think illustrates that is around
2010
i remember having um being in a press
conference actually with
then facebook now meta um executives and
they kept saying the executives in this
call saying we have the best privacy
controls of any company in the world we
have the most like the mo we give
consumers the most control
over all of their their data
and they would say that on the hill when
they would visit members of congress and
what we really realized is that
we didn't add that to what i realized
now is that at that time i didn't really
quite understand what that meant it was
almost a distraction from what was
really happening yes there were tons of
different drop-down
options that you'd have on facebook on
how who could see your data but what
that was obscuring or distracting from
was the fact that the company was
gobbling up so much data and that was
and that advertisers were getting access
to that data and it took quite some time
for folks on the hill for journalists to
realize that's actually the ball we
should be chasing not how many controls
every consumer has
and i use that i mentioned that anecdote
to describe that these are the kinds of
things that we're trying to figure out
to look behind the messaging oftentimes
of companies to tell consumers how does
this how do these decisions and the
technologies that are being created by
these incredibly powerful
companies affecting you as individuals
and so we're just digging constantly and
we're still in the same story
i completely agree with you about
control um as an academic whose job it
is to be uh insightful and perhaps
critical of the world that we that we
see around us um i agree that i think i
think control is a myth it's an argument
that i've explored in some of my writing
including at the risk of shameless
self-promotion my new book why privacy
matters but putting that to one side um
in identifying things like the the the
smoke screen that is
informational self-determination or
putting users in control of their data
how do you guys approach
your role of informing the public if
that is indeed what you see your role as
and but assume that it is how do you
figure out how which stories to
prioritize which concepts to try and get
in people's minds
and how do you go about
crafting
those stories so that your readers can
understand what what they need to
understand what's going on
well it's a great question because i
think when i first started writing about
privacy in 2010
it was actually you just had to convince
readers that there was even something to
worry about really people weren't
focused on this issue and so
um
there was a lot of
why this matters and that's still true
to some degree but i feel like the
people now understand a lot better than
they did
that
in all their data's being collected it's
being used for weird things cambridge
analytica was a big wake-up call for
people and so i think that the
the
issue for journalists now is
to be a little bit more precise about
the harm about
um exactly what types of cutting-edge
techniques are being used against them
one thing that we did at the markup is
we realized that
there was so much happening um and we
can't a lot of people um
you might read a story about some app
that's stealing your data but you don't
use that app so it doesn't really matter
to you so we thought let's build a tool
where readers can actually learn about
whatever they want so we built this
thing called blacklight and if you
haven't gone to it it's a tool where you
just enter the url of any website and we
actually run a real-time forensic
privacy analysis at that moment of what
types of techniques it's using so it
tells you about how many cookies and how
many
trackers and which companies but it also
tells you things that you wouldn't
really know
that are pretty advanced like are they
doing what's called session recording
where they record every movement of your
bra of your mouse and where you scroll
on the page and send like a little video
of your actions back are they using some
techniques like the google remarketing
cookie which basically is
tracking you across other websites um in
addition to the google analytics that
you're on that page and so it really is
an amazing way to see how different
websites act and people write to us all
the time like you know
i was able to check my kids school and i
saw that they were doing this thing and
that's really wrong and i wrote to the
principal and they changed it and so i
feel like we've given people a chance to
do their own advocacy around these
issues and i think that is what people
want is they want to know a little bit
more precisely not just generally bad
scary things are happening but what bad
scary things are happening to me
yeah i would say that's it's a real
challenge in writing about privacy is
that it can feel very abstract and that
the the harm does not feel immediate nor
does it feel tangible for for a lot of
readers so
um looking for the stories that can be
animated by real life anecdotes
you know how
how a new technology tool
a new collaboration between companies
a regulatory decision translates or has
a downwind effect and affects real
individuals
that's sort of the the the magic sort of
rubric we're trying to
look through and trying to find stories
through which to write
about it's hard it's really hard and
we're talking backstage about for
example even
cambridge analytica is a story which was
a watershed moment incredibly important
to really and surfaced a lot of
concern and interest in business models
and decisions from like decades ago
about opening up a platform like
facebook and how data is being used
differently
it takes like five paragraphs to explain
even what cape breton look at is and it
can be for some readers it's kind of
something that either makes their eyes
glaze over or just goes over their head
and the challenge is to we we believe at
the times is our service is really to
explain to the public in very accessible
ways why they should care what's really
going on and
sometimes the best way is to do it
through anecdotes through real
individuals but you know in terms of
trying to find the stories there's
there are limits frankly in a newspaper
story and this is one reason why we
wrote our book my co-author and ice
because
we realized that there was so much more
than the one-off stories to explain what
was really happening at now meta
we needed to
we wanted to and we needed to explain to
readers what the business model was and
those are the kinds of things again that
is sort of a work in progress that all
journalists are doing a fantastic job
and i should say julia was like a
pioneer her wall street journal story
series was like that opened everyone's
eyes that they should care it's that
kind of evolution that took place to get
to the point where we can now
assume that consumers have a readers
have a baseline knowledge of data
privacy and what that means and build on
that in terms of news stories it's
interesting that the the process of of
public education um and the the the
level of sophistication with which the
public can talk about privacy today um
we're no longer having the conversation
is privacy out of date or is it people
get it they seem to they seem to care
because they do care because they
realize that it's about avoiding harm
and it's also about avoiding
manipulation and the data confers power
um but along the lines of your book
you've both written long-form pieces of
journalism in books your book an ugly
truth and and julia's book um dragnet
nation but both of which are highly
recommended wonderful treatments how do
you see the relationship between the
long-form journalism
in a book
versus the the the shorter form
journalism of
of you know new
traditional or in julia's case some
non-traditional but
news stories that
that are
more ephemeral
yeah i mean my book uh dragnet nation
came out in 2014 and it's so hilarious
to me now because i felt at the time
that i was writing a pretty
you know overheated like
things are gonna be bad you guys need to
wake up call and then when i look back
at it i was actually under paranoid like
i did not see some of the things coming
i did not see how quickly facial
recognition was going to become
mainstream and used ubiquitously and and
certainly not in like these crazy ways
like with clearview ai where just
wild and unregulated scraping of photos
from the internet and
and so i think back on that book as like
wow
i was trying to i was trying to get
people
interested in this topic and the way i
did it was by trying to protect my own
privacy i spent a year trying all these
different techniques using burner phones
using tor web browser using lots of
things that most of you are familiar
with probably and
the point of that exercise was not
actually to succeed
it was to show the reader that this is
no way to live and maybe regulation or
some other
way that we can handle this because
trying to deal with it as an individual
problem is not really solvable and that
was the question that i was trying to
answer that i couldn't answer in my
journalism right was the question that
everyone asked me the reason i wanted to
write that book was they were like well
why should i care
i don't have anything to hide i um i use
you know
this one web browser so i'm safe and i
wanted to explain that this is a
collective problem and it needs
collective solutions and i'm going to
show you by trying to pursue the
individualistic solution and show you
how failed it is and so i think that's
the purpose of these books is to answer
those bigger meta questions that are in
that are
raised by the reporting that are really
hard to answer in any of these formats
in a long form investigative piece or
even a short
explainer article and cecilia's book is
about the massive question so to speak
yeah yeah no
pun intended so they um
so yeah our
i agree with everything that julie just
said for for us our book um was actually
born from our reporting at the new york
times
we found that we were in many ways
writing the same story over and over
again when it came to meta
it was
it was big scandal or crisis that
surfaces into the public
you know huge cry of apology from an
executive promises to do better
and then
repeat the cycle
and
we found ourselves shira frankel and i
asking ourselves as well as you know
the smart people who we turn to for our
sources over and over
is this
are these accidental or is there is
there some sort of
idea or like some sort of theory behind
these this pattern
and that was our animating question in
terms of asking the big meta question
was like what is behind this this series
of apologies over and over again
and what we found is actually it was not
really a frankenstein's monster getting
away from its creator story that was
totally unpredictable in fact the
machinery of facebook being the business
model and the technology were working as
intended
and that was sort of our thesis and
that's what we came up with after
interviewing so many hundreds of people
and so that was that we could not do
necessarily in a newspaper story but was
absolutely developed from the corpus of
work that we had developed at the new
york times at the washington post and
for her as a foreign correspondent and
so many other places and so it all built
on each other but the book
the service i think to julia's point as
well that a book provides is to connect
the dots also because you're reading all
these stories and you're thinking okay i
think i should feel bad about
edward snowden i think i should feel bad
about you know cambridge analytica i
think i should feel bad about these
things that we're reading about off and
on but how does this all what's the
method or the theory behind this and it
was kind of clear it was the business
model
what do you
what are you working on now what what
what issues
or what will you be working on what are
the issues that you guys think
are going to be the ones that are that
are worth covering in depth the ones
that are that
sorry yeah the capacity to capture the
public imagination
um as we as as you hope to advance this
public understanding in the service of
of advancing informed public debate and
deliberation on on the sorts of
regulatory questions that brad smith was
just talking about
i mean i think we're in a really
interesting time as brad
talked about we're on the cusp of
regulation and
tech policy
in the u.s which has been really stalled
is now happening it's not happening at
the federal level but it's happening at
the state level and state after state
are passing privacy laws and
the reality is that
those are probably going to
conflict with each other and create the
need for a federal harmonization
and so what's happening is the policy is
being written
in places where people aren't paying
attention right most state capitals
their journalism has been totally
depleted you know and it's worth noting
that um
the rise of big tech uh has
directly impacted um journalists
revenues and so one of the things that
has happened over the years is that um
you know my profession our profession is
um cratering
and and that's a real harm to democracy
and so one thing by the way that just
people ask all the time is what is the
harm of creepy ads following you on the
internet and one of the harms is the
destruction of journalism which by the
way might lead to
the destruction of democracy because you
need watchdogs on power
otherwise you don't have a check on
power and journalists our job is to be a
check on power and so right now what you
see that i'm very worried about is a lot
of really important laws being written
at the state level without very much
oversight and so i think that we're in a
world where
honestly the the companies who are the
most to gain from gaming these laws can
easily influence them at the state level
and um really set policy in a way where
people are not paying any attention so
i'm
the markup was written about this and
we're writing more about this and this
is one of many issues obviously there's
european regulation as well but i think
in the u.s the state privacy laws is the
thing to watch
there is this great irony that um as
someone who's sort of been an adult and
a lawyer and an academic through the
the the growth of what we think of now
as the internets that uh that a set of
technologies run by companies that were
touted sincerely as as promoting the
information age and allowing everyone to
have access to information
have simultaneously had a business model
that has undermined the foundation of
the journalism that we need to make
sense of this this fire hose or torrent
or
choose your watery metaphor here of
information that is that that is washing
over us um
what do you think is is coming next and
yeah i mean how journalism particularly
traditional print journalism uh can rise
to the challenge
yeah i mean i think
the
technology
data expectation markets as well as
a lot of the regulatory action that's
that's happening right now
makes this probably one of the best
beats i think i probably have one of the
best beats in the paper right now and i
think very few people would agree with
me
so which is fine with me because i'm
happy to do this because this is the
nexus of power
it's the nexus of um
of of government accountability this is
these are the things that we should be
writing about as journalists so
i'm really fascinated with what's
happening in the market itself um how
apple
um
as my colleague kara swisher says tim
cook is america's privacy regulator
right now um i think that that's you
know whether you agree with or not
there's a there's some interesting truth
in that like we're seeing
real market changes because of a
decision by apple on its att product
um it's really interesting to see
consumer behavior change and you see
this with the earnings reports from
google and meta and all these other
companies and especially at um at meta
you're seeing younger users leave the
site so consumers are changing their
habits and on the regulatory landscape
super fascinating what's happening on
the local state level national level
which is i'm sorry i'm one of the only
people here that may think i don't think
that there's going to be federal
regulation regulation very soon at all
but maybe i will eat my lunch when i if
i'm wrong um but really importantly also
the splintering of the global internet
and different regulatory changes we hear
about the splinter net but how what does
it mean to have essentially three types
of internet maybe now two different
types of internet and what does that
mean in terms of our world and thinking
about sort of big themes like as a
global society and how we are
accessing and viewing and thinking about
information differently communicating
differently
that's fascinating we only have a couple
of minutes left so i want to end with a
final question that i think will be of
great interest to possibly everybody in
the room which is how do peop privacy
professionals uh people in what is in
large part a compliance and risk
management industry
avoid appearing on the front page of the
new york times or the byline of the
markup um
try not to
sell your users data in bulk to
massive data brokers unanimized um
and um
and then not be honest about it in your
privacy policy would be a starting point
um but i would say like it is are you
reading privacy policies
uh we read yeah we i mean yeah we are
one of the few people who read them um
you can uh so you guys will be
appreciative there is an audience for
your work fist bump from somebody
right here
i read them too
so this is a conflict of interest i need
you to be on
my stories well listen i think so so in
negative stories right so so what are
the sorts of yeah it's a conflict
but um
no i think what's
what what the smarter we are the better
off everyone is right
if you try to deduct and you know dodge
and
you know actually distract and sometimes
deceive
then that's problematic for everybody
the story eventually gets out and you
also don't build goodwill and the public
needs to understand you know if you
hear you know
if if they're
these are complicated topics and
you know like just for example i was
trying to write a story about the ad
tech market oh my god like try to write
that for a new york times audience you
know it's like really really
um
hard to make it accessible and
it writes about that in plain language
just if like i'm very grateful when i'm
able to talk to privacy experts and
professionals who can
be so generous as to lend their
knowledge and um that's a good way to
appear in a story i would imagine so not
such a conflict of interest not such a
conflict of interest
um
i i think unfortunately we're at the end
of our time so please join me in
thanking cecilia kong and julian
you
[Music]
first of all i just want to thank our
keynote panel
professor olasoga
brad smith
neil richards julia anguin and cecilia
king let's give them a round of applause
for an amazing keynote
[Applause]
my name is dominique shelton leipzig i
am a proud member of the iapp board and
a partner at mayor brown i do lead the
global data innovation team
what we heard today from brad and
professor olusoga is that data is now no
longer a compliance issue but a business
imperative
we have a situation where data is in the
positionally in the midst of moving
markets i was reading about the nasdaq
market share of 1.3 trillion lost just
at the end of march
we are generating 2.5 quintillion bytes
of data per day uh so the global
pandemic has
in that matter will only increase as
brad was talking about the connected
devices that we have
listening to uh cecilia and julia talk
about tracking ad tech this is uh really
a 800 billion dollar market that is in
flux
all of us here have an important role to
play and how the the future is shaped
and so i hope you all will continue to
enjoy the rest of the conference
interact with each other and use this
opportunity to continue the dialogue
when you get back to your homes thanks
so much and enjoy the rest of the
[Music]
i can feel afternoon in the future
i can see it in the culture
i see the