Watch sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. Jeff kosip is a professor of cybersecurity law at the u. S. Naval academy and also the author of the book the 26 words that created the internet and these are the 26 words that can be found in section 230 of the Communications Decency act of 1996. They say no provider or user of an Interactive Computer Service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker provided by another content provider. Jeff, explain what those 26 words mean. To understand what they mean you have to first understand the history of why Congress Passed it and the basic rule under the First Amendment going back to bookstores was that distributor of someone elses content would only be held liable if they knew or had reason to know of their legal content and when we started having early Online Services and the clerk started to say, well, if you dont moderate any user content you can receive that protection because youre like a bookstore, but if you moderate user content then youre more like a store. In 1996 Congress Passed section 230 of the decency act which basically said it doesnt matter if you moderate or dont moderate, if you know or have reason to know of the content and subject to a few exceptions you will have this very broad immunity for the content that users post. Go back to 1996, what would in your mind the development of the internet look like without section 230 . So i think it would be very difficult to have some of the current platforms under their Current Business model. So yelp, for example, is a great example. If you did not have section 230 yelp could be liable for every negative review that someone posts if they dont take it down immediately upon receiving a complaint. So you think about how useful would yelp be if they started reviewing every onestar review youd have a lot of fivestar averages. Why are we talking about section 230 and why is Congress Interested in this. Its taken on new visibility because of two separate types of criticism. The platforms are not moderating nearly enough so theres a lot of harmful content, fake propaganda, hate speech that gets through videos of shootings that arent taken down immediately and thats one set of criticisms and what those critics say is thats contrary to the intent of section 30 that it was passed in part to encourage moderation. Then theres another criticism thats basically along the lines of large platforms like google, youtube, twitter censoring certain political viewpoints and conservatives are saying this that they dont get the best search results or their content is demonetized and theyre saying thats political bias. Why are we giving 230 protection to these platforms that are biased against certain political viewpoints. Go back to something you just said that there was a thought out there that was passed to encourage moderation. If you were not held liable for anything, how does that encourage moderation . So the idea is that the platforms will develop the moderation policies that those users demand. So if the platform doesnt do any moderation and lets say google or youtube or twitter just allowed every bit of content out there. Thats probably not going to be a great place to be and consumers will walk and its a theory called Consumer Empowerment and the idea is to have the government set moderation standards for First Amendment issues and lets have these platforms that are accountable for these users. Thats the theory. So do you think thats happened in the way that the original writers of section 230 thought would happen . I think it hasnt in some respects, there are very detailed moderation policies. I would say that the platforms have been very far from perfect in both how they implement and how they communicate their policies. I am at the Naval Academy and i interact with intelligence agencies as well and sometimes the intelligence agencies are more transparent than some of the Online Platforms in terms of and thats not what should be happening. They really need to be communicating and this is what we do and they need to better involve users in these decisions. Jeff kosip is our guest and professor of cybersecurity law at the u. S. Naval academy and the author of the book the twentysix words that created the internet. Phone lines are open for the conversation. Democrats 2027488000, republicans 2027488001, and independents 2027488002. The bill at the white house, as well, set up the players in this debate right now and how theyre lining up on either side of this . So you have so there were two members of congress who sponsored section 230. One is chris cox now in private law practice and the other senator rod wyden. Is that the chris cox that was at the nra. No, he was the sec chairman under president bush. Gotcha. So they wrote section 230 and theyve both been advocating and senator wyden has been a pretty strong defender currently. In terms of the critics there are holly and cruz who have taken a lead is on saying these platforms should not be biassed on certain political viewpoints and senator hawley introduced legislation that would basically condition section 230 protections for larger platforms on some form of political neutrality. On the other side i would say there are a lot of democrats who were saying theres not enough moderation and Speaker Pelosi has suggested eliminating section 230 and shes had she recently had that video of her that was altered and that was shared pretty widely. So thats been really an example of the undermoderation of platforms. Where does the president come down on this and the top advisers at the white house. I am not aware of any specific statements. I know he held a social media forum where he praised senator hollys efforts on legislation which i would assume is the bill about a political bias. Do you personally take a stand on what should happen here . Ill take the caveat and im not speaking on behalf of the Naval Academy and dod. What i think needs to be done is all sides are raising really important issues and we have a lot of anecdotes and we have a lot of contradicting anecdotes and what i would stress most importantly is that section 230 is so fundamental to the infrastructure of how the ecosystem has been belt that its not its not something that can change. Its something that we have to really, really carefully consider how to change it if were going to. Is there a middle ground here between the status quo and creating a federal online content liability czar that gets to decide whats fair and whats not . I think there are a lot of different options and one option which would be great is to require better transparency among the platform so we can first find out what actually are they doing . Are these results people complain about is are they algorithms or optimization or Something Else . So the transparency would be one thing and i think also there are certain cases where harmful content may have been adjudicated to be defamatory or harmful to individuals on making sure and seeing if that could come down from the internet because sometimes the content could devastate peoples lives. So i think there are a lot of options to consider, and i think everything should be on the table and congress about a year and a half ago amended section 230 to deal with the issue of online sex trafficking. I want to talk about that, and bring up callers. Online content and the liability thereof is our topic and the phone lines for democrats, republicans and well start with benjamin in california, an independent. Go ahead. Hi, good morning. You are on with jeff kosip. So my question is how does cybersecurity coordinate or relate to poverty because usually security threats are coordinated with poverty or instability in county roos and how the cybersecurity specifically relate to that kind of thing like Internet Access and things like that. I think theres always been a Digital Divide and this is separate from section 230, but cybersecurity is an area that i research and practice, and i think that one interesting thing as cybersecurity practices across the board have been very weak and part of that is a lack of training, education, which i personally think should be starting from the very early ages in Elementary School and high school to develop good cyber hygiene practices so people might be less likely to click on a link or click on an attachment that could have devastating consequences for them and their employers. Are there states that created that in Elementary School and high school. Are they doing it the best right now . Its been scattered and there have been some and i talk with my students who are undergrad, and i every year i ask them how many of you have cybersecurity training . More and more, more hand goes up so that makes me happy. Not enough hands because i frankly think that should be one of the Top Priorities in education. Are you optimistic on that front . I think so. I think theres more awareness than there ever has been before in cyber security. I think it cut the cybersecurity threats cut across every portion of our society and whether its political, economic, individual rights and privacy. I think people are recognizing it, it just takes a little while for that toness tro translate i action. Good morning. I think that there should be some rules against somebody being able just to go on and trash somebody over say theyve had a minor disagreement over something, whatever it might be and they annihilate their reputations and destroy their businesses and everything, and for anybody not to want that protected, i just dont understand where theyre coming from. We want to be able to use the internet and have it be safe and not just because we disagree with somebody its called, you know, were called unamerican or whatever, socialist. Pat, well take the point to pats concern. Yeah. So the internet has given us a mirror to society and its a mirror for the good things and the very bad things. One important thing to note is that even with section 230, someone who has been defamed and harmed and these harms are real and devastating. They can still go after legally the person who created the content. There are a few problems with that. Sometimes the really bad actors post anonymously so you cant identify them and also they might not have sufficient assets that showing them would be worthwhile. So the discussion with section 230 would be if we cant necessarily hold the posters accountable, then do we hold the platforms accountable if they fail to take actions to protect us . Come back to the book, the twentysix words that created the internet why was this fundamental to your mind of the creation of the internet. Why this specific provision . This was so fundamental because the largest websites in the world both in the largest platforms in the United States, facebook, twitter, youtube. You think about how they can function if there was even the chance of them being liable for the vast amount of user content thats out there and they would have to have very different business models. The United States is the only country that has such a broad protection for platforms and is home to many of the largest platforms. How does it work in some other countries . Some other countries it varies and some have the default protections that we have under the First Amendment for distributors which is if you know or have reason to know then you can be liable, so what that effectively creates is a takedown system. In europe, there is a right to be forgotten where there has to be removal of certain information thats determined to have substantial privacy invasion and that was flee speech and other hate speech laws that require the prevention or removal of certain hate speech. Theres a wide variety of approaches and then some other countries that will go further and prevent certain types of content that will be posted that might be critical of government. The United States is really an outliar in terms of the protection that provides distributors. If you want to join the conversation, democrats, 2027488000, republicans 2027488001, and independents 2027488002. John is in south carolina, republican. Go ahead. Yes, i would like for your guest to explain the two platforms that i see each morning when i wake up and turn my computer on on google and then yahoo right underneath it. Explain the difference between the two platforms, if you will, and the reason im concerned because yahoo , i think the lady who owns yahoo , i know for a fact shes a trump hater. So you want to know the difference between the Search Engines . Yeah, and why yahoo , why yahoo never, ever, they never say anything good every headline is a negative President Trump headline. Jeff . So google yahoo actually developed first in yahoo in the 90s with the Search Engine in google quickly took the vast majority of the Search Market share. What it sounds like youre talking about isnt just the search results and also the news headlines. Yahoo actually has some news staff and they have a section thats more like a traditional news service and thats where they probably have more editorial discretion. Google is much more focused on its algorithm for both its search results and for the google news. I think that might be what youre seeing is that there isnt at least in some sites theyd even offer a search and they still have more discretion over the stories theyre running. Dairy, new hampshire. Sabrina, republican. Good morning. Good morning. So id just like to know and i understand that this is about liability and people that make negative comments about corporations and what not, so whats in place for the other way around, meaning what if these people that are making these negative comments are actually correct in what theyre observing. How does it swing the other way so that you see people and entities are investigatory agencies trying to find out what the truth is. Are they even trying to find out what the truth is or are we just bolstering up Corporate America once again to be able to escape accountability . So thats definitely the idea of section 230 allowing platforms to escape accountability and its definitely a criticism that has been raised for probably two decades from people who say, you know, the platforms are not transparent and they dont necessarily remove the content that we know is false and harmful. So i think the criticism that youre raising is something that has persisted over time and its probably gotten louder as platforms have, frankly, become far more important. We have to remember that when section 230 was passed in 1996 we were talking about prodigy and compuserve ora aol and theyre not like twitter or google in less than ten minutes in this conversation. Democrats, republicans and independents open as folks continue to call in. Go back to the discussion about amending section 230 and the history here of why its been amended in the past and how often its been amended. Theres only been one substantial amendment and technical changes and the substantial amendment happened from 2017 to 2018 and this came from concerns about a particular site called back page that had hosted classified ads, but many of the classified ads involved sex trafficking and some of those involved sex trafficking of minors. There were three women that were trafficked on back page and they went up to a federal Appellate Court which dismissed the case under section 230 in 2016. That got a lot of criticism saying, you know, this isnt just defamation. These are children who were sold online and that caused congress over about a oneyear period to consider and then pass an amendment the firstever substantive amendment to section 230 that exempts certain types of sex trafficking laws from civil and also state, criminal prosecution. Was there anybody who tried to fight that on such a sensitive topic . So the tech industrys response was not great. They talked about frivolous lawsuits and plaintiffs lawyers rather than acknowledge there are real harms that are happening. So i think were they scared of the slippery slope argument, too . Yeah. There were two interesting things to note. First, theres always been an exception for federal criminal law and a few days before the president signed this amendment into law the fbi seized and was able to shut down back page and indicted people who were involved in the site. So this happened without this amendment and the second thing is that youre starting to see platforms and youre very ris a riskaverse and you might not say that was necessarily the end of the world and that shows you the platforms are going to be risk averse when youre amending section 230. Newport richey, florida. Ann is a republican. Good morning. Yes, id like to ask jeff kosip, if im pronouncing his name correctly. Yes. I remember when europe changed over civility laws about please, you know, people should be respected online. The other thing that i wanted to enter ject into the conversation is online content and liability. We have a lot of breaches every day in the government and the fbi today and what liability do people have laws and to the regular people have in the timely manner to correct any information thats connected to those losses and actually, id like to ask you if you are at the Naval Academy, what do you think about all of this stuff with the dark web because, really, most people dont even use the dark web . Lots of questions there. The first issue about civility and approaches in europe and its very different in terms of its core legal values for speech in the United States and this goes beyond section 230 and in europe they have much stronger privacy rights while in the United States weve always had a much greater value for Free Expression over privacy, and i think you see those values within the section 230 debate. In terms of the breaches, im not sure if you were talking about data breach e and i think thats a little outside if youre outside the scope of section 230 because companies can be held liable for data breaches. Unfortunately, thats currently theres not a very strong legal system in the United States for that right now. We have a patchwork of state laws and we have a fairly weak law that empowers that pc to take certain actions and there are a lot of calls to have much stronger laws of both the state and federal level and you saw california just do that. I wonder, before we leave, breaches, what you think will happen in the wake of the news making front pages around the country today. Capital one, the fifth biggest u. S. Credit card issuer said monday that hackers had accessed the personal information of approximately 106 million card customers and applicants, one of the largestever data breaches of the large bank. So i think that will help to further strengthen the call for a strong federal Data Security law. We do have some, but theyre fairly weak. I know in that case i think and most of the Social Security numbers werent disclosed, but we need to have a broader conception of what constitutes a data breach because there are a lot of breaches that are harmful and not adequately covered by current laws. Her last question was on the dark web. Yeah, so, this is actually the subject of my next book which is about the u. S. Approach to anonymity both off line and online and this goes back to the issue of the United States really valuing Free Expression and there are Supreme Court cases going back more than a half century that have protected the rights of people to speak anonymously. It started with cases that refused to require the membership lists and it goes to modern day anonymity protections. In the United States i think it would be we have this legal challenge and we also have technological challenges with Services Like tour that help protect anonymity, which many of the advocates say are fundamental to the american ability to speak freely. To bring it back to section 230 before we run out of time, what is the timing of any potential new change to that law . Im not really sure of politics. Its outside of my expertise. The criticisms im hearing from democrats and republicans are very different from section 230. So im not sure how you reconcile the criticisms that theyre moderating too much and theyre moderating too little into a single bill. And last question for you from twitter from john locke. To the larger question of trust to the internet as someone who studies cybersecurity and how do you respond to john saying i have no doubt that everything we save or type, we will have the same system as china. I dont know if i would go that far, but i do think that especially in a lot of these recent breach cases weve seen that companies do retain data for quite a long time and its wise to be careful about what you put online. Jeff kosip is the professor of cybersecurity law. He wrote the twentysix words that created the internet. We appreciate your time this morning. Thanks so much. Washington journal mugs are available at cspans new online store been go to cspanstore. Org and see all of the cspan products. Earlier today arkansas republican senator tom cotton talked about immigration and National Security issues. He appeared at an event hosted by the center for Immigration Studies here in washington, d. C. This is about 40 minutes. Good morning. My name is Mark Kerkorian for the cente