Host if you could, in a general sense before we get specific, share with us your philosophical thought at this time about that. Guest i would say two things. First, we need wellcrafted regulation. Regulation that protects peoples privacy online and make sure that we have robust competition but that does not impede or innovation or competitive advantage over europe or other nations. I do believe there is a possibility to get that wellcrafted regulation but candidly, congress as an extraordinary knowledge gap and people here frankly do not understand Technology Well enough so we need to educate ourselves and see if we can have wellcrafted regulation. Second, and equally important, we need to extend the promise of Silicon Valley with job creation and a new economy to communities left out into communities and Rural America in communities of color. Right now almost every american is a consumer of technology but if you get to participate in the creation of these news jobs and wealth. We have to do a better job of making sure people from around the country to participate and have access to the jobs of the future. Host can you give an example of what you mean by wellcrafted . Guest for example, an privacy regulation we want to make sure that before people transfer data they get an individual consent but we may not need an individuals consent if a company is just transferring data about a Third Party Verification for a credit card. You probably dont want to have to consent every time an ordinary business practice is done to verify that your credit card is yours. We need a regulation that says yes, lets consent for collection of data but make an exception for ordinary business use cases. That is how, for example, californias privacy law was modeled. Host congressman ro khanna joining us at the table and looking at the specific issues is crag of the Washington Post. Hello, congressman, how are you . Im good, thanks. You mentioned the knowledge gap in your opening remarks and i thought about this a lot over the years and every time there is a hearing on the hill involving technology issues, twitter. With complaints and the guys dont you to use their iphones and how they regulate facebook, twitter, google how do you fix that . These companies are paying huge salaries and bonuses and a hard place to be so how could congress and federal government get better at knowing and understanding tech and potentially crafting useful policies and laws . Guest there has to be a greater curiosity and willingness to learn. Members of congress dont have an expertise in the Financial Sector but they take an interest in that they dont have an expertise in healthcare but take an interest in that. For too long washington has not paid sufficient attention to Silicon Valley and has not understood what profound impacts they are having on the economy. I would urge every member of congress to come to my district to spend a few days meeting with Technology Leaders and its worse that members of congress dont know how to use an iphone and members of congress did not know apple made the iphone and a particular case where a member of congress was grilling the ceo of google arguing that google made the iphone and then paraded him because when the ceo said it depends what apps you have on your phone whether we can track you the Congress Person that i dont know what apps are and i dont care what apps are. Theres a smugness and not understanding that culture has to change. A big news story and tech has been the washington story about ice and fbi accessing facial recognition data on every american in the country. Drivers license and images and databases that the federal can access tell me what he thought of that story and the possibility that something will happen with this issue . Guest it is concerning. You know the facial recognition is not perfect and can be subject to racial profiling and has the inherent biases that are prevalent in society. I think what is necessary for us to have clear guidelines for the use of facial recognition or Artificial Intelligence to make sure the technology is being used for good uses. For example, in medicine major reusing technology to diagnose things with greater accuracy or using Artificial Intelligence to help make access to education more apparent or to process statistics and it should not be these technologies that are used a third of the racial divides or furthering the erosion of civil liberty. Stanford has started a consumer interest center on artificial technologists in the technology i have great hope for an they will assemble some of the greatest minds and practitioners in the world to think through these issues. Obviously, theres attention here and if we have the director of the fbi he says we use this technology to run down terrorist threats and ask you to discover child predators. Youre talking about protecting Civil Liberties witches what all of us like to see happen but where do you draw these lines . If you cant go into face recognition database to stop a terrorist threat and go after child predators, i guess i want to ask is there any category for crime for which you think should be open or which categories of crime it should not be open . Guest im not saying we should wholesale ban these of technology. There are useful technologies that allow us to better protect terrorists or crime and we should use them but there should be clear guidelines on the use of it and that we need to know technology is not being exploited or misused so i would want to see data that breaks down race and gender to see whether certain populations are being more subject to the use of the technology or not and i would want to make sure Civil Liberties were being respected so that before you have the use of this technology you have a court that said theres probable cause or some standard that would be met and that you werent using the technology for surveillance violating peoples rights. I think these are ageold dilemmas that the courts can adjudicate and that congress can pass laws protecting peoples privacy just because your new technology doesnt mean that we throughout the safeguard of the constitution. Im curious your read on the politics of this in congress. The post reported back in 2013 that the state license database were used by federal authorities up to 125 million americans and it has grown but im curious if we entered an era in 2019 when Congress Might act on this . Congress is struggling to do anything right now rather than fight over partisan matters and is there an opportunity for congress to come together . Guest i do inhouse. Mcconnell has not done anything in the senate thats not part but we can pass something inhouse that is thoughtful where we do regulate the use of the technology and allow one person to use it but safeguard privacy but you could even get republicans like will heard on board with that kind of approach but whether you can get a move in the senate or president to sign it thats a difficult list. Let me change subjects. We all know how extensive our Technology Company to interfere in the president ial election of 2016 is the biggest story of the past few years but im curious if you look into your crystal ball a little bit and head to another president ial cycle, potentially even more hotly contested and more countries deeply interested in the outcome of that election so what do you think we will see in 2020 and terms of social media . Guest big concern of mine. I dont think enough has been done yet. There is better coordination between social Media Companies online for cement but one thing that needs to be fixed social Media Companies should be sharing information with each other and bad actors. That is not happening and for example if you go to open up a fraudulent account at wells fargo thank you cant the next day go open it up in bank of america or citibank. The shares makes sure that information but if youre on facebook that is interfering for sewing discontent and facebook fans you you could the next day go on to twitter or go on to you to so we need better platforms where social Media Companies can share information and share best practices and we need a real commitment in terms of resources that they will be prepared to remove any actors that have a suspicion of foreign interference on the election. Host congressman ro khanna, at some point is the censorship . Guest well, it is censorship if you are influencing speech. Obviously, you want to make sure that platforms are open to speech but i dont think its censorship if youre saying that the russians should not be allowed to have targeted messages to africanamericans in communities to suppress their vote by engaged in blatant falsehoods. I dont think that standard is censorship coming from a private company not from the u. S. Government. You raised the question about social Media Companies are doing enough to share information and i wonder if its a realistic expectation that a bunch of private Companies Whose main motive will ultimately be profit if they be the ones to protect our democracy . Is that a reasonable ask . If not, whose job is it and who is doing the job . Guest i dont think we can leave the burden on private companies for the reason you savored the primary response ability is for their shareholders to make a profit as well intentioned as they may be but their charges to their companies, not to the security of the United States so ultimately its the response ability of congress and the encouraging thing ive had constructive conversations with minority leader Kevin Mccarthy and he understands these issues and his son worked in Silicon Valley and quite savvy about technology, leader mccarthy is. Im hopeful we may work on legislation in the next couple months that addresses this issue of better preparing our Technology Platform with the threat of foreign interference. Lets say you pull that off. Is the president an impediment to measures that might protect the country . Guest i worked with the white house a couple constructive projects the president signed my bill to modernize federal websites and working on reducing paperwork and federal agencies so my hope is the White House Office of innovation would recognize that this is not a partisan issue but you can see Foreign Countries wanting to interfere as much on the liberal side of the conservative but we should reject that and i hope that is what the hell white house will look at it and not make it partisan. Host congressman ro khanna, a conversation being held washington at least is perhaps censorship of conservatives on social media. Do you think thats a legitimate complaint . Guest i dont. Its quite absurd even that i dont think donald trump would be president if it werent for social media and Silicon Valley secretary clinton got 99 but donald trump got the buzz on social media and their campaign and using it our Democratic Campaign was and these problems at the bias is just not true. Host do you consider facebook and twitter like the Washington Post the Media Company . Guest i do think their new Media Company. There are a hybrid and not the Washington Post and if we write a letter to the Washington Post they get a lot of letters but its not 2 billion letter so its easier to monitor content and edit it i dont think facebook is a web platform with so many people are going to facebook to get their news. The question is what is their responsibility and they cant pass a fact check all 2 billion users content but maybe we have some responsibility if a post goes viral or goes to election to take down propaganda or put in other perspectives. I think theres a whole field on new media ethics that is missing and we need a Journalism School from new Media Companies to come up with some rules. For example, the reason question post, if i were to say or say on cspan since ive been elected weve had 20 Economic Growth in my district the reason no one would print that were question that is not because you fear i sue you but because theres a sense of standards and ethics involved in journalism and we need some standards and ethics to involved in these new Media Companies. Let me change the subject, i thank you have a couple Young Children and i have children amount to talk to people one of the questions i hear is how do i get my kids off their iphones and get them to stop playing fortnight so often . Can i get them to go to the park or play baseball and im curious whether you feel like both the companies and the federal government has done enough to protect children and their privacy, their time and even from, you know, content that we as parents dont want our children to see . Has there been enough . If not, what can make it better . Guest no, we need to do more. We dont let kids use the phone and i like to read to them but even at this age there very young and they see something on the phone bill want to go to it. Its a challenge for parents. Let me give you a concrete example of something that the companies could do better. I had a friend in the constituency and he has a daughter whos a teenager and she was getting creepy messages, frankly, from people who wanted to request her as a friend. My friend got concerned that this was taking place on instagram and wanted to go change the privacy settings on instagram and this is someone who has technology, very savvy in technology and took him 18 minutes to figure out how to change the privacy settings so that his daughter would not be subject to that kind of online harassment. At the very least we need clear standards that give parents much tighter control and much easier ways of navigating the online world to protect children. Senator markey has a bill to update the child online reduction act and working on a bill that would control the kind of content as it is now to enter his or her say theres a date they can access pornography or websites with alcohol and what would be the right federal Government Role here and what are the chances that this congress can move on this . It seems like the kind of issue that a reasonably bipartisan support to what the holdup . Guest i think hes very thoughtful on these issues and id be looking at legislation and they should issue clear guidelines of what Tech Companies need to do to make privacy settings easy for people to use it to make it clear that parents have excellent control over these technologies as is allowable and to make that something that you dont have to navigate 20 minutes to do and its thoughtful, clear relations will help it i will say this. Look, if i do technologies come into society and of both positive and negative impacts for decades. People are probably more corrupted by the influence of tv. If you look at the study at stanford lots of the polarization, he argues, happened because of television that social media. The semi television is a bad platform . No, im glad im to this interview and lead television allows people to connect but what is important is how we use that technology and how we make sure culturally we are not addicted to the technology and so we had to have a cultural conversation about how we foster Critical Thinking and foster active learning and regulate the use of these technologies among kids and their parents and civic organizations at schools. Host congressman ro khanna theres been talk about repealing section 230 which limits liability of the social media sites to what is posted. What are your thoughts . Guest i think it would be a mistake. I voted which [inaudible] what you have seen since that bill has passed is a lot of sex workers have now been forced to go on the streets and it led to an increase in sex trafficking because they are able to use the internet for communication about safety and in ways they had in the past. I think removing 230 restrictions would be for the two unintended consequences and also put us at a competitive disadvantage with europe and other countries. Is talk into trust for a second. When i started on this back in 2012 big story or so within that time was at the seat would crackdown on global because it got too big in europe would crackdown on google. Ftc never came to pass in a way that people envisioned at the time and here we are seven years later with a lot of talk of into trust and Companies Getting with the political conversation and im curious what you think actually practically happened . My impression is antitrust laws are not terribly well geared to deal with what you might call [inaudible] in the way that is a threat to innovation so tell us about what you think the federal government could or should do to deal with these Big Companies . Guest we need to have double antitrust enforcement that does not allow companies to privilege their own platforms so i think the Microsoft Case was a great example. Microsoft, the Windows Platform was not allowed to use Internet Explorer and they cannot tie those together and that allowed netscape to emerge and let google to emerge and the court did not break up microsoft that make a soft should not be able to privilege its own platform. Similarly amazon should not be able to privilege its own platform every time you go on amazon to shop it should not just be amazon basic products but a neutral pla