Safety and privacy, because encryption is a tool used to keep people safe, to keep information about unsafe, to keep their property safe, and therefore needs to be a critical part of how we move forward. The Judiciary Committee has long played a role in dealing with these issues from both a technology standpoint and from the Law Enforcement standpoint, and we will continue to do that. The energy and Commerce Committee also have a keen interest in this, so we will work in a collaborative effort, between the two committees and in a very bipartisan fashion to continue to develop a record on this and look for solutions that will help to make sure that Law Enforcement has ways to be able to gather the information they need to keep people safe. Part of that is going to be Law Enforcement having to either find new ways to approach gathering information, and utilizing more traditional ways of gathering information. Because i do think that over the last few decades, the reliance upon electronic information gathering has probably grown too great, and the reaction to that has been an awareness on the part of the public that, unlike 20 or 30 years ago, their most valuable information is now on these devices, and in the cloud, if you will. Whereas a generation ago, they were in the faults vaults, safe deposit boxes, file cotton its cabinets, or maybe your desk drawers at home. The public is aware of the fact these are important things to protect. And that will continue, and we should not discourage that continuing. If you simply allow Law Enforcement to under any circumstance have a backdoor into everyones computer, that backdoor can be entered by all actors, as well as by Law Enforcement, and thats the number one concern we need to address. Peter are you seeing a growing consensus in the congress for legislation . Rep. Goodlatte there is growing interest for legislation, but i dont think yet it is at all clear what that legislation would be. I think it is important for us to work on this, to work on it thoroughly and expeditiously, but also with a recognition that we should not jump at the first possible alternative. Interestess has shown in working on this. The Important Committee should work on this. I dont think we should turn it over to an outside commission, as has been proposed by some. This is our responsibility. We have the expertise. We have the access to the advice from the outside that we need, both in public hearings and classified briefings. Toare to proceed ought proceed that way. Peter lets bring in kate from politico. Kate you announced you would mark up the email privacy act next month, which would require Law Enforcement to get a warrant for emails. You expressed concern this bill ofld hinder the ability civil agencies to get information for investigations. Are you planning to change the bill . Rep. Goodlatte there have been a number of concerns expressed about the language in the bill. Let me start by saying, the core concept of this bill i have always strongly supported. That is, that we should have to get a warrant in order to get information from a third party that may be holding information, just like what we just spoke about, that belong to somebody else. Now, a bill the bill in its current form will make that difficult, if not impossible, for agencies that do not have criminal warrant authority. The fbi, the dea, organizations like the have no problem because they are empowered to conduct criminal investigations and get warrants. But if you are a civil agency that investigates, like the securities and exchange commission, you have a problem. We have had a lot of discussions with a lot of people about alternative ways to handle it. That is only one of a number of issues in the bill, which was not written by the Judiciary Committee, or even any member of the Judiciary Committee. Therefore, those discussions are going on now, amongst the Committee Members and with others, to find ways to fix a number of concerns in this bill without changing the core concept of the bill, which i support. That is, the old method of requiring that you meet one standard if the email is a certain age, and another is is a different age. We think that is by the boards, and we think that a warrant should be required anytime you need to get information from any of these third parties. There are a lot of fixes to the bill we think are necessary, and thats what we are holding the markup and having a good discussion about how to do that. Kate is there growing consensus . Rep. Goodlatte there are many members of the committee on both sides of the aisle who acknowledged the need to be some changes. But wish changes, and under what language is yet to be determined. Kate great. I wanted to ship to the issue of online sales tax, which is something that you seem to have been debating for a long time in congress. The past because them they passed the customs bill, which included a permanent moratorium on taxing internet access. That has been tied up in the senate. Rep. Goodlatte not a permanent ban. A moratorium is by its nature not permanent. Kate they committed to debating the marketplace fairness act. You propose a different way to tackle this issue. Im curious. Now that there is pressure in the senate, are you planning on taking out their bill, or pushing your bill, or represented chipsets representative chaffetzs bill . Rep. Goodlatte we are interested in any senators pursuing this bill. We think this should be addressed, both from the perspective of the state needing and being entitled to revenue from online sales, but also from the standpoint of fairness among various types of retailers. Brickandmortar retailers always had a physical presence in whatever state they are doing business and, and they have to collect sales tax. If the customer goes outofstate online to a business elsewhere, they may or may not have to collect sales tax. Thatding on whether or not business has a nexus with whatever state the sale is taking place in. We think it should be addressed. We set for quite a long time ago several principles available on the house Judiciary Committee website that we think any legislation should have to meet. We dont feel that the senate legislation, and this is not new, they have been working on this. They passed a bill in the last congress, and there have been attempts to try to tie that to other legislation that have been unsuccessful. We would like to work with anyone who is concerned about making sure that we dont set a precedent for allowing state to reach out and regulate businesses outside of their jurisdiction, and that is what we feel the senate bill does. It requires businesses to comply with all the rules of all the states, and all of the subdivisions of those states which may have different addon taxes in different localities. We think there is a much simpler way to do this. But more important than that, we believe there is a way to do this without having any state given the authority to regulate businesses outside their jurisdiction. We look closely at the trend we are seeing, with a number of states attempting to expand regulatory and taxing powers by froming the test for this what the Supreme Court set forth in a long series of cases, including the quill decision, and basing it on physical nexus, they would like to move to what they call economic nexus. So if you have any kind of Economic Activity that might have any impact on a particular state, the state wants to say, i will regulate your business, they should not have the right to do that because the businesses are not represented in the state legislature. They are represented in their own state legislature. So we have put forward a plan for how to do it in an alternative way. It has good reviews from technology companies, from online businesses, from taxpayer organizations, from conservative groups. But we are still very open to having discussions with the state to work this out. I frankly felt when this issue first started coming up, more than two decades ago, that the states would Work Together and form a compact where they would find a way to share the revenue congress have the to give them authority to regulate businesses outside of their jurisdiction. And if they come to the congress, we would something have to vote. 25 seats have engaged in those discussions, but a lot of states, including some big states, have not. Thats why this will come back to the congress. You fix it for us, but fix it in a way that we like. I think we should fix it, but we should fix it in a way that protects the american taxpayer, the american consumer, and protects our Economic System that is built upon having businesses able easily to do business across boundaries without being regulated by a multitude of different states. We see this not just in sales tax, but california right now is regulating the production of eggs, telling nevada and utah at any state that wants to ship eggs into california, if you want to sail sell eggs in our state, you have to raise the chickens and the eggs in a way that meets our regulations. All 50 states, if they decided to get into that and have conflicting regulations, it doesnt make sense. Thats why we have the Commerce Clause in the constitution, and why we must make sure when we try to solve this problem that we dont do it in such a way that gives states the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Peter chairman goodlatte is also cochair of the congressional internet caucus. Another issue that is important to the Tech Community is immigration andh1b viassas. What is your thinking on that . Rep. Goodlatte first of all, any immigration in the country should be founded on a couple principles. One, that it is fair to american workers. Second, that it encourages the so theyn of americans, can get as many of these jobs as possible, but also that it recognizes there are certain areas in our economy where there are shortages of workers, and where if you dont need the shortages, you run the risk of businesses locating their entire enterprise in canada, in europe, anywhere in the world. In china, india, wherever. So it makes sense to make sure that companies are able to get the workers they need in order to maintain their Business Operations in the United States. Which has program, existed for a long time, is an Important Program in need of reform. In the last congress, we passed legislation out of the Judiciary Committee that reforms the h1b program, and similar legislation will be introduced again in the near future, most likely by congressman darrell issa, the author of that legislation in the last congress. We look forward to examining that very closely, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to encourage Economic Growth in our economy. Program of the h1b program, done properly, does just that. Many people have been extremely disappointed with the president s lack of enforcement on our immigration laws. Therefore, the committee has also spent a lot of time on enforcement legislation. I would say most people in the public want to see those enforcement measures, and want to see a president enforce our immigration laws before they see action taken on Legal Immigration matters. Because, the fact of the matter is if you dont trust the enforcement of the law, you are going to be very worried that your job is at stake, with the government not protecting you from unfair competition, with people simply entering the country not just across the border, but also entering weekly on business visas, student visas, and simply overstaying. So this is a situation where the United States is a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. And if we are going to have a successful economy in the future, we are going to have to have respect for the rule of law. And that is not occurring under the leadership of the current administration. And i think that lack of effort in that regard makes it more difficult to pass legislation that is needed addressing reforms of our Legal Immigration programs. Lets do the enforcement first. Peter we talked about three issues. Immigration it is an election year. Is it going to happen . Rep. Goodlatte well, i would say that theres always the possibility of these things happening when you have a bipartisan effort to do so. We were for example, talking about the issue related to Internet Sales tax collection. That issue is one that, when we have the right solution, that will be the right time to move it. I dont think the political environment will play a major role in that. Immigration is a fairy hotly contested, controversial issue, and until we address the enforcement issue first it will be more difficult to address some of the other things that i certainly acknowledge need to be addressed. Cba, that is a e bill that has more cosponsors than any other bill in the congress. That has every prospect of passing in the house. I hesitate to speak for the United States senate on any of these issues, but obviously for a to become law it also has to pass the senate. Kate another privacy issue kind of on everyones mind is fisa reform. Certain surveillance authorities are expiring next year. You have kick started the consideration of fisa reform. What changes do you see being made to that authority . Is this going to come down to the wire, like it did with usa freedom . Rep. Goodlatte it did not come down to the wire in the house. We have been working on it for a long time. We passed it in a timely fashion. Senate leadership did not agree with legislation passed by the house, but they could not come up with any alternative that came even close to getting majority support, much less the 60 votes to cut off debate. At the end of the day, they were forced to put the house bill on the floor, but when it did it passed the senate with a strong bipartisan vote. I dont want to predict what will happen with the senate, but if the house we dont want to go up against the deadline. We are hard at work on that. I would not want to predict at this point what changes need to be made. We are still the process of learning what the impact of making changes would have on the intelligencether regarding foreign nationals who could be a threat to the United States. Implies, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is designed to gather information to keep us safe. When you gather information about foreign nationals, that sometimes intersects with u. S. Citizens who might be communicating with somebody outside the country, so you have to pay very close attention to make sure that the rights of those citizens are properly protected under any laws, because they are entitled to the protected. They should be protected, as provided in our bill of rights. I look forward to continuing to work on that. I made a commitment at the time we did the usa freedom act, which ended the usa government not metadata collection, just for telephone metadata but for any metadata, not only under that section of the patriot act but under a host of different government statutes. That was well handled, and it enhanced our National Security and the privacy of u. S. Citizens. We have to handle this in the same way. Kate another judiciary issue that a lot of us have been following closely. There has not been any action passedhe committees sweeping patent reform action last year. There is worry in the Tech Community that the clock is running out, as it does every two years. Now you see lawmakers introducing much more narrow bills, aimed at reforms so the socalled patent trolls cannot bring their cases to court. That is partly taken from your action words in the innovation act. Rep. Goodlatte if you take the which is Patent Litigation reform, it addresses six or seven different areas of the law. Supported. Widely in the last congress, it was passed out of the committee with a big bipartisan vote. 350s supported by more than organizations around the country who recognize that patent trolling, the extortionate practice of threatening usually a Small Business and user of some technology with a very expensive patent suit unless they pay them, fill in the blank, 50,000 it has become a multibillion dollar industry, and it needs to be trapped. Take adifficult to segment of this legislation and have it separately. It is certainly a possibility that we are aware of and not opposed to. Our preference would be to take the bill, which has brought support, and pass it as a whole. But no decision has been made yet about scheduling that for the floor. We are open to both in order to do as much as we can in this area. It is also true that courts have made some important decisions in the last couple years that have helped, mostly helped. Some have not, but most decisions have helped in this area, and we are more than anxious to build off of that as well. Peter is there going to be movement this year on music, and how we listen to it, how it gets paid . Act . Air play, fair pay rep. Goodlatte when i became chairman of the committee, i realized there had not been review of our copyright laws in over 40 years. So we undertook that, and we hearingsth many, many here in washington in the committee. But we have also gone out to various parts of the country to take testimony and to have discussion panels with a wide array of the different interests in copyright law. Music is certainly one important segment of that, but you also have book publishers, you have Motion Picture companies, you have the people who use them, not just the direct consumers but also you have libraries, universities, various types of online services, and so on. So, trying to look at opportunities within the information that we have gathered for reform of our copyright law is what we are now focusing on. We have gathered the information, and now we are looking for opportunity. I