Email from a Fourth Amendment perspective in part that he feared if it doesnt count that should eliminate the protection of privacy. That is, to the extent we a lhaa lot of robots looking at our email to scan it for viruses or to service ads or whatever, if that counts and weve agreed to that or otherwise have allowed that, that could mean we have given up our overall interpretation of privacy in those communications. I fear that toxin was killing the Fourth Amendment to save it. I think im more concerned about the parables that come from government surveillance than private surveillance and i think our allowing that kind of behavior does not eliminate protection of privacy, and we have enough cases saying that that i feel comfortable. But its not that easy. It gets to the automation rationale which is the case where smithfield, maryland said we do not have enough cases to judge. I think this goes to age bias as much as anything else. They said, human operators used to connect our calls, and the fact the phone companies have automated that process doesnt change the fact we have exposed that information to the phone company. We pivot that and use that to our advantage in the paper and say, well, if its good for the goose, its good for the gander. The fact the government is auto ma mating this reading doesnt make it less of an advantage. Thats right, and i think another way of sort of restating this or maybe adding a bit to it that kelly and andy could answer the question is that we agree with you, neil and michael and woody, that the real genius of our paper is not the use of the word robots in the title but is the use of the word agent. Because we talk about the National Security agency and that National Security agency has agents, and some of them are human beings and some of them are Software Agents. Maybe some of them are scary robots, too. And those agents follow out the wishes of the principal, and it doesnt matter whether those wishes are accomplished through a Software Agent or a human agent or a scary killer robot agent. What matters is that the agency is happening. And the will of the principal is being a feffectuated through onf its agents. When michael said i dont have any privacy anymore because everything is being tracked, there is something that says we respect an expectation of privacy that people have, subjective, and also one that people accept as reasonable in an inquiry. If there isnt an expectation anymore, privacy goes away. There are two things we can do. Junk the perspective entirely, which i think we can do, and when it comes to objective reasonableness, we should look to lawyers. Lawyers, doctors, priests or librarians or psychotherapists, anybody who has a professional duty of confidentiality. When you trust someone with your data, your lawyer, lets say, this might be publicly known information but they are under a duty as your agent not to disclose under any circumstances. It doesnt matter whether the person asked the question knows whats going on, it doesnt matter really anything, and thats the way the agency can be used as a sword, that it can protect confidences, it can protect sharing. Ironically enough so that sharing can take place. It occurred to me that over the last 200 years, theres been a massive erosion in the publics concern with privacy. Because if you think about what our founders were trying to do with the bill of rights in protecting our papers and effects and preventing the interception of our mail, essentially the free ice cream that we get when we sign up for google or hotmail or Something Like that lets us sacrifice the privacy youve heard the free ice cream theory, right . I dont get the ice cream. Oh, sorry. There is a little bit of a theme, i guess, in privacy discussions on articles and stuff, they call it the free ice cream problem. That people will accept any crazy terms of use, including indemnification of the service that theyre providing and limitation of liability to the amount of their subscription, and they will do anything for the free ice cream. Thats the saying that is going around. If people are thinking, okay, ill click i accept these insane terms of use and sacrifice my firstborn and my arm and my leg, that is the reason why this expectation of privacy just kind of disappeared, then the only people who are terrified are the lawyers, right . Because the lawyers are thinking, how do i defend my client in court when the contents of every email that theyve ever sent are exposed for consideration . Thats one thing. How do we expose this problem to the general public and inspire them to be outraged in the same way that our founders were outraged, in the same way that the british were outraged when the Castle Doctrine originated . And how do we manage the problem of the destruction of a persons life during a multiyear litigation when you may finally get this critical piece of evidence that was acquired by violating the privacy kicked out of the lawsuit, but the person has basically been dragged through the mud in the public eye . I wont speak for kevin because hell noriel at me, but i get this privacy dead question a lot, like do people not care about this anymore . My experience is if they dont care, they dont know. To the extent they do, i agree with kevin on his point earlier that quit being a narcissist. But also because you talked about a multiyear litigation, i just had to go through this with my sister who lives in florida and had to be told her Facebook Messages could be subpoenaed, even her private messages. And she had no idea, which is an interesting place to put someone when they start thinking about what is private and what is public. You have to put it in context, is that people may give up their privacy but they give it up contextually and they dont understand that information can leave the context that you put it into. So i think there are a lot of psychological pieces that go into that that go outside the law, and lawyers are used to thinking of it in very rigid, specific instances and not really the way you think about it in everyday life. Kevin is right, its you will about power. But its all about power on the consumer expectation, too. The reason papers are in the Fourth Amendment wasnt because people were concerned about the government rummaging through their things, but they were rummaging through their things to find diaries or letters or evidence that could be used to punish or haul people in courts on charges of treason because it was very much a public liberty. I think thats part of the argument as well, but its an argument that we should care about the Fourth Amendment because we care about a Government Society. This might be controversial, it might be wrong, but ill say it, anyway. Its more important to have a Government Society than to have free ice cream. On the commercial side, its also a question of power. Amy is exactly right, its a question of limited choices. Its a question of knowledge and information. Where we have that elsewhere in the consumer context, we regulate it. That might be practically difficult to accomplish, but thats the answer, and i think thats the story we need to tell. These are all about stories. I just want to know if somebody from microsoft and google are here giving out ice cream. I want my ice cream. First of all, you two are my favorite country lawyers. Or at least kevin is, im not sure amy is from the country. She said she is. I think you should use that perspective actually more. Im going to push back against neal. The litigator perspective . Yeah. Actually, youre uniquely situated for the litigator perspective. Kevin, something you said earlier struck me which is this is all about trying to get these issues into court. I looked to see if amnesty is included, and i couldnt find it. If this is about power, which i agree it is, the very complex series of hurdles that you have to overcome to even get to the question thats a lot of series. Right, but if youre about power, this is like that last piece in all the other pieces of the system, which i think is a really important part of it. Im just here to control neal because im still mad at him for saying we should treat robots like drivers a few weeks ago . I think the real problem is its not about robots, and its maybe not right to use robots in this context. I agree with that, but we talked so much about how people perceive robots as agents and how we have these completely Unrealistic Expectations from science fiction, and it just sounds so different. A robot is reading your email versus your emails being automatically scanned, and so if were talking about getting people to care about privacy d and, you know i dont know, im just trolling, basically, but if you had to choose between being intellectually honest and having people actually care about these issues, what would you pick . Thats directed at neal. I want to say like based on this that i just added in, what were talking about, they are robots. Theyre certainly bots. Would take the ro off make people happy . So when did i stop beating my wife is the loaded question youre asking me. I dont think its intellectually dishonest to call it robots, and i want to be clear because that was one of my critiques of kevin on this paper. I dont think its intellectually dishonest. I think using the word agent is better. My concern about using at a tactical level using robots to get people to care is we may get people to care about the privacy issue, but then we create this whole anthropomorphic level, and we create a huge robotics problem with the anthropomorphic problems that the people yesterday were talking about. When i say robots are hammers metaphors are hammers, too, and hammers are good. We should just be clear that these are human construction tools. Hammer is probably a colorful way of expressing it. Toasters are even a more metaphorphic way of expressing it. All of us are engineers and we just want to build good things. We can argue what good is, but ultimately thats all we have to realize. There is no mystery to this, its just hard. Thats why were here. Thats all very much. I have two quick announcements. The first is we have tshirts for sale out front. If you want them they have the wonderful symbol of rosie the roboter. And this is the last chance to sign up for car action at the airport if you need that. Having done that, i now have the fun part of thanking you for joining this wonderful panel. It was a great panel. [applause] thank you. Well see you in 15 minutes sharp. Were live this morning on capitol hill where we expect a hearing to get under way shortly which will explore the effectiveness and the access to the vas Mental Health and Suicide Prevention programs. A 2012 suicide data report released by the va found that 18 to 22 veterans per day commit suicide despite increases, significant increases, in the departments Mental Health and Suicide PreventionBudget Programs and staff. Members of the House Veterans Affairs committee will hear this morning from Veterans Health administration officials, Mental Health experts, family members of veterans who killed themselves and others. Congressman jeff miller of florida is the chair and representative mike mishu of maine is the Ranking Member. Also youll get a chance throughout the day, if youd like to give us your reaction, you can use facebook and of course twitter with the hash tag cspan chat. If i could get everybody to take their seats, please. Welcome to order. Before we begin, i would like unanimous consent for our colleagues representative scott peters from california and pierson cinema from arizona to sit in and participate in the proceedings today. Without objection, so ordered. Id like to welcome everybody to todays full Committee Oversight hearing entitled service should not lead to suicide, access to vas Mental Health care. Following widespread manipulation and physical harm in facilities all across this nation, this committee has held a series of Oversight Committee hearings over the last several weeks to evaluate the systemic access and integrity failures that have consumed the Va Health Care system. Perhaps none of these hearings have presented the alltoohuman face of vas failures so much as todays hearing will, in fact, do. A hearing that i believe will show the horrible human costs of vas ddysfunction, and i dare say, corruption. At its heart, access to care is not about numbers, it is about people. Recently the Committee Heard from a veteran who had attempted to receive Mental Health care at a va communitybased Outpatient Clinic in pennsylvania. This veteran was told repeatedly by the va employee he spoke with that he would be unable to get an appointment for six months. However, when that employee left, another va employee leaned in to tell this veteran that if he just told her that he was thinking of killing himself, she would be able to get him an appointment much sooner. In just three months instead of six. Fortunately, that veteran was not considering suicide. But what about those veterans who are . How many of the tens of thousands of veterans that va has now admitted have been left on waiting lists for weeks, months, and even years for care were seeking Mental Health care appointments . How many are suicidal or edging towards suicide as a result of the inability to get the care they earned. Despite significant increases in vas Mental Health and Suicide Prevention programs and staff in recent years, the suicide level of veterans has remained more or less stable since 1999, with approximately 22 veterans committing suicide every single day. However, the most recent va data has shown that over the last three years, rates of suicide have increased by nearly 40 among male veterans under 30 who use Va Health Care services and by more than 70 among male veterans between the ages of 18 and 24 who use Va Health Care services. This morning were going to hear testimony from three families, the somers, the portlies and [ inaudible ] they sought medical care after combat. Each of these men hit barrier after barrier to getting help. Each of these young men su succumbed to suicide. In a note, one wrote he felt the government had abandoned him and came home to face a system of dehumanization, neglect and indifference. Va owed daniel and clay and brian so much more than that. With that i yield to our Ranking Member, mr. Misho, for his opening statement. Thank you so much, mr. Chairman, for holding this very important hearing. We have had many discussions and debates about how to deliver the best Health Care Services to our nations veterans and how to ensure accountability within the leadership ranks of the department of Veterans Affairs. Over the course of these recent hearings and discussions, we have touched on important issues, but one we havent zeroed in on yet is access to Mental Health care and Suicide Prevention services for our veterans. Thats why this hearing today is so important. Id like to thank all the panelists for joining us today, but particularly i want to thank the family members joining us who have lost a loved one. I know theyre speaking about a loss of a loved one, particularly a child, can be an incredibly difficult and exhaustive experience. But in this case i think we have to listen to your stories, identify what went wrong, and we can take action to ensure that those failures arent repeated again. So i want to thank you very, very much for joining us today to share your stories. 18 to 22 veterans commit suicide each day. In my opinion, that is 18 to 22 brave men and women each day who our system hazls let down in so capacity. It is totally unacceptable. When a veteran has experienced depression or other Early Warning signs that may indicate Mental Health issues or even suicide, that must be treated like immediate medical crisis because thats exactly what it is. Veterans in that position should never be forced to wait months on end for medical consult because, quite frankly, that is time that they may not have. We have taken steps to help put in place programs and initiatives aimed at early detection, and we have significantly increased our funding. The department of Veterans Affairs funding of Mental Health has doubled since 2007, but its not working as well as we had hoped and we have to figure out why and how we can correct these problems. Our veterans are the ones paying the price for this dysfunction. A 2012 ig report found that va data, on whether it was providing timely access to mental services, is totally unreliable. In a go report from that year not only confirmed that finding but also confirmed that va scheduling made it difficult, if not impossible, to get patients the help they need when they need it. That is why we have to look at this situation. That is a problem that we have seen repeatedly as we dig into the vas dysfunctions, and enough is enough. Our veterans and their families deserve a va that delivers timely Mental Health services that cover a spectrum of needs from ptsd, counseling for family members to veterans, to urgent roundtheclock response to a veteran in need. A recent va ig report found that in one facility patients waited up to 432 days, well over a year, for care. So once again, we are finding that our veterans deserve much better than t