Gadgetory

we're here we're in Washington DC the Capitol building the building full of hundreds of people who have literally no idea how the internet works but there are a couple of people who get it senator Al Franken is one of them he let us into his office to hang out and talk about the future of the internet so senator Franken thank you for for joining us today very well be here pleasure I on your what do you call this it's not airwaves not airwaves are pipes are tubes you're tubes are tube so is that that's right well let's that's what what the internet is it's a series of series of tubes yeah you have an interesting story first of all I think that people kind of they know they know an old Al Franken yeah and now there's a modern reborn Al Franken a beautiful political butterfly how did how do you go from one to the other oh it's really odd I it made perfect sense to me a lot of the comedy I did starting in high school was satire political satire and on SNL wrote a lot of the plays I did a lot of stupid silly comedy comedy comedy stuff but always was very very interested in politics so one thing I think is really interesting like your political trajectory over the past few years is that you've been very focused on technology you're obviously very focused on privacy lead the Subcommittee on privacy and acknowledge in law why why have you chosen to kind of like lead in that area as opposed to all the myriad other things that you can choose in the same well it's just an interesting area I mean we have on the Judiciary Committee which I didn't ask for I mean I thought you know 90 of these people are lawyers why should I be on that because I'm the best actually yeah I actually was for the best and I've actually been interested in constitutional issues for a long time but I also came from out of the communications industry you know telecommunications industry so what was kind of interesting is that when Comcast NBC came up I sort of felt like the one who understood it the most yeah on the antitrust subcommittee so I felt like this was an area that I kind of understood better than then most of my colleagues on judiciary so I thought I'd jump in and we kind of I'm kind of invented it you know the Subcommittee on privacy technology and in the law and and also it just constitutionally Goodwin Liu who was turned down he was this brilliant law professor who was turned down because he was so brilliant and asian-american yeah and they didn't want him they didn't confirm him well the Republicans didn't want him confirmed because you're so brilliant and young that they knew well okay he'll be on the Supreme Court someday if we don't stop it now yeah and so they did and but he was you know criticized by the Republicans for believing in a living Constitution and they and and he kind of said well a living kind of course the Constitution's living because not everything that existed that exists you know has existed existed then for example and they use tell the telephone the founding fathers did not anticipate the telephone and at a certain point the Supreme Court had to decide what were people's expectations of privacy with the is-is-is wiretapping a telephone yeah a violation of the Fourth Amendment and they thought it was so you need a warrant to tap someone's phone and in the same way just every technology has to be sort of seen through that lens right well so the lens of both it enables all this inter communication enables new innovation but then it also enables government to spy on you or the lens of theirs well it's not a government spying on you necessarily very often this is actually it's corporations are able to get all this information so it's actually a little different than what most people thought of privacy law good most people always thought of privacy law as the government mm you know finding out what you're reading or the government finding out Big Brother hey brother this is now corporate said rather and and people don't I think people have a fundamental right to privacy and they have a fundamental right to know what at least what's being taken and being stored and and control over whether it goes to third parties and they don't so you've proposed you mean you've held a few hearings on it you did a location tracking one a few months ago hearing that you just held the hearing on facial recognition technology and how they're being used when I thought it was interesting what that is you had Facebook's head of privacy in there and then you had the FBI in there right do their interest a line can you regulate both of them with the same kind of law or do you have to split them apart well that's a really good question uh yeah I think you're gonna we're gonna have to split them apart and I think it might be easier to regulate the FBI you know I mean frankly it's just that I mean Facebook literally has I guess what 900 million yeah they're popular it's popular and that means in this regard they have these face prints of maybe one out of every you know yeah seven people on earth or something you know I think people are more comfortable making rules to contain government than they are to you know private enterprise or or corporations or right private entities so I think that actually leads me into a whole set of issues or I'm net neutrality right because you were a very firm supporter of net neutrality they had always been yeah yeah I've them I mean it at that moment you were a particular vocal supporter yes when the FCC was debating it now it's well when the FCC was debating and when the house tried to overturn it yeah and so I was very disappointing that thing our readers know that I'm I do a lot of swearing when we talk about net neutrality God passionately believe it's important well you know quite a lot of House members the internet did just fine yeah before without net neutrality just hilarious that's my favorite thing I saw I mean House members would get on the floor and go what you've seen all this expansion of the internet without net neutrality why I have it now yeah let's go you I would calmly say that's we don't want to change anything yeah that's the architecture net neutrality is the architecture of the internet has been the architecture of the internet we want to preserve that that's my answer so what home they've been my Commons well I mostly do a lot of like fist pounding so I mean have you heard for example there's rumors that you know the iPhone has FaceTime video calling and they're gonna enable it over the carrier's right they're gonna enable so you can do it over 18 Verizon's like mobile networks and there's rumors that a CT is gonna like charge you for it right as an additional feature but it's just the same data yes so why that's wrong that's so that's in your opinion just completely wrong yeah is there anywhere I agree with you I'm asking is there any I think that you that you have a thing called network management as I what we call it you have right to do that and if you're overloading and crashing because people are using something that is making that happen you have right though yeah say you can't do that yeah we're gonna have to charge you for that to incentivize not using it all the D&D centum eyes right but so relation seven disincentive you're we're gonna punish you ATT should slight beyond the rest and say well for for doing something that would make our network crash if everybody did it okay I could see that that's network management that I can I can understand that but that's not what this is that if this is like tiers of service yes and I that that is not that's wrong so because that's not the architecture we've had to me that protects innovation hmm that that freedom has been what has created the innovation over that's net neutrality right and that's so you and I are having like even at this level which is like pretty high level let's talk about the basic concepts a pretty nerdy conversation right about net neutrality in the architecture of the internet not as nerdy as I imagine most of your own I have but I will nerd you out you can it doesn't take much to nerd me out so I think that's that's we're going well don't be too impressed with my chairmanship yeah your stats that you can nerd me well so I mean isn't that the problem I mean you're trying to explain this concept that my readers kind of instinctively get the you've even the lovely we're talking about it you seem to understand your staunchly supportive of yes but one level out of it you've got an entire Congress or the people who don't seem to understand what's going on and I don't have any technical expertise yeah I mean you have the cert through everything that's going on in Congress sometimes people there's people who do understand things but pretend not to there are people's very knowing like there is self-delusion there is not wanting to know I mean there's all kinds of levels here and there's voting with your leadership yeah and etc and and their corporate interests and that tend to I don't know if you've heard of this thing called Citizens United yeah anyway so yeah so so you don't think a corporation is a person I don't I don't and I you know corporations can live a lot longer yeah and they are shorter but no they're they're not close the piece a if you never you can't break a corporation's heart it's really disappointing actually I try every day I should read some my editorials about AT&T so we've been talking about this balance between the public interest the private interest you've been talking about corporate interests one of the things that our readers always talked about when they talk about corporate interest of course you have to worry about it's coming right through our mics yeah that's okay people that's one of parts of the sound it's real it's real you'd pay for that you'd have that sound effect to make it seem like you're at the center okay so one of things our readers are talk about when they were worried about corporate interest yeah and what the internet is SOPA and PIPA sure you are a co-sponsor protect IP sure what the hell happened there ma'am well you know again a no better champion than an open Internet I also care about intellectual property rights yeah so in the corporate interest win is that what would happen there over no actually the Internet guys were screaming from get-go right don't do this and it went through the Senate and it was only in the house of like there was a real traction when Google and Wikipedia blacked out so what happened no I didn't get to got traction believe me when tipping Wikipedia Disher gotten traction in the Senate - and we heard those concerns and very legitimate concerns my my concerns were both the openness of the Internet and they're also about you know I had someone in my office from a shoe company in Minnesota it's a very well-known shoe company and they get ripped off all the time there so we were trying to target was overseas you know other country road websites that pirate yeah intellectual property again the concerns of folks that are I'm sure watching today were heard loud and clear you know and and people are pirating fake pharmaceuticals that are dangerous they're pirating a lot of stuff that people's jobs depend on mmm and so that is it's trying to find the right spot there but for now I don't see us that revisiting that anybody you think you think it's dead well it's certainly dead for now and I don't you know we would have to figure out how to cuz I think probably most your most of your viewers believe that people have a right to their intellectual property in other words have a right to our founders were many of them were authors yeah and an inventors and so they believed in I don't know you know we wouldn't have a 747 these days if we wouldn't have a lot of this this stuff if you couldn't patent thanks for example so and so that has to be you have to find a way to protect that and at the same time protect everyone's rights so what I have an open Internet so what I'm hearing is like there's a balance right between in that case a balance between kind of media rights you know copyright it's been like what's happening on the internet now the rights is almost consumers to do stuff the media as they wish but how do you balance at a legislative level a place that has historically been pretty unregulated in terms of behavior and also enable so many new kinds of behavior that you might block with it with additional regulation how do you how do you balance sort of making transit you know it I guess it was how narrowly are you what behavior we're talking about it for the behavior is well we're I think we were trying to achieve and it was trying to stop foreign websites from pirating yeah you know clothes and yeah pharmaceuticals software and movies and all those kind of things so that's the guy behavior which is an illegal behavior in this country is illegal and this was a try it wasn't a to get at the foreign but can you do that with a technical solution of like let's mock you with DNS or can you do that with it another way because the technical solutions that bother people right yeah but the problem is that you had no legal solution because they're foreign entities and we don't know where they are Frank is really nice thanks for talking to self