Welcome to the tech policy podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and

innovate. Joining me in our DC studio is Fun-loving Dictator and founder of Tech Freedom, Baron Soka.

Baron, thank you for joining me yet again. Thanks for inviting me back.

Yesterday, we said Obama wouldn't say much about tech in his final state of the union as president,

but here's what he did say. Today we said Obama wouldn't say much about tech in his final state of the union as president,

but here's what he did say.

Priority number one is protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks.

Both al-Qaeda and now ISIL pose a direct threat to our people because in today's world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage.

They use the Internet to poison the minds of individuals inside our country.

Their actions undermine and destabilize our allies.

Barron, what's the president talking about?

Well, he's talking about a bipartisan bill. Senator Dian Feinstein has introduced a bill called

the Reporting of Online Terrorist Act Act, and that really would require social media companies to do something they're already doing, which is to tell the government when they have the knowledge of terrorist activities.

That bill is in some ways uncontroversial. If you look at it, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing that should be problematic.

Yes, it only applies if a company has actual knowledge, which is a high legal bar, but it doesn't define what

terrorist activities are. It leaves that incredibly open-ended. So our concern is that companies are

going to start having to report anything that they think might conceivably later be interpreted to be terrorist

activities. And that could include far more than just ISIS activities. It could include

anything that might be potentially suspicious. So the concern is that by putting a mandate or

requirement on a company to do something that they're already doing that they might be overreporting,

which could have a

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