#74: The Role of Phone Companies in Surveillance

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2016

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What role should telephone and other technology companies play in national security and surveillance? Who should be in charge of collecting and storing data about our phone calls? The NSA? Or the companies themselves? In a recent paper, Mieke Eoyang, VP of the National Security Program at Third Way, argues that the telecommunications industry should play a greater role in the shaping and enacting of surveillance policy. She and Evan discuss what that role should be and policy recommendations that would protect privacy and economic interests while still allowing the government to access the information it needs. Can foreign customers of US tech companies trust that their data are protected from mass, indiscriminate surveillance?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwarger, your host. On today's show, what role
0:13.8	should telephone companies and others in the telecom industry play in national security and surveillance?
0:19.9	As the Edward Snowden leaks of 2013 showed,
0:23.7	telecom companies are really wrapped up in surveillance. In that case, they were indiscriminately
0:29.8	collecting information in bulk on millions of Americans. And while that program has been
0:35.0	reformed in some ways with the passage of the USA Freedom Act,
0:38.8	there's still a lot of questions about what the role of the Tenalcom industry in surveillance
0:42.8	will look like going forward, especially as it relates to foreign surveillance and what the
0:47.3	NSA does overseas. So joining me to discuss this is Mika O'yang, vice president of the National
0:53.2	Security Program at Third Way.
0:55.0	Mika, thank you so much for joining me.
0:56.5	Thanks for having me.
0:57.7	So you've got a new paper out examining this relationship and making recommendations on how
1:02.5	industries should work with government and what's appropriate and what's not.
1:06.5	So give us a quick synopsis of the paper and what the things that really stood out to you were.
1:11.6	Yeah, so I took a look at electronic surveillance reform over time and what the relationship has been between the companies and the government.
1:19.4	And in both a legal and literal sense, companies, technology companies, telecommunications companies, are the gatekeeper between the
1:27.8	government and individuals in terms of the privacy of their data. They physically hold it, and the
1:33.2	government has to come to the companies and ask for it, or at least that's the way it's supposed to
1:37.4	work, and that's the way that it's worked going back to just after World War II when the government
1:42.9	would come to the old telecommunications companies,
1:47.3	the ma bells of the world, and ask them for information.
	...

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