Speaker 1: Hey, there, everybody, this is Jonathan Strickland, host of Tax Stuff. Today,
Speaker 1: we have something a little different for you. We have
Speaker 1: a series called First Contact with Laurie Siegel uh, former
Speaker 1: correspondent with CNN, and if you have not listened to
Speaker 1: that show, you definitely need to check it out. She's
Speaker 1: doing amazing work having incredible conversations with thought leaders in
Speaker 1: the tech space and the social space, and this particular
Speaker 1: episode I think is really important and one that really
Speaker 1: needs to be heard by as many folks as possible.
Speaker 1: She sits down with a CLU president, Susan Herman, and
Speaker 1: together they talk about the issue of racially biased face
Speaker 1: recognition technology. And you've heard me speak on episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff in the past about bias artificial intelligence, facial recognition,
Speaker 1: you know, image recognition, that sort of stuff, and how
Speaker 1: that is a real problem in tech and it's something
Speaker 1: that we absolutely have to get our heads wrapped around
Speaker 1: and address. So, without further ado, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: that episode play in lieu of a Tech Stuff episode
Speaker 1: for today, and I highly recommend you check out First Contact.
Speaker 1: It's a great show and one that I think really
Speaker 1: dove tails nicely with Tech Stuff. So if you enjoy
Speaker 1: tech stuff, I think you're really gonna like First Contact
Speaker 1: as well, and we will catch you next week with
Speaker 1: new episodes of tech Stuff. Thanks. First Contact with Lori
Speaker 1: Siegel is a production of Dot Dot Dot Media and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. There's a great quote on the A
Speaker 1: c l U website. The fact that technology now allows
Speaker 1: an individual to carry such information in his hand does
Speaker 1: not make the information any less worthy of the protection
Speaker 1: for which the founders fought. Exactly. I like to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the whole points of the Constitution
Speaker 1: adding the fourth Amendment, which is the protection of privacy,
Speaker 1: is they wanted to protect what was in Benjamin Franklin's disk.
Speaker 1: Nobody should know if he was writing some things that
Speaker 1: were anti government, and we now have that on our
Speaker 1: cell phone, so of course, but that's where I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of the protection of civil liberties is
Speaker 1: applying our fundamental principles in different circumstances. We are in
Speaker 1: a moment of reckoning as we enter an age of
Speaker 1: ubiquitous surveillance, questionable data collection practices, even algorithms that discriminate.
Speaker 1: It's minorities, especially black and brown communities that are disproportionately affected.
Speaker 1: Over the last months, as the nation has grappled with
Speaker 1: a conversation around police brutality, we've seen predator drones used
Speaker 1: for aerial surveillance at protests, facial recognition technology that wrongfully
Speaker 1: accused a black man of a crime he didn't commit,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't a coincidence. Reports say the tech is
Speaker 1: a hundred times more likely to misidentify African, American and
Speaker 1: Asian people, and as COVID nineteen continues to spread, there
Speaker 1: are serious questions being raised about contact tracing apps and
Speaker 1: how that data collected could be misused. These issues raise
Speaker 1: ethical questions about technology and its impact on our civil liberties, equality,
Speaker 1: and the future of our country. For Susan Herman, it
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary time to be sitting in her seat
Speaker 1: as president of the a s l U. Over the years,
Speaker 1: the American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits fighting for
Speaker 1: free speech, reproductive rights, and privacy. But as technology continues
Speaker 1: to muddy the waters, the tradeoffs become more complicated. Where
Speaker 1: do we draw the line between security and privacy and
Speaker 1: how do we prevent technological innovation from outpacing the law.
Speaker 1: I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is first contact, Susan, thank
Speaker 1: you for being virtually with me today. Thank you for
Speaker 1: inviting me, Laurie. Yeah, you know, I I always start
Speaker 1: out these interviews with our first contact. I talked to
Speaker 1: guests about how we met, and we don't really have
Speaker 1: a first contact. We've never met in person, but we
Speaker 1: met on an email chain because we were going to
Speaker 1: do an interview together for something else and it and
Speaker 1: it fell through. So I said, you've got to come
Speaker 1: on the podcast because you are just sitting in such
Speaker 1: an extraordinary seat at such an extraordinary moment in time.
Speaker 1: So that's our first contact. Well, thanks, It just seems
Speaker 1: to me like our first contact was total serendipity. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so you know, to get started. You've been the president
Speaker 1: of the a c l U since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and I said this before, but you know, what an
Speaker 1: extraordinary time to be sitting in your seat. You know,
Speaker 1: how are you feeling? Oh my, it's just sort of overwhelming.
Speaker 1: You know. As president, I'm go the chair of the board,
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm not the one doing the day
Speaker 1: to day work as all of the members of our
Speaker 1: staff are. But to be a member of the a
Speaker 1: c l U staff right now is just it's mind
Speaker 1: boggling because we had, you know, a lot of work
Speaker 1: that we were already doing before two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: with all of the states making worse and worse laws
Speaker 1: about reproductive freedom and voting rights and immigrants rights, and
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of other things. Then came the election,
Speaker 1: and since that we have brought a hundreds and seventy
Speaker 1: three legal actions against the Trump administration for things like
Speaker 1: family separations and the travel BAM and prohibiting trans in
Speaker 1: the military. Then in March, COVID hit, and at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, since then, we've also brought over a hundred lawsuits,
Speaker 1: including with a hundred lawsuits just about people who are
Speaker 1: incarcerated in jails and prisons and ice attention and who
Speaker 1: are just in a hotspot. You know, they have no
Speaker 1: control over whether they can social distance, and so we've
Speaker 1: been working very hard to get vulnerable people out of
Speaker 1: those terrible situations, out of basically death traps. Plus, the
Speaker 1: COVID also led to a number of states opportunistically restricting
Speaker 1: things like freedom of abortion, declaring abortion to be a
Speaker 1: non essential procedure so people could just wait until the
Speaker 1: pandemic is over to get an abortion right, and voting
Speaker 1: rights has also just been a really braught area right
Speaker 1: now because all the restrictions on voting and the ways
Speaker 1: in which the vote was becoming distorted. Have you just
Speaker 1: been magnified by all the difficulties of So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about. So I was a gonna say,
Speaker 1: what what what I'm hearing from is you're sleeping really
Speaker 1: well at night. You know, there's no work to do,
Speaker 1: almost nothing to do this stuff that they're just sitting
Speaker 1: around polishing their nails. Yeah, I mean, like, take me
Speaker 1: to March, like coronavirus hits. You have been involved in
Speaker 1: some of these monumental cases that have just shaped society
Speaker 1: in our civil liberties, like coronavirus hits. And now you know,
Speaker 1: we have a little bit I don't even think we
Speaker 1: have the luxury of perspective at this point, but we
Speaker 1: have a little bit more perspective. But let's take me
Speaker 1: to March, Like in your role at this extraordinary moment,
Speaker 1: like what was going through your head? What were you
Speaker 1: concerned about at the time. Well, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the first concerns is just you have to close the office.
Speaker 1: So the first concern is how can people do all
Speaker 1: this umcity It increases the work and makes it more
Speaker 1: difficult to do the work. So we just had to
Speaker 1: really make sure that our technology was up to doing things.
Speaker 1: So one thing that the a c l YOU did
Speaker 1: was to buy new laptops for some stuff. People who
Speaker 1: are going to be working and you have to worry
Speaker 1: about how the technology is working um which has been
Speaker 1: a question for us every time there's something really big hits.
Speaker 1: When the travel band hit, there were so many people
Speaker 1: wanting to donate to the a c l U. There
Speaker 1: are website crash so even things like that, you know,
Speaker 1: that's you know, like number one of how do you
Speaker 1: handle this? We have been fortunate so far that the
Speaker 1: a c l U is so well managed and we
Speaker 1: had not spent every penny that all of our donors
Speaker 1: had given us up until that point, so have not
Speaker 1: had to laid people off, which is very fortunate because
Speaker 1: as you know, saying, there's more than enough work to do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the first concern of just you know,
Speaker 1: how do you keep the organization up to speed and
Speaker 1: ready to do you know what. Staff members now need
Speaker 1: to be doing an incredible amount more work. But for
Speaker 1: some of them, it's well, they're juggling a toddler and
Speaker 1: a dog. Yeah. Can you give me a run through
Speaker 1: of some of the cases that you've been involved in
Speaker 1: that correct me if I'm wrong. You started out as
Speaker 1: an intern, right, and really just worked your way up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can imagine you've been involved, and I
Speaker 1: know you've been involved in some pretty extraordinary cases. To
Speaker 1: give listeners some context, can you explain some of the
Speaker 1: cases that kind of stick out to you. Well, I
Speaker 1: wasn't intern for the a c l U back, you know,
Speaker 1: in the nineties seventies, you know, around the time when
Speaker 1: I was in law school. And just to make sure
Speaker 1: that everybody understands, I don't actually work at the a
Speaker 1: c l U. Day job is I'm a law professor,
Speaker 1: and I don't generally work on the cases. What I'm
Speaker 1: generally doing is we run the organization. But I'll tell
Speaker 1: you I think it would be interesting start um. But
Speaker 1: the first a c l U case that I actually
Speaker 1: did work on, which was while I was a law student,
Speaker 1: and this was the case. One of my connections with
Speaker 1: the a c l U originally was that one of
Speaker 1: my law professors in the first year was connected with
Speaker 1: the New York Civil Liberties Union, and he had some
Speaker 1: clients who came to him who were graduate students at
Speaker 1: Stony Brook on Allowland, and they had just discovered they
Speaker 1: were not allowed to live together. They had rented a
Speaker 1: house together, there were six of them, and they had
Speaker 1: just discovered they weren't allowed to live together because there
Speaker 1: was an ordinance in their village village called belt Hair,
Speaker 1: that prohibited more than two persons unrelated by blood, marriage
Speaker 1: or adoption from living together. So, you know, they were
Speaker 1: pretty shocked. And it turned out that under the laws
Speaker 1: it was at the time, by the time they were
Speaker 1: talking about this, they were liable for all sorts of
Speaker 1: criminal fines and punishment. It was really a very heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: So I started working on that case with my law
Speaker 1: professor and um we went to a federal job to
Speaker 1: ask for a temporary restraining order, which means to just
Speaker 1: until we had litigated whether or not that was a
Speaker 1: constitutional thing to do, to tell people who they couldn't
Speaker 1: couldn't live with that the village should not be allowed
Speaker 1: to either kick them out of their their house or
Speaker 1: to you know, start walking them up because you know,
Speaker 1: they owned too many fines for having been illegal residents.
Speaker 1: So um, the judge ended up signing the order, and
Speaker 1: he was signing the order about that, and then one
Speaker 1: of the ways they which actually the original way in
Speaker 1: which our clients had discovered that they were illegal residents,
Speaker 1: was that they had applied for residents only beach permit
Speaker 1: and they were told they couldn't have one because they
Speaker 1: were illegal residents. So the judge who we had the
Speaker 1: district judge, who was a very nice man, looked at
Speaker 1: the order we had written out and he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the summer. Don't your clients want to
Speaker 1: go to the beach while the litigation is pending? Do
Speaker 1: you mind if I write that in that they have
Speaker 1: to be allowed to park in the parking lot of
Speaker 1: the beach. So we said sure, you know, that's very nice,
Speaker 1: so he wrote that in. Then, as the junior member
Speaker 1: of the team, I was sent out to explain to
Speaker 1: our clients, to show them the order and explained to
Speaker 1: them what was going on, and they gave me a
Speaker 1: tour of you what the village looked like in the
Speaker 1: residents only beach and the minute the wheels of their
Speaker 1: car hit the parking lot is very large. Your fierce
Speaker 1: looking man comes striding across and says, what are you
Speaker 1: doing here? You're not allowed to be in this parking lot.
Speaker 1: And they all look at me, and I'm thinking, what
Speaker 1: am I? I'm like, you know, twenty something, I'm not
Speaker 1: very tall, but what am I supposed to do with
Speaker 1: this large man who doesn't want us in there in
Speaker 1: his parking lot? And then I remembered that I had
Speaker 1: a federal court order right on my person, so I
Speaker 1: kind of drew myself up, but I showed him my
Speaker 1: federal court order and I said, well, I'm with the
Speaker 1: New York Civil Liberties Union kind of, and I have
Speaker 1: a federal court order saying that these people are allowed
Speaker 1: to be in this parking lot and go to the beach.
Speaker 1: And he melted. And that that was, I think, in
Speaker 1: one of the points at which I thought, Wow, you
Speaker 1: know this, this is really powerful stuff. Yeah you saw
Speaker 1: that there was my first day case. Yeah, exactly, that's great.
Speaker 1: And I saw I read that. So maybe your your
Speaker 1: earliest memories, um of speaking up to authority involved I
Speaker 1: think a dispute over a book at your school library. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, even before the Belchair case. My first civil
Speaker 1: liberties hero was my mother. So when I was in
Speaker 1: third grade, we were doing a school play about a
Speaker 1: story called Johnny Tremaine, about a boy in the American Revolution,
Speaker 1: and I like, I thought the play was interesting. Players
Speaker 1: don't have that many words, and we were told that
Speaker 1: this was based on the book. So I went to
Speaker 1: my school library, my public school library, and I asked
Speaker 1: to take out the book, and the librarian said, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't take out that book, dear, that's in the
Speaker 1: boys section. And I was I was surprised to find
Speaker 1: this out. I've been reading books in the girls section,
Speaker 1: which were all collections of fairy tales and biographies of
Speaker 1: president's wives, but it had never occurred to me that
Speaker 1: I wasn't allowed to take out a book from the
Speaker 1: boys section. So I went home and I told my
Speaker 1: mother about this. You're just thinking, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: way things are, and she just exploded and she called
Speaker 1: the librarian the next day and say, how dare you
Speaker 1: told my daughter you know what she's not allowed to read.
Speaker 1: So the librarian told me that from then on, I
Speaker 1: could take out any book I wanted, and you know,
Speaker 1: not long after that, they changed the policy for everyone.
Speaker 1: So you know, there was another example of how you
Speaker 1: know you can kind of speak up to authority when
Speaker 1: they kind of tell you who to be and prevent
Speaker 1: you from making your own choices. Were you always like that? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's third grade and I feel like yes,
Speaker 1: I think for most of us are values of form
Speaker 1: when we're pretty young. Yeah, so you know, seeing my
Speaker 1: mother do that, I'm sure you would have had an
Speaker 1: impact on me. Yeah, that's such a good story. And
Speaker 1: did you I mean, did you always know you wanted
Speaker 1: to go into law? No? I actually really didn't, because
Speaker 1: having grown up as a woman during that era, my
Speaker 1: father was a lawyer and he always used to talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that law was really not a good
Speaker 1: profession for women. Why would you want to do that
Speaker 1: if you could be an English teacher and have the
Speaker 1: summer off, you take care of your children, so you
Speaker 1: have to be a while. I graduated from college and
Speaker 1: then spent a few years doing other things and then
Speaker 1: decided to go to law school. Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's so interesting and now to seeing where you're at
Speaker 1: um and seeing this moment, it does feel like a moment.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at something you said about you know,
Speaker 1: this feels like a moment we can be optimistic because
Speaker 1: so many Americans are beginning to really understand the scope
Speaker 1: and the depth of structural racism. It certainly feels, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm based in New York City. You can just feel
Speaker 1: it right on the streets with the protests, and they
Speaker 1: hear the sirens and the helicopters, you know, as we
Speaker 1: sit here, um and we hear you know, your rich
Speaker 1: history and covering and caring about these issues. What is
Speaker 1: the challenge for you guys ahead, Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: challenge on that particular subject is that this is work
Speaker 1: that we had already been doing. One of our top
Speaker 1: priorities for the past several years has been trying to
Speaker 1: break our addiction to mass incarceration, which, as everybody is
Speaker 1: now really coming to terms with, has been really it's
Speaker 1: a system that has disproportionately affected people on the basis
Speaker 1: of race and income and disability of co to the
Speaker 1: people who are arrested or people who are mentally ill,
Speaker 1: And our feeling is that the system has been fundamentally
Speaker 1: broken and misguided for a long time. So part of
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do with this moment is to
Speaker 1: capitalize on the fact that people want to look at
Speaker 1: what the police do. We're trying to encourage people to
Speaker 1: look beyond the police. It's not just you. Who are
Speaker 1: the police arresting and how are they treating the people
Speaker 1: they arrest? I think behind that is the question of
Speaker 1: what do we really want to treat as a crime.
Speaker 1: So when you treat all sorts of very minor misconduct
Speaker 1: as a crime, you're really setting up a situation where
Speaker 1: they're going to be more contacts and therefore potentially more
Speaker 1: arbitrary and discriminatory context. So, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: Eric Garner ended up dying because he was selling single
Speaker 1: cigarettes on which the tax had not been paid. George Floyd.
Speaker 1: The basis for that encounter was that they thought he
Speaker 1: might be passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. So I
Speaker 1: think that if you look at why are we criminalizing
Speaker 1: some of the things we criminalize, especially if you're talking
Speaker 1: about people who are mentally ill and are having problems.
Speaker 1: Do we really want the police to be the people
Speaker 1: who are the first responders to people who are having
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis or is there some more effective
Speaker 1: way to deal with that that would avoid putting those
Speaker 1: people into the criminal justice system, which isn't really good
Speaker 1: for anyone, and to maybe recommit, reallocate some of the
Speaker 1: resources we're using on arresting people and locking them up
Speaker 1: to actually dealing with the mental health crises. You have
Speaker 1: mental health treatment. So instead of viewing everything as well
Speaker 1: dysfunction as a matter of policing, why don't we spend
Speaker 1: more time reinvesting and to try to prevent more dysfunction.
Speaker 1: Instort of like the old saying, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: not every problem in our society is a problem for
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system, and an occasion to arrest people
Speaker 1: and lock them up a lot of them really should
Speaker 1: be an occasion for thinking about public health treatments. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about how we want to approach homelessness, and you
Speaker 1: have a lot of much deeper thoughts about how you
Speaker 1: prevent dysfunction. Rather than answering everything with you we're going
Speaker 1: to send in the police. It certainly seems also like
Speaker 1: this moment, even coming out of the pandemic, I can
Speaker 1: only imagine the mental health crisis is going to be
Speaker 1: even worse. Yeah, that could well be um and I
Speaker 1: think the pandemic is also showing us. Somebody asked me
Speaker 1: the other day whether the protests over policing and police
Speaker 1: brutality are related to the pandemic, and I was in
Speaker 1: a webinar and one of the smart people in the
Speaker 1: room said, oh, no, no, they're two entirely different things.
Speaker 1: But I said, what do you mean. The same people
Speaker 1: who are being disproportionately affected by policing and police brutality
Speaker 1: are the people who are being disproportionately affected by COVID.
Speaker 1: The statistics is that people of color are much more
Speaker 1: likely to die, and there are a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: for that. You're having to do with your underlying health
Speaker 1: and having to do with the fact that minorities and
Speaker 1: people who are not affluent don't get to work from home,
Speaker 1: they don't get to work through zoom. There are the
Speaker 1: people who are out there on the streets being the
Speaker 1: first risk wanders, being the people who are picking up
Speaker 1: the garbage, being the people who was talking the supermarket shills.
Speaker 1: And I feel like the virus is really amplifying so
Speaker 1: many of the inequities we've had in our society. And
Speaker 1: I think especially you know, I don't know what it's
Speaker 1: like for everyone else. But I live in Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: in New York City. It really felt like a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who were out on the street, they
Speaker 1: were out on the street because they were upset about
Speaker 1: George Floyd. But I think it was more that they
Speaker 1: recognized that George Floyd was the chip of the iceberg
Speaker 1: and that there were just a lot going on that
Speaker 1: they really just you could not tolerate any longer. More
Speaker 1: from Susan after the break, and make sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to First Contact in Apple podcasts or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: so you don't miss an episode putting on the tech hat.
Speaker 1: You know, I think most people probably don't think of
Speaker 1: tech when they think of the a c l U,
Speaker 1: But there's quite a bit of litigation in regards to
Speaker 1: security and privacy issues around contact tracing, surveillance, algorithmic bias,
Speaker 1: and obviously the a c l U has a hand
Speaker 1: in checks and balances and a lot of the issues
Speaker 1: that are merging from the pandemic. You know, what are
Speaker 1: some of the tech developments that you guys are most
Speaker 1: concerned about. Well, since you were mentioning the COVID and
Speaker 1: the the contact tracking and tracing, I'll start with that.
Speaker 1: So the upshot is that we are neither for nor
Speaker 1: against contact racing. Contact tracing is something that really will
Speaker 1: contribute to public health. Our concern is not to say no,
Speaker 1: you can't do it, or you just go right ahead
Speaker 1: and do whatever you want. What we're concerned about is
Speaker 1: to minimize the damage to privacy, the damage to equity. Again, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of concerns that we have. The
Speaker 1: other thing that we're concerned about is discrimination. Again, because
Speaker 1: there are ways in which the technology could also increase
Speaker 1: pre existing social inequities. We think that people should not
Speaker 1: be coerced into participating and in testing. We think it
Speaker 1: should be voluntary, and we also think that it should
Speaker 1: be nonpunitive, because if you start having the criminal justice
Speaker 1: system enforcing whether or not people are willing to use
Speaker 1: their phone to take a test or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you're just creating more opportunities for police interactions that will
Speaker 1: at some point be arbitrary or discriminatory. So we don't
Speaker 1: want to see rules and regulations that are good to
Speaker 1: public health rules. Even if they really are good public
Speaker 1: health rules, we don't want to see those become occasions
Speaker 1: for filling up the jails with the people who aren't complying,
Speaker 1: because we've already seen there were some statistics in New
Speaker 1: York that when you ask the police to start enforcing
Speaker 1: who's wearing a mask and who's not wearing a mask,
Speaker 1: that right away, excuse excuse, racially truly disproportionate in terms
Speaker 1: of who they were questioning and who they weren't questioning.
Speaker 1: So I think there's just a lot of issues they
Speaker 1: were which is very much prop your reality, because they're
Speaker 1: very much ethical issues. Yeah, you know, UM one of
Speaker 1: the one of the cases that I'm fascinated by. UM
Speaker 1: and I you know, I honestly I felt like it
Speaker 1: was just it was only a matter of time until
Speaker 1: we saw this headline. And then we saw the headline,
Speaker 1: you know, a man was arrested after an algorithm wrongfully
Speaker 1: identified him. You know, I've been covering for so many years.
Speaker 1: AI is biased. AI is trained on you know, on
Speaker 1: data online, which can be very racist, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think for so many years we've been having this conversation.
Speaker 1: But the question of okay, well, what happens when it
Speaker 1: gets into the hands of the police, what happens, you know,
Speaker 1: if if it could go for policing, And so I
Speaker 1: think it's such a fascinating case. And and you guys
Speaker 1: that a cl you filed an administrative complaint with Detroit's
Speaker 1: police department over what you guys are calling the country's
Speaker 1: first known wrongful arrest involving facial recognition technology. I mean,
Speaker 1: for context, a man was arrested because he was wrongfully
Speaker 1: identified by an algorithm. The police department thought he had
Speaker 1: robbed I believe, like stolen watches, and he was arrested.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you talk to me about the significance
Speaker 1: of this case. I can't help put put on my
Speaker 1: tech hat and scream. You guys, this is a really
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, it is a really big deal. And
Speaker 1: as you're saying, Laurie, we were aware of this problem
Speaker 1: for a long time and we've been complaining. So going
Speaker 1: back for a minute before getting to the case you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Robert Williams UH the National Institute of Science
Speaker 1: and Technology says that African American and Asian people are
Speaker 1: up to a hundred times is likely to be disidentified
Speaker 1: by official recognition. So yeah, that's the background problem. And
Speaker 1: so we knew that, right, you know, we knew that
Speaker 1: before the case came up in Michigan. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: not the algorithm's fault. Obviously, there's something that's being put
Speaker 1: into the algorithm that that is, you know, that has
Speaker 1: a bias. And I people tend to think that algorithms
Speaker 1: are you know, are so neutral and that we can
Speaker 1: rely on algorithms. That's what I was saying about the
Speaker 1: contact tracking and tracing, that you you start relying on
Speaker 1: algorithms or apps that you think are neutral, and you
Speaker 1: really have to be very wary of that. So again,
Speaker 1: before getting to the Robert Williams case, uh An, a
Speaker 1: c l U staffer at the ah LU of Northern California,
Speaker 1: had the really interesting idea of trying out Amazon's facial
Speaker 1: recognition program Recognition with the K because yeah, they were
Speaker 1: just offering this to the police or whatever. This is great,
Speaker 1: it will help you identify and see if you have
Speaker 1: somebody who matches a mug shot. Well, what they tried
Speaker 1: to do, which I thought was very clever, was they
Speaker 1: tried to match mug shots against the members of Congress.
Speaker 1: They got the facial pictures of all the members of Congress.
Speaker 1: This was in July and there were twenty eight members
Speaker 1: of Congress who were misidentified as matching the mug shots.
Speaker 1: There were twenty in mistakes out of that, and not
Speaker 1: only that, but that the false matches were disc apportionately
Speaker 1: people of color. And one of the people who was
Speaker 1: identified as matching a mug shot, and therefore, you know,
Speaker 1: probably you know this criminal was civil rights legend John Lewis.
Speaker 1: You're the guy who was beat up on the bridge
Speaker 1: in Salma to know, to get us all voting rights.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we know that almost of the false matches
Speaker 1: there were of people of color, even though people of
Speaker 1: color made up only twenty of the members of Congress.
Speaker 1: So in some ways, you know, the Robert Williams case
Speaker 1: is completely predictable. We knew that we allowed for that
Speaker 1: to happen. It might have already happened elsewhere, but you know,
Speaker 1: subterranean lee in a way that we don't really we
Speaker 1: didn't see the case. But what's amazing about the Robert
Speaker 1: Williams cases that it happened right there, you know, visible
Speaker 1: to everybody where you can just see it. So what
Speaker 1: happened was that they told him that he was being
Speaker 1: arrested because they believed that he was that the algorithm
Speaker 1: has said that that that he was a match for
Speaker 1: this mug shot, and they showed him in the mug shot,
Speaker 1: and he said to them, do you guys think all
Speaker 1: black people look alike? That looks nothing like me. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it was pretty clearing that if you used
Speaker 1: your eyes and looked at the picture yourself, if you
Speaker 1: didn't trust the algorithm, and if you looked at the
Speaker 1: picture in this man's face, they didn't look alike. But nevertheless,
Speaker 1: he spent thirty hours in jail under some pretty miserable
Speaker 1: conditions because the algorithm said it was a match. So
Speaker 1: I think that's really important. In some ways, the fact
Speaker 1: that you know a problem exists is not as inspiring
Speaker 1: to make people want to do something about it as
Speaker 1: when you see it. So that's what happened with all
Speaker 1: the protests about George Floyd. You people could watch that
Speaker 1: horrible video. They could see it. It was recorded on
Speaker 1: the video, And here we have an actual person, not
Speaker 1: just hypothetically statistics are showing, but an actual person who
Speaker 1: did get arrested and did have a miserable time. He
Speaker 1: was arrested in front of his family. It was really
Speaker 1: traumatizing and based on again, the officers involved were trusting
Speaker 1: the science more than they were trusting their their own eyes.
Speaker 1: When anybody cook he didn't look like the picture right.
Speaker 1: And you know, he wrote an offed in the Washington
Speaker 1: Post and he he asked the question, He said, why
Speaker 1: is law enforcement even allowed to use this technology when
Speaker 1: it obviously doesn't work? So, I guess asking a legal
Speaker 1: scholar the question. You know, police departments all around the
Speaker 1: country are using different variations of facial recognition software. So
Speaker 1: you know, what regulations should we see as we enter
Speaker 1: this era of algorithmic discrimination. Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: And again we've been urging, you know, long before Robert
Speaker 1: Williams turned up, we've been urging police departments not to
Speaker 1: rely on the facial recognition technology that it was just
Speaker 1: it was not reliable enough to you know, to hold
Speaker 1: people's face in the hands of the algorithms don't have hands,
Speaker 1: but for people's face to be dependent on the spatial
Speaker 1: recognition technology which was being touted. And again, it's great
Speaker 1: if a company is doing something to make money, but
Speaker 1: if wanting to make money is your only consideration, and
Speaker 1: if you're not considering whether you are unleashing something that
Speaker 1: is really going to be disruptive of people's lives unfairly,
Speaker 1: either because it's just going to be wrong or because
Speaker 1: it's going to be wrong in a racially skewed way.
Speaker 1: I think that's just really a problem. So um, we've
Speaker 1: been urging police departments not to buy and use the technology.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you know Amazon has withdrawn the facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology temporarily and they're not sure whether or not
Speaker 1: they'll bring it back. So the probability of a wrongful
Speaker 1: arrest is one thing, but when you draw the camera
Speaker 1: back and look at all the technology in the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: In addition to facial recognition, one thing that police departments
Speaker 1: have been doing with facial recognition and different law enforcement
Speaker 1: agencies is to try to see who attends a demonstration
Speaker 1: or see who's in the crowd. So it ties not
Speaker 1: into are you, like, is somebody likely to be wrongly
Speaker 1: arrested like Robert Williams because they just there was a
Speaker 1: false match. But it starts becoming big surveillance too that
Speaker 1: an agency has the cameras on and then they have
Speaker 1: the facial recognition and they're purporting to identify all the
Speaker 1: people in that crowd, so that then they contract those people.
Speaker 1: They now know that you were at the George Floyd demonstration,
Speaker 1: and that person was in the the the anti war demonstration,
Speaker 1: And at that point, the government starts having more and
Speaker 1: more information about all of us, to the point where
Speaker 1: it feels like instead of we're controlling the government, it's
Speaker 1: like the government controls us. So I think the facial
Speaker 1: recognition is only one part of the whole tendency of technology.
Speaker 1: Two amplify government power to be kind of watching, watching
Speaker 1: what we do. Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting to
Speaker 1: hear you say that. Um. You know, that type of
Speaker 1: technology is just a part of it, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to this moment where people are out protesting police brutality,
Speaker 1: when people are out fighting for their civil liberties. You know,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of technology that's being built. Their cameras
Speaker 1: that are are being built that can recognize people in
Speaker 1: real time that are police, police are wearing. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of technology. This is just the beginning of it. Um.
Speaker 1: I I know you mentioned Amazon put a hold on
Speaker 1: their sales of recognition software. Microsoft said it's not going
Speaker 1: to sell face recognition software to police departments until their
Speaker 1: federal regulations. I know. IBM said that it was going
Speaker 1: to announce a ban on general purpose facial recognition? Is
Speaker 1: that enough? Like? What is I guess, you know, what
Speaker 1: is the government's role here? Like? What do you think
Speaker 1: should happen? Especially since this is just, as you say,
Speaker 1: one small part of a larger issue that we're facing
Speaker 1: as a society. I think that's right, and I think
Speaker 1: that there could be, you know, government regulation, but that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen unless the public wants to urge
Speaker 1: their representatives to start controlling this. And what we've seen
Speaker 1: is that an enlightened public can make something happen even
Speaker 1: without regulation, right, So, you know, it was that the
Speaker 1: public is becoming concerned and that's the reason why Amazon
Speaker 1: acted to withdraw this. They started being concerned that their
Speaker 1: customers were not going to be happy with them. And
Speaker 1: I think at this point that's almost more effective than
Speaker 1: government regulation. And once you have that wake up call,
Speaker 1: then you can start having serious debates. And I think
Speaker 1: those debates have to take place in many places. They
Speaker 1: should be taking place in legislatures where people can talk
Speaker 1: about the trade off between privacy and mass surveillance and
Speaker 1: whatever the government is trying to accomplish, why do they
Speaker 1: need this technology? Is it really worth it? You are
Speaker 1: their crimes that they wouldn't be solving without it, and
Speaker 1: are they crimes that we're concerned about solving or do
Speaker 1: they fall into the category of, you know, is that
Speaker 1: something that we don't think should be a crime at all.
Speaker 1: People are generally unaware in terms of what the police
Speaker 1: do that only four to five percent of all arrests
Speaker 1: involved crimes of violence. So when people think about we
Speaker 1: want to enable law enforcement to be at catching criminals,
Speaker 1: where we're concerned about divesting or defunding the police because
Speaker 1: who's going to protect us from physical harm? Almost none
Speaker 1: of what the police and law enforcement do is about
Speaker 1: physical harm. It's a tiny percentage. Everything else that they're
Speaker 1: doing is about this whole array of all sorts of
Speaker 1: other things that we criminalize. And I think that in
Speaker 1: addition to having better conversations about is there a potential
Speaker 1: for some of these technologies that the government is using
Speaker 1: to create arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement, I think we need
Speaker 1: to dig deeper behind that question, in the same way
Speaker 1: that you need to dig deeper beyond the George Floyd
Speaker 1: murder and to ask if there's something systemically wrong here.
Speaker 1: Do you need to rethink the whole question. So when
Speaker 1: people say, well, you know, but we need the facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology because it helps the police solve crimes, well, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know what crimes and what are the costs?
Speaker 1: So I think once people are educated enough and once
Speaker 1: they realize what the nature of the problem is kind
Speaker 1: of what's being unleashed, they can start really being read
Speaker 1: to have that broader conversation. And I think it should
Speaker 1: take place in legislatures, but I think it also should
Speaker 1: take place and evidently is taking place in boardrooms at Amazon, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google and Microsoft. They should be talking and they
Speaker 1: do sometimes if the people demand it. And it also
Speaker 1: has to take part just among people, you know, among
Speaker 1: you know, tech communities and people just beginning to talk
Speaker 1: about what are our responsibilities here? Is it okay for
Speaker 1: us to create products just to make money if we
Speaker 1: know that there are dangers, that the products are going
Speaker 1: to be misused, or maybe aren't reliable enough, or that
Speaker 1: they just feed into this enormous surveillance date. So let
Speaker 1: me compare this to an earlier moment. After nine eleven,
Speaker 1: we had a kind of similar phenomenon that in order
Speaker 1: to deal with catching terrorists. We changed a lot of
Speaker 1: laws that ended up really sacrificing a lot of privacy
Speaker 1: and allowing a lot more government surveillance. And for a
Speaker 1: number of years that went unchallenged, and people kept saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if if that's what we need in order
Speaker 1: to be safe, we're willing to give up a little privacy. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think people didn't think about the
Speaker 1: fact that they weren't giving up their own privacy, they
Speaker 1: were giving up somebody else's. And second of all, people
Speaker 1: didn't realize how extensive the surveillance really was until Edward Snowden.
Speaker 1: So then after Edward Snowden came along and people realized
Speaker 1: how the government was just scooping up tons of information
Speaker 1: about people and just keeping it in government databases and
Speaker 1: started realizing the horrifying potential of all that. What happened
Speaker 1: was that Congress made a couple of little changes to
Speaker 1: the law. But more important, Microsoft and Google and other
Speaker 1: places started to realize that their customers were concerned, and
Speaker 1: they started being a little less cooperative. At the beginning,
Speaker 1: right after nine eleven, all of the telecoms, all these
Speaker 1: companies were just saying to the government, you want information here.
Speaker 1: Take it all your verizons are sure, you know, hear
Speaker 1: all the records of all our customers. Take it all.
Speaker 1: You're keeping us safe. And I think that to me,
Speaker 1: the most important thing is an informed public. That if
Speaker 1: people can examine for themselves, but that they really think
Speaker 1: that we're being kept safe by all of this, and
Speaker 1: really examine you both the costs and the benefits in
Speaker 1: an educated way, I think we get much better discussions.
Speaker 1: And I think not only do you have the possibility
Speaker 1: of getting better legislation or regulation, you also have the
Speaker 1: possibility that private companies and you know, the tech the
Speaker 1: tech companies are not going to want to do it
Speaker 1: anymore because their customers don't want them to. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard to have an informed public and to
Speaker 1: have these discussions, even in this current environment. To some degree.
Speaker 1: I mean, people I think are struggling with the idea
Speaker 1: of truth. People are um, you know. And I remember,
Speaker 1: by the way, I remember this note in leaks, like
Speaker 1: I remember being in the news room covering technology and
Speaker 1: thinking to myself because I wrote the tech bubble all
Speaker 1: the way up right, and thinking, this is an extraordinary moment,
Speaker 1: because we saw that we've been sharing all our data.
Speaker 1: But we saw for the first time that, you know,
Speaker 1: the government had a lot of access to things that
Speaker 1: we had no idea they had access to. And I
Speaker 1: think it was a fundamental shift, and the lens on
Speaker 1: tech companies changed at that moment, and tech companies behavior
Speaker 1: has changed quite a bit after that. You know, I
Speaker 1: wonder this moment we're sitting in where we're having these
Speaker 1: debates about surveillance and privacy and whatnot. These are sticky
Speaker 1: debates and they're very politicized as we're heading into an election,
Speaker 1: as we have misinformation spreading online, as a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know what to believe and what not to believe.
Speaker 1: As the media landscape has changed, it's it certainly seems
Speaker 1: like a harder environment to even to even have some
Speaker 1: of these conversations. Well, I think in some ways it's
Speaker 1: harder in some ways. I think the other thing that
Speaker 1: is a catalyst for the discussions is realizing that there's
Speaker 1: a dimension of race to all of us, I think,
Speaker 1: and talking about artificial intelligence and facial recognition, not many
Speaker 1: people saw that as an issue of structural racism. You know,
Speaker 1: that there's something wrong with how we're putting together the
Speaker 1: algorithms and it ends up that John Lewis is going
Speaker 1: to be misidentified as somebody who matches a mug shot
Speaker 1: and that Robert Williams is going to be arrested. So
Speaker 1: I think that the fact that we now know that
Speaker 1: that is an additional concern enables us to have richer conversations.
Speaker 1: So we're not only talking about is there a trade
Speaker 1: off between security and privacy? Plus, I think the other
Speaker 1: thing that people are feeling much more open to is
Speaker 1: to have that deeper conversation about what are our goals
Speaker 1: here and if we're enabling all this government surveillance in
Speaker 1: order to help the government to catch criminals, well, you
Speaker 1: know what do we mean by criminals? What crimes are
Speaker 1: they solving? And how are they using you know, how
Speaker 1: how are how is this actually being used in services?
Speaker 1: Wood So I feel like in some ways, you know,
Speaker 1: with the election coming up, I think that gives people
Speaker 1: more impetus to want to talk about these issues, because
Speaker 1: the elections aren't only about the president. They're also about
Speaker 1: local prosecutors and sheriffs and the people who make the
Speaker 1: decisions about whether to buy surveillance equipment and what they're
Speaker 1: gonna do with their authority over the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: So one thing the a c l U has been
Speaker 1: doing in addition to everything else, as we've been very
Speaker 1: involved in elections of prosecutors because that's the place where
Speaker 1: almost people never used to pay attention to, you know who,
Speaker 1: who were these people running and maybe they would vote
Speaker 1: for somebody without really knowing what they voted for. So
Speaker 1: what we're urging, and I think this is very much
Speaker 1: what we're talking about about having an educated public. We're
Speaker 1: urging people to go to elections or to go to debates,
Speaker 1: to go to campaign events, attend I guess on zoom
Speaker 1: these days, to attend campaign events and ask the candidates questions,
Speaker 1: what would be your policy about whether or not you're
Speaker 1: going to accept military equipment from the federal government in
Speaker 1: your police department? Are you going to buy tanks? Are
Speaker 1: you going to buy you know, these horrible weapons that
Speaker 1: are used. Is that something you would do? Are you
Speaker 1: going to buy you know, facial recognition software? Is that
Speaker 1: how you would use your power? If we left you
Speaker 1: um say that the prosecutors, would you support a reduction
Speaker 1: in cash bail and increase of increased alternatives to incarceration?
Speaker 1: So that's a place where without way for the government
Speaker 1: to do something, we can ourselves affect what's happening in
Speaker 1: our communities by encouraging candidates to think about what positions
Speaker 1: they're taking on these different issues and letting them know
Speaker 1: that they're gonna lose votes. The more people educated, the
Speaker 1: more they are educated, the more they can tell people
Speaker 1: that they'll lose votes, and to try that. This is
Speaker 1: something that's worked in some places to encourage candidates to
Speaker 1: take a better position. Yeah. Yeah, they might never never
Speaker 1: thought of that, but you know, once they commit themselves,
Speaker 1: you know that that's going to be better. So there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of ways that we can affect things.
Speaker 1: More from Susan after the break and make sure you
Speaker 1: set up for our newsletter at dot dot dot media
Speaker 1: dot com. Backslash newsletter will be launching this summer. Before
Speaker 1: I move on from specifically some of the tech issues,
Speaker 1: I have to bring up predator drones right right, you know,
Speaker 1: the the U S. Customs and Border Protection flew a
Speaker 1: large predator drone over the Minneapolis protests. You know, people
Speaker 1: were protesting police brutality and the killing of George Floyd,
Speaker 1: and for many reasons, it almost felt symbolic. You know,
Speaker 1: it was raising all these questions about aerial surveillance, about
Speaker 1: what data was being collected, where was this going? What
Speaker 1: is your take on this? Well, you know, as you're saying, Laurie,
Speaker 1: and you know that really it really magnifies the opportunity
Speaker 1: to gather more information because you don't even have to
Speaker 1: have the helicopters or whatever. But so you know that
Speaker 1: of course is a concern just you how much information
Speaker 1: is the government gathering, what are they going to do
Speaker 1: with it, who's going to have access to it? Will
Speaker 1: would ever be deleted or will it just got to
Speaker 1: stay there in the government databasis forever. But I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that the Predator drone brings to mind
Speaker 1: is a question that people were also asking, which is
Speaker 1: about the new live touris aation of law enforcement we've
Speaker 1: had for years in this country, a passi Comma tat
Speaker 1: us Act as it's called, which says, you don't want
Speaker 1: the military doing everyday law enforcement, because that's that's not
Speaker 1: our country. We don't want the military to be quote
Speaker 1: dominating the streets, and we don't want the people who
Speaker 1: are out protesting to be considered the enemy of the
Speaker 1: United States, there are people who are expressing their opinions,
Speaker 1: and so the whole idea of you know, it's one thing.
Speaker 1: It's enough if the police held helicopters are flying overhead
Speaker 1: and trying to keep track of, you know, who's in
Speaker 1: the crowd and what the crowd is doing. But once
Speaker 1: you start adding an element of something the military helicopters
Speaker 1: or the military drones or things that feel like we
Speaker 1: are being treated as the enemy of the government, instaid
Speaker 1: that the people who are the government, who are supposed
Speaker 1: to be controlling the government, I think that that's just it.
Speaker 1: It's a very bad paradigm. You think it's a slippery slope, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a slippery slope unless we stopped the slipping. And
Speaker 1: as we saw with you with Amazon and the facial recognition,
Speaker 1: if people say, wait a minute, yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: can make that stuff. But I think if people don't
Speaker 1: pay attention, I think we have a very slippery slope.
Speaker 1: And that's what I've been saying about most of the
Speaker 1: issues we've talked about you, starting with the contact tracing
Speaker 1: and the surveillance and everything else. It seems to me
Speaker 1: that what's really important is transparency. We should know what
Speaker 1: the government is doing and accountability. Back on the issue
Speaker 1: of contact tracing, one thing that the AHL you do,
Speaker 1: together with the a l U of Massachusetts, is we
Speaker 1: have filed a lawsuit. We're actually a records request demanding
Speaker 1: that the government, including the CDC, release information about the
Speaker 1: possible uses of all the location data that they would
Speaker 1: be collecting in connection with contact tracing, because you know,
Speaker 1: once if you don't know what they're doing, then you
Speaker 1: can't have a discussion about what they should be doing.
Speaker 1: And one reason why I was bringing up all the
Speaker 1: post nine eleven changes of law is that I think
Speaker 1: that the whole idea that we can't know the government
Speaker 1: is doing. The government has to act in secret in
Speaker 1: order to keep us safe or else the enemy will
Speaker 1: be able to know what they're doing and you know,
Speaker 1: and work around it. But the government can know everything
Speaker 1: that we're doing. I think that just has democracy backwards.
Speaker 1: You know, we have to be able to know what's
Speaker 1: happening inside the government. And that applies to why are
Speaker 1: they sending the Predator drone? What are they going to
Speaker 1: do with the information? What does this mean? Are they
Speaker 1: going to do it again? And it also has to
Speaker 1: do with the contact track tracking and tracing. Once they
Speaker 1: get that data, what happens to it? Are they going
Speaker 1: to erase itever? You know, who do they share it with?
Speaker 1: What are they going to do with it? And I feel,
Speaker 1: you know, those are really important issues in a democracy,
Speaker 1: that we just have the right to know what the
Speaker 1: government is doing so that we can talk about it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like to sort of say, well, this
Speaker 1: is what the government is doing and that's really bad,
Speaker 1: and that upsets me. I think that kind of misses
Speaker 1: the point. If the government is doing something bad, then
Speaker 1: it is the duty of every American to find out
Speaker 1: what they're doing and to push back. And so at
Speaker 1: the a C. O you we have a program that
Speaker 1: we call People Power. We first invented that and used
Speaker 1: it to explain to cities and localities all over the
Speaker 1: country about how they could fight back against draconian immigration
Speaker 1: rules by becoming quote sanctuary cities, what what their rights
Speaker 1: actually were. We then used it for voting rights. We're
Speaker 1: about to use it some more for voting rights. But
Speaker 1: what we have really urged and I hope that you know,
Speaker 1: some of your listeners will go to the a C
Speaker 1: l U website and see about what people power is
Speaker 1: doing in addition to what the a c l U
Speaker 1: is doing, Because what is the A c L you doing?
Speaker 1: And that's all the staffers at home trying to you know,
Speaker 1: work on their new laptops while they're trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: keep their talkers quiet. But people power is about what
Speaker 1: every single person can and I think should be doing.
Speaker 1: You know, if people really educate themselves and think about
Speaker 1: the ethical issues, the costs and benefits of all this
Speaker 1: technology in addition to a lot of other things going on,
Speaker 1: I think we get a lot better results if people
Speaker 1: pay attention. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to watch the
Speaker 1: A c L you take on issues like surveillance, facial recognition.
Speaker 1: I know, the A C L you out a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against clear View AI, which was this very controversial company
Speaker 1: that was using biometric data. I think facial recognition technology
Speaker 1: helped them collect something like three billion face prints, and
Speaker 1: they were giving access to private companies, wealthy individuals, federal,
Speaker 1: state and local law enforcement agencies. And you know, coming
Speaker 1: from the tech space, it certainly feels like sometimes these stories,
Speaker 1: you just don't know what these companies are doing until
Speaker 1: you start, you know, peeling back the layers and seeing
Speaker 1: all the data went to here and here, and why
Speaker 1: did it go there? And why wasn't this disclosed? And
Speaker 1: and oftentimes it takes the watchdog to really understand where
Speaker 1: some of this can can go wrong and how it's
Speaker 1: being used in ways in ways that can be dangerous
Speaker 1: in many ways. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: that's why I was saying before that aren't concerned before
Speaker 1: everybody jumps on the bandwagon about let's have more contact
Speaker 1: tracing and then you know, like everybody should just be
Speaker 1: doing all this information. I think we have to get
Speaker 1: a dog. Yeah, you're not gonna have the watch dog
Speaker 1: telling you things unless you build a watchdog into the system.
Speaker 1: And if everything is just you know, a company has
Speaker 1: invented this and is selling it to the police, or
Speaker 1: a company who has invented this and now we're all
Speaker 1: going to buy it. If you just leave out any
Speaker 1: sort of oversight, then you really have a tremendous potential problem.
Speaker 1: Are there any other examples of tech that we're not
Speaker 1: thinking about the unintended consequences for our rights or privacy yet? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, a AI is really big altogether across as
Speaker 1: you're saying across many different kinds of issues. I was
Speaker 1: just actually, this is not a tangential to your question,
Speaker 1: but you were asking me before about cases that I
Speaker 1: had worked on, and there was another case that I
Speaker 1: worked on that was about tech where I wrote the
Speaker 1: A c l Use brief in the Supreme Court. It
Speaker 1: was an ancus brief. It wasn't about our client, but
Speaker 1: it was a kid called Riley versus California. And what
Speaker 1: the police were saying they're most law enforcement places, the
Speaker 1: federal government as well as the state of California and
Speaker 1: many other jurisdictions, was that when you arrest somebody, the
Speaker 1: police get to do what is called a search incident
Speaker 1: to arrest, so they get to see what you have
Speaker 1: in your pocket. Makes some sense, right, you know, if
Speaker 1: you have a gun in your pocket, that's a problem,
Speaker 1: or you know whatever, So they get to do a
Speaker 1: surgeon sent in to arrest. And the law had been
Speaker 1: that if they find something in your pocket like that's
Speaker 1: that's a container, they can search inside the container to
Speaker 1: see if there's anything in it that that could be harmful.
Speaker 1: And in fact, there was one situation where they opened
Speaker 1: up a cigarette package that somebody had and they you know,
Speaker 1: they could find a razor blade, they could find marijuana,
Speaker 1: cigarette whatever. So that was law where the Supreme Court said, yes,
Speaker 1: you're allowed to search people and search the containers that
Speaker 1: are on them. Well, what law enforcement said was, your
Speaker 1: cell phone is a container. When we arrest you, we
Speaker 1: can search your cell phone. It's a container. We have
Speaker 1: the right to search incident to risk. And so we
Speaker 1: wrote a brief saying no, it's not you know, it's
Speaker 1: a container, but it's a container that essentially is your home,
Speaker 1: it's your library, it's your desk. So allowing the police
Speaker 1: to look in your cell phone when they only had
Speaker 1: really very feeble and very unlikely scenarios, things just wouldn't
Speaker 1: happen too often for what the need was. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you had some remote thing that would go off
Speaker 1: and would blow something up, you know, oh come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there were other ways to deal with a
Speaker 1: lot of that, and so the Supreme Court actually agreed
Speaker 1: with that. They said, yeah, you know, this is really
Speaker 1: is just a technological way of finding out what's in
Speaker 1: your your papers and books and records. It used to
Speaker 1: be they were in your desk, and now they're in
Speaker 1: your cell phone. So that to me, it's a sort
Speaker 1: of a whole thread of what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: But the challenges to civil liberties are different and in
Speaker 1: some ways greater when the technology builds up. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's a great quote on the A c. L U website.
Speaker 1: The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry
Speaker 1: such information in his hand does not make the information
Speaker 1: any less worthy of the protection for which the founders fought.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts exactly.
Speaker 1: I like to talk about, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: whole points of the Constitution adding the Fourth Amendment, which
Speaker 1: is the protection of privacy, is they wanted to protect
Speaker 1: what was in Benjamin Franklin's disk. You know, nobody should
Speaker 1: know if he was writing some things that were anti government,
Speaker 1: and we now have that on our cell phone, so
Speaker 1: of course, But that's where I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of the protection of civil liberties is applying our fundamental
Speaker 1: principles in different circumstances. Taking a gigantic step back, what
Speaker 1: do you think is the biggest threat to civil liberties
Speaker 1: in the new World Order? In the New World Order, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to just select one. In sort
Speaker 1: of like Sophie's choice, you know which, which is your
Speaker 1: favorite child? Right now, I think one of our very
Speaker 1: top priorities in Adenia. Mass incarceration is a big one
Speaker 1: because so many people's lives are just being totally disrupted
Speaker 1: their families, and often the question really has to be
Speaker 1: for what. One thing that we're hoping is that the
Speaker 1: work we've been doing around trying to get vulnerable people
Speaker 1: released from prison so that they won't get the virus
Speaker 1: and get seriously all possibly die is we're helping that
Speaker 1: once jurisdictions see that they were able to release thousands
Speaker 1: of people from prisons and jails and that it's not
Speaker 1: going to cause a spike in the crime rate, it
Speaker 1: really is pretty safe thing to do. We're hoping that
Speaker 1: that's going to stick and that long run will be
Speaker 1: able to rethink, well, did we really need to put
Speaker 1: all those people in prison and jail to start with?
Speaker 1: What are we doing with the criminal justice system? So
Speaker 1: that's really big. But the other thing that I think
Speaker 1: is really big right now is voting rights. I have
Speaker 1: alluded to this at the beginning of our conversation, but
Speaker 1: the premise of democracy is that the people get to
Speaker 1: decide on who should be running the government and who
Speaker 1: should be making the policy about all these things we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. You know, what, what are the regulations
Speaker 1: about technology? What are the regulations about your reproductive freedom?
Speaker 1: Everything else? LGBT rights? Uh, And it's the people's vote
Speaker 1: is distorted. That's a real problem that people can't vote.
Speaker 1: So we have litigation going on right now in I
Speaker 1: think it's like thirty different states trying to get people
Speaker 1: the opportunity to vote. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: has happened in addition to all way is that incumbents
Speaker 1: had been using to try to protect their own seats,
Speaker 1: is that the virus has really made it dangerous for
Speaker 1: people to vote in public places. So we saw the
Speaker 1: election in Wisconsin where people were just lined up for
Speaker 1: you know, tremendous distance is waiting for a really long
Speaker 1: time to vote because Wisconsin would not allow them to
Speaker 1: submit absentee ballots. And in fact, a study showed afterwards
Speaker 1: that at least seventeen people got got the virus from voting.
Speaker 1: Many many polling places were closed because they, first of all,
Speaker 1: the poll poll workers are generally elderly people, and the
Speaker 1: poll workers were not able and willing to to man
Speaker 1: the polling places. There are a number of states that
Speaker 1: don't allow absentee ballots at all unless you have a
Speaker 1: particular situation, like if you're disabled, and the states are saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the pure the virus are getting yill, that's
Speaker 1: not a disability. Or before you get an absentee ballot,
Speaker 1: you have to have it notarized, you have to have witnesses. Now,
Speaker 1: how is all this going to happen? So it's very
Speaker 1: concerning that people are going to have to choose between
Speaker 1: their health and they're right to vote, and we don't
Speaker 1: think that that should happen. And that's something that has
Speaker 1: to be attended to right now, because if states don't
Speaker 1: come up with plans for trying to enable everyone who
Speaker 1: wants to vote to be able to vote, and for
Speaker 1: counting absentee ballots and for administering this program, if you
Speaker 1: don't come up right now with the plan and the resources,
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to be left out
Speaker 1: and they're going to find that either you know, they
Speaker 1: can't vote because they're afraid to go out to the poll,
Speaker 1: or the vote is not going to be adequately counted.
Speaker 1: So I think that right now, making democracy work is
Speaker 1: really one of our top projects. What is the solution
Speaker 1: to some of these problems? What are your tangible solutions?
Speaker 1: But one tangible solution is that more states have to
Speaker 1: make absentee balloting available to people without having all these
Speaker 1: conditions and you know obstacles. Uh. The other solution is
Speaker 1: you were talking before about truth. A lot of the
Speaker 1: reason that's given the very thin veneer of justification that's
Speaker 1: given for we don't want absentee ballots or we need
Speaker 1: voter i D keep to carry government to approved voter
Speaker 1: i D, which means you have to go down to
Speaker 1: a governmental office live and get your voter i D
Speaker 1: and show it at the polls. The excuse for a
Speaker 1: lot of this is is that there could be fraud. Well,
Speaker 1: studies have shown that there's virtually no voter fraud, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's really a real unicorn. And again, I
Speaker 1: think if people understood that, that might sound good, but
Speaker 1: it's not true. I think truth is another thing that
Speaker 1: we're really fighting for these days. Can you listen to
Speaker 1: the evidence. Can you listen to the public health officials?
Speaker 1: Can you listen to what you what's real? I know
Speaker 1: for a fact that tech companies are very concerned about
Speaker 1: voter suppression, you know, and misinformation spreading online. This idea
Speaker 1: of countering truth around a lot of these very important initiatives,
Speaker 1: whether it's absentee ballots, whether it's showing up to the polls,
Speaker 1: all that kind of thing. You know. I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to know your take. There's a current battle happening right now.
Speaker 1: You have seven fifty advertisers boycotting Facebook asking for better
Speaker 1: policing of hateful content. Our social media companies doing enough
Speaker 1: to police harmful content, especially as we head into an
Speaker 1: election where voter suppression and the spread of misinformation will
Speaker 1: most certainly be attacked. It used to manipulate voters. Well,
Speaker 1: let me actually break your question down into two different parts,
Speaker 1: because you were starting by saying about the concern about
Speaker 1: voter suppression. I think one thing that everybody should be
Speaker 1: doing is to increase awareness of what is a fair
Speaker 1: way to improve access to the ballot for everybody. And
Speaker 1: some of those things are tech solutions. We've had tech
Speaker 1: solutions for years that are available and not widely enough used.
Speaker 1: How to enable differently able people to vote. You can
Speaker 1: blind people, do they have the technology? So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of places where we need the tech community
Speaker 1: and we need everybody to find out how you vote,
Speaker 1: to find out a voting can be made easier, and
Speaker 1: to let people know what the rules for voting are
Speaker 1: where they live. So one thing the a c l
Speaker 1: U Is doing is we have on our website you
Speaker 1: know your rights, you know what you're voting regulations are,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I think people really have to
Speaker 1: start thinking a lot about and to let let all
Speaker 1: their community is all their friends and family know about
Speaker 1: the importance of voting and how they what they have
Speaker 1: to do to vote, and to urge them to just
Speaker 1: get out and vote in whatever form that's going to take.
Speaker 1: So I think that's really important. In terms of disinformation
Speaker 1: on social media, people talk about the First Amendment and
Speaker 1: whether you know there's a First Amendment problem with Facebook
Speaker 1: telling you what you can't do. Well, there isn't, because
Speaker 1: the First Amendment only applies to the government, so you
Speaker 1: don't have a First Amendment right to say whatever you
Speaker 1: want on Facebook. However, I have to say that we're
Speaker 1: you know, we don't regard that issue is altogether a
Speaker 1: simplistic issue that Facebook should be telling everybody what they
Speaker 1: can't say, because even though the First Amendment does not
Speaker 1: apply to private companies, there's still a tremendous value to
Speaker 1: free speech. And there are a number of examples which
Speaker 1: you know, are we've come up with about people who
Speaker 1: are have speech suppressed for bad reasons. I'll give you
Speaker 1: one example. There was a woman who African American woman
Speaker 1: who posted something on Twitter and she got all the
Speaker 1: it is horrible racist responses, and she posted a screenshot
Speaker 1: of the responses that she got to show people what
Speaker 1: she was up against, and Twitter took it down because
Speaker 1: it included racist words that you know, okay, you know
Speaker 1: kind of this is the point. There was another uh
Speaker 1: An CLU lawyer wrote about a statue in Kansas that
Speaker 1: was a topless statue is a woman who were bare aggreasted,
Speaker 1: and so whatever the locality was in Kansas decided to
Speaker 1: take it down because yeah, that was they considered that
Speaker 1: to be important. So the A. C. L You lawyer
Speaker 1: who was challenging whether or not the I think it
Speaker 1: was city could take it down, posted a portrait a
Speaker 1: picture of the statue and that was it wasn't Twitter
Speaker 1: as I think Facebook, and that was taken down on
Speaker 1: the ground that it was obscene, so she couldn't post
Speaker 1: the picture of what she wanted to do. So we
Speaker 1: think that social media control is really a two age sword.
Speaker 1: What I liked is at one point Facebook had a
Speaker 1: protocol for about you what's true and what isn't true,
Speaker 1: And what they did was they gave you a flag.
Speaker 1: So they were concerned that something that was said wasn't true,
Speaker 1: they would have a neutral fact checker check it, and
Speaker 1: then if it didn't turn up well, they would put
Speaker 1: a little flag over it and say this has been questioned,
Speaker 1: and you could click on the flag and you could
Speaker 1: see why it was questioned. But they didn't just take
Speaker 1: it down. So you know, I I agree that, you know,
Speaker 1: disinformation is a tremendous problem, but I think that the
Speaker 1: idea that the solution is asked the tchech companies to
Speaker 1: decide what we should and shouldn't see. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's so great either, And certainly they should not
Speaker 1: be doing it without a lot of transparency and accountability.
Speaker 1: If they're going to be taking things down, they should
Speaker 1: tell us what their protocols are, and you know, there
Speaker 1: should be more public discussion about where the balance is there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It certainly seems like the protocols changed quite a bit,
Speaker 1: especially having covered tent for for this many years. It
Speaker 1: certainly seems like Facebook changes at Twitter changes it, and
Speaker 1: oftentimes it depends on public pressure. I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: what happens with all these advertisers boycotting. I think personally,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling it won't impact the bottom line
Speaker 1: much and they'll go back to business, says normal. But
Speaker 1: but who knows, you know, I do know that Zuckerbird
Speaker 1: cares uh deeply about his employees and and but they've
Speaker 1: been kind of up against you know, public scrutiny for
Speaker 1: a very long time. But but it certainly is interesting,
Speaker 1: especially when the stakes get higher and disinformation can go further,
Speaker 1: and especially as we get closer to an election, it
Speaker 1: certainly feels like everyone feels more triggered around it. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the classics statements about the First
Speaker 1: Amendment is that in the marketplace of ideas, the best
Speaker 1: antidote to bad speech is more speech, right, so, you know, suppression.
Speaker 1: I think we always have to worry every time somebody's
Speaker 1: censoring and suppressing. Yeah, who are we giving that power to?
Speaker 1: You know, nearing a clothes because we don't have you
Speaker 1: for too much longer. I saw that you gave a
Speaker 1: talk um a Democrat and a Republican walk into a bar,
Speaker 1: and you're saying that it seems like these days Democrats
Speaker 1: and Republicans can't really agree on anything, but we all
Speaker 1: need to agree on fundamental American principles like do process,
Speaker 1: equality and freedom of conscience. So is that possible? Do
Speaker 1: you believe are you? Are you an optimist? Do you
Speaker 1: believe that in this current environment? Is that possible? Well?
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a great wrap up question. Where
Speaker 1: so that speech I gave it the Central Arkansas Library,
Speaker 1: And my chief point, as you're saying, is I think
Speaker 1: that people have to be able to agree on neutral principles.
Speaker 1: The Constitution was designed not to say what we're going
Speaker 1: to do about everything. It was designed to have everybody
Speaker 1: have a fair opportunity to be part of the process
Speaker 1: of deciding what we're going to do. So it sets
Speaker 1: up all these democratic structures where we get to vote
Speaker 1: for the people who are the policy makers and we
Speaker 1: all get to decide. But the principles there, the underlying
Speaker 1: principle is that everybody should have a fair and you know,
Speaker 1: the principle should be neutral. Everyone should get to vote.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, if you're a Democrat, your
Speaker 1: vote doesn't count in this area, and if your republic
Speaker 1: and your vote doesn't count in that area, is that's
Speaker 1: not fair. And the basic ideas of the freedom of speech,
Speaker 1: freedom of religion, they're all to be they manage the
Speaker 1: stations of the Golden rule that if I want the
Speaker 1: ability to just choose my own religion and decide what
Speaker 1: religion I'm going to practice, I have to respect your
Speaker 1: right to make a different choice and have your own religion,
Speaker 1: because that's the golden rule. If I want to say
Speaker 1: something that's unpopular, I have to respect your right to
Speaker 1: say something that's unpopular. And if I want to be
Speaker 1: treated fairly and not locked away for you know, doing
Speaker 1: something minor and never given a fair trial, I have
Speaker 1: to respect your right to have the same thing happened
Speaker 1: to you and to be all those fundamental principles are
Speaker 1: things that we really all should agree on. I think
Speaker 1: people get into arguing and assuming that they can never
Speaker 1: agree on the principles because they're differing on what they
Speaker 1: think the results should be. And I think to be
Speaker 1: part of the point of civil liberties is it's all
Speaker 1: about process, it's not about results. The a c l
Speaker 1: U is nonpartisan. We don't try to get Republicans elected,
Speaker 1: we don't try to get Democrats elected. We don't favor
Speaker 1: or disfavor individual politicians or individual parties, but we we
Speaker 1: favor or that there should be neutral principles that everybody
Speaker 1: can agree to to say, okay, here's what's fair. And
Speaker 1: the analogy I used in that talk at the Central
Speaker 1: Arkansas Library. It was one of the nights during the
Speaker 1: World Series, but fortunately not a night where there was
Speaker 1: a game, so people were able to come. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: so what happens before a baseball game is that everybody
Speaker 1: has agreed on the underlying rules, and everyone agrees that
Speaker 1: the your umpires, your referees, and any sports should be neutral.
Speaker 1: And you don't want somebody who's partisan. If they were
Speaker 1: favoring one team, you get rid of them at all.
Speaker 1: Sports fans could agree to that. You know, maybe there
Speaker 1: would be a few who would be just so you know, matchiavellian,
Speaker 1: that they would rather have the biased umpire to always
Speaker 1: rule for their side. But I think sports fans can
Speaker 1: agree what you really want for a fair game. Is
Speaker 1: you want a fair game, you want everyone to agree
Speaker 1: on the principles beforehand. And I think that if we
Speaker 1: could sit down in small groups around the country and
Speaker 1: really talk about what the fundamental principles are, I am
Speaker 1: an enough of the patriot to think we actually could
Speaker 1: agree about a lot. And let me give you an
Speaker 1: example of why. I think there's some basis for hope.
Speaker 1: Maybe not optimism, but certainly hope. We were talking about
Speaker 1: voting rights. So one of the major problems is gerrymandering,
Speaker 1: the way when a party is in power they try
Speaker 1: to distort all the district and they try to stack
Speaker 1: the deck so that their party will remain in power.
Speaker 1: Or if the party in power in a particular state
Speaker 1: thinks it's to their advantage to not have that many
Speaker 1: people vote, they try to make it harder to register
Speaker 1: to vote for new voters, etcetera. Uh, we have had
Speaker 1: the A C l U and a number of other
Speaker 1: organizations working in coalition with US have had a fair
Speaker 1: amount of success doing ballot initiatives going to the people
Speaker 1: of the state in states like Michigan and Nevada and
Speaker 1: Missouri and Florida, where we were part of getting the
Speaker 1: amendment for a past that gave the vote back to
Speaker 1: people who have been convicted of a felony at some
Speaker 1: point and the people of the state. When you us
Speaker 1: the people of the state, you can get a majority
Speaker 1: sometimes the super majority of people who say no, we
Speaker 1: want the rules to be fair. Who doesn't want the
Speaker 1: rules to be fair are legislators who want who are
Speaker 1: incumbents and who want to keep their seats even if
Speaker 1: it takes unfair procedures to do it. So that's a
Speaker 1: real problem right where we have right now that the incumbents,
Speaker 1: the people who are trying to maintain power and not
Speaker 1: allow any sort of regime change, are pulling all the levers.
Speaker 1: But what I think, I think the chief grounds for
Speaker 1: optimism is that when you go to the American people
Speaker 1: themselves and say, well, do you want a fair system
Speaker 1: or do you want a system where you think your
Speaker 1: side is more likely to win? You talk to them
Speaker 1: about that, and I think that you're going to get
Speaker 1: them to say they would really like to see a
Speaker 1: fair system, and that is the promise of America. UM.
Speaker 1: Last question, you have taught at Brooklyn Law School since
Speaker 1: what is the lesson your students will take from this
Speaker 1: moment in history. Well, I know there are lots of lessons,
Speaker 1: but if you could extract it, what is the lesson
Speaker 1: your students will take from this moment in history? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, in an individual setting, one thing I'm doing
Speaker 1: for the fall is I am preparing of course that
Speaker 1: I'm calling COVID nineteen and the Constitution. So what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do in this seminar is we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking at the way in which the Constitution has been
Speaker 1: challenged and to see, you know, how well it holds up.
Speaker 1: What does the Constitution have to say about whether you
Speaker 1: can quarantine people and whether you can allow people to
Speaker 1: be at a religious assembly but not to go to
Speaker 1: a protest, and etcetera, etcetera. So I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting things there which I think are very
Speaker 1: much this particular moment, But big picture, what I would
Speaker 1: like the students to take away the constitutional law students
Speaker 1: especially is essentially what I just said to you, that
Speaker 1: the Constitution is about process. It's not about results. It's
Speaker 1: not about you know, you're a Republican and you're a Democrat,
Speaker 1: and we have two different countries depending on what your
Speaker 1: party is I think that we have one country and
Speaker 1: it's all about a neutral process for very good reasons,
Speaker 1: and I would like people to think more about that.
Speaker 1: After my speech at the Central Arkansas Library, I had
Speaker 1: two examples of people who talked to me. One guy
Speaker 1: came up to me, he said, I'm the Republican who
Speaker 1: walked into that bar, and he said, you know, you're
Speaker 1: making a lot of sense to me. And then there
Speaker 1: was another guy who talked to me who was a Democrat.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, I never really thought about that,
Speaker 1: that maybe it's not right if we're only trying to win.
Speaker 1: I never thought about you know, that's that's not what
Speaker 1: we do in sports. And that's what I'd like people
Speaker 1: to think about. You know, do you really want to
Speaker 1: do things that are only about how you think it's
Speaker 1: going to come out and cheat and destroy the system
Speaker 1: and you know, put a film on the scale and
Speaker 1: you know, stack the deck in order to make things
Speaker 1: come out to what your preferred result is in the
Speaker 1: short run or a long term. Is that just a
Speaker 1: really bad idea because it's just totally inconsistent. You know,
Speaker 1: we've just come from fourth of July and totally inconsistent
Speaker 1: with the premises on which we would like to believe
Speaker 1: our country was founded. Does technology throw a wrench in
Speaker 1: the system? I mean it does. It does create lots
Speaker 1: of things you can't control, and and it it always
Speaker 1: it's always you know, it's always new environment. So you know,
Speaker 1: different kind of example, we were talking about technology and surveillance,
Speaker 1: where of course technology has enabled a whole lot of
Speaker 1: surveillance that we then have to deal with. But technology
Speaker 1: also enabled a whole lot of new marketplaces of ideas.
Speaker 1: So the A. C. L. You did a lot of
Speaker 1: litigation you a few decades ago on applying first two
Speaker 1: Moment principles to the Internet, right, you know, because the
Speaker 1: government censor what was on the Internet because you know, child,
Speaker 1: a child might see it. Yeah, And so you know,
Speaker 1: every new generation of technology, there are new challenges about
Speaker 1: how you apply our principles like privacy and free speech,
Speaker 1: et cetera to the Internet, but the principles remained the same.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone is doing well in these strange and
Speaker 1: surreal times and adjusting to the new normal. Most of important,
Speaker 1: I hope you're staying healthy and somewhat saying follow along
Speaker 1: on our social media. I'm at Lorie Siegel on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and the show is at First Contact Podcasts
Speaker 1: on Instagram and on Twitter. We're at First Contact pod
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Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. First Contact is a production of
Speaker 1: dot dot dot Media, Executive produced by Laurie Siegel and
Speaker 1: Derek Dodge. This episode was produced and edited by Sabine
Speaker 1: Jansen and Jack Reagan. The original theme music is by
Speaker 1: Zander Sing. First Contact with Lori Siegel is a production
Speaker 1: of dot dot dot Media and I Heart Radio