Representative Zoe Lofgren | Talks at Google

Good morning, fellow Googlers, and hello to folks watching this out on YouTube. My name is Alan Davidson. I head Google's Washington Policy Office. And I'm delighted to be here this morning to introduce the next in our series of policy talks. And we're delighted to welcome today Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who represents the 16th district of California, one of our local representatives. Just by way of a short introduction, I wanted to share a story. I first met Congressman Lofgren when I was. It's probably 1997 or 1998. I was a freshly minted civil liberties attorney. And I was. I had the assignment to go out and try and change US Encryption laws. And it's almost hard for us to believe now, but back in the day, we actually had rules in the United States that were designed to try to keep, somehow keep encryption inside the US and only allow the export of strong encryption. And we had this other goal of building back doors into all encryption technologies. And today it sounds kind of quaint, but at the time, it was a really serious problem. It was a serious problem for American civil liberties, a serious problem for industry. And I came in to visit the congresswoman with Bruce Schneier, who's a noted cryptographer and computer security expert. And let's just say we had been making the rounds on Capitol Hill trying to describe or explain encryption to the average congressperson. Well, let's just say it was a challenge. But we spent. I remember very vividly, we spent over. The congresswoman spent over an hour with us, and we talked about the difference between asymmetric and symmetric keys, the difference between 40 and 128 bit symmetric key lengths, the problems with key recovery. It was like a total geek dream. And afterwards, Bruce Schneier and I walked out and Bruce said to me, you know, I really think. I think we really might be able to win this thing. And I said, well, Bruce, Zoe Loughran is not your average Congressperson. And it was true. And we were delighted and very lucky to have her as somebody who really got it and really fought for changes in those rules. We ended up changing those rules in 2000. We have the world we have now where people actually can get access to strong encryption. And since then, I mean, and in her time in Congress, Congress since 1995, Zoe Lofgren has been at the forefront of the major issues that have affected the Internet and technology companies, whether it's whether it was copyright, fighting for a balanced copyright law, working on privacy rules, innovative approaches to spam, the huge net neutrality fight where she was a major leader in the last Congress. She's been there with us in the 110th Congress. She has been a leader on immigration issues in the House. And I'll say also we are very grateful for her work on patent reform, which is something that's been really, really important for companies like Google. So I am really delighted to. We're delighted to have her here today. She's going to be joined on stage by our own CEO Eric Schmidt in a Fireside Chat. Please join me in welcoming Eric and Congressman Zoe Lofgren.

You know, Zoe has been a representative representing Silicon Valley really for more than 10 years. And her background as one of the smartest lawyers in the country, a professor at local university, and somebody who really understands the law and technology has served us extremely well. It is a great honor to have you here.

I'm glad to be here.

What I wanted to begin with is you did something rather courageous. More than one thing, I hope, but something. Recently you endorsed Barack Obama back when no one else had endorsed him.

Well, yes, I did. I would say that no one else had endorsed him, but I would say.

But you were one of the first of the traditional power structure, if you will, in Washington to support someone who is now leading in the polls as of today. Give us a little bit about why. And was it, in fact, an act of courage?

Well, I had fun doing it. I knew that I favored him for a lot of reasons. Wouldn't it be great to have a smart president? I mean, I'm looking forward to that.

As opposed to the current president. Is that what you were trying to say?

I don't want to engage in the politics of destruction, but certainly either of the remaining Democratic candidates are smart people. So I don't mean to say say otherwise, but I think we're at a time in the country where we need an inspirational leader, not just a manager, somebody who can really move us in a very different direction from the way we've been going at every level. The environment, civil liberties, on and on. We're in the wrong direction. And I think we're at that generational moment where the next generation needs to move us forward. And I think that Senator Obama is that inspirational figure. Now, just because I thought that didn't mean that I had to do an endorsement. What really was a huge factor for me was my son and my daughter who favored Senator Obama and who told me, really, this is a time when you can't just sit on the sidelines. There's too much at stake for the country and for the world. And so I made the endorsement hoping that it would help. I hope it did. Certainly a number of other members of the House have endorsed since that time and it looks like he has a very good chance of being a nominee.

Given where we are today. Can you just. I want to get back to policy and members of the Hill, but since everyone is very interested, what is your reading of the current Democratic primary process? How do you score it today with the Wisconsin and and other victories for Senator Obama behind him?

Well, Senator Clinton is really a very admirable person in many respects and I can't think of another person who would still be standing after losing 10 elections, I mean, 10 races in a row. So she's someone who should never be ruled out. I certainly don't. I have tremendous respect for her as a person and as a politician. But I think that there is a momentum behind Senator Obama that could be hard to stop.

And you're a super delegate. What does that actually mean? Do you get a different pass?

No.

Or do you get a different seat?

Well, you know, it's funny because no, we get the same old seats. It's something that nobody really paid much attention to until this year because these decisions were always made very early and it was never really a factor. You're there at the convention, but you're not counting vote by vote because it's all been done by the voters. And now because of this, the nature of this race, the superdelegates may be a factor in this. I hope not because it should be decided by the voters, not by, you know, people who are there by virtue of their positions as a member of the House or Senate or a governor or the like. But I think there's been a lot of discussion informally that we need to make sure that we enforce what the voters have done and not overturn. I think people will go just wild if we overturn them.

So on the cable networks they say, well, you know, the superdelegates can vote either way and they're pledged this way. Your reading is that people will look at the will of the country and.

That, well, legally we can vote whatever way we want, but I think that we would be well advised to look at what the country decided. I think that people will be very massively upset and they should be upset if some so called insiders overturn what voters decide. That wouldn't be right.

Let's move to the areas of the Congress. And you are the smartest lawyer I know in Congress.

I don't know about that.

You're sitting in the, you're sitting in the Judiciary Committee and the other hearings that where some of the most sort of the roughest issues are coming through. The one that I wanted to ask you about was this issue about wiretaps.

Right.

And you have a strong, strong record on civil liberties. It's something that you're extremely passionate about. You must be upset with what has happened.

Yes.

So. And you must be willing to do what you can as our representative to. So take us through that. What are you going to vote for? What are you going to propose? How are we going to get these issues resolved?

Well, I wish I knew the answer to that. We, the House put together a pretty good bill, a bill that streamlines the wiretap procedures, because there are occasions when that needs to happen and we do, in fact, have enemies, but also adheres to the requirements of the Constitution. And that bill was sent over to the Senate and they basically dismantled it and sent us back a bill that did not adhere to the requirements of the Constitution, in my judgment. And not only that provided for retroactive liability relief for phone companies, which I just, you know, if we say you can violate the law without penalty, you might as well say we don't have a law. You can't have that scenario. So the president.

So basically this law would give them immunity for illegal acts that they did. For what reason? Why would they, why would they get such an immunity?

That's a very good question. We had the attorney general before the Judiciary Committee recently, and he said several things. First, that they had no liability, they'd done nothing wrong. And secondly, that they needed relief from liability for whatever wrongdoing they had done. I have to be careful because I spent a considerable amount of time reading the classified documents that I'm not at liberty to discuss. But I will say that there's a whole structure of how the law is to be administered that all the phone companies know about. And I think that it is right to expect individuals and companies to abide by the law. And if they have not, then there needs to be accountability for that. And I will never vote to eliminate accountability. Now, having said that, I expect that I will be a conferee which is appointed by members of the House and Senate, are appointed to see if a compromise can be made.

This is between the House and the Senate.

That's correct.

Okay.

And it can't just be my way or the highway. I mean, we have to sit down and see is there in fact, some compromise that could be made. But there are some principles that I'm going to adhere to. And one is that the Constitution has to be adhered to. Now we had, there's a lot of political gamesmanship on this because the bill that I voted against that was the current law was going to expire. And we suggested, even though I didn't vote for the bill, that we extend it for 21 days just to keep the status quo, to give us time to have a conference committee. All the Republicans voted against the extension of the law that they say they're for. And so we let that law expire. The underlying statute, the FISA statute, still exists. It is a decent framework. I don't think there's any emergency, although the President has tried to fear monger to say that there is an emergency. All of the intelligence agencies are able to do what they need to do. Right now. We're going to go ahead and see if we can conference our bill. The President said he'd veto anything that doesn't provide for retroactive liability relief. So we may be at a stalemate and if we remain at a stalemate until we have Senator Obama, that, you know, that's all right for the country too because we have a system that's actually working now, could be improved, but it's adequate now.

Last year there was a big controversy over whether the executive, the part of the executive branch, the, that approve these things could bypass the FISA judges. You took a pretty strong position on that. You want to take us through your reasoning?

Well, you know, the current administration appears to be a group that doesn't really believe in the American system of government. I mean, they don't trust the judicial or the legislative branch. It's only the executive and that's not the system we have. You know, I trust the judiciary to play the role that they are supposed to play and I also trust the Congress. We're not always the best, but we play our legislative role and the executive does not is not the entire U.S. government. I think that to have the judicial oversight that FISA the act requires is absolutely essential so that we are doing what we need to protect the country, but not to the detriment of the Constitution and, and the privacy rights that we hold dear.

Again, in your role in the Congress, you've also been pushing hard for immigration reform. You were an immigration lawyer.

Yes.

So you've seen what really happens in the system as opposed to the theory as it's played out in the debate.

Yeah.

We have an example here at Google, obviously successful company. We should be to able to get in our view the best talent in the world to come to Google. We now have employees parked in other countries waiting for this lottery that occurs roughly October 1st. It's filled very quickly. The whole thing strikes me as foolish. The people would be brought into the country rather than working in another country. They'd pay taxes, create great wealth for the citizens, and it's just a good deal. Why are we not letting these people come into Google and work here?

That's a very good question. We've got ourselves a stalemate on the question of immigration in the United States Congress and in the country as people watch the talk shows. I mean, anti immigrant fervor is all over the United States. I think that's very unfortunate. And that whole climate has affected every aspect of immigration. Not just people who are picking strawberries, but people who got their PhDs in engineering are all caught up in this kind of crazy discussion. One of the things that is currently being discussed, and I don't know if we're going to be able to be successful at this, is at least this proposition. If you got your PhD and master's from an American university in engineering, math, science or some other technology, why don't we let you stay here instead of making you go someplace else to compete against us? That isn't the whole.

So who is opposed to your proposal and what IQ problem do they have?

We have not succeeded in getting that done yet, but it's.

But there must be some political argument because it's such a reasonable argument.

I think it's reasonable, but what looks reasonable sitting in Silicon Valley may not look as reasonable in the Ohio Valley. So we've got a very diverse country and we've got to find the political consensus to move forward. And that's. I found this to be enormously frustrating. The system itself, aside from the lack of visas for people who would create wealth and opportunity in the United States, the system itself is very poorly run. I don't know. I'm sure looking out in this valley, this is a typical Silicon Valley audience of very diverse, like my district, probably enormous numbers of people who are Americans born someplace else may have run into just the nightmare bureaucracy that can't get anything done. They're still creating paper files, which is kind of an astonishing factor here in 2010.

It's much harder to delete them when they create a paper file like that's right now. Do you have a broader view on what to do with the illegal immigration that is occurring in the country? I take it you're not in favor of building a large fence around the country.

I don't think that's going to work. You know, 40% of the people, people here without their documents entered with a visa. They didn't sneak across a land border. And the border that we are, the fence that's being built is in the southern border. I mean, the northern border is completely open. There's not any border patrol agents between Alaska and Canada, for example, not a single one. So it's not a rational approach. I do think that we need a system that works for, for everybody. The current system of people having to. It's a job magnet for people who are at the lower end and at the upper end as well. And to have systems that allow people to move back and forth is what we need for the dignity of people who want to come. But also there is a security issue involved. I mean, it's overplayed by the anti immigrant side, but there is some element to that as well. But right now, if you probably 70%, for example, of the people who are farm workers in the United States are here without their documents, we wouldn't be eating salad were it not for those individuals. There ought to be a system. There currently is no system for farm workers who want to come here, to come here legally. I mean, there's no system that works that way. And so we've essentially forced this situation through our laws. We ought to visit our laws and figure out what makes sense for the United States, what serves our interests, and it wouldn't be the current system. But the problem is to get consensus on what we need is very difficult. I do think that if we have an immigrant workforce in certain parts of the economy, that it is in our best interest that those immigrants are paid adequately and have a respectful work environment because their children are going to be the engineers down the road. I mean, that's, you know, the farm worker today is the entry level. And were it not for immigration, we would have the same kind of demographic problem that Japan is facing and Russia is facing. So we ought to embrace the role that immigrants play, have always played in America and continue to play to our country.

Unfortunately, all of us are immigrants ancestrally anyway. When you think back to your service as a congresswoman, I was thinking back to when you started. You were actually on the impeachment period. And as a relatively young member of Congress, did that whole process shape your view of politics as it's played out as you watched it in front of you? Because you were literally sitting in the meeting room.

It's interesting because I'm one of the few in the House that was involved both in the Nixon impeachment and the Clinton impeachment. And I worked for my predecessor in office, Congressman Don Edwards, who was a member of the Judiciary Committee. I actually wrote the Cambodia bombing article of impeachment back in 1970, she says with great pride. But actually we didn't approve that one for a reason because Congress was complicit in that and it did not therefore meet the high crime and misdemeanor criteria in the Constitution for rogue actor. The Clinton impeachment was just a travesty. Having been through the Nixon impeachment where it was done pretty much the right way. I mean, it took eight or nine months. There was evidence, not just opinion, it had to do with misbehavior that went to the very core of the Constitution, not personal improprieties. It was just a vendetta against President Clinton. And it was, I mean it was, it was appalling. And one of the things that I've thought about doing and actually we have the Library of Congress or Congressional Research Service going through it now. We had several days that were closed to the public and supposedly for. To protect the privacy rights of individuals that are being discussed. But in fact it was a gigantic two day argument about the Constitution. And I would like to release the audio of that argument about the Constitution. And just for the general benefit of historians on what was the vendetta that was going on at that time, I disapproved greatly of the President's misbehavior. I mean, I think, you know, for a man that age to have a relationship with an intern, for God's sake, I mean, it's embarrassing and it was wrong but had nothing to do with the Constitution. And so it did shape my view of people who would throw the Constitution overboard for a political agenda. That's what went on and I hope that we will never have that again.

And did you see a connection between that and then your criticism of the Bush administration? Or was it a different group?

I'm sorry?

At the time in the Clinton administration, it was alleged that there was this right wing conspiracy against Mr. Clinton. Do you see that as a similar group as what has gone on with the Bush administration, which you've also been very critical of? Or is it a different set of players and a different set of actors?

Well, I think to some extent it's a different set of actors. I mean there was Scaife and sort of the well funded right wing that sent investors, investigators into Arkansas to dig up dirt. I mean it was a campaign to find things, anything that they could use against the Clintons. That crew is not running the show now, but certainly the current administration has, you know, it's probably the worst administration in history. I didn't know we would get there. But it's, it's full of cronies, it's incompetent. You know, people saw the Katrina response and thought, you know, gosh. But that's the administration. I mean, you take a look at what they've done to the Department of Justice where they have made, in my judgment, decisions that were entirely inappropriate, highly politicized crony politics. It's really the next president is going to have his or her hands full cleaning this mess up.

So now you're in charge. What happened in 2006 was that the House and the Senate became majority Democratic. And in your career you were in the minority pretty much the whole time. And now all of a sudden you're in charge. So why haven't you fixed all these things that you're complaining about?

Well done. In 12 months we've made progress. I mean, I was in the minority for 12 years and we've been in the majority for 13 months. And we have made some improvements. We haven't been able to do everything we wanted to do. The energy bill we did was a huge improvement in terms of research for alternative energies. You know, driving the semi truck towards oil and gas. And we did a u turn towards alternative energy and raising the CAFE standards for the first time in decades. It's not everything we need to do, but it's a good first step. We made the biggest increase in higher education funding since the GI Bill. Cut college student loans. Yes. College student loans are going to cost half as much the interest rate half as much. So these are important things. They're not everything we want to do. But you know, we've learned also is that the Senate is essentially tied. Joe Lieberman is their is their majority and it is the graveyard of good ideas. They have tied themselves into knots. They need a super majority to do anything now and they can't get it. So this is it.

It's not really the case that the Senate is controlled by the Democrats.

Not really. Not if you need a 2/3 vote to get cloture. And so we've had a lot of good things go sent over. The House has done, has been very active and we've passed more bills this year than in. It's been decades since anything has happened like this, but not all of them.

Do you think that you can get anything done in this election fever right now, with everyone so focused on the presidential election, can the Congress actually continue with the reforms that you are pushing during this session, or do you think fundamentally it's now going to wait until the next president?

Well, some things are going to wait, but we still want to accomplish some additional things. We do want to get this FISA thing settled, if we can. We put together a program for health insurance for children and it's a good plan. The president has vetoed it twice. And we, the Senate actually, for once, got together, they have enough votes to override the Veto. We are 13 votes short of two thirds in the House. We're going to try one more time to override that veto. It's a first step towards we need health care for all Americans. And we were going to start with killed. We thought that that would be something that would be embraced generally, and large numbers of people do in the House, but not quite enough to override the president. Well, you know, why would the president veto? It's pretty nasty.

He's not running for reelection. I think I want to ask one more question, then ask our audience to ask some questions. I've deliberately spoken with you mostly about domestic. Domestic issues. But the issue that is on everyone's mind is Iraq, Iran, al Qaeda, Afghanistan, so forth. What do you really think is going to happen? Are we going to wait until a new president and the president will just decide? Do you think that Congress will force some outcome? What's your scoring again of this huge controversy within the country on Iraq?

I think it's going to wait for the next president. And we have tried over and over again to impact the Iraq situation, to begin removal from Iraq. I voted against the invasion. And in retrospect, sometimes I go back and read the speeches I gave and oftentimes it makes you cringe. But this time it didn't because everything I said, it turned out to be true. And it's a mess. I mean, it's one of the worst foreign policy debacles ever. And although the soldiers are serving and we thank them for their service, they're all volunteers. There's no way the military can solve the problem that is there. As good as they are. It's not the nature of the problem that we face. I think that in all likelihood there is no great outcome. That's something Americans don't want to hear. We always think there's a positive possibility, but it is a mess we have created. I do think that when we support democratic institutions instead of dictators, we're on the right road. If you take a look at what's just happened in, in Pakistan, it's very interesting. As a matter of fact, my law school classmate was president of the Supreme Court Bar association of Pakistan. He came and visited in the summer shortly before he was arrested and held and mistreated to the point where all his kidneys failed. So, you know, there's a problem when we support and give money to dictators in the hopes that they'll fight Al Qaeda. And instead of that they go and arrest the Supreme Court and the lawyers. I mean, that's not. We're on the wrong side of history on that. And we're in a long dispute with people who are anti modern and who in fact do wish us harm. I don't think that we are going to be successful by aligning ourselves with dictators.

Very, very well said. Do we have some questions from our audience? Who would like to line up? Go ahead. Very, very well said.

Congresswoman, thanks for joining us today. I appreciate your position on fisa. I agree wholeheartedly with you. My question is about standing. Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled that the ACLU has no standing to sue. And the issue with a law like this is the only people who have standing are people who can't see what's been done to them because it's classified by the very people they're trying to sue. So what can be done to give standing to perhaps Congress or to somebody else to see that the law actually gets enforced?

Well, I think the chances of our being able to provide standing in the current Congress with the current president is nil.

I mean, could you explain standing?

Standing is that you have a legitimate beef, that you have actually been wronged and that you can go to court to seek a remedy. And it's meant to. I mean, in the Constitution, you need cases and controversies before courts, not somebody who actually isn't a party, who has not really been injured. And the idea is you want real, real disputes before the court, not somebody who's not really been impacted. I don't know that I agree with the court's standing ruling, but I guess that opinion of mine doesn't matter very much. I do think that that's part of this whole liability issue in fisa, because there are parties at least coming up the way who may have standing even under the court's ruling. And to retroactively provide complete liability relief is a mistake. I mean, in my opinion, Congress would not know today what the administration had done except for the civil litigation that was engaged in.

So what can be done to, in effect, give the law teeth? It doesn't really matter what laws you pass. If, if nobody has the right to question what the government is doing. Do you think some action needs to be taken other than not providing immunity? Is there some.

I think you're right. A right without a remedy is no right. And I think with the next president, we're going to have to put some checks and balances into place in the wiretap laws that I think. Let me make sure I'm not saying anything I shouldn't say. I think it's been in the New York Times and other places that the laws were violated. I believe that that is the case. And unless you have some ability to call that to account within the judicial system, then you have. You have no. The law is worthless if there's no remedy. So, yes, I do. But we're not going to get it done with President Bush sitting in the Oval Office before vetoing everything. It's got to be the next president.

Thank you.

Our next question.

I have a couple questions.

Sure, go ahead.

Okay, so since you brought up the GI Bill, I was one of the last people to be grandfathered in under.

The old GI Bill.

I was in the Air Force. And part of the reason I'm here at Google today is because I was able to take advantage of the education benefits of the GI Bill. But if I had joined like three months later, I would not have been able to afford to because of the much weaker benefits that were available. And I wonder, with all these guys coming back from Iraq, does it make sense to have a new revitalized GI Bill?

I think it does, not only for education benefits, but what we're not doing for guys and gals coming back from the war zone in terms of health care is really a scandal now. We did a huge expansion of funding for the va. It's interesting because, you know, the Congress is a very partisan place. I think you've all observed one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said, you know, they were he was going to vote against the VA measure. And then he started reading and he said, well, I guess we should have had the prosthetics after all and ended up voting for it. But we haven't done all that we need to do in that score. The President has lowballed the requests and the budget and we're going to have to really up that. I mean, the cost of the Iraq war is going to be in the trillions. If you actually add in the cost to care for veterans. I mean, the education benefits is the smallest portion of it. The damage that's been done because we've saved lives where people would have died with the injuries before. I mean, just profound injuries that are going to be lifelong burdens that we must gladly share because of the service that people volunteered for.

So the other thing is, are you familiar with the Draft Lessig campaign? A lot of people have signed a yes, and he's considering running for Congress because a lot of people have petitioned. So what do you think? Should Dr. Lessig run?

Well, I'll give my advice directly to Larry on that.

Perhaps Professor Lessig should have a private meeting with you where you describe the actual real life of congresspeople as opposed to the theoretical life.

It's a long commute.

It's a long commute. Go ahead.

Hi.

So I'm a long term permanent resident of the United States. You talked a lot about immigration issues. Right now there's a bill in the house, it's HR3997, and it's one of those nice help the military bills, but tucked on the bottom is an exit tax from the United States which will tax departing residents at 30% of their untaxed gains. Included in that Is pension plans, 401ks and IRAs. So as a result, people who leave this country after a period and go back to their home countries will find themselves without a pension plan. Now, that means that since I don't have a lot of working years left in me, I have to consider leaving the US early so I can build a pension plan again. With the large immigrant workforce force in Silicon Valley, what do you think the effect will be of that bill on the people who work here, on the companies who employ them?

I'm actually not familiar with the bill.

It's HR3997.

I don't doubt it, but I've not run into it.

That's the only one I know, by the way.

I don't know what the status is, but I don't think it's moving anywhere.

It's actually been voted past both Houses and it's in committee for reconciliation, so it's really close.

Well, I wish I had an answer for you. I'll have to check into it.

Okay, please do.

And you're saying that this particular bill, which I'm not familiar with either, is primarily a military funding bill?

Yes, it is.

And this is for people who are residents, who are.

For long term, Long term residents who return to their home country. It will effectively take 30% of their pension plans.

Well, why don't. My staff is here, they'll write it down and I'll try and find out and get back to them.

Thank you. And our Google executives are here as well. So let's review that. And obviously a bad deal for Google as well.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Sure.

This is Vint Cerf.

Oh, I was going to introduce myself, Eric, but thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to. One is glad to be of service. First of all, thank you for long service in the Congress and the interest of Silicon Valley and our citizens here, and also for taking the time to come and join us today. I have this long list which I will not go through because there are people behind me. But be assured if we run into a silent spot, I'll be happy to add some more. Let me start out with a question on this wiretap matter that Eric brought up. Let's imagine from for just a moment, you are responsible for one of those telcos. 911 has happened. There is a wave of sentiment across the United States and outside sympathy and concern and worry about is there more coming? And you are assured by very high levels of the government that the requests that are being made to you are legal and written material is supplied to you to that effect. What do you do? Looking backwards, the assertions are made that these various things were illegal violations of the law. And yet the highest legal authority in the land, except for the Supreme Court, is asserting that these things fall within the prerogative of, of the executive branch. What should you do? And so I'm a little concerned that having been given assurances of that kind, that when we turn around and say, well, you should have said no, you should have brought your own legal opinions to the table. And yet it's a little hard to justify that opinion given the sources of reassurance. You and I both aren't allowed to go into any detail, but I served at MCI during that period of time, so I have some sense for what went on. So I'm having trouble reconciling that particular scenario with the view I think you expressed earlier that, well, you shouldn't go scot free, you broke the law.

Here's what I think about that. I think that that all of the telecoms were familiar with the requirements of the statute and that if the statute, at least the prima facie adherence to the statute was not made, that they have a responsibility to comply with the statute. They do. And to expect the government to comply if the statute was complied with I think that they have a right to rely on that. I can't really get into what I saw in terms of the classified information, but I just think it's not too much to ask individuals and companies in the United States who are entrusted with our information to comply with the law.

We'll have to have a discussion in another context.

Right. We can go up to the fourth floor.

By the way, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't follow the law, but I do think that this is a really tough issue.

But one argument that we face internally has to do with we, Google, are under lots of pressure from governments who make all sorts of statements and we actually check their statements before we make a decision because sometimes we could be being manipulated. And it's very important that we interpret the law as best we can because we're subject to it. And I think that's my general answer to this question. From a Google perspective, we're in the same sort of hotbeds around information and so forth, and we have to be very careful. And it's not just true in the US it's also all over the world.

Understood. One imagines that there. Anyway, we'll take this off. 1. Could I ask one more question? Yes, yes.

This is.

This has to do with immigration. I served for a time at Stanford University, and some of the best students I had, some of the best research that was done was done by people coming from outside the United States. And it's pretty understandable because they couldn't get here without being extraordinarily good because they had to pass through significant filters just to get the opportunity to come here. We benefited, we citizens of the United States benefited enormously from their research. Some of them stayed, some didn't, but it didn't matter. The research was still done and it was made public because that's part of the university process. Some of those students were instrumental in creating the Internet. I can't for a moment understand any rationale that inhibits the flow of that kind of talent into the United States. And in fact, if you think about the rate of production scientists and engineers outside the US just due to population alone in India and China, we can never catch up. And we don't think we want to. We don't want a trillion people living in the United States because it's not supportable, but because we can't compete on numbers, we had better find another way to leverage the brilliant talents that are available outside the country. And one way to do that is to invite them to come here and Enjoy the use of our universities and research facilities. I don't understand why that argument isn't persuasive, and I'm not suggesting you disagree with it, but I don't wonder about your colleagues and why they don't get it.

I'm never able to explain why people don't see the world the way I do. But clearly we have benefited tremendously from smartest people in the world wanting to come here. You know, go to Stanford or Harvard or mit, and then you can't make people stay. But if they want to stay, aren't we the lucky ones? Except that we don't allow them to. So our current system doesn't make any sense at all to me.

Our next question.

Going back to Lessig.

Again, obviously I want to press you.

On his run for Congress, but I wonder what you thought of his ChangeCongress.org program. Program in particular, encouraging congressmen to not.

Accept donations from PACs. Well, you know, Larry and I have talked about this, and I. Don't think it really works the way Larry thinks it does. And in a way, I mean, I like the Jackie Spears, someone I've known for. We were staffers together when she worked for Leo Ryan. I worked for Don Edwards, so I'm a big fan of Jackie's, too. But in a way, if we had somebody like Larry in the Congress blogging about what Congress was really like, it would probably help us because it's not as people imagine in most cases. I do think that the role of money in politics is disturbing one to people, and rightly so. There's a sense that, you know, somebody is, you know, you put your money in, you get your result out, and that should never happen. I mean, the legislative branch ought to be serving the public interest, not a variety of private interests. On the other hand, you have to have some money to run campaigns. And, you know, I kind of like the way the donors have. Have come forward to Senator Obama where, you know, it's just masses of people sending small contributions so that he owes everyone, not just a few. But it's hard to do that for more mundane political races, like races for the House.

Would you make any changes to McKean Feingold, or would you keep it pretty much the same?

Well, you know, I think whatever you do, there's. There's some constitutional constraints on what you can do. And right now the court has equated money with speech. I'm not sure I see that in the same way they do, but that's the state of the law today. And so if you constrain candidates, and it has been constrained in terms of fundraising, you end up with really moneyed interests who are completely unrestrained. For example, the pharmacist pharmaceutical industry spent more money for Republican House candidates than the Republican House candidates spent in 2004. So, you know, it's. I don't know.

And I'm surprised we don't know that. That's an interesting question.

Yeah. So there's no easy answer to this. But I do think to the extent that we can broaden out participation and contribution among all Americans, we're a lot better off.

Thank you. Let's have our two final questions. We're sort of running over, but this.

Is pretty interesting follow up to Vint Cerf's question about fisa. My understanding is that if the telecom immunity is not granted, it doesn't automatically mean that the telecom companies get punished. It means that.

That's correct.

A judge will decide what happens, and that judge may decide that, in fact, it was quite reasonable for that telecom executive.

That's correct. And the argument on the, on the administration side to give them their due is that unless there is, you know, no chance for a case, that telecommunications companies will not ever respond. And I don't think there's, I don't think that case has been made. You know, one of the things that I'm thinking about is if it's a dollar amount that's of concern, you could take a look at capping damages in some way. But I think that if you, if you're going to retroactively just eliminate the cases in their entirety, that's something that generally is bad practice for the Congress to do, and I think it's bad practice in this case as well.

I think you have the honor of the last question.

Oh, thank you. Thanks for coming to talk to us.

Though.

I'm wondering if it's too early in the election year to talk about tax reform.

You like them to be higher?

Well, some of them, yes. But the things that happened earlier in this decade have put the conventional tax system out of whack with AMT requirements, with AMT system and this. If we ever get the economy on track to the extent where inflation starts up again, that could cause serious problems, especially for many of the, many of the people at Google.

Well, on tax, luckily or not, I'm not on the Ways and Means Committee, so I don't have to go through the details of this, but we're all aware that the AMT needs to be reformed. I mean, it was, you know whether or not it was a good idea originally to put it into place. People can argue, but it was never intended to impact middle class people. It was intended to impact only the very affluent who had made, you know, creative use of every tax deduction possible so that at least the very wealthy would pay something. And that's not what's happening because we never indexed it for inflation. So that needs to change. I will say that we finally did get a fix to the ISO AMT nightmare that many people ran into. It took me a long time and we didn't get any sympathy from other parts of the country. But we finally did get a fix for that just at the end of last year, which I'm glad for thousands.

Of people in the Bay Area. Thank you a lot.

Yes, well, it was late. A lot of people went through a lot of trauma, but at least we finally got it done. The tax code is a mess and does need to be reformed. It's a massive effort because every single thing in there, somebody loved and got it there for a reason. And so it's a lot easier to say you're going to reform it than to do it. I mean, it's a mess. But I do think that the tax breaks for the very affluent, I mean, Most, more than 50% of the benefit of the Bush tax cuts for individuals went to people whose annual income is over a million dollars a year, not their assets, their income. And I'm not against that. I mean, that's the American dream. But I also don't think those people were really in need of that tax benefit. And it's had the impact of stripping our ability to fund things that we need to fund. In addition to the war, which is now $10 billion a month, that's all borrowed money. We have a $9 trillion accumulated deficit that has to be dealt with. We can't just pile up the debt. It's having an adverse impact on our economy. So, you know, we're going to have to pull up our socks and, and make sure we have a revenue stream that actually works for the country and also doesn't leave the most affluent off the hook. But we can't do it right now. We reversed the tax benefits to the oil companies. I mean, they're making money hand over fist and we don't need to give a special benefit to the oil companies. We couldn't get that through the Senate. The House passed it, but not the Senate. So that's for the next president. And we've, you know, I don't know if we're going to completely reform the tax code, but we do need to do something. We also need to make the adjustments that are going to be necessary in Social Security. And I know Charlie Rangel is the chairman of the committee, is a great guy, realizes, I mean, there's different ways to do it and it's quite doable, but it needs a bipartisan consensus to do.

I'm concerned about some of the things that Senator Obama said about reforming Social Security because in a sense, increasing the cap on Social Security taxes increases the rate at which the government borrows against the Social Security bonds, doesn't provide a way to redeem any of those bonds at any time in the future.

Well, we need to have more flow into Social Security. You know, as I say, you could. You could increase the cap. You could cap it, but then reintroduce it at over 200,000. I mean, there's lots of different ways to do it, but we do need to address it. And we also need to address the overall revenues and spending situation, because you're right, unless we also do that at the same time, we're not really solving the problem.

So I think we've seen today why the congresswoman is so effective representing San Jose, the Bay Area high tech. I don't know of a person in Congress who understands high tech and the kinds of issues that we face every day than you. It is a great honor to have you here at Google and it's an honor to have you representing us.

Well, thank you very much. I've enjoyed being here today and thank you for hiring all my constituents. They love working here.

Thank you all.

Thanks a lot.