YouSaid · the spoken record

Ted Ullyot

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21
first
2017-05-22
most recent
2017-05-22
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1
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  1. “I suspect, however, the court ends up dealing with it, there will be a lot of language in someone's opinion saying, Congress, please fix all this. And you saw that in a few of these recent cases. Of these recent cases, of theirs where they're like, look, we shouldn't be figuring this out in the first instance. Let's get some statutes on the books that were written at least in the same decade as the technology that you're asking us to apply the Constitution do because the government can fix some of these warrant problems. And, you know, why don't we get some laws to give a framework here? And I think the court gets particularly frustrated in situations like that where they feel like they're being put in a position of dealing with something that they don't think they should have to be the ones to deal in the first instance with. So I think it will, it's a situation they probably hope to be able to avoid, but Congress doesn't look to be trying to resolve these issues quickly unless it absolutely has to.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Listening to you in your house, and Amazon did not want to give this up, and they asserted First Amendment. And there's in a case where the murder had been taken place. And the defendant in the murder case, and I got to know more about this because this is a little odd, gave up the information himself, and that mooted this issue about whether they could get the stuff that Alexa was picking up in the home. But I think Ted, you're absolutely right. This is coming. There's no way to avoid it. But I find it really hard to believe it's not coming in a way that's very focused legal issue like the FBI San Bernardino case or like the Alexa murder case. And that's going to happen. And the truth is these statutes, we are not equipped for this. We are not equipped for this. But Congress is showing no evidence of racing to our rescue to wrestle this to the ground and figure it out either.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Framework. And if that wasn't going to apply, there was a 20 year old statute that might suffice. And the truth is none of it was equipped for now. And part of the question was, what's Congress going to do about this? And in the end, because the pressure was off, the FBI resorted to self-help, they broke into the phone themselves. The issue did not get to be teed up in the courts, and the pressure came off of Congress, so nobody did anything. Similarly, in this, I don't know if you're similarly following the Alexa murder case where describe that. So the government had wanted the data in the Amazon Echo. You know, when you say Alexa, tell me the weather. So Alexa is gathering data while she's sitting there. Listening.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Correct. I think there are, well, there are two things. One is they're being called upon to stand up and have a view, particularly if there's a lot of momentum. But then second of all, frequently there are players in a universe where they just impact so many people. In a way that it used to be only the government had a reach that would impact so many people, and now there are these companies who do. So it's hard to not be responsible to those basically your employees and to be silent and your consumers.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I think Judge Posner is on to something when he says it's called Friend of the Court, not friend of the party. I think that's very posnerish and intelligent. I don't think there's reason not to do that. But I also think for the tech companies, and I'm sure there are people here who can relate to this, the Amicus briefs are one example of this in the world, but I think on some level, they have no choice other than to be answerable to some of these issues.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The court because it starts to become more just like how, and you have plenty of groups like that on both sides of the dialogue in cases that you know are going to show up and they're going to file and you know what they're going to say before you read their brief. And yes, I think for any industry or any group that files amicus briefs, I think it's always good to be thinking about what do we really have to contribute in this case that is the reason that we as an industry have a particular reason to be here and something to say other than just kind of we happen to be some people who have this view just like any other undifferentiated”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, I do. When I think about Amika's participation, I mean, there are cases where it's quite obvious that there's a wonderful role for tech companies to play. I think courts are not happy. Courts are not sophisticated in their understanding of technologies. And a lot of times parties have limited ability to explain that. And it's wonderful to have briefs that that's the point of Amicus briefs to be able to kind of be someone who's there and has a particularized role to play in the debate. But I don't know that I'm a huge fan of the trend of because of who we are, we have views on anything and everything and everybody better sign on to the brief who's in the industry because the industry supports this view and everyone in it. I think that's probably a bit of an oversimplification of the industry and the employees. And I think it's definitely something that risks turning off some consumers. And I'm not sure at the end of the day, if it becomes a dynamic of the industry is here to represent a policy view consistently that it's going to represent, I think it diminishes the importance of the briefs.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think often the company is responding mainly to their employees in the sense of the employee base on some of these big political questions of the day. And to your point on the public end, I think for certain tech companies, maybe their customers are of a pretty consistent political view one way or the other. I think the risk is, and I think Facebook has encountered this over the past year, that I don't think it's traceable to the amicus briefs, but it's not only to that, but there's a sense out there, I think, among many on the right that, well, Facebook is taking sides in big political disputes and this thing about the algorithm, whether that's suppressing conservative news. But a company might well look at that and say, listen, I know my employees feel passionate about this, but I don't want to piss off a big slice of my consumers. Do you think that's a risk?”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And we may become increasingly reliant on the tech sector to push forward things because they understand the technology. They can move rapidly. And because the rest of the branches of government are failing us in this respect. So I think this is a great question. I spent a lot of time working on it and thinking about it. I think, frankly, by next year you'll be having a whole panel about how the tech sector is going to move everybody forward.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Have the public reach. I mean, the fact is years ago, it was predictable by some that social movement was going to happen at the hands of tech companies, Facebook, for one, I'm going to pander to Ted, but that is definitely the case. And so what's going on now is tech companies have an imperative. They're being called upon by their employees and also by consumers. And this is actually being called political consumerism, where it used to be if you're a company and you sort of stayed neutral, that was the right thing to do. But now if you stay neutral, a lot of times it's not at all the right thing to do. And people get very angry at you. So the tech companies are sort of looking around and they also have values that they're trying to propagate in the world. And the truth of the matter is I think this is having an enormous effect beyond the bottom line of the company.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, so I work for a number of tech companies, so I'll just say my views are my own on this topic. But I have thought about this a lot, and I actually think I've heard even just today one person I talked to said the problem is the regulators can't keep up with the technology, so the answer will be found in the courts. And then somebody else said, well, the courts can't keep up with the technology so that the answer has to be what the policymakers and the regulators. And even if you look at this Alito decision that we're talking about just a second ago, Justice Alito writes, you know, The Fourth Amendment is really very blunt instrument, so maybe Congress should figure this out for us and give us some direction. And so in thinking about this, I've developed sort of a new worldview, which I will unveil here. And wait for it. And we think about courts, legislatures, you know, the executive. But I really think the fourth branch of government at this point are tech companies. And I think that they have the resources to move fast enough.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, you know, I think it's probably a completely unproven hypothesis on my part, but I would assume that you're impacted by whether your children are of the age that they grew up with that kind of technology, which some of them are and some of them aren't. But for one, it impacts your familiarity with the technology, but I think you're just, because most of them are, even the younger members are of a generation where that's not the technology they grew up with and they may now use it much more than they ever did. But if you've got kids at home who that is the way their world works, I think it would open your eyes to thinking about, okay, we need to be sure we understand what the implications of this are and what it means and what people really are carrying around with them in this phone all the time or what it really means if you're going to be able to triangulate people's locations every moment of their life wherever they are.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah. I think when you look at some of those decisions where the court and certain justices seem to be reconsidering these settled doctrines, it's not exclusively the younger members, but it's predominantly the younger members.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, yeah, I mean, I imagine that the universe of law enforcement is like, oh my God, are you kidding me with this? What a hassle to have to write the warrant application. In reality, you probably get the same information, just to be honest, most cases, the warrants are signed. But it made me really think, oh my gosh, every time that we just got all this information, maybe we weren't just entitled to do it legally. This”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “To the world, which is we have to revisit this idea of privacy interests for data disclosed to third parties, and we have to revisit the Fourth Amendment. We have to revisit this idea that everything is physical. And I will tell you as a former prosecutor, I mean, search incident to arrest in the cell phone, I was shocked that this happened because law enforcement is really reliant on being able to do that.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So, I think that is very interesting, and the replacement of Justice Scalia with Justice Gorsuch is particularly interesting because Justice Scalia, who wrote a precursor decision to that Jones, styled it very much as a physical trespass. And it's not completely clear to me that that is how Justice Gorsuch will approach this because in many ways it's very obvious at the time to equate physical trespass with the kind of data. Isn't physical at all. Maybe over, and this is what Aaron was talking about that Justice Alito and Justice Sonomor in particular, who had an amazing concurrence in that case well worth reading, are signaling”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I agree also, I think, that the court has shown a recent rather dramatic interest in revisiting the Fourth Amendment in general. And as I read these cases, I don't find their opinions limited in their impact to just Fourth Amendment jurisprudence because I think the reaction to the Riley case, which was a couple years ago, which talks specifically about the cell phone and whether you could do a search incident to arrest on the cell phone and get everything in the cell phone, was finally a moment where people said, oh my gosh, you know, the Supreme Court understands that I'm carrying in my hand a computer and there's stuff in it that is meaningful to me and what the tech companies have been saying for a long time, which is my privacy interest, is really important and ought to be protected.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Talking about, well, we have to look at all of this with a recognition that technology has caused our sense of what is reasonable expectations of privacy to change. And we can't kind of blind ourselves to thinking about that when we're thinking about these constitutional questions. So to me, that will be a really interesting area as a lot of these cases are coming up that implicates technology. And Justice Gorsic had a couple decisions on the 10th Circuit that indicated he's pretty sensitive to this idea of not reflexively applying old rules to new technology. But when you're on a lower court, you're bound by what the higher court says. And now he's not bound by anything anyone says. So, you know, it's always hard to read too much into what a then judge said when thinking about how they'll approach things as a justice.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “That bright line approach that Justice Scalia did looking for ways to easily apply kind of 18th century law to modern technology or comes at it a little more like we've seen in particular from some decisions from Justice Alito.”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Approach, and that really plays itself out when it comes to something like asking whether there's been a search and a reasonable search, and we've seen this play out a little bit in recent years with cases dealing with things like using technology in ways that many of us would think of as invading our privacy to some extent. There's so many of those issues to be dealt with still in terms of what kinds of things the government can use technology to do without running a foul of constitutional constraints right now, for instance, the court's thinking about a case about whether searching the cell tower records for an individual qualifies as a search and implicates the Fourth Amendment. So we got a lot of these issues that are coming up. And I think it will be very interesting to see if Justice Gorsuch is someone who comes at it with a little bit more of”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Sure, absolutely. First, thank you all for having me here. It'll be interesting to watch this area as it will be interesting to watch a lot of areas with a new member of the court. You know, there's many ways in which I think people think that Justice Gorsuch will look a fair amount like Justice Scalia, but there's always subtle differences and things are always a little bit more complicated than that. And one of the particular areas in which justice scalia and some of his conservative colleagues on the court didn't always quite see eye to eye were in some of these privacy issues, particularly I'm thinking Fourth Amendment issues, search and seizure issues. Sometimes they'd get to the same result, but through different ways of thinking about it, just as Scalio is a big fan of looking at things in terms of bright line rules and putting things into neat and easy boxes, I think some of his conservative colleagues take a little bit more of a pragmatic”

    2017-05-22 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: Tech Policy and the Courts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source