Politics and The Surveillance State.
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00:00
Food energyStudent's t-testElectric currentChaos (cosmogony)Term (mathematics)Quantum stateTelecommunicationLimit (category theory)Mountain passPhysical lawTelecommunicationState of matterFood energyLimit (category theory)Data conversionGoodness of fitSound effectSpeech synthesisChaos (cosmogony)Term (mathematics)Student's t-testFlow separationConservation lawLine (geometry)RandomizationOcean currentPower (physics)Online helpFaculty (division)Series (mathematics)Group representationOffice suiteCausalityExpressionStreaming mediaLinear programmingSystem callXMLComputer animation
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Exception handlingPhysical lawInformationNumerical analysisMereologyState of matterOffice suiteMusical ensembleMaxima and minimaLecture/Conference
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Coalition2 (number)Type theorySelf-organizationDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Hydraulic jumpRule of inferenceMeeting/Interview
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
When you're a younger person who runs for office, the last thing you want to do is kiss babies, especially when you don't have your own. That just looks weird, and so I don't want to go there. All right, my name is Daniel Zolmakov, and I'm a Montana state representative, and we're going to talk about politics in the surveillance state, and if there's one thing that might be something you kind of catch is, all this is obscure. For example, I'm from a town called Roundup, Montana.
00:23
I'm 31 years old. I actually first served in the legislature at 25 years old. Currently, I chair the House Energy and Technology Committee in the State House. Yeah, they let a Russian help dictate energy and technology policy for not only Montana, but the Northwest. That's a scary thing, especially in today's politics,
00:42
if you ask me. I am a Republican, and I may even seem crazier with this issue, but I'm going to talk about the politics on these issues and try to help clearly dictate how you can approach from both sides of the aisle and hopefully pass some of the laws we passed in Montana.
01:03
We have two-year terms in Montana, so again, we have term limits after four terms. I'm running for my fourth term. The fact that we have term limits allows us to go up in influence and power quicker, and so that's why I get to chair the committee, do one more chairmanship, and then I'm out, and it also means each of our voices are a lot stronger, even if we're younger or newer.
01:22
Random facts about me, I am a swimmer. I am a current MBA student. I previously spoke at DEFCON 21 where I did not do my shot, so that's why I had to come back. I'm half Russian, I'm half Italian, and that's a lot of chaos mixed in it all, and last fun fact is I still use a Blackberry. I just thought I'd throw that out there
01:41
at a tech conference to just... Okay, so why am I here? What have I done? What is the legislation I've worked on and passed into law? A lot of politicians say what they've worked on, but they never talk about if it passed or not. These all passed into law. In 2013, I passed a bill that required a warrant for GPS location. No one knew about it, no one cared,
02:00
and then Edward Snowden came out. We'll talk a little more about all these later on. 2015, I passed the nation's strongest freedom of the press law in Montana. I also passed a bill for medical immunity for minors. That has nothing to do with this speech, but it's a really good bill that if you're under 21 and dying, you call 911, no one gets an MIP,
02:20
you just get them to the hospital. Co-sponsored asset forfeiture in 2015 as well. Also, in 2017, more recently, I carried a bill that required a warrant for electronic devices, all devices. That bill is state law in Montana. Carried a bill that required a warrant or Fourth Amendment subpoena requirements,
02:42
which was like a special kind of subpoena that had to follow the Fourth Amendment for electronic communications. That passed into law. I put severe limits on license plate readers in Montana, that passed into law, and did major reforms and restrictions for vehicle spot checks in Montana, also law.
03:01
So we're gonna go through a series, oh, thank you. I'm actually just here to get you guys to move to my state and invest in big tech companies and things along those lines, especially if you like skiing and hiking. Shameless promotion for Montana. So, First and Fourth Amendment. I know some of this I'm gonna cover
03:20
you're gonna know a little bit about, and that's fine. I just am doing it, just it's nice to touch on it again. First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, and to petition the government. I am a, what you'd call a liberty conservative or a constitutional conservative, very similar lines where I like the Constitution.
03:40
And I like all, I think all of it. I like all the Constitution. Especially the Bill of Rights is what I focus on. So, First Amendment, freedom of speech. The nation is founded on a concept that we can share ideas, be who we want, do what we want with our lives. If we wanna go into technology, you can do it. Education, you can do it.
04:00
It doesn't matter, we have opportunity here, and the idea to talk and have conversations is huge in this nation. The Fourth Amendment prevents the government from unreasonable searches and seizures of their houses on them, their cars, papers, and effects. And you need probable cause for that. Well, without probable cause,
04:21
the government's listening, looking, watching, and you're more likely to censor your freedom of speech, express, discuss, talk, live, and now you are no longer in a free society. So, why isn't our data ours? And this is why the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to our data. It's third-party doctrine, which is a legal theory, states that your information really isn't yours. If I send you a text message, it goes through Verizon.
04:44
Verizon is the third party. Now there's no expectation of privacy through that digital communication and through court cases and legal doctrine, legal theory, this isn't considered your private information anymore. You shared it with somebody. That's why your data can be mass collected
05:02
by government agencies. There are also outdated laws from the 80s, a little bit updated in the 90s, that also have very limited protections of your digital communications. Also, the Patriot Act, after which I would like to rather say the Unpatriot Act, is the expanded government's ability to monitor,
05:23
collect, and retain the data of Americans, and then they can delay or not even notify you of some of these searches. So, your data technically is just not yours. And that led to these other problems. Technically, the data's not yours, so then we have the NSA, who of course we all have learned five years ago
05:42
and continuously the mass data collection of your digital communications, and then there are private companies that took part in this through backdoor channels, with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Apple. They all participated. So, there's a problem of you have your data, it's not considered yours, and now through large companies,
06:01
it's siphoned into a database of the federal government. To simplify this, I know it gets a lot more technical, but let's just keep it simple. Then there's secret courts that are supposed to have checks and balances over the government, which of course we know these secret courts. A court that's secret is not open to the public. The public cannot be critical and hold them accountable when nobody really knows.
06:22
Plus, the people who are appointed on the secret court are appointed by a Supreme Court justice, who's appointed by a president. So, there's like three or four levels of not being accountable to the people once again. From the late 70s to the early 2013s, the court rejected like 11 out of 33,000 requests.
06:42
All I know, it was a very low number, which means they were rubber-stamping basically every request. Then the National DEA License Plate and Facial Recognition Tracking Program is another one that came out a few years ago that we learned about through the ACLU FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act,
07:01
that the DEA had a national database of your driving information. So, if you are a local individual, we're in Las Vegas, driving around, you are likely having your picture taken with these license plate readers either on vehicles or on bridges and infrastructure of your vehicle, of their license plate and of the people in it.
07:20
This is me taking pictures of you. So, they're just taking these pictures all the time. Well, a lot of times local law enforcement work with national agencies, they upload the data. And so, even if there's good rules of the data short-term in your state, this data is being uploaded nationally into a database that's forever and can connect all the license plates across the country
07:41
and the people in the vehicles. And that's permanent. And we don't know what's happening with it and how big of a database and where it's going. So, not my favorite route of where the third party doctrine has led us. And then we got people, well, this is like the worst thing. This just bothers me completely is we have nothing to hide.
08:02
There's so many philosophies based on the freedom of speech and expression that we kinda talked about already, but there are major problems with self-censorship. First off, if you have nothing to hide, you're probably really boring and haven't lived a single day of your life because I don't know about you, but I have a lot to hide, right? I went to college.
08:21
I had a great time. I went to college. I had a great time. Let me get a good example of the problems of self-censorship. So, we're driving in rural Montana, which all you will one day visit, I hope. And the radio is on. There's some great like 80 song pops on that you love
08:41
and you just crank it up. There's nobody out there. There's nobody listening. There's nobody watching. Your windows are down because it's not a hundred degrees like it is here. You're just cruising and you just start singing that song and you don't care. And you sing that song when you just scream because you know you have the best voice, right? Put that same person in a scenario in a city, say Las Vegas,
09:00
driving down the street and their favorite song comes on and they crank it up and they start singing. They look over and somebody's looking at them. They're most likely going to turn the volume down and maybe not scream at the top of their lungs because it's their favorite song in the world. That is a form of censorship because when you know somebody's watching you, you change your actions even if you don't know
09:23
you actually changed your actions. And that applies to government. So, if I'm having a conversation with you, then we can talk about whatever you want. You bring a microphone in it. I'm a politician. I might censor myself a little bit. You know, I know that my phone is recording everything I'm saying in a national database.
09:43
You will most likely keep that in the back of your mind. You may not censor a lot. If you're talking about what pizza you're going to get, who cares? If you're talking about something else that's no one's business, some idea, whatever, that will likely force you to change your actions. And if you're changing your actions due to the fear and threat of government,
10:01
you are no longer in as free of a country as you thought you were, and that means you're reacting out of fear, even if it's a fear that has not led to any logical conclusions yet. It's something to keep in mind. One other thing I wanted to touch on was Montana literally 100 years ago had some of the worst edition acts in the country where if you spoke German, you were beaten,
10:24
you were arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. If you said you didn't support the war, you were arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. If you said some of the companies had horrible conditions for work and labor, you were arrested, beaten, and imprisoned. And so really bad laws where you were not allowed
10:42
to have anything, say anything. If you didn't buy bonds, then you were also considered like maybe treasonous. Really bad. So in 100 years, we were basically able to go from one of the worst states in the nation, which these laws were passed federally for a period of time too, to literally one of the best states in the nation regarding having some solid privacy rights.
11:03
The last thing I want to touch on is you may have nothing to hide, but one day you might. We only know what we know and what we live through, but all scenarios change. All governments change, and history is proof that everything that has ever existed a thousand years ago has changed. And almost 500 years ago, 400 years ago, in forms of governments, they always change.
11:22
Okay, so we're gonna touch on some quick historical examples of why this is relevant today, at least in the last 50 years. First one, J. Edgar Hoover, he had documents, information on congressmen, senators, and he would leverage them and say, hey, we know you had sex with this person over here. You really don't want your wife to know
11:41
or your voters to know, so please do what we want. That happened in our government, which means that our legislative branch, the voice of the people, was actually not truly representing the people, it was representing fear at one point. Now, it's not like J. Edgar Hoover was asking for a lot at all these times, but the whole concept was our government was hijacked
12:02
for a period of time out of fear. Even presidents feared the guy. And he tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. to stop with sex tapes, actually, that did not stop him. But one person with data can do crazy, scary things in our country.
12:21
Watergate is just proof how political parties will do whatever they can to collect, obtain data on their adversaries or enemies or their opposition to beat them. This speech, after I give it, if it's uploaded or whatever, it will be sought through, it will be gone through, they'll be looking for me to say one or two lines that I said something wrong or dumb,
12:41
which I say that all the time, so they have plenty of material. Last one's East Germany. East Germany was the part that was held by communist Russia, and with the Stasi, they were only able to tap 40 phones at a time. They were able to silence and keep an entire country, or at least that region of the country,
13:01
in fear of their government, where people would actually tell on their families and friends. Very scary, very scary, but real example. So we kind of talked about how to use these tools to take over the world, but they're real because you have a huge amount of data
13:20
on everybody in this room, and everybody, and especially people running for office, you have examples of how data was used to blackmail, leverage, expose, discredit individuals, and as you know in politics today, I know it's everybody's favorite topic, but you get one person who can bend the oversight
13:44
or access that information, they could stop anybody they want to, and that is a real thing. That's not like some conspiracy theory. If you're in that powerful position, you could stop anybody politically.
14:00
So there are some limits and standards worth imposing. I would love the data be deleted. If it's not, how about we do what this country is based on, which was checks and balances. Required records of searches of the mass data collected, who searched it, why were they searched, and at some point, release this collected information and ensure that that way, knowing that what you searched
14:23
and who you searched and why you searched is released one day, we'll know that one day you'll be held accountable so you might think twice about what you do today. Have a better court system that is overseeing this. Either have it have a more public process or again, a more transparent one.
14:41
Have burdens approved for the data that is requested for when people's information is being sought through through these mass databases, that there's Fourth Amendment standards or notification standards. If your information is ever sought through to see if you were involved in any criminal activities with your cell phone number and all the messages
15:01
or your email or whatever they use, have notification standards to ensure that one day you're gonna know. So unless they really know you're guilty of something, they're gonna think twice. These are pretty solid and easy and basic limits and standards worth considering. So story time, I ran for office at 25.
15:24
I knocked a lot of doors. I knocked doors for four months. I called people for months. I had to raise money. It was a great time. It's something that I wish everybody else would acknowledge and appreciate because you think of politicians,
15:40
you think of these guys who are being money and doing all these evil deeds, but it is a lot of, it is not glamorous, put it this way. It is a lot of alone and you're trying to just talk to people and knock on doors and get elected so you can actually do something good, especially the newer politicians, not newer as in the guys who used to run,
16:01
but someone who's new and running for the first time. There's a lot of idealism behind that and a lot of effort, and they're challenging an entire system that they've never really experienced most likely before. So every state's different. My state's a smaller state. Other states are larger. Some have donation limits. Some represent more people. Some represent less people.
16:21
Some are rural. Some are urban, more urban states. Anyone can run, but keeping that in mind, if people do run, it is smart to have a strategy, not a plan. I know a lot of people who are like, I'm gonna run. I'm gonna go talk to people. People are gonna care about what I say, and then they're gonna like me and I'm gonna get elected, and really it's no, you gotta obtain fundraising,
16:43
and you have to use that to market yourself because people care about the presidential race, maybe the governor race, but our bottom lesser races, they kind of go by the wayside, so you have to have a strategy. Everybody has a plan to get elected and change the world. You gotta have a strategy.
17:00
So I'm gonna talk about a little bit of my experiences. I befriended colleagues on both sides of the aisle when I first was elected. I just didn't like politics, but I like people, so I saw no reason not to befriend somebody super far left. I'm pretty conservative liberty. There's people in the middle on both sides,
17:20
and it was very valuable, and it was not a strategy. It was just luck that I tried to do a privacy bill at rights in 2013. It failed. You said your data's yours. You need consent to collect. There's gotta be security. It was well-intended but not well-written, so where it landed was probably where it should have, but the lobbyists wanted to make an example of me
17:41
because I told them I don't like them, in other words, and I just created a reputation that I am not easy to work with, and that it's not true. I'm very easy to work with if you don't lie to me and you negotiate, so I make sure whatever bill I'm working on gets 90% of what I want.
18:03
Okay, but then I talked to a Democrat senator who's like, Daniel, your bill failed, but we really like what you attempted to do, or I like what you attempted to do, so why don't you try to do a GPS warrant requirement bill? And I said, okay, and so Democrats knew I didn't care about working my way up. Republicans knew that I have pretty conservative values,
18:23
especially taxes, and I really like our freedoms a lot, enough passionately to basically ruin my political career in three weeks of being elected, so I think that basically not being, I mean, you can use this motto for life, but don't be a dick, like that applies to life,
18:40
but it also applies really well to politics because it gave me a really good, simple bill that we ended up passing in Montana being the first one to pass it. 2015, went back, and I was like, and I had a whole slew of these privacy bills that needed to have good precedent set nationally, and the one that ended up passing
19:00
was the freedom of the press for privacy, saying the digital communications of the press cannot ever be obtained. There are no exceptions. They can never be obtained. Freedom of the press is the watchdog of the government, although it's very partisan and biased and probably not doing as well of a job as it could be from when this was historically written. Without it, we look like North Korea, where you don't know anything,
19:22
and the only media you hear is state-sponsored, and that's never good. It's never good. So that bill ended up passing. My warrants for devices and digital communications bill failed in 2015, later passed in 2017, but that ended up failing because of politics, and there was a lot of misinformation
19:41
from prosecutors and law enforcement how if we pass these bills, we're never gonna catch rape victims, and I don't know, make up the argument. That's what I had to defend against. The bill on limits on license plate readers and spot check legislation, that also failed. There were some people on the other side of the aisle who tried to leverage my vote, which I did not give up.
20:02
There were some people on my side of the aisle who just thought I was a arrogant punk, and they wanted to put me in my place, and I can't really always argue with the guys on my side of the aisle. Sometimes I can be a little bit of a punk, but I don't think they should kill legislation based on my personality. They thought they should have. So I'm gonna tell you one thing.
20:21
I spoke at DEF CON 21. Edward Snowden came out. It was realized I passed the first privacy bill of its type in the nation five years ago. Forbes put me on their 30 under 30 list, and all of a sudden I got more positive national press than anybody else in Montana politics. That's not a bragging thing. What I'm telling you that is it helped me
20:42
because people wanted to take me out politically. They wanted to remove me from office, and I was not removed because you can't take out the guy who's getting all the positive press in your party, and so as the conservative guys were more on my side, there were just some of the other guys who were not, and a lot of the industry was not. So the power of DEF CON 21
21:01
is actually what allowed me to come back up here with successes that I'm gonna talk about in a few minutes, so thank you all. So one thing about this legislation, though, that I realized is the importance of model state legislation.
21:21
We passed that GPS privacy bill. Other states started passing that GPS privacy bill, and there was a proof that we can do it successfully. So Montana, being that passing that bill was about Utah then passing it, and Maine and then passing it, and as some of you may or may not know, in 2018, the Supreme Court case ruling stated
21:41
that there is a warrant, there should be, or it deems there is a warrant requirement for GPS location to obtain that, which means that the entire country is now under that ruling. So one state, it can create a whole precedent.
22:08
So next was my third term. So I didn't explain one thing. We serve four months every other year. So we had to do all these bills in four months every other year. So I actually only had a year to do these bills,
22:22
and we actually only have two months to pass it through our body and then the other body. So it's like very time crunch period. So third term, I had an election. I had the second most expensive primary. My seat became more conservative because it's redistricted, so I had a very expensive primary with industry, law enforcement, basically anybody from the contractors,
22:43
hospitals, the utilities, a lot of money spent against me because they knew if I won, I would, first off, I'm gonna keep trying to do my privacy bills, and also I'd be the chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. Montana's an energy state. That wasn't some people's ideal result,
23:01
and that's not who they wanted to be chairing that committee. So again, with term limits, I won that election. I got to chair that committee, and when you're chairing a committee, people are a lot nicer to you because they know something of theirs might go through that committee in the near future. So it's amazing how some of these bills have a lot less,
23:21
there is a lot less leverage for my vote on the House floor because people are like, yeah, that's a bad idea. Let's just leave Daniel alone and bother somebody else. So nice, nice. Term limits do have their benefits, right? So 2017, these are the bills I kind of touched on, but we passed the warrant requirement for digital communications,
23:41
and there was, some of these model bills that are now in law in Montana, there had to be a few meeting, a little bit in the middle, like notification was 90, or it was six months versus three months of notification standards if they ever go through digital communications. There were some other things along those lines, but I still think it's a pretty solid model bill
24:02
that Montana passed. War requirements for devices, you need a warrant to go through electronic devices. They can't pull you over, say, are you texting? Let me go through your phone. That's not gonna happen in my state. That's like, legally, it can't happen. Or your computers or whatever, and we define devices as things that haven't been invented yet either. That's not what it says in the definition,
24:20
but it's a very broad definition. A lot of times when you pass laws, you make the definitions too tight to not apply to the future. I did not want to do that. Then license plate readers. We did not have these yet in my state, but they were trying to get these put into place, and so I worked with one of the main guys
24:41
in law enforcement in the state, and probably one of the most reasonable guys, and he's like, Daniel, why do you want to ban these? I was like, national databases of where we've driven in Montana being applied and held forever by our federal government. I don't want to take any part of that. So with the exception of a few certain things
25:02
like kidnappings, they can be used. The data is collected 90 days, I think, at max. Whoever goes through the data has to be recorded of what data they went through, why they went through it, and then if any other law enforcement group
25:20
wants to obtain that information, they have to get a warrant. So if the sheriff's office wants the police departments, they have to get a warrant. If the federal government wants the state police department or one of the police departments have to get a warrant with the defined license plate number they're looking for. That way they can't get a warrant for all the information ever. It's the warrant of just one license plate.
25:43
So that either means they have to do a few million requests daily or they aren't gonna get our information. And hopefully they're not, I'm not a prosecutor, so maybe there's some loophole I missed, but I try to basically say you could use it for very close, limited things,
26:02
but not for pulling somebody over because they have a license that's expired or something. It's not really the big crimes we're worried about. So that's the license plate reader law that's in place. Then vehicle spot checks, we really reformed those so you can't just pull people over.
26:20
I keep, that has nothing to do with technology, but it has to do with the civil liberty side of things. And then also this whole time I was working on handfuls of energy policy that were good. Some removed special laws from huge corporations, which I know a lot of people in this group would probably like. So passing the bills, this is a little bit more important. This is where it becomes more applicable to you
26:41
if you want to apply it in the future. So my question here is what do gun groups, the ACLU, like family, like Christian organizations, hackers, citizens, and I forgot to add in there, libraries have in common? Those were the people who supported my legislation. So unique coalitions are key.
27:02
So let me say it again, you got gun groups in the ACLU and like family organizations and hackers, citizens, and libraries. That is the island of misfit toys politically. Like, you want to talk about like a funky like family dinner time where like nobody should've even
27:22
been there and had a conversation. That's what my committees would look like when you had prosecutors who'd been doing it for 15 years, could argue, could really influence. You got the Department of Justice. You have members of law enforcement. Who else did we have?
27:41
Those were the main ones that showed up in opposition and they were good. They were very good at what they did. There was a lot of misinformation. They would lead the argument. Well, if my kid got kidnapped and you didn't have this in place and this could really go and we couldn't catch these people when the whole argument would go into like license plate readers that aren't even in place yet.
28:01
So it's like, well, if we don't have something in place that's not in place yet, how could that impact you catching the person who's guilty? So I had to defend against these impossible arguments. Or the whole like, so there's distractions or they're just buildup arguments where they burn the whole thing down. And all I was saying was all I'm doing is just requesting a Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.
28:23
You can email, you can get it. This is like for the warrant requirements for devices. You can email the judge. They can sign it in minutes. They can send it back to you. Boom, that's it. Not really some crazy stuff. Like I'm not saying you can't ever access this information, just do it the proper way.
28:44
So one thing I'm gonna touch I think with the, yeah, unique coalitions a little bit later, but that goes back to be nice to people. There is a lot of Republicans who would never talk to the ACLU. There's a lot of Democrats who wouldn't talk to the family groups.
29:01
You'd be surprised somewhere along the lines what you have in common. We have 95% of everything in common. I don't care if your politics are diametrically opposed, you're a member of the NSA and love every second of it. We still have almost everything in common. I know it's a crazy statement to hear, but it is very true.
29:21
I'll touch on that a little bit later. Our efforts, so there were a lot of efforts to become a privacy technology expert. I'm not a natural public speaker. Reading isn't my favorite thing, especially technical reading, especially technical reading of laws, especially then looking up court cases and amending them, learning how to negotiate.
29:41
All these things, I had to teach myself over four, five years. So when somebody came up to me with an argument, I was able to stand up and have the reasoning, understanding, and oppose it. We don't have staff in my state. We don't have personal staff. So I had to learn it all, negotiate it all, and get on the ground, call people out on committee,
30:03
lobby the votes, do all the work. It wasn't like, a lot of politicians come up, their staff do 90% of the work. They're the ones, the staff are talking to their constituents. No, I had a 10-minute little break. I'm on my computer emailing back my constituents while in session, then sitting back down, just going in the hallway, negotiating a bill
30:20
that were pretty big pieces of legislation, emailing people out till nine or 10 at night with new amendments, getting it to the people to get them written legally for our bill drafts, and then going back at it in the morning. Non-stop, so basically, how to become a privacy technology and legislative expert.
30:41
One thing is there were groups who showed up, like I mentioned, and there were groups who did not show up. I talked about the ACLU showed up. Other tech groups that you think are very helpful weren't even in the room, weren't even in the state. So I was trying to pass some good precedents. They didn't show up. I won't call them out just to be respectful, but they almost actually at one point
31:01
derailed my legislation, and it infuriated me since I've been working on it for four years. So here's what we got. We got multiple model bills for your states, and that's good regarding government, but here's my main failures. I tried to amend a bill saying you cannot collect browser data, and that failed 52 to 48, 48 to 52 on the House floor.
31:23
I believe your data belongs to you. It's like my philosophy. That's weird in politics, but your data is your personal information, and if it's obtained, just ask for consent. So we're gonna be working on a bill like that a little bit more, and it's more for ISPs, not edge providers, and consent to collect is huge,
31:42
and also the other one that I'm gonna be putting more of my political capital into is biometric data. I firmly believe even more than personal data, personal browsing data, that biometric data is completely your property. I'm working on the legislation. I've got smart people working on that.
32:00
I think it would go through my committee, so at least it'd have a good chance of going through half the legislature. See, that's what happens when you get people in power for too long. They start to move bills through their committee, but hopefully I think that's a really good precedent and policy that we could pass in Montana. So what drives politicians? Influence, power, change, anger, political involvement.
32:23
Some people wanna influence an industry that they're part of. They think it's the best way to do it. Some people just want power. They were treated poorly as a child, and now it's their way to get back to the world. Who knows? I don't know their family background, but people want power, and you can see it. They just, you feel it. They want that influence. If there's an edge, they're gonna find it.
32:41
Some people truly wanna make change. Some people are just angry at the whole system, and the angry people are harder to work with because they're angry, and they wanna be angry at you and at everybody, and then there's people who have been following politics their whole life, and then they buy into the rhetoric of both sides, and so they are just, there's through political involvement that they're driven,
33:01
and they listen to their left-winger, right-wing media all the time, and that's, so those are the five major points I'd say drives politicians. One thing to keep in mind, if you ever talk to politicians in your state about these issues, because that's what I'd like you to do, you'd be surprised how much influence you have as an individual on your politician, is there are hundreds of issues.
33:20
People run for energy, education, healthcare, transportation, taxes, family issues, gun issues. I don't care. There are hundreds of issues, hundreds of issues, and a lot of the people who are elected are older, so your issues, my issues, aren't really relevant to them. They're not as important to them. That doesn't mean they're not important issues. It means that they don't just study
33:40
all hundreds of issues. They kinda focus on theirs, and somebody else focuses on another one. In my legislature, I focus on technology issues and other, and energy issues, and then other people focus on healthcare and education all across the board, but to expect people to care about your issue is, it's not a fair expectation.
34:02
Yes, there is a lot of issues. Yes, it's your job to know about them, but to be in expertise and be like, why don't you have Fourth Amendment standards on my digital communications? They're gonna be like, what are you even talking about? Because it's just not an issue, really, that people would know about, and you have to be okay with that, so then you can sit down and explain to them what you're talking about and why it's important.
34:23
There are political issues versus policy issues. Political issues are in the news, crazy rhetoric. Policy issues can be political issues, but sometimes they're just like, how do we make the budget really fund this group, and what's going on over here, and this tax is not bringing in a lot of money, and this one's bringing a lot more,
34:40
and we have extra surplus here, and then pretty soon it gets really wonky, and nobody really wants to talk about it, because it's really boring, so political issues can be trendy, but they're not the same as policy issues, and political issues usually are the extremes on both sides, so if you jump on board with that, you're gonna be missing the policy side.
35:01
It's okay to not follow the trends. It's even better to do legislation that's not trendy. No one's really talking about some of the legislation we talked about here, and that's okay because it's not partisan. It's okay because no one's really talking about it, so it's not like if a Republican stands up for it, a Democrat's gonna be against it. In other words, it's not political.
35:22
It's not full of partisan politics. There's a chance that people could be like, this is an easy bill. We can all support and push it through, so the fact it's not political is on your side if you use it that way. One last thing to remember with politicians. Say I have five bills.
35:41
I have my two priority bills. I know they're popular. I know they're important. I know I can get them passed. Then I got three or four other bills, maybe two or four constituents. One's kind of important. It's a technology bill that is important to some constituents who bother me, but it's not my major priority. I'm just using that as an example. My political capital is gonna be focused
36:00
on my most important bills to me, which means you could be leverage. You could be trading votes. You could be just asking the committee to pass these ones because the more you ask, the more they kind of get annoyed with you. It matters per state how they do their politics, cutting deals. There's all the stuff behind the scenes you'll never see,
36:21
but there is so much political capital. So when someone's like, oh, this guy sold out, well, maybe he did four great things or she did four great things, and then the other two things they didn't end up passing was it just was not politically feasible, and it's really hard to put it into words, but it's something to keep in mind that there is a limit on how much and what you can push through a legislature.
36:43
Having said that, I just pushed my political capital to the max. I try to do everything because we're only there for a few months. We're only alive for 100 years or less, so might as well just go all in. It results in primary elections, so maybe be smarter than me if you ever do this. Partisanship. So I kind of talked about this a little bit,
37:01
but politicians divide and conquer the electorate. If you are married to a political party completely, I mean, I ran for office, so it's maybe a little bit different, but if you're married to one, really question it, question what drove you, question the rhetoric. I see so many times people jump on board with one political party because of one issue. They don't know much about the other issues, so they just follow and jump on board with it completely.
37:23
I know social issues really drives people either side of the aisle. We don't have to go into details on the issue, but if you're pro-life or pro-choice, you tend to say these are really important to me, and then you just look at these other issues and say these are my guys on my side, and you know what, I agree with their issues as well.
37:40
So you have one or two main issues, and people jump on board with a political party, and pretty soon they're married to everything the political party has. And what happens is you lose your independence as an individual and a voter when it becomes that, and you're actually playing into a game where you're divided and conquered. Do not lose that independence. That is a, the independent vote is the most valuable vote,
38:00
so by maintaining that, you can have a little bit more influence is what I would suggest. Let me give a great example of politics. Sorry, I'm just, I'm trying to cover a lot of information. And there is, let me give the best example. Blue Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter, okay? I'm not gonna talk about the politics,
38:21
one's right or wrong, that's not what I'm here to do. I do think it's a very funny example that Blue Lives Matter are the people who support law enforcement, but it's usually the right side of the aisle who hates more government and more laws in their life, yet they strongly support the guys enforcing the laws. While Black Lives Matter is the group that tends to be more laws, I'm doing some stereotypes, so just work with me.
38:42
They do, they want, they're usually more Democrat leaning, they want more laws in place, but then they don't like the guys who are enforcing the laws as much. So you see the irony in politics, and nobody even questions it. You got the one group who's on one side, but they're really fighting their own ideas, and then you got the other group who's on this side, and they're really fighting some of their own ideas over here.
39:01
It's a crazy concept. So in Montana, we passed, most of those laws would fit under the Black Lives Matter mantra of politics, of we want more rights for people to make sure that if they're arrested, they're following the right procedures, but instead of jumping on that
39:21
political partisan division path, these were sold as constitutional bills as well, because they are. They are First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, mostly Fourth Amendment pieces of legislation that fit the same argument in California of what the Black Lives Matter group was doing. The difference is, is my approach wasn't saying this is a constitutional conservative issue.
39:41
I'm just saying we're following the Constitution. We left all the division out of it. So although some of the people on the left would say, you know, this really fits what's going on politically, the people on the right were like, these are really good constitutional bills that are worth putting into law. If I'm saying anything, it's don't jump on a bandwagon too early,
40:03
because there are reasons why it's leading you down that path, and it is not always for, there's usually some reason behind it, and just don't be blinded by it. Okay, partisan politics invokes partisan behavior. Here's a whole other thing, tribalism.
40:22
You are, let's say, I'm the Republican, there's a Democrat, they say he's a Republican. Before I stopped, they were opposing my election, so that's, like, we don't like those guys. Second off, they were, they're for the exact opposite of the beliefs that I want. So now it's like, anything they say, I don't like.
40:41
Third off, they're just these greedy people, and we don't like them. So they found reasons to dislike somebody before they even met them. But their party helped them raise money, helped them knock on doors, helped them win, and now they're all working together on common issues. What you have is tribalism, where you hate the other person, and you really like your people. When what you lost was your ability to question the people internally, what they're going for,
41:02
and figure out if you have any common ground across the aisle. Our politics right now is huge differences where you can't even trust, and there's very limited dialogue. My legislation all passed because I had people on both sides of the aisle jump on board with me and say, this is good legislation, because I did not adhere to tribalism
41:22
and follow those basic rules of, this is my team, and I hate that team. If you have that mindset politically, this type of legislation will never move forward. This legislation can move forward in the US Center and Congress at the Patrick Leahy's, Rand Paul's, and the Mike Lee's, and the Whited out of Oregon,
41:42
if those guys really spearheaded it and held back their political capital together. The thing is, a lot of those guys literally hate each other, and so it's hard when you have a coalition of people who can agree with the idea, but they sometimes can't get past the personalities and tribalism.
42:00
And like I said, keep this issue non-partisan. Do not make it a one group or another group. Especially if it's more of a liberal legislature, then you know that it follows more with, like I said, the Black Lives Matter concept. If it's more conservative one, these are complete conservative issues. You're not lying to either group.
42:20
You're not telling them half a story. You're just talking to somebody how they want to be spoken to in the way that they can relate to what you're doing. The last thing, one of the last things is force politicians to listen. So people think of federal politics as everything, but state politics is everything. We make a lot of rules, and we are very accessible.
42:40
So you can literally sit down with almost any state representative or senator. Some of them are not the nice people, but a lot of them you can reach out to, ask their office and say, I wanna meet them, I wanna talk to them for 15 minutes. You can talk about these issues that are important to them. You say, these guys should represent me, but most people don't ever reach out to them. They don't even know who their representatives and senators are at the state level.
43:01
So make them represent you. You're the constituent. It is literally your job to figure it out and ask them to hear you. Make, especially more importantly, make a politician in a tight election earn your vote. If you say, hey, I know you're running. I know this is an expensive race. This is important to me. They're so likely to placate and give you their support on an issue that's not important to them.
43:21
You can literally get them on your side, get their support, and if the bill comes up, hold them accountable. You can do that. So a tight election is very powerful for you. Again, be persistent, but do not be offensive. Do not insult these people they don't listen to. That doesn't get you anything. It actually makes you look obnoxious
43:40
and makes your issue look obnoxious and it makes their support of your issue or opposing you a lot easier for them. So be persistent, call, call, call. Just don't be rude. If they don't care, you can always challenge them for office. You can make it the main issue while you're running. And if they don't do what you want, people will like to be on Facebook.
44:00
It's their solution. It's not a solution. It makes you feel good, but it's not the best way to do it. I would go and use opinion editorials and papers. Write something. Say this guy, he wants the government going through emails. You know who wants the government going through their emails and phones? Nobody, because everybody's got something to hide again, unless they're really boring. Which we talked about.
44:22
So then the last thing is politicians fear controversy. They hate to be bothered. They hate to have something. So this is an easy thing for them to support where they're never gonna lose a vote or gain a vote really. So you wanna make it so it's easy for them to vote for and not easy for them to vote against and go hide. But it's very easy for them to vote for and just be left alone
44:41
if you ever pushed any of these types of legislation. Just the last thing is expecting them to know better is never reasonable because sometimes they just don't know about these issues. It's not even in their generation. So then go a little bit farther. I have just a minute, there are two left, but identify the bill sponsor. You gotta have somebody carry the bill in the legislature. That's really important to do.
45:01
And then organize. You need to just contact the people, contact committee members of where the bill would go through and you could get support of this type of legislation. Work with groups. The other group that was very helpful was the Center for Democracy and Technology with this legislation.
45:20
They gave me the original model bills before they were in law so that I gotta kinda disrupt. So work with groups. Doesn't matter what your politics are. Find the commonality and in the end testify. I've worked on legislation for people who didn't even show up to testify. That's really annoying. So please, if you ever do this and have somebody working on this legislation, testify.
45:42
This is the last slide of why you matter. And this is a little bit different than everything else we talked about. Regarding technology, if technology is used inappropriately, it could really ruin our republic and it could put a lot of fear into people. So I think this quote is proper.
46:03
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. So in other words, if you're gonna follow a bad law, you might lose your morality. But if you refuse to follow that law, you lose respect for the law.
46:21
But you know what? You might actually be some of the most important people if the worst case scenario comes into fruition. So with that, thank you for having me and I appreciate having this opportunity. Thank you.