Tech Policy Leaders

Alejandro Roark is Executive Director of the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership (HTTP) in Washington, DC. HTTP is a national non-profit that convenes an intersectional coalition of national Latino organizations committed to promoting access, adoption, and the full utilization of technology and telecommunications resources by the Hispanic/Latino/a community in the United States. HTTP works at the intersection of ethics, technology, and public policy to educate, advocate, and serve as a national voice for Hispanics/Latinos in technology and telecommunications policy.

As Executive Director, Alejandro leads a strategic planning process with HTTP member organizations to set the national Latino tech policy agenda that creates opportunities for national, and local advocates to engage with Congress and the Administration to advocate for inclusive public policy that promotes civil rights protections, equitable access to broadband, and increased diversity in media and tech workforces. HTTP works to extend Latino priorities in the following policy areas: broadband adoption, spectrum allocation, consumer privacy, open internet, intellectual property, and diversity & Inclusion within the technology workforce.

With nearly a decade of experience working at the local, state and national level, Alejandro has dedicated his career to the elimination of structural inequities across LGBT inclusion, racial and social justice, and civil rights policies, through community power building, story-telling, equitable resource allocation and by creating pathways for a more diverse workforce.

Alejandro applies his skills and leadership to the examination of the ethical and social dimensions of technological change including the attention economy, data privacy, algorithmic decision-making, and artificial intelligence to ensure that Latino priorities are integrated into the policy-making process.

Prior to his position with HTTP, Alejandro oversaw the tech policy portfolio which included the planning and execution of its annual Latinx Tech Summit, for LULAC National, the nation's oldest nation's country's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization. In addition to leading the corporate social responsibility team where he worked with fortune 500 companies to develop, implement, and scale nationwide community programs and coordinating LULAC's Corporate Alliance. Alejandro has also served as the founding executive director for Utah's first and only Mexican Cultural Arts organization, as well as the associate director for Equality Utah where he managed the region's public relations systems, community outreach programming, and state, local, and federal advocacy work.

Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership

Hey everyone. Here we are on Election Day as purveyors of misinformation and intimidation use both traditional and digital tactics to keep voters away from the polls. The backdrop to this, of course, has been the Supreme Court's roll-back of the Voting Rights Act, most notably its Shelby County v. Holder decision, in which it essentially neutered the VRA's preclearance requirement -- the provision requiring state and local governments to get federal approval before making changes to their voting laws and practices.

Section 5 is still there. The Court just ruled the 40-year-old data Congress relied on to decide which states are subject to the requirement were too-old.

Then, as Laurence Tribe wrote in Lawfare last week, we have the current, conservative majority of the Supreme Court, with the exception of Chief Justice Roberts, suggesting state legislatures should be the highest authority in each state when it comes to each state's voting laws, even above the highest state court charged with enforcing each state's constitution.

Social media has not played as dominant a role in shaping public opinion as it did in 2016. But that doesn't mean state actors and others aren't still using it. And the Washington Post reports bad actors are using robocalls, in Michigan specifically, to explicitly tell people to stay away from the polls. The FCC empowered carriers to block robocalls before they reach consumers. But apparently they dropped the ball here.

The New York Times warned the public this morning about potential rigged voting machines, tossed ballots, and intimidating federal agents, Yes, this is 2020. And yes, we are still fighting this battle. In this election though the electorate cast their votes by mail in record numbers. So we are seeing this shift across the political spectrum to more analog tacticseither to suppress votes or to preserve them.

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We'll see what happens. I'm tuning it out--at least until tomorrow. I don't think I'm even gonna watch the results come in. I'll wake up tomorrow and see what happened.

But my guest today is Alejandro Roark, Executive Director of the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Parntership here in Washington. Previously, Alejandro led LULAC's tech portfolio. He was also the founding Executive Director of the state of Utah's first and only Mexican Culutral Arts Organization. Alejandro Roark!

Richard Fowler is Host of radio's nationally syndicated The Richard Fowler Show, Democratic Messaging Expert, and Millennial Engagement Specialist, Richard Fowler is an advocate for youth and social policy reform. Currently, Richard works with teachers, nurses, and higher education faculty to make sure their voices matters in the decision making process taking place at city halls, state capitols, and our nation's Capital. Fowler is regularly featured on prime-time cable news discussing a wide variety of issues, including the 2016 election, social justice, race, and news of the day.

Most frequently, he appears on The Kelly File and Hardball on MSNBC, in addition to other major international and outlets across the country. He was a 2012 Democratic National Convention Delegate.

The Richard Fowler Show can be heard in over 9.1 million homes internationally and is a partner in the TYT Network, a multi-channel network on YouTube specializing in political talk shows. Richard has been a regular fill-in anchor on Current TV and RTTV and currently serves as the official guest host for The Full Court Press with Bill Press.

A native of Fort Lauderdale, Richard got his first taste of politics at a young age when he went with his mother into the voting booth to pull the lever for Bill Clinton for President. After that auspicious start, Richard began his involvement in politics. As a young man he volunteered on numerous local races in Florida, including former Attorney General Janet Reno's gubernatorial campaign.

From registering and organizing more than a thousand young voters in Florida for the NAACP — to being a campaign manager in the District of Columbia, Richard has used his experience to advise youth, minority and female candidates. Richard has been a featured speaker at the Center For American Progress, National Council of La Raza's National Conference, College Democrats of America, United States Student Association, the American Councils on International Education, the Young Democrats of America, over twenty different foreign delegations, and numerous colleges and universities. He has trained nearly 2,000 young people about the importance of image and messaging in the political arena.

Richard is also the co-founder of Richard Media Company, a boutique messaging, public relations, and production outfit located in Washington, DC. Outside of his work in media, Richard was the co-founder and director of PHOENIX FREEDOM PAC, a transportation solutions political action committee. Richard Formerly served as the Advocacy Director of The Young Democrats of America and as the Executive Director of Generational Alliance, a progressive youth engagement organization. He sat on the Board of Directors for Amara Legal Center and now is a National Executive Board Member for Pride at Work. He is also the former Executive Director of the Virginia Young Democrats Annual Conference, a Fellow at the New Leaders Council, and a former Fellow at the Center for Progressive Leadership.

Richard earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Bachelors of Arts in International Affairs from The George Washington University.

The Richard Fowler Show

A coalition of the United States Department of Justice and 11 mostly red states announced Tuesday that they filed a new antitrust lawsuit against Google because of its search dominance. The complaint accuses Google of engaging in a number of anti-competitive practices. One of them is Apple's exclusive relationship with Google that allows Google's search engine to be the default in Apple's Safari browser. The Wall Street Journal reports that some estimates place the cost to Google for this relationship at $11 billion, comprising some 20% of Apple's total revenue.

A key piece of evidence here was a 2018 email from a top Apple executive telling his counterpart at Google, "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." Neither company has released the name of the executive who sent that email. But I am just beside myself trying to figure out, and I'm really trying to empathize with the person who sent it, why, out of all of the things they could have put in writing, why they wrote the absolute worst thing they could possibly think of.

This was a high-level interaction with a competitor in which anticompetitive pitfalls were blatantly obvious. The first thing on this executive's mind should have been to avoid an appearance of impropriety at all costs, especially given the discourse here in Washington about both companies' market dominance and bipartisan support for regulating tech companies.

These executives are supposed to be the best and brightest, right? But this is just basic antitrust law and policy. A high-ranking executive in a company like Apple should know it. It's just basic. It's not hard.

I cannot help but wonder if the executive here was a person of color. Forgive me if I sound harsh. But companies like Apple use their purported inability to find qualified diverse talent as an excuse to justify the sheer lack of diversity in their executive ranks. I really want to know how someone, who is supposed to be so superior to everyone else who competed for their job, could make such a dumb mistake.

I'm not saying this person should be fired. Everyone makes mistakes. But for a company that seems so invested in meritocracy, I, like many of you, can't help but wonder 1) was this executive a person of color, and; 2) how did the company respond to this? Are they treating it as an isolated, forgivable incident, or, are they are globalizing it, making a value judgment about the executive's overall intelligence?

I'm not saying it's right. I'm not even saying it's healthy to think this way. I'm just saying it crossed my mind.

And I won't even get into Jeffrey Toobin.

How to spot and stop misinformation with John Breyault (Ep. 244) -- John and Joe Miller discuss how consumers themselves can correct misinformation, by weighing in when they see it, rather than relying on tech companies.

Bio

John Breyault is a nationally-recognized consumer advocate with more than 15 years of experience championing the rights of consumers and the underserved. At the National Consumers League, he advocates for stronger consumer protections before Congress and federal agencies on issues related to telecommunications, fraud, data security, privacy, aviation, live event ticketing, video gaming, and other consumer concerns. In addition, John manages NCL's Fraud.org and #DataInsecurity project campaigns. John has testified multiple times before Congress and federal agencies and is a regular contributor to national press outlets including the Washington Post, New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Prior to NCL, John was the director of research at Amplify Public Affairs, where hs supported clients in the telecommunications, energy, labor, and environmental sectors. Earlier in his career, John worked at Sprint and at the American Center for Polich Culture in Washington, DC. A lifelong Virginian, John is a graduate of George Mason University, where he received a bachelor's degree in International Studies with a minor in French.

Resources:

National Consumers League

Intro

Joe: Hey everybody. Congress can't get anything done. Now the state Attorneys General are hamstrung by corruption and politics, as they try to execute a serious of actions against big tech.

Real news outlets believe the Department of Justice and various state coalitions are planning to sue Google. The DOJ is expected to focus on Google's search dominance. The state coalitions are working together with the DOJ, but then again, they're no,t because many of them believe the DOJ's moving too slowly. Congress has subpoenaed Facebook, Google, and Twitter. But, of course, Republicans and Democrats rarely see eye-to-eye.

But now we've got problems in Texas -- with their Attorney General, Ken Paxton, facing bribery charges -- accusations his own Deputies alleged in a whistleblower complaint. It's a litany of allegations claiming that:

• He received hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts for his own legal defense fund. What did the people who gave those donations expect in exchange? They couldn't have given them out of the goodness of their hearts. In that case, why not give it to poor people? Nevertheless, Paxton says these donors are family friends.
• His own wife, a state senator, introduced a bill to expand his power to exempt individuals from state regulations, which would have set him up to return favors to people.
• He unilaterally decided that Texas Governor Greg Abbot's ban of elective procedures due to COVID-19 should apply to abortions. This went into effect immediately, forcing women to cancel their appointments, pending the outcome of litigation arising from this.

The list goes on and on.

So Democratic Attorneys General are calling for Paxton to step down, saying it threatens their multistate investigation into Google's market practices. Meanwhile, sources expect the DOJ to file a lawsuit in a few days. Why that's public, I have no idea. You'd think it'd be attorney-privileged. But, frankly, following ethical guidelines doesn't appear to be part of Bill Barr's skill set.

To make matters worse, you have a dozen or so other Republican Attorneys General facing similar corruption problems.

Eliot Spitzer must feel vindicated for his little prostitution situation back in 2008. But that was 12 years ago!

Let's move on, let's move on.

John McAfee, the namesake of the antivirus software, was arrested in Spain Monday. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges McAfee took $23 million from people to invest in cryptocurrencies he was being paid to promote. But the officials note this is a personal lawsuit, not one against McAfee, the company.

So we're in this place where politics are holding up anything meaningful when it comes to antitrust enforcement against big tech companies. We'll see what the DOJ lawsuit says. But, without even looking at it, I anticipate a number of free speech problems that will have to be overcome, and much of the case law has been written by Conservatives.

'Social media policy: It's the moderation, stupid!' with Chris Lewis Ep. 232(Opens in a new browser tab)

'Health Tech and Communications in Crisis' with Licy DoCanto (Ep. 231)(Opens in a new browser tab)

'They Smile in Your Face: How the Internet is Unmasking Hidden Racism' with Robert Eschmann (Ep. 222)(Opens in a new browser tab)

Ep. 203: The Internet and Racial Justice w/ Charlton McIlwain(Opens in a new browser tab)

Kids and YouTube with Patrick van Kessel (Ep. 197)(Opens in a new browser tab)

John Bergmayer is Legal Director at Public Knowledge, specializing in telecommunications, media, internet, and intellectual property issues. He advocates for the public interest before courts and policymakers, and works to make sure that all stakeholders -- including ordinary citizens, artists, and technological innovators -- have a say in shaping emerging digital policies.

Bergmayer, J., 2020. Tending The Garden: How To Ensure App Stores Put Users First. [ebook] Washington, DC: Public Knowledge. Available at: [Accessed 27 September 2020].

Charlton McIlwain (@cmcilwain) is Vice Provost or Faculty Engagement and Development; Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. His recent work focuses on the intersections of race, digital media, and racial justice activism. He recently wrote Racial Formation, Inequality & the Political Economy of Web Traffic, in the journal Information, Communication & Society, and he co-authored, with Deen Freelon and Meredith Clark, the recent report Beyond the Hashtags: Ferguson, #BlackLivesMatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice, published by the Center for Media & Social Impact, and supported by the Spencer Foundation. Today, Tuesday October 1st, 2019, his new book entitled Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter releases via Oxford University Press and available wherever you buy books.

McIlwain, Charlton. Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Mike Alkire

Michael J. Alkire (@AlkirePremier) is the President at Premier, the largest global supply chain, healthcare technology company in the U.S, that helps hospitals and health systems provide higher quality patient care at a better cost. In addition to leading the integration of the company's clinical, financial, supply chain and operational performance offerings, Alkire also oversees the quality, safety, labor and supply chain technology solutions.

An influential figure in America's efforts to address drug shortages and infuse data-enabled technology solutions into the U.S. healthcare system, Alkire has been consulted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, FEMA, congressional lawmakers, Wall Street investors and private sector industry leaders on how to stabilize the medical and pharmaceutical supply chain during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to offering his expertise in the media, he shares perspectives via his podcast, InsideOut, through discussions with insiders in healthcare.

With an eye on equipping the nation's hospitals and health systems with the clinical, financial, supply chain and operational performance improvement offerings they need to provide quality care at efficient costs, Alkire oversees Premier's quality, safety, labor and supply chain technology apps and data-driven collaboratives including Premier's comparative database, one of the nation's largest outcomes databases.

Alkire also led Premier's efforts to address public health and safety issues from the nationwide drug shortage problem, testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives regarding Premier research on shortages and gray market price gouging. This work contributed to the president and Congress taking action to investigate and correct the problem, resulting in two pieces of bipartisan legislation.

Alkire is a past board member of GHX and the Healthcare Supply Chain Association. He recently was named one of the Top 25 COOs in Healthcare for 2018 by Modern Healthcare. In 2015, Alkire won the Gold Stevie Award for Executive of the Year and in 2014 he was recognized as a Gold Award Winner for COO of the Year by the Golden Bridge Awards. He has more than 20 years of experience in running business operations and business development organizations at Deloitte & Touche and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Before joining Premier, he served in a number of leadership roles at Cap Gemini, including North American responsibilities for supply chain and high-tech manufacturing.

Alkire graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science from Indiana State University and a MBA from Indiana University.

Jonathan Slotkin MD, FAANS

Jonathan Slotkin leads clinical strategy, innovation and operations for Contigo Health by partnering with health systems and employers to deliver the highest quality care at a fair price. He works to support the development of novel products and implementation approaches that always aim for clinical excellence, patient satisfaction and value. Slotkin is a neurosurgeon and scientist who has led prominent care delivery reengineering and digital transformation initiatives centered around patients. He has partnered with some of the nation's largest employers to help them reimagine the care of their associates. Slotkin believes higher quality care will always be the most cost-effective care in the end and that innovative employers and providers working together is the most powerful force we have to fix the U.S. healthcare system. He maintains a clinical practice caring for patients directly at Geisinger where he is associate chief medical informatics officer and Vice Chair of neurosurgery.

Scott Weingarten, Jonathan Slotkin & Mike Alkire, Building A Real-Time Covid-19 Early-Warning System, Harvard Business Review, 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/06/building-a-real-time-covid-19-early-warning-system (last visited Aug 3, 2020).

Lisa Woods, Jonathan R. Slotkin & M. Ruth Coleman, How Employers are Fixing Healthcare, Harvard Business Review, 2019, https://hbr.org/cover-story/2019/03/how-employers-are-fixing-health-care (last visited Aug 3, 2020).

Jonathan R. Slotkin, Karen Murphy & Jaewon Ryu, How One Health System is Transforming in Response to COVID-19, Harvard Business Review, 2020, https://hbr.org/2020/06/how-one-health-system-is-transforming-in-response-to-covid-19 (last visited Aug 3, 2020).

Philip N. Howard (@pnhoward) the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and a statutory Professor of Internet Studies at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. Howard investigates the impact of digital media on political life around the world, and he is a frequent commentator on global media and political affairs. Howard's research has demonstrated how new information technologies are used in both civic engagement and social control in countries around the world. His projects on digital activism, computational propaganda, and modern governance have been supported by the European Research Council, National Science Foundation, US Institutes of Peace, and Intel's People and Practices Group.

He has published nine books and over 140 academic articles, book chapters, conference papers, and commentary essays on information technology, international affairs and public life. His articles examine the role of new information and communication technologies in politics and social development, and he has published in peer review journals such as the American Behavioral Scientist, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and The Journal of Communication. His first book on information technology and elections in the United States is called New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). It is one of the few books to ever win simultaneous "best book" prizes from the professional associations of multiple disciplines, with awards from the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Communication Association. His authored books include The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), Castells and the Media (London, UK: Polity, 2011), Democracy's Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012, with Muzammil Hussain), and Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). He has edited Society Online: The Internet in Context (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004, with Steve Jones), the Handbook of Internet Politics (London, UK: Routledge, 2008, with Andrew Chadwick), State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013, with Muzammil Hussain) and Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians and Manipulation on Social Media (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018, with Samuel Woolley).

Howard has had senior teaching, research, and administrative appointments at universities around the world. He has been on the teaching faculty at the Central European University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, the University of Oslo, and the University of Washington. He has had fellowship appointments at the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington D.C., the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research at the London School of Economics, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. From 2013-15 he helped design and launch a new School of Public Policy at Central European University in Budapest, where he was the school's first Founding Professor and Director of the Center for Media, Data and Society. He currently serves as Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, the leading center of research and teaching on technology and society.

Howard's research and commentary writing has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many international media outlets. He was awarded the National Democratic Institute's 2018 "Democracy Prize" and Foreign Policy magazine named him a "Global Thinker" for pioneering the social science of fake news production.

His B.A. is in political science from Innis College at the University of Toronto, his M.Sc. is in economics from the London School of Economics, and his Ph.D. is in sociology from Northwestern University. His website is philhoward.org.

Philip Howard, Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives (2020)

Sara Harrison - 'Telehealth at the End of Life' (Ep. 238) Sara Harrison, a New York City-based freelance journalist, joined Joe Miller to talk about telehealth and palliative care. Bio Sara Harrison (@SaraHarrison) is a freelance writer and journalist based in New York. Previously she was a reporting fellow at WIRED where she covering vaping, content moderation, sleep science, and much more. She is a former assistant editor for the politics section of the Los Angeles Review of Books and her work has been featured in outlets including WIRED, Protocol, San Francisco Magazine, and on NPR-affiliate KALW's Crosscurrents. Sara holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and a masters degree from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism where she was a Dean's Merit Fellow. Her thesis, "The Quest to Make a Bot that Can Smell as Well as a Dog," won the Clay Felker Award for Excellence in Narrative Writing. Email: sara[dot]harrison[at]berkeley[dot]edu Resources Sara Harrison, When Doctors and Patients Talk About Death Over Zoom Wired (2020), https://www.wired.com/story/when-doctors-and-patients-talk-about-death-over-zoom/ (last visited Jul 20, 2020).