The Reason Roundtable

Silicon Valley firms are building surveillance and profiling tools to help government agents make sense of the massive amount of information available on social media and in publicly accessible data sets. Are they using cutting-edge technologies to keep Americans safe, or laying the groundwork for a police state?

The Palo-Alto based Palantir is one of the biggest so-called threat intelligence firms, and it's primary backer is Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder, Facebook board member, and Trump supporter.

Also an outspoken libertarian, Thiel told Fortune magazine he hopes Palantir's technology will help protect the civil liberties of Americans because, given the massive amounts of Americans' data the government takes in, "if we could help [agents] make sense of data, they could end indiscriminate surveillance."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Alexis Garcia, Justin Monticello, and Mark McDaniel.

In 2006, when Egypt was ruled by strongman Hosni Mubarak, then 22-year-old Cynthia Farahat co-founded the Liberal Egyptian Party, the first secular, classical liberal political party in the country's modern history.

Reason's Justin Monticello spoke with Farahat about her mission to bring a true political alternative to the region, why she vociferously advocates for the Muslim Brotherhood to be labeled a terrorist organization, how Coptic Christians in Egypt are persecuted and blamed for American foreign policy, and why she believes people across the Middle East are hungry for civil liberties and free markets.

Produced by Justin Monticello. Cameras by Meredith Bragg and Zach Weissmueller. Music by Silent Partner.

Many Californians are upset about Donald Trump. Some are so upset that they are working to get a referendum on the ballot in 2018. It would ask Californians if their state should leave the United States and become an independent country—which it was back in 1846.

But if they vote to leave will the rest of America let them? Maybe not, if Spain's reaction to a similar movement is any guide. A region called Catalonia wants to secede from the rest of Spain. But the Spanish government says that is illegal and sent thousands of police to stop Catalonians from even voting about whether they want to leave. The police brutally assaulted many people trying to vote.

Catalonia's regional Parliament responded with a declaration of independence from Spain, but the Spanish authorities then dissolved the parliament and arrested many of the leaders who favored secession. Other leaders have fled the country and are trying to convince the EU to give Catalonia independence.

Stossel hopes they succeed, because if people don't want to be governed by their government—and would prefer another—let them choose! It also means more governments, and more competition among governments, which should lead to better laws.

As libertarian Michael Strong puts it, "we need lots of experiments. It's funny—in the world of science, we believe in the freedom to experiment. Now we need to go to the world of government and believe in the freedom to experiment."

Produced by Maxim Lott. Edited by Joshua Swain.

Federal auto safety regulations fill nearly 900 pages with standards that determine everything from rear-view mirror and steering wheel placement to the shape of vehicles and the exact placement of seats. Many of the rules don't make sense in the coming era of self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles don't need rear-view mirrors, or (eventually) steering wheels. Their ideal physical form is still a work in progress.

But an even bigger rethink is in order. As motor vehicles become essentially computers on wheels, software, not hardware, will soon be paramount for safety. This will make most government regulation unnecessary, and, to the extent that it slows innovation, could even cost lives on the highway.

Shot, written, edited, and produced by Jim Epstein. Filmed at the 2017 Automated Vehicles Symposium.

"Detour" by Gunnar Olsen.

"The Key" by The Tall Pines is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

"Stranger in the City" by Marcos Bolaños is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

"Hills" by Riot

"Boogie Pt. 1" by The Tall Pines is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

"Realness," by Kai Engel is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Caitlin Long, one of Inc. magazine's "10 business leaders changing the world through tech," a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, and the current president of Symbiont, which is bringing blockchain technology to Wall Street.

Interview edited by Mark McDaniel. Introduction edited by Jim Epstein.

"Modum" by Kai Engel is licensed under Creative Commons.

Donald Trump has declared "with tax reform, we can make it morning in America again" and that "revising our tax code is not just a policy discussion — it is a moral one, because we are not talking about the government's money – we are talking about your money, your hard work."

The Republican tax plan, which would cut rates for individuals and small businesses, sounds like good policy, but it's not. Before we get lost in details and political infighting, it's worth laying out what effective tax reform actually looks like.

Produced by Todd Krainin. Written and narrated by Nick Gillespie. Cameras by Jim Epstein.

Remy culturally appropriates Michael Jackson in this updated Halloween classic.

Written and Performed by Remy. Video by Meredith and Austin Bragg. Music tracks and backing vocals by Ben Karlstrom.

On Halloween the media scare people with stories about dangerous costumes and poison candy. Most of the stories are not even true.

Lots of things Americans are scared of pose little risk.

John Stossel goes to Times Square and asks people what scares them. Most answered with low-risk dangers, like sharks, spiders, horses, and plane crashes. Common among the answers was the fear of losing control.

Flying scares many people more than driving. That's because in cars we feel in control. But there are more than 90 deaths a day from car crashes. No one's died in an American commercial plane crash in years.

Stossel says it's not good to fear so much. Fear is a friend of big government. Politicians use our fear to say, "there ought to be a law!"

Yet life in America is safer than ever. Don't let the media, and politicians, wreck your Halloween!

This Halloween while you're getting pudgy from candy, crony capitalists are getting rich off of sugar subsidies. The system is rigged through price controls, subsidies, and tariffs, all designed to protect the sugar industry from competition–and basic math. In the latest "Mostly Weekly" Andrew Heaton tears into the Willy Wonkas gaming the system, and shows why an open market can more than handle your sugar craving.

If you're a parent of a child under the age of 12, here's a question for you: When is the last time you let them walk to school by themselves, have an unscheduled play date, or—God forbid!—let them to go to the store to pick up a gallon of milk by themselves?

Kids today are tagged, surveilled, and tracked like endangered species. Is it any wonder that our college campuses now rush to provide safe spaces and panic rooms to protect young adults from speakers and materials they might find disturbing?

To discuss the changes in American childhood—and what to do about them—Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Lenore Skenazy, the author of Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) and a contributor to Reason. Skenazy is launching a new non-profit called Let Grow, along with psychology professors Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray, and Daniel Shuchman, who's the chairman of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Skenazy and Haidt make the case for Let Grow in a feature story in Reason's December issue.

Produced by Todd Krainin.