[laughs] OK. No, that’s fine. Either way. I’m open.

Perfect. I really appreciate your time and patience. It’s lovely to connect, and hope we can keep a conversation going over time at mutually beneficial time zones. Thanks for taking some of your evening time to talk with me.

Like you said, some of the best ideas come from people who are not experts in that field, but who can cut through what’s needed to give that sense of connection and security. Interesting. All right.

That’s great to know. It seems like in designing something like that, it’s the technology, plus the psychology, and the sociology, and you need people...It’s such a multidimensional...So often, people think about it only as a technology issue.

[laughs] That’s sometimes what it takes.

Wow, perfect.

Huh.

I’m curious if I can lean on your expertise and your great thinking for a moment more. Are there interventions that you see now in your governmental role that you think could be really effective in raising the privacy conversation from a policymaker?

Unfortunately, I have to go shortly, because I have a meeting here.

Absolutely.

The community has been really active. There’s a widespread views on Aadhaar within the Indian Mozilla community, but there’s shared value in data protection, and so they’re using their privacy month activities to talk about Aadhaar. It’s a nice partnership and I’d love to do that more places.

We don’t like the system either, but since it has a 99 percent adoption rate among a billion people, [laughs] it would be a little challenging to overturn it.

I am interested in what, as you said, a connecting with the community more and bridging that gap. We’re working in India on the Aadhaar biometric database, and we’re calling for a data protection bill that would secure user data within the system.

Yeah. It would be wonderful to have a Taiwanese fellow. I don’t know that we’ve had a Taiwanese fellow in the past.

Mm-mm. No.

We are definitely struggling with our ambition to be more global, and trying to scale that in a way that works for both us and for the people we’re supporting, so they don’t feel like they’re on their own.

Then we started a cohort of tech policy fellows that are a bit more worldwide, so we have some fellows, one from Brazil, a fellow in East Africa, but there’s still actually those that are pretty North American, too.

That’s actually designed more to create kind of a cohort of civic, tech, and public interest tech professionals, on both sides for non-profits to see the value and importance of that work and put it in their budgets, and also for the technologists to understand how they can have an ...

This year, we have a couple science fellows, a couple of media fellows, who are funded by the Open Society Foundation. Then we have a Ford open Web fellowship program cohort. They’re connected with host organizations.

Now we have a bit of a mish-mash of fellows in a way that is lovely but we’re trying to figure out how to wrangle that, too, which is we’ve got some that are dedicated by issue or by professional dedication, like science.

I had not thought about it from that angle, but you’re connecting some thoughts I’ve had, separately, in a really helpful way.

I think, especially, in places around the world, where we don’t have a staff base, it would be a way for us to learn more and share the stories of what are happening in some key places around the world in a deeper way than we would otherwise.

I also hear there are lots of journalists who are seeking refuge and escape from their profession because of all the stress. [laughs] We could help the community more broadly in that way.

We have a challenge in telling the story in a way that’s compelling and that people relate to. That’s one of my goals for this year is to establish some sort of media fellowship for that purpose.

I hadn’t been thinking of it through the investigative angle. That’s interesting. I was thinking more people who are gifted and who know about these issues and who are gifted, and breaking it down for the general public.

At the same time, also, help connect the staff with the cutting-edge ideas and issues that we need to know about and be connected to, to do our jobs well. I’ve been thinking what we need is a media fellow, actually journalists, who are eager to work in the public ...

People working on consolidation, Web literacy, and net neutrality around the world, all different kinds of things, and giving them a place to hang their hat, get support, and really dig into the ideas, in a deeper way than they would if they had to scramble for a job.

The fellowships really serve two purposes. We’re sort of really trying to mine the full value for both the people and for us, that is to give people working on cutting-edge ideas within this Internet health movement, as we’re calling it.

Your idea is really helpful. It connects to something that I’ve been thinking about, which is we have these fellowships. We have 30 fellows in Mozilla right now.

It was a really big part of the change in that moment, because it was like listening to themselves. It was separate from the polished PR machine, and it was their true selves and their true intentions were revealed. It actually formed the basis of the litigation. It was a ...

There is a similar trove of information that really pinched the dynamics in this tobacco debate, too, because they found the memos that really basically outlined their evil plan. [laughs]

That’s really interesting. Do you mean stories about the issue and how they would use it, or...? I want to learn more, because I think you’re on to something, and I don’t think we’re doing that. [laughs]

Yes.

If we can get them anxious in talking to the manufacturers, then we think we’ll have a more open conversation. Yes, designed to be a big effort, not just led by us, would be our goal.

The first thing we’re doing is focusing on retailers and getting retailers nervous about...because the manufacturer has kind of blown people off a bit, so we’re trying to focus on their weakness, which is they’re dependent a lot on the retailers, on the distributors.

We’re trying to look at different moments in time when there’s either a lack of transparency, or transparency where there’s lack of choice or no choice, or there’s a lack of options. Then sort of consciously disrupt that space.

What Consumer Reports is doing and what EFF is doing is helping disrupt various spaces of it. Even disrupting the privacy policy space.

Our goal is for other people to improve, hack, change the basic concept, all towards the common goal of amplifying this conversation about what’s happening with your data and what are the components of it.

In the public interest campaigning, actually, people hold their action rates and their list size very tightly. [laughs] It’s a different thing.

Actually, one of our ideas is to work to open campaigns so that we would share our public opinion polls, our focus group data, if we do that, some Keystone Resources, and then tell people what we’re doing and what we’re finding.

We’re trying to take a little bit more holistic look. Yes, we’re working in coordination.

We have told them, in general, what we’re planning to do. Our goal is to not replicate. That’s why we want to use the Consumer Reports Digital Standard, not to take any wind out of their sails for doing that, because we think that rating products is exactly the kind ...

That’s where we’re headed.

Separate we were struggling with the privacy and security frame a little bit. This is all about harvesting personal data without knowledge, or consent, and/or choices within that scheme. That felt like it freed us a little bit to get more to the heart of the economic model, which is ...

At the core we’ve decided mostly to focus on data collection. The transparency related to data protection, choices within that.

We think that if we can start to amplify this conversation, we can change education among lawmakers and start to get some legislation and policies bubbling up, too. We think this is the way to get to that.

Trying to amplify that conversation. Basically, try to foment a bit of a consumer revolution in this space, [laughs] just a tiny revolution, to popularize that conversation. That’s where we’re headed.

That started the conversation there, and now we’re planning to look at some specific cohorts of products to register consumer concern about them, probably, particularly about connected toys for kids. There are some toys that have been banned in Germany and Canada but are still available in the US, Australia, ...

We stared to shift that conversation. We did a buyer’s guide on connected devices for the holiday season here, and used the "Consumer Reports" Digital Standard to look at those products the same way across different...It’s called "Privacy Not Included."

Rather than making privacy and security settings difficult to find and master, or not have them at all, is put the responsibility back on the manufacturers to start changing their habits. We feel like there’s a dysfunctional conversation, where manufacturers say they don’t care about it, and so they don’t ...