Tim Wu

Certain things work better.

But the basics of sort of anti-surveillance law, I mean, even national security was really into this stuff.

They're like, it's too easy to spy on everybody.

And, you know, that's a problem for us as a national security organization.

issue and we just could not get a vote on even the most basic anti-surveillance which would suggest like if you download a dog walking app it shouldn't be just like tracking you and uploading every kind of information about you that that should be illegal i have been very uh

I've been disturbed.

We've not been able to do more on surveillance and privacy.

And I've also been struck by how badly what has been done elsewhere seems to have worked out.

I find, I call this terms and conditions capitalism, where you just move the burden onto the consumer.

So Europe has put out some very sweeping rules.

that have given me the opportunity to individually decide which of the 303 cookies on every website I visit might be good and might be bad.

Similarly, nobody's ever, in my view, to a first approximation, read an iOS terms and conditions update.

And I have found that very often it seems to me where policymakers end up after the debate is saying, well, as long as there is disclosure, then the consumer can decide.

But the consumer, in a very rational way, does not want to decide.

So it has ended up, I think, in a very dispiriting place.

Instead of creating a structure in which I'm confident what companies are doing is well-bounded, it has demanded of me a level of cognitive work I'm not willing to do and I think nobody else is willing to do to oversee those companies myself with not really great options if I don't like what they're doing.

And so I'm curious how you think about that.

No, I couldn't agree more.

I feel like if the byproduct of government action is that you are clicking on more little windows, that is government failure.

And I would trace it to...