They can identify you in everything from unlocking your phone to targeting advertising. The business behind facial identifications. Google adds to its robot line up, buying boston dynamics, a firm that designs Research Robots like cheetah and big dog for the pentagon. It is part of a project being led by a former android head in the rubin. There are new questions about whether the nsas against Technology Collection of genetic records is legal. Probably violated the fourth which protects americans from unreasonable search and seizure. They can move forward. All this comes as president obama prepares to host a number of executives at the white house tomorrow. They will surely be talking about it. For more lets bring in Julianna Goldman in washington. What an important time for these guys to be in the white house. That is right. The federal judge caught the program almost orwellian saying that it violates the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches. The district judge was a bush appointee. He ordered the government to stop collecting data on the two plaintiffs and destroy the records. Theyre likely to show the privacy interest outweighed the government interest when it comes to collecting this data. But he put the injunction on hold. He said there are Significant National security interests at stake, so he is giving the government time to appeal which he said could take around six months. The government does not have to stop the program until that d. C. Court of appeals ruling and depending on what it says. This is the First Successful ruling against the Government Program since the leaks by edward snowden. Up until this point, courts including the foreign intelligence savings court which request the metadata said the program is constitutional. What is the administrations reaction . Nothing typical yet. The white house is referring questions to the Justice Department. The Justice Department said they are reviewing the ruling. In the past, the administration has argued that the Fourth Amendment does not protect metadata. Not be content. It is also argued that metadata collection is a crucial pool against terrorism. They cannot get a case where they stop an imminent terrorist attack. This is the timing that is interesting. They will be meeting with a number of tech executives including marissa meyer, costello and sheryl sandberg. Im sure they will get an earful. Julianna goldman in washington, d. C. Thank you very much. I want to bring in a special roundtable. Michael riley covers security for bloomberg is this week and joins us from washington dc jeff barton from treadstone joins us via skype. They are selling the gear to the nsa to collect information. Could this slowdown anytime . This is going to be a long process. The nsa will fight this under the Justice Department. We have a long way to go. This is an incredibly valuable tool. The judge cannot come up with one example where this stopped an attack. This is an open court. There are certain classified materials they cannot present in this form. Im sure there will point that out. Tough arguement to make, saying, we cannot tell you. Trust us. It is interesting. Let me ask you about the business behind us. What can you tell us about how this is going and where it is growing . A new data center out in utah is in expansion a massive amount of storage. Every phone call of every citizen in the u. S. That is an amazing amount of data. Whether they are using it or not is not relevant. It is amazing how much they have to collect in the storage. Every phone call that comes out means another set of phone calls. Exponential growth. The Processing Power to understand all that in the storage. When you look at the courts, this court spoke with a very strong voice in the pulmonary preliminary ruling. They did. I actually agree with them. Every phone call you made, the location a came from, the length of time, the number you called. The frequency of it. It is just an amazing amount of data. Do they really need that . Do they need to target the people they are really after and get to the content. The collection of this lead to things down the road in the future that can be used against innocent citizens for things that could potentially be used as false patterns in the future. When you look at this story, the drip drop of the snowden leaks continues to keep this thing on the front page. Does this continue to have a Business Impact with the Companies Involved . Absolutely. He released a statement shortly after the ruling. This is a vindication of what i did. I believe this program when not found constitutional in an open court. He took it out of the secret court of the pfizer around and put it in the open light of day. The judge said exactly that. He said this is a program that if you look at it theres no way it passes muster under the Fourth Amendment. It is a really interesting turn. Itll be a question of whether or not he should be viewed as a traitor or an activist was doing something out of a sense of duty. It does. The judge is likely to side with the constitution. Courts are supposed to be open. It may be an interesting thought as well. Michael oreilly and jeff barton. Thank you very much. Still to come, should companies be able to use facial Recognition Technology to target you with advertisements . Who it is, how it works, and all about facial recognition next. Major companies are looking into facial Recognition Technology. It can be used for everything from targeted ads to security. Theyll also be working in regulation, taking part in meetings early next year. This means they can do what ever they want. It is interesting that this is happening at once. Theyre working with similar technologies. With no standards in place. What the commerce wants to do is get ahead of that. It behooves the Tech Companies to have their own say in this matter. They want there to be actual laws in place that will protect our civil liberties. One step at a time. Facebook, to apple, to Lockheed Martin, i think is interesting. I can see Lockheed Martin as this. He has a different purpose for is. Every year this seems to be more realistic. You can have a scenario where a local business will say cory johnson just walked by. He wants a maserati. This is more my style. As youre walking by the business. There is a security component. Apple is using thumbprint recognition. Why not take it a step further . Were not letting this person onto the ipad. Lets talk about how this works. The Technology Behind it is very much like a fingerprint. The computer reads the face, the figures were the eyes and lips are an run out rhythms to look for a pattern to do that and then they extract the things that are different about each face. What is interesting about it is that the Processing Power exists all over the place. You cannot do this on a phone five years ago. Now you could. The chips are becoming much more powerful. Theyre able to process much more. It is no surprise that these computers will become that much powerful. What are the security and privacy implications . Do you want people to know that much about you as youre walking by . Great to see you. Thank you very much. Google is grabbing another company for its robotic arsenal. It is acquiring boston dynamics for a company known for the animal themed machines i can run and walk like the real thing. If youre listening to the sound, that is a robotic dog running like a cheetah. This is the eighth Robotics Company google has bought in the last six months. All part of a new special project. On todays Early Edition of bloomberg west we spoke with john leonard. He started by asking him exactly just what these robotics can do. They specialize in locomotion, how a robot moves through the world. This captures their imagination. It is on the cutting age of what you can do in a challenging environment. We are looking at how they move. What are the Practical Implications for you . I do know they have done a number of contracts for the military. Theyre building a robot called atlas that is you something in the darker robotics challenge which is happening in florida. My colleagues are leading the m. I. T. Team. There are about 15 teams competing for a price to build a robot that can use tools and climb up ladders and chided vehicles and maybe respond in a disaster scenario. These are robots that can interact with the world in a capable way. It would be relevant to the military but there are a range of civilian applications. Anything that means going out to the field into mines in Disaster Response situations. Interesting. John, yet spoke with the head of mergers and acquisitions. They could be working toward a production line. Maybe it will all be part of some longterm global google manufacturing supply chain here at what is looking most likely . They could track down some of the amazon drones. I think what is really important here, there are a couple of things to highlight. Google does make a lot of acquisitions at least once a month. We shouldnt not tie about what google has been traditionally. In many years, many deals were building a moat around the advertising business. The deals they do now are powering the internet. All of these are google looking for it next leg of growth. This is more like a new version of ge, looking for the new legs of growth as opposing an exact way to tie this back to what google has been in the past. We do not know just yet. They have done a lot of robotics deals. This is a company that is ambitious and always has been figuring out where its future will take it. You mentioned the founder must be very passionate about his company. He gave up his tenure at m. I. T. To work on this. What do you imagine compelled them to sell to google . I cannot imagine. I know that m. I. T. Faculty want to make impacts on the world. My guess is that investment would help them create a better impact. The one way i view this as a longterm investment in the hard court technologies of robotics and if i use the analogy of a cell chiding being hit will, is something i follow very closely. They went and hired the very best people in the world. Several of the recent acquisitions of getting some of the top superstar talent in the world affiliated with seven these challenges. I dont know where it may lead. In the longterm it as an investment in core technologies. Bloomberg west will be right back. We have some breaking news. Charter communications looks like theyre putting a hit together to go after Time Warner Cable. Now they have financing for 20 billion. They are lining up to help lend charter as ministry by doing to get this done. Theyve offered 135. The offer itself is less. It looks like charters going to go off with a proxy battle. The battle for Time Warner Cable is on. Goldman sachs and Credit Suisse are on the charter side of that fight. We will be monitoring that story. It is also the season for holiday shopping. Online retailers are hard at work are also seeing returns and handling customer complaints. Stella services measures how well all of these companies are doing. They then sell the information. Now. Eo joins us talk to me about the quality of the holiday season. It has been interesting. Quality of service and speed. Then you start to see some new innovating things and am a people to try to compete with amazon. I want to talk about zappos. It is not about me. It is about me at the zappos. They were gearing up to have everybody on the phone. They famously let customers call and talk for as long as they want and spend as much time as they want. That is why they are in vegas. They can afford to do that. Theyve always had a different take on the world than most retailers. They want you to call. They want you to call and most would view that as a marketing expense. It drives people to come back. Who is flubbing right now . The walmart site went down. Health care got more attention. Walmart probably had more problems. The traditional big box retailers have had difficulty trying to keep up with the web only players. This is going to hurt them eventually. Who is getting it right in the retail space . Sears is one of the companies that have started to take their stores and turn them into distribution centers. Seeing what amazon has been doing, stores like macys and sears are starting to use those the stores as fulfillment center. Amazon is great as always. They are so spread out baking get you thecan item almost faster than anyone else. In terms of general strength, are we seeing that . The retail numbers, it has been good or bad. It has been a pretty good season. Thank you very much. Bloomberg west coming up. We focus on innovation, technology, and the future of business. Lets get straight to the top headlines. Twitter is tweaking to make ads look more prominent on mobile devices. They normally run on the side of the twitter timeline. Now they will be in the stream of updates. Violent memory has fired the ceo. They lost 70 share and have lost the ceo. Even larger than the revenues, sucking off the Balance Sheet as well. The second film in the hobbit series, the desolation of smaug. It is raking in over 73 million. Speaking of the box office, miramax is hoping to find some hollywood gold by reuniting with the studios original founders. They have a recent agreement that will bring the weinstein brothers back to miramax. Jon erlichman is in l. A. With the new hollywood. This is a wonderful christmas he y story. They should make a movie about it. You know what . It is a gray business story. We know how passionate the weinstein brothers had been about this miramax of randa business started in 1979. They had a great run of independent films in the 80s. It ends up as part of the business. They did not leave on the friendliest of terms and has started the Weinstein Company and disney sold the miramax business to a group of investors. All along, everyone has wondered all along, everyone has wondered will they come together in some way shape or form. Here they are again. In a couple of decades we could see them thinking about some creative ways to tap into this library that is miramax for film and television. Specifically, what kind of projects could we see for miramax . A range of stuff. They are all ready talking about the idea of maybe a project tied to Goodwill Hunting or others. Harvey weinstein even suggesting maybe there could be another film could be tied to shakespeare in love. The bigger business story is for a film library to maintain its value or to grow in value, a it needs to stay active. The new owners of miramax had done a great job of making their money back by selling the digital rights, cutting deals with new platforms like netflix. That is great. If youre not able to go out and make sequels or movies tied to that library, people start to forget a little bit. That can hurt on the value of what they had. That is the big reason behind this deal. They want to prove they can take some of the early miramax brands and get them out there in a big way it is good to see. All the love in the room. It is so much, even for hollywood. We will do a buddy film soon. I am bad cop. You can be the good cop. Celebrities joined forces last week was 70 biggest names in technology to encourage childrens to dedicate one hour to learning or teaching Computer Sciences. It is called an hour of code initiative. President obama urging kids to take part in a youtube video. It is not just important for your future. It is important for our countrys future. They want america to stay on the cutting edge we need Young Americans like you to master the tools and technology that will change just about the way we do everything. They got 15 Million Students to participate in hourlong coding session. One of five u. S. Students participated. To start by asking them how the event helped to expose more girls to Computer Science. More girls experienced Computer Science last week than in the history. How are you encouraging girls . How do you get teachers to do that Going Forward . One of the great thing we do with the hour of code is we do not recruit the students. We recruited the teachers. Teachers have an even number of boys and girls. We did not go after the girls. The teachers brought in an equal ratio. That is what you have here at the sole experience has given us renewed optimism in the potential of the american teacher. The other people you have recorded personally, getting people to join you. Mark zuckerberg, bill gates, jack dorsey. Have they given it back . It is hard to tell you apart. We are twins. Everybody we have asked has had such open armed embrace in this. It is good for america. It is good for the economy. Very few people have thought this is not a good idea. How do you get their continued support . Do you need that . We have a longterm plan. It started about a year ago. We wanted to start something to change the face of Computer Science. This is not an easy task your schools do not know how to teach it. There are not enough teachers to teach it. Kids dont want to take it. State education standards dont recognize it. We have a longterm plan were recently have to change the rules, healthy schools, and make it cool. The hardest part is how to make it cool. Really . How have they received it . Is it like a class they do not want to take or are they excited . We have had over the top, and i teacher saying they have been getting calls all week and from parents he said the girls have been doing this all weekend long. How do you turn one hour into many hours of