news about two high profile tech companies are converging into one larger conversation this week about data privacy and the future of surveillance and AI in Denver.

And really, throughout Colorado.

And when we look at Colorado through the lens of our congressional districts, could all of us voters be asked to upend those boundaries when we go to the polls in November?

Now, before we get to all of that, a shout out to the Vail Valley's Mikaela Shiffrin for capturing a gold at this year's Winter games.

Giving us a moment of Colorado pride and a clear example of perseverance really paying off.

Our team is so ready to go.

So let's get started with this week's Colorado Inside Out.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Kyle Dwyer.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start with Patty Calhoun, founder and editor of Westward.

David Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute.

And Penfield Tate, Denver attorney and former state rep and state senator at the Colorado Legislature.

And Eric Schneiderman, columnist with Color of Politics and the Colorado Springs and Denver Gazette.

This week, Palantir Technologies, the state's largest public company, moved its headquarters out of Denver and to Miami.

Neither the mayor nor the governor had any heads up from Planet Terror, which has received a lot of criticism for its data support with U.S.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Also in Denver, the city appears to be nearing the end of its contract with Flock Safety, whose camera network has also brought a lot of attention to it for the surveillance technology it use.

And where does that those videos and those images go?

So we have these two big companies are in tech, Patty, and together the stories about them not being here kind of brings up a larger issue of, you know, who controls the data that's collected out there of all of us, who gets to access it, and then who should govern all of this?

We have to assume we are being watched all the time, and we are being filmed all the time, not just at this TV station.

The Palantir story is fascinating because didn't move here until 2020.

Kind of just dropped in.

Was downtown first, I love the excuses.

People are coming up with now for why they moved.

Like if you look at their filing, Palantir is filing.

You know, one of the things was the climate here was so unknown it caused problems like Miami doesn't have climate issues with hurricanes.

You have with the protesters who think they made the difference, which we highly doubt.

I think the AI issue coming up before the legislature definitely affects Palantir having been based here.

But there's also a little person named Donald Trump who might have had something to do with this group that gets so much from the federal government, including a $30 million contract to do new investigation and deportation for people violating Ice rules.

You wonder if maybe there wasn't a little bit of a revenge on Colorado there, and then being urged to leave?

Well, the revenge on Colorado is going to hit everybody because the this Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, the Common Sense Institute, did a study, and they estimate that by 2030, we could lose 30,000 jobs in the tech sector and 40,000 other jobs in other fields like law and health that are they're heavily, tech dependent and a total loss of over $6 billion in personal income by this very badly written anti intelligence Act.

You know, Governor Polis, who's a sophisticated businessman, he wrote to the legislature and he said laws that seek to prevent discrimination generally focus on prohibiting intentional discriminatory conduct.

Notably, this bill deviates from that practice by regulating the results of AI system use regardless of intent.

And he also told the legislature that a patchwork of state laws on AI is a terrible idea.

And this thing, because it's a national issue with all kinds of interstate commerce involved, ought to be regulated by Congress with a uniform national law.

And yet, after saying all those wise things, he signed it anyway, which is the tragedy of his administration.

He's so easily and so often bullied by the far left.

So Palantir and flock I mean flock.

I like the idea of license plate readers.

I see people run red lights and stop signs all the time.

I'd like to have a way to stop that for all of our safety.

But the problem is, these knuckleheads are selling the data or giving it to Homeland Security or Border Patrol or somebody else.

No one consented to that.

And that's the issue.

Everybody's scared to death that the data may be collected for a legitimate reason, as David was pointing out.

But how it gets used and misuse is what scares people.

Have to death.

So my guess is a lot of people are like Palantir, you know, God love you.

Goodbye.

Flock, you'll probably lose your contract here because I know I think it's Loveland and Fort Collins are also looking at canceling their contracts.

So it's not just the liberal cities, it's even the more moderate to conservative cities.

They're saying, hold on a minute.

There's a legitimate purpose for the technology.

But if you go overboard with how you misuse or abuse our data, we're gone.

We're all going to have an issue with that.

Haven't they said, though in Denver, if it's not flock, it might be someone else.

And they're already getting bids.

They're getting.

Many.

They're not getting many.

And they'll also probably strictly control how the data is used.

The problem is flock did this without telling anybody they were doing it because they were making so much money giving the data to the administration, either, you know, Border Patrol or Homeland Security, that's the problem.

Okay.

as everyone has pointed out, we're all being watched.

I was in an auto accident a month ago, something like that.

And what stunned me, other than the accident stunning me, was within ten minutes the police on the scene had visual.

A video of the accident from a camera a quarter mile away to see exactly what had gone down.

With regard to Palantir, yes, Colorado will survive without Palantir.

A company whose whole culture is surreptitious, shall we say, decided to exit the state in a very surreptitious way and sort of the dead of night with no reason given.

They don't owe anyone an explanation.

Maybe Palantir just decided the political climate in Florida was more to their taste.

And a Florida does something stupid or doesn't welcome them in the right way.

They'll be gone in the middle of the night again in favor of some other state.

Will Colorado become the first state in the country to completely decriminalize prostitution?

Democrats in the legislature have proposed Senate Bill 97, which would remove criminal penalties for prostitution and decriminalize sexual activity among consenting adults.

Now, supporters say the current laws put those involved at greater risk and discourage workers from seeking help or protection.

Now, David, is this a shift in criminal justice policy that needs to happen, or is it something that is being discussed at the state Capitol when most voters are thinking about other issues that they want solved?

I think it's a good idea.

But as as with the eye law, there is a gigantic competence gap in the legislature of bills being written by people who can't think 2 or 3 steps ahead.

So this bill would legalize prostitution in Colorado, which was legal or de facto legal.

In most of the state throughout the 19th century.

But it's atrociously written.

It bans any form of local regulation.

So literally a town would be forbidden to enact a law to say prostitutes can't solicit on the sidewalk outside of the high school graduation ceremony.

You know, congratulations, you turned 18, you know, first one half price.

And then the bill envisions that prostitution is going to be provided in part by massage parlors or escort bureaus.

But the bill accidentally makes both of those illegal because it keeps the definition of pimping, which is making a living off off of someone else's sex work.

So it would be illegal to then own a massage parlor.

They would have been better off instead of going off half cocked to have done a more thoughtful study of how regulated legalized prostitution exists in Nevada and in some nations in Europe.

Okay, the bill is confusing because, just as David described when I read it, I thought it allowed for local jurisdictions to opt in.

So if you did not want the state law to apply, you could just opt out and say, now we're not doing that.

We've got our own system of regulation.

And in our city that could be so stringent as to essentially make a de facto illegal again.

The other thing that struck me with this bill, and this may just be a sign of the times I was thinking back to the Vietnam War era, where many of us were protesting and upset that 18 year olds ought to have the right to vote, especially if you could get drafted and go to war.

And this defines adult as 18 and older.

And I'm thinking, oh, do you really want 18 year olds to be able to go to a house of prostitution?

Well, I think this is fabulous news because if the legislature is considering this, that means our roads are fixed.

Our schools are again performing at a high level.

Our budget is balanced and has great shape with, adequate surpluses.

Obviously taking my tongue out of my cheek here because we know none of those are the case.

This seems extraneous.

It doesn't seem at the core of Colorado's problems.

I think the the subtext of all of this is that there's no viable opposition party in the legislature or in the state at large.

If the conservatives had a viable political party, the Republican Party, the legislature wouldn't be on these kinds of tangents and trying to take it as far as it is, whether it's on this subject or a bunch of other subjects, because there's no pushback, but because Democrats, and particularly the left side of the Democratic Party, thinks they can act with total political impunity, there's no penalty for going and taking it as far as you want to go.

Patty well, if it were truly legalized, you could tax it, which means you could use the money to fix the roads and a face.

Other problems.

But the bill as written is so confusing you actually can't tell if the businesses would be taxable, if they would be legal, or just decriminalized.

I think the intentions of some of the people pushing it were really good.

You're talking about you can cut down on sex trafficking.

Look at the scandal that just took down the former Prince of England, Prince Andrew.

Sex trafficking happens.

I mean, what is happening around the world, what's happening in this country is horrifying.

Some regulation maybe could help, but maybe what could help people who are under 18 come forward because of things that have happened.

Sex workers are behind it because they think there would be more protection involved.

We started looking at it.

We thought, is it like marijuana that there will actually you'll be able to opt in?

Well, as it turns out, you really can't.

So the bill as written is bad, but it's an issue worth looking at.

So we'll see what happens with that okay.

Thank you.

A Denver District Court judge recently ruled that the Department of Corrections in Colorado required inmates to work prison jobs and threatened penalties like solitary confinement for those who refuse.

Colorado voters amended amended the state constitution in 2018 to ban slavery and involuntary servitude and a 2022 lawsuit, which is behind all of this, argued that prison labor violated that amendment.

Does this raise broader questions about enforcing new laws?

Penn.

Last year, there were a bunch of counties that said, hey, there are these new laws and there's really no enforcement.

So is this an isolated thing or part of a bigger story?

Well, no, it's not an isolated thing.

For years, the legislature, both at the state level and the national level, have passed laws, didn't fund them and expected people to comply when there was no way to pay for what you needed to do to comply.

This is this is a really interesting situation.

Colorado has long had the Colorado Division of Correctional Industries, where inmates were theoretically paid to train guide dogs, support animals, build furniture.

They did weed and fire mitigation work and a host of other things.

But number one, it was supposed to be voluntary, that if you were an inmate, you had to sign up for it.

And number two, you're supposed to get paid for it.

Now, there were exceptions in statute that it wasn't minimum wage.

They weren't paying inmates $20 an hour to do this work, but they were supposed to get paid for it.

But what this case seems to to focus on is the fact that it wasn't really voluntary.

Inmates were being coerced to do these things, and if they didn't, they were getting punished.

This goes back to my fundamental problem with our Department of Corrections.

We don't correct anything.

It's a department of being pissed off and wanting to punish people because they broke the law.

And if that's what you really want to do, you ought to be honest about it.

And this is unfortunately just taking what might be a positive concept, letting someone develop some job skills and perverting it by making it mandatory.

I'm going to let Penn and David, as the lawyers at the table, talk about the legal piece of this and the judge's decision and all the rest.

My comment, I think Penn raised, you know, good points.

Is this voluntary or not?

And if it is not purely voluntary, you know, can that be a part of our penal system?

From where I sit, you know, there's an old line about idle hands.

And I think particularly in with people incarcerated.

Idle hands is not a good situation.

Idle hands lead to trouble.

Idle hands lead to a further downward spiral.

So keeping people busy, I think, is something to be valued.

And then you also have the rehabilitative piece of it so that people can come out of the joint with some kind of job skill.

So I'm not opposed to prison industries.

I'm not opposed to prisoners being put to work.

And I'll let others opine on whether the the legal piece of this adds up.

Right.

You look at some of the programs that work, the Colorado prisons, like The Wild Horses, which was an amazing program, just got dumped this year, truly.

Now, that's not a skill everyone needs or can use, but there have been some really useful programs the furniture programs, the dog training programs.

And to lose those or have them not be able to participate is the way, the way you could to learn a skill and be paid for it.

If that was perverted, that system, that's too bad.

You can also see how people are going to take advantage of prisoners.

If you're running a prison, you need someone to mop the floor.

You're going to make them do punitive acts without paying them.

So You need an overall look at what's going on.

We're hearing we're overcrowded.

We're hearing we're letting people out too early.

We need to see what's really going on there.

But let me also say, if you've never been to a prison gift shop, go because you see what people have learned to make in those prisons.

And it's really fascinating to see the skills they acquire.

And lastly, David, so.

Our Colorado Constitution copy in 1876 copied word for word the U.S.

Constitution, which bans slavery.

They call it involuntary servitude.

And they had an express exception, as you can have involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.

In 2018, the voters of Colorado chose to amend the Constitution and take out that criminal punishment exception.

So this is a very straightforward case.

The Department of Corrections says, oh, it's not involuntary servitude because people get vocational training and learn skills rehabilitation, prepare for successful reentry.

All those beneficial things are true.

But if you lock somebody up in solitary confinement for not participating, that is involuntary servitude.

Okay.

All right.

A proposed ballot measure at the state capitol is calling for a shake up of Colorado's congressional districts and ahead of schedule.

A Democratic aligned group wants to ask voters this November to approve, a plan where a new congressional boundary map for would be drawn for 2028 and the 2030 elections.

Years before the state's redistricting commission would redraw the boundaries after they look over the 2030 census.

Okay, so there are four different versions of this ballot measure that will be discussed in a few weeks at the state Capitol.

All of them seem to Eric to be with the plan of getting Democrats in better position to fill more seats in Washington, in Congress.

There is no doubt about who started this battle.

I mean, Donald Trump and his minions started it in Texas.

Then Democrats got in on the action in California, in Maryland and other places.

And now, the cancer has come to Colorado.

Colorado voters by over a 70% margin said, no, we don't want that route.

We want to have independent commission, nonpartisan, bipartisan commission do this.

I think it is going to be tough to get that number of voters to change their mind in favor of something like this, no matter who started it, no matter how ill the intent was on the part of those who started this fight.

But if we're ever going to get out of this cycle, this downward, toxic, tribal, divisive political cycle that we're in.

Somebody has to step forward and say, I'm not going there, and let's hope Colorado is the one that steps forward and says, no, we're not doing that.

Okay, Patty.

It's a classic case of two wrongs don't make a right.

Why should we go?

Well, might make a right in this case.

Why would we go this way?

When Kent Thiry, bless his heart, when he pushed those ballot initiatives so that we would have independent commissions decide how to redistrict, would look at it very carefully.

Coloradans really supported that because they want to be fair more than anything else.

I think on this, we're independent sometimes cranky.

But you try to be fair on that and we've got a hold to it.

There's a there was a happy hour last night where they were both fighting election deniers, but also pushing for this redistricting.

We just have to do what we've already approved, which is do it the fair, rational way.

Yeah.

It was a 2018 constitutional amendment by the people again, people in the insiders trying to blow it off.

It requires that communities be kept together in drawing congressional districts and the to the extent possible you try to draw competitive districts.

And it says in our Constitution, the practice of political gerrymandering must end now on the other side, you got this ridiculous front group level playing field and Attorney General Phil Weiser leading to terminate this part of the Constitution.

We have a system now where the people elect their representatives.

What he wants is instead, the representatives get to choose the people into gerrymander districts.

That would not be competitive.

So it makes elections irrelevant.

Why have an election if everybody's been gerrymandered?

So they're all the incumbents are perpetually safe.

Forever.

And they claim this power grab is because of Trump.

But their proposal keeps the gerrymander even after Trump's term ends.

And once the gerrymander is in place, you know, the cabal is always going to find new pretexts to prevent competitive elections.

And, well.

That's wording that this proposal only applies to the 2028 and 2030 elections.

Biden's proposal.

Okay, regardless, it's a bad idea.

You know, this is Donald Trump's fault.

He started this war on fair and open elections by claiming he's never lost an election in his life.

And then when that lie didn't sit, then he started telling Texas redistrict so we can keep a majority so I can keep breaking the law.

And then he seemed stunned that everybody else was stepping up in other states, saying, well, we can do this too.

And Patty's right.

2 or 3 wrongs don't make a right.

Somebody does need to stand up and say, you know what, we're not going any further with this nonsense.

We've got a system that works for Colorado, our state.

It's what voters approved.

We don't need to change it again.

In many ways, I feel that making this change simply moves in the direction Donald Trump wants to move people, which is, however I feel is the flavor of de jure.

And if I change my mind tomorrow, I'm going to do something else.

So you better hurry up and ratchet things up to try to counter me, because I've changed my mind again.

We've got to stop being whipsawed and played like that.

Do you guys think that somebody will stand up and say, not now.

There are four different versions of this ballot measure that will be discussed in a couple of weeks, the first week of March in the legislature.

Do you think any.

Three of them are statutory, which would only require a 50% plus one approval?

Okay.

One is constitutional, which would require 55% at the end.

The sponsor to this will pick one of those four to take the petitioning.

I suspect it won't be the constitutional one.

It will be one of these other statutory ones.

But you know, right now the delegation split for four, for Democrats, for Republicans, the goal and the way the map is drawn is to try to take that, not five three or something modest like that.

71271 let Lauren Boebert have her eastern plane seat by an overwhelming margin and take away everything else.

That is the goal.

And yes, I think they are serious enough with enough political muscle behind it that they will put it on the ballot.

I think that's when the the road gets much tougher for them is when they have to actually get voter approval.

Okay.

Let's go around the table now and talk about some of the highs and lows of this week that we've witnessed.

We'll start on the low point.

So again on a good note.

And we're going to start with Patty.

It's been a horrifying week for low points.

But I'm going to bring up RTD, which had raised the price on excessive rides for people who are handicapped, disabled, have issues, raised it very high and then is kind of a little sop to the group named the one name the Civic Center station, Market Street station after Wade blank, this legendary fighter for accessibility and without talking to his family.

And then we hear Chris Haynes also complaining that the city didn't talk to him about how to make the city council chambers more accessible.

If we're going to really work with people, let's talk to them first.

At the Olympics, Sweden set up a hidden camera in court.

The Canadian men's curling team illegally double touching the stone with a finger.

And then the next day, the Canadian women's team got caught on camera cheating in exactly the same way.

So I would say the Canadian curling teams are both dishonest and stupid.

Was it a flock camera?

And probably I'm really concerned, and it's a theme we've hit that have touched a couple of issues how the federal administration is just going to war at every level.

When I see the attack on late night talk show programs, it's like, this is insane.

You know, now you have broadcast licenses being threatened because one person doesn't like what somebody's saying at any given time.

Free speech is fundamental in this country.

And when fundamental rights get challenged and trampled like this, we all need to be concerned.

I'm going to follow on Penn Field here.

We had this conversation about redistricting because of one individual, our dear leader in the white House, and he just continues to disrespect norm after norm, civic norm and constitutional norms.

This past week, he went to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, did a speech in front of the assembled troops.

Parts of his speech were just fine.

But then he brings up the Republican candidate for the US Senate in North Carolina and tells them all, all those people there, that they need to vote for this guy.

Otherwise, you know, the worst kinds of things are going to happen.

Our military has traditionally been off limits for that kind of raw politicking.

It goes on and on.

This idea of nationalizing our elections, having some functionaries summon all the secretaries of state on to some kind of phone call.

It's a we're in a bad place.

Let's lighten things up, shall we, please?

Paddy, Denver is going to be a very good place this weekend for celebrating our diverse communities here in Five Points.

We've got second round of jazz roots.

If you love jazz, go to Welton Street.

Far East Center is celebrating Lunar New Year and check.

The Chicano Humanities Arts Council is having a great event Saturday night, so get out and see what's going on in this town.

All right.

Sounds fun.

The best collegiate athletic team in Colorado this winter is the women's basketball team from Colorado Mesa.

You have the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks.

They have a record of 27 wins, only one loss.

They've clinched their conference regular season title, and they currently ranked number four in the polls.

Thanks for bringing that up.

Way to go.

All right.

City of Boulder, was the beneficiary of a Toni Morrison bench by the road.

Recognition.

This international group honoring Doctor Charles Nylon and his wife, Mrs.

Mildred Nylon.

Doctor nylon was the first black tenured professor at CU going back to the 50s.

And his wife was the first black librarian at Norlin Library.

So congratulations to them and to Boulder.

And also, I just can't let it pass.

The loss of, Reverend Jesse Jackson is a huge loss, for this country.

People think and he was a civil rights leader, but he made clear that his coalition, which was why I was the Rainbow Coalition, was the Disenfranchized people who had been left behind, who had been marginalized, the disabled and others.

And his voice will be greatly missed in this country.

Okay.

Yeah.

Real quick.

My wife has a big birthday.

Will say this weekend.

So happy birthday, Tracy.

Living much of our time these days in grand County.

Grand County has a number of athletes, in the Winter Olympic Games right now.

One in particular, a young woman, Seve Irvine, who's a freestyle skier who is one of the four who spoke out about how it's the challenge of representing America when some of your values are not being represented right now.

And good for her for having the courage to speak out, no matter the pushback she received from the white House.

Lastly, it's good to have the old gang all back together.

You say this is like the first time in how many years you think the four of you been together?

It's been.

A while.

I think 4 or 5 years.

You've got to be kidding me.

I think.

That's right.

We're not going that long again.

It's been a great conversation.

Okay, well, my high of the week is the arrival of our fellow insider, Elena Alvarez.

Is baby.

Her little boy's name is Cyrus.

He arrived right on time on his due date, happy and healthy and Elena says she and her husband are head over heels over their little guy.

And the same goes for their, dog Rocco, who in this picture you can see just adores Cyrus.

Her Chihuahua is slowly warming up to Cyrus.

But our love to you all again.

We're so happy for the entire family.

And Elena, you look amazing for going on little to no sleep.

Thank you, insiders, thanks for the gang coming back together.

Thank you for watching or listening to our podcast.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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