>> welcome to aljazeera, i'm del walters, and we're waiting at this hour for the president to speak this morning. worldwide concerns about how the national security administration does business. it's following months of reports that the nsa spies on its allies and collects data worldwide including on americans. national security protecting this country from another terrorist attack. mike is at the white house, and have you been given any insight as to what the president will say? >> there have been rules on the briefing, and we can't talk about the details, it's

embargoed in the parl wants of washington, but the thing that you need to look at, the metadata collection, the most controversial one from edward snowden, that came through the course of last year. what will he do about it? we know that his own administration came back with they hold the data itself. but not going forward. we know it's not enough for many advocates, many civil libertarians in this country, and where will the president go on that? where will he go with the so-called national security letters issued by the fbi to the communications companies requesting information without any sort of judicial review? will there be constraints on that as well? and back to the metadata collection, will there be review for when they two to the secret

court, the court that hears law enforcement in the intelligence community. their request for intelligence warrants the tools that they need to fight terrorism and law enforcement. the advocate on that, the privacy advocate that speaks up for the public's right to privacy. and overall, the president expected to emphasize the need for further transparency, and the overriding theme, as the technology advances by leaps and bounds, del, and allows the intelligence community in the united states to do things that are unprecedented and surprising to a lot of people, do the protocols and the practices keep up with the privacy that many people expect and believe is their right, not only in the united states, but it's one of the many questions here, not only in the united states, but

overseas as well. and how much of this is going to go to the congress for approval? and the president will address it in the next minutes at the department of justice >> reporter: >> i don't know if you can see him, but front and from, senator patrick leahy, one of those critical of surveillance on american citizens, and he has to wonder what the president is going to say. >> a lot of folks have gun briefed and there's a parade of stakeholders in the television community. googles and technology titans who are here in the west wing talking to the president and members talking particularly on the intelligence committees in the last weeks. keep in mind that the president did receive those recommendations last month, del, but it has taken him this long to review those recommendations and decide on what he's going to ask the congress to do, and what

he's going to ask the attorney general and the national intelligence to do. when it comes to congress, the people on the opposite side of the spectrum, you look at it as a continuum, and you make it a circle, and the two ends, the far left and the far right come together in some respects, and join in the cause of civil liberty and oppose what many regard as the invasion of privacy, the fundamental right to privacy of americans. and it's complicated as far as capitol hill is concerned, and a lot of cross currents, i this i it's safe to say that the majority in congress want to impose further restrictions for the right to privacy. >> mike mckara at the white house, and we want to tell you what the public says on this particular issue, and they seem to be divided on the nsa.

68% of americans believe that keeping phone records and watching traffic is a privacy violation, and 53% say they disapprove of the way that the president has handled the nsa activity. but that doesn't mean to say that theypproveve of edward snowden, the man who launched all of this as a hero. 50% say that edward snowden and the surveillance, the director of the electronic surveillance, she's in washington d.c. this morning, and thank you for being with us. >> thank you for having me, del. >> for many, the revelations are new, but your organization has been sounding the bells for years. with that said, do you expect the president to say anything today that would change the way that the nsa does business? >> we are hoping that the president will agree with our group and our recommendation to

end the program. it's an untargetted and indiscriminate way to gather information about victims throughout the country and really throughout the world. so we recommended that the president end this program, and we are push something hope that he agrees with them and says that they should no longer be collecting this information. >> amy, for quite some time, what the nsa does in maryland is way beyond the pale and i may have to interrupt you if the president begins to speak, but you've maintained that what the nsa has done is beyond the pale. and do you think that edward snowden is hero or goat? >> i think that the conversation about edward snowden confuses the issue. what we do know, we have had a total lack of transparency into the government's programs, and for the first time, starting in june of last year, we were able to see exactly what was

happening behind the iron curtain of the nsa, and we have been able to see some of the abuses and a lot of the overcollection, and just mass surveillance taking place. >> that being said, after september 11th, you were one of those who said that it can't happen again, but keep this country safe. >> you know, the problem is that these programs haven't been proved to prevent another attack. specifically, in regard to the telephone metadata collection program that everybody has heard so much about, that progra progs not proven to have prevented one attack. they initially said there were many attacks that it prevented and they narrowed it down to a few, and with the last one,

senator leahy blew that last example out of the water during a congressional hearing. so we're having massive abuses and massive of violations of individual rights to privacy, but we're not getting anything in return. >> i want to get a question into you, and also into mike mckara before the president speaks, and are you concerned about what the private sector is doing with the collection of data? >> we know that the government is requesting this information from the private sector, so you have to look at what they're collect and can know that the nsa, the government can only collect the data for business purposes, so there's a question of what they're collecting and why they're collecting, and what it means for what the government can do with that information, but they are not able to talk about what the government requests in the name of national security and they have a gag order. so we have very little information about how many times the government goes to these

companies and under what authority and requests information on foreign tense. >> with the people that you talk to on the daily basis for the white house, are you concerned about what is good for the goose and the gander, in this case, being the private sector. >> you heard that loud and clear with the private sectish. obviously they're represented full-time here in washington, but we saw the heads of google, tim cook at apple and netflix on down. meet with the president and the top aids, and here's the issue. when the government is obtaining information from them through national security letters or through the metadata program, the controversial program, it undermines the confidence that their customers have in them, so the bottom line question, the bottom line being they are using

the services, the technology provided by their company, their bread and butter, how much of them is open to surveillance from the government. and how much concern do they have, the customers, and virtually everyone using this technology at this point, that the data that the communications, the conversations that they are having, day-to-day as they may be, is subject to government scrutiny. so that is really the fundamental concern here, and something that the white house has heard loud and clear, and you can expect the president to address some of those concerns, whether he goes far enough to satisfy the private industry, it's something that we'll have to listen very carefully for in the speech here. >> amy, from where you sit, we have been given the heads up that the president will be entering the room shortly. but from where you sit, do you believe that what the nsa is doing is sinister, or do you

believe that it's sinister, not being caught up with technology moving so fast? >> well, the technology is definitely leaping and bounding ahead. and the problem is we don't know what their motives are. i'm going to keep harping on this, but there has been a total lack of transparency into what they're doing and why they're doing it. you can say these are hard working individuals trying to protect security. but the public needs to know what's going on in government. because really, that's where the oversight comes from. people are saying, you're doing this in our name. and we should have a right to say what you can do in our name. >> but isn't that the catch 22? if the public does know what they're doing, so will the enemies, and they won't need to do it anymore because it will circumvent what they're using. >> there's a difference in letting the public know about

the goals and the collections and the programs, and the specific technologies and the ways they're collecting information. there's an integral difference there. and you can let the public know what's going at a broad level without drilling into the individual cases and the individual technology that's you're implementing and putting into place. >> and i'll explain to the audience, that's the hierarchy, the law enforcement community, the fbi director and the department of homeland security head, so they will be listening front and center to what the president has to say. and back to you, amy, we learned this holiday season that a card swipe can affect hundreds of millions of people that did holiday shopping this holiday season, and how do we stay protected? >> there's a failure in implementing the security protocols. we're looking at person to person encryption standards, and making sure that data links are

protected. and making sure that financial transactions can't be intercepted. there needs to be a large-scale conversation about what security measures need to be put in place to protect individual data from both government and bad actors. and the problem is, with one of these revelations, we saw that the nsa was purposely lowering security standards. and lowering what companies were putting into place to protect users so they could get access to the data. and that meant not only was individual information able to be accessed by the nsa, something that people could access, but any actor could take advantage of that hole built by the communications was able to get in as well. >> mike, you have 30 seconds to answer this question, but what political tightrope is the president walking today? >> well, again, there are people, the core base of the

democratic party, those who fore privacy of the american public. and it's obvious to say that it goes without saying, this is a debate that they welcome. edward snowden, from the core issues, but when you have the one or two high-ranking official from the national security agency going on television, offering clemency, and there's probably a lot more out there. and then it comes to the question, how does the white house feel about that? they still feel that he's a fugitive, and he should come back to the country and face due process, and it has obviously caused a lot of division and controversy at the top echelons between the united states and vladimir putin for example, and

this has distracted from the president's agenda. in a week and a half time, the president is going to be laying out his agenda, and obviously there's a great deal of frustration, in being able to advance or his inability to advance some of the marquee items that he wants done. we have seen him going around congress in the last days, and he has significant limitations, and if he wants to get anything done this year, he has to get out the issues. >> in 30 seconds exactly, the president baracpresident of the. >> thank you so much. please have a seat. at the dawn of our republic, a small secret surveillance committee, born out of the sons of liberty, was established in boston, and the group's members

included paul revere. at night, they would patrol the streets, reporting back any signs that the british would prepare raids against american patriots. throughout american history, intelligence has helped to secure our intelligence and our freedoms. balloons would count the armies by counting the number of campfires. in world war ii, the war plans, and in europe, communications helped survive. increased the need for sustained intelligence gathering. so in the early days of the cold war, president truman created the national security agency to

give us insight into the soviet block and give us information they needed to divert catastrophe. throughout this evolution, we benefited from both our constitution and our traditions of limited government. u.s. intelligence agencies were anchored in a system of checks and balances. with oversight from elected leaders and protections for ordinary sentence. ordinary citizens. meantime, east germany offered a cautionary tale of what happened when vast unchecked surveillance turned citizens into prisoners for their own homes. and even the united states proved to not be immune to the abuse of surveillance. in the 1960s, governments spied on civil rights leaders and critics of the vietnam war, and partly in response to these

revelations, additional laws were established in the 1970s to ensure that our intelligence capabilities could not be used against our citizens. in the long twilight struggle against communism, we have been reminded that the very liberties we preserved could not be sacrificed at the alter of national security. with the fall of the soviet union, left america without a competing super power, emerging terrorist groups and weapons of mass destruction placed new demands on our national intelligence agencies. globalization and the internet made these threats more acute as technology erased borders and empowered individuals to project great violence, as well as great good. more of these new threats raised new legal and policy questions. for a while few doubted the digt

see of spying on hostile states, few agreed with individuals acting on their own, or in small ideological groups, on behalf of foreign power. the horror of september 11th brought all of these issues to the forefront. across the political spectrum, americans recognized that we had to adapt to a world where a bomb could be built in a basement. and our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away. we were shaken by the signs we had missed, leading up to the attacks. how the hijackers had made phonecalls to known extremists, and traveled to suspicious places. so we demanded that our intelligence community improve its capabilities, and that law enforcement change practices to focus more on preventing attacks

before they happen than prosecuting terrorists after an attack. it is hard to overstate the transformation america's intelligence community had to go through after 9-1-1. our agencies need to do far more than the traditional mission of monitoring hostile powers and gathering information for policymakers. instead, they were asked to identify plots in the world and anticipate works that by their very nature could not be easily penetrated by spies or informants. and it's a testimony to the hard work and dedication of the men and women of our intelligence community that over the past decade we have made enormous strides in fulfilling this mission.

today new capabilities allow intelligence agencies to track who terrorists are in contact with, and follow the trail of his funding. new laws allow information to be collected and shared more quickly and effectively between agencies and state and local law enforcement. relationships with foreign intelligence services have expanded and our capacity to repel cyber attacks have been instructened. taken together, these efforts have prevented multiple attacks and saved innocent lives. not just here in the united states, but around the globe. and yet, in our rush to respond to a very real and novel set of threats, the risk of government over reach, the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security

also became more pronounced. we saw n. the immediate aftermath o of 9-11, as a senat, i was quit of wiretaps, and all too often, new authorities were instituted without adequate public debade. with courts, congressional oversight. and adjustments by the previous administration, some of the worst were heard by the time i took office. but a variety of factors had continued to complicate america's efforts to both defend our nation and uphold our civil liberties. first, the same technological advances that allowed us to

pinpoint an al qaeda cell in yemen, or an email between sahara, shows us that communications are within our reach. and at a time when our communications are digital, that time was disquieting for all of us. second, the powerful super computers offers intelligence agencies the possibility of sifting through massive amounts of bulk data to identify patterns or pursue leads that may thwart impending threats. it's a powerful tool. but the government collection and storage of such bulk data creates a potential for abuse. third, the legal safety guards that restrict surveillance against u.s. persons without a warrant, do not apply to foreign persons overseas. this is not unique to america.

few, if any spy agencies around the world constrain their activities beyond their own borders, and the point of intelligence is to obtain information that's not publicly available. but america's capabilities are unique. and the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical restraint on what we can do. that places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do. and finally, intelligence agencies cannot function without secrecy. which makes their work less subject to public debates. yet, there is an inevitable bias. not only within the intelligence community, but among all of us who are responsible for national security, to collect more information about the world, not

yes. less. so in the absence of institutional requirements for regular debate, public as well as private or classified, the danger of government overreach becomes more acute. it is particularly true when surveillance technology and our reliance on digital information is evolving much faster than our loss. for all of these reasons, i maintain a healthy skepticism of our surveillance programs after i became president. i ordered that they be reviewed and in some cases i changed the way we do business. oversight and auditing, compliance, rules proposed by the government and approved by the foreign intelligence surveillance court. and we sought to keep congress

continually updated on these activities. what i did not do is stop these programs wholesale. not only because i felt they made us more securit secure, buo because nothing in that initial review and nothing that i've learned since indicated that our tense community sought to violate the law or is cavalier about the civil liberties of their citizens. to the contrary, in an extraordinarily different job, one in which actions are second guessed success is not reported, and failure can be catastrophic, the men and women of the tense community, including the nsa, consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people. they're not abusing authorities

in order to listen to your private phonecalls or read our emails. when mistakes are made, and mistakes are inevitable, they correct those mistakes. laboring in obscurity, often unable to discuss their work even with family and friends, the men and women of the nsa know that if another 9/11 or a cyber attack occurs, they will be asked by congress and the media why they failed to connect the dots. what sustains those who work at nsa and the other intelligence agencies and the pressures, is the knowledge that their communications play a central role in the defense of our nation. now, to say that our intelligence community follows the law and is staffed by patriots is not to suggest that

i nor others in my administration felt complacent when the impact of these programs. those who hold office in america have a heavy responsibility to our constitution. and while i was confident in the integrity of those who lead our intelligence community, it was clear to me in observing our intelligence communications on a regular basis that changes in our technological capabilities were raising new questions about the privacy safeguards currently in place. moreover, after an extended review of our use of drones in the fight against terrorist networks, i believed a fresh examination of our surveillance programs was a necessary next step in our effort to get off the open-ended war footing that we have maintained since 9/11, and in a speech that i made at a defense university last may, we need a robust public discussion

about the balance between security and liberty. of course what i did not know at the time is within weeks of my speech, an avalanche of unauthorized disclosures would spark controversies at home and abroad that have continued to this day. given the fact of an open investigation, i'm not going to dwell on whether snowden's actions or his motivations. i will say that our nation's defense is in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets. if any individual who objects to policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, we last name be able -- will not be able to keep our people safe or conduct foreign policy. moreover, the sensational way that these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat

than light, while giving our adverses in ways that we may not though, the task, is more than preventing more disclosures from taking place in the future. instead we have to make some important decisions about how to protect ourselves and sustain our leadership in the world while upholding the civil liberties that our ideals and our constitution requires. we need to do so not only because it is right but because the challenges posed by threats like terrorism and proliferation and cyberattacks are not going away any time soon. they are going to continue to be a major problem. and for our intelligence community to be effective over the long haul