this is valjavec live from new york city. u.s. intelligence agencies have new marching orders. president obama announced new guidelines for government surveillance activities. this follows months of revelations that the nsa spied on world leaders and routinely collected data on millions of people. the u.n. says four employees are missing after a deadline attack on a restaurant in the afghan capital, kabul. authorities say 16 people were killed. the taliban has issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, a document obtained by the associated press shows that in just two years, pope benedict xvi, defract nearly 400

children -- defrocked nearly 40 people on how they are handling sexual abuse. >> the company blamed for tainting the water supply for hundreds of thousands of vest virginiaages. freedom industries faces several investigations after last week's chemical spill near charleston. water restrictions put into place have been lifted for most residents. fire fighters say they have stopped the spread after 1700 acre wildfire near los angeles. severely dry weather helped it grow quickly and the governor declared a drought emergency. "inside story" is up next. >> security surveillance is not going away. there will be newspaper rules in place. the president's proposals are

"the inside story." >> hello. i am ray suarez. president obama even brought it up, himself. when he was a senator, he was suspicious of the ability of the federal government security agencies to poke around in our private lives. once president, the threats to the country he led forced him, he says, to a more complicated view. today, he laid out a plan he said would protect the public's interest and still allow the government to keep an eye out for threats. whether he managed to strike a balance in a way that meets all of those tests is today's program. we will begin with a look at the president's suggested fixes. we are troubled by our existing programs and are not interested in repeating the tragedy of

9-11. those who defend these programs are not dismissive of civil liberties. the challenge is getting the details right, and that is not simple. >> the president talked about the changed world of intelligence gathering after 9-11 and insisted the u.s. must still be vigilant. he spoke at length about what he called the most controversial surveillance practice of the nsa, the collection and storage ofphone data in bulk, borne of section 215 of the patriot act. >> the telephone meta data program under section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists so we could see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible. in this and this capability to prove valuable in a crisis. having said that, i believe critics are right to point out that without proper safeguards, this type of program could be used to yield more information about our private lives and open the door to more intrusive bulk

collection programs in the future. >> the president is ending this program as it exists and asking his intelligence team to proposal alternative. >> effective immediately, we will only pursue phone calls two steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization instead of the current three. and i have directed the attorney general to work with the foreign intelligence surveillance court so that during this transition period, the database can be y r queried after a judicial finding or in a true emergency. the president says he doesn't think the government should hold meta data t? >> they will report back to me with options for alternative approaches before it comes up for reauthorization on march 28th. during this period, i will consult with the relevant committees in congress to seek

their views and then seek congressional authorization for the new program as needed. >> the president proposed a big change for the foreign intelligence surveillance court which currently issues warrants in national security cases out of public view. >> to ensure that the court hear a broader range of privacy prospectives, i am calling on congress to authorize the establishment of a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice in significant cases before the foreign intelligence surveillance court. >> the government also obtains information about possible suspects by leveraging internet companies with national security letters. the president called for more transparency in the process and time limits but stopped short of calling for court approval for national security letters as recommended by the nsa review group. >> some who participated in our review as well as some members of congress would like to see

more sweeping reforms to the use of national security letters. so we have to go to a judge each time before issuing these requests. here, i have concerns that we should not set a stead for terrorism investigations that is higher than those involved in investigating an ordinary crime. but i agree that greater oversite on the use of these letters may be appropriate and i am prepared to work with congress on these issues. >> the electronic spying revelations created outrage crooning beyond the united states and upset international diplomacy. the president offered protection to foreign civilians and foreign leaders in his addressed to. people. >> people around the world, regard let's of their nationality, should know that the united states is not spying on ordinary people who don't threaten our national security. we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures. this applies to foreign leaders

as well. let me be clear, our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments. >> in the same way the intelligence services of every other nation does. we will not apologize simply because our services may be more effective. they should feel confident we are treating them as partners. >> the nsa is taking up a few but he stressed the pace of technological change and the demands on the government to protect americans. >> the unique power of the state. it is not enough for leaders to say: trust us. we won't abuse the data we collect.

for history has too many examples when that trust has been breached. our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty can't depend upon the good intentions of those in power. it depends upon the law to constrain those in power. president obama may have presented his ideas for reforming the nsa but the debate is just beginning in congress, in the courts and in the public. joining us to discuss the president's proposals are alan friedman, visiting scholar at george washington security policy institute. he is a co-author of cyber security and cyber war, what everyone needs to know. in san francisco, raney wrightman a group that defends privacy rights. she is chief operating officer of the freedom of the press foundathes. here in washington, ben chan at

the national security council under presidents bush and obama. it's a 7 ario vice president of communications at the albright stonebridge group in binchang. thef president laid out his philosophy of surveillance and drilled down into the specific proposals but it was a straddle all the way. did he get the balance right? >> i think one of the things he attempted to do was, in a word, borrowed from another policy on rebalance about documents. national security in this country. what i was hoping for was a glimmer of educator in chief. it was a chance to talk about why these programs exist, how they evolved within a certain window and why they are necessary for our national security moving forward and to leve that both individually as president and in bavp with various parties including congress and the business and tech community.

>> raney wrightman, did he get it right? >> so i, you know, i don't want to say that obama didn't do good things. obama did make a number of reforms that i think are particularly powerful i think that he did do a number of significant things. but there was so much more left on the table that he didn't have an opportunity to do or that he had an opportunity and he didn't take. i think he fell short. i think it's up to congress now to pick up the reins and go from there? >> it sounds like you were waiting to hear some things you just didn't. like what? >> he mentioned one in particular. we have one thought for national security letters to connell only through judicial authority so a judge signs off on them rather than fbi agents. i think that would have been a very common sense, simple fix that he could have done. we were also concerned about

mass sur recallance probably a little more than what he was able to address. i know obama is trying to take the telephone meta data program and say that isn't something that the united states government is going to hang on to anymore. somebody else might hang on to it ortrition it into some other form. >> isn't the only type of mass surveillance that the nsa is engaged in. they are sweeping up millions of people's internet communications and i think the devil will be in the details as to whether or not that type of gets rained in effectively with a technologist's hat on did you hear a president who was literate suggesting things that could be accomplished. >> i like ben's phrase of the educator in chief.

he took us through as the technology grows, we need to evolve and adapt policy responses as well. on the other hand, he didn't dive into issues that the technical community, the nsa has been in charge of securing systems. now it appears they have engaged in compromising the security systems that are available, used to defend themselves or security technologies that all of us use daily and now it appears they can't be trusted. >> no matter how many doors and locks they put up, there is a threat the government may be able to pick them all? >> on some level, that's a good thing. the nsa should be able to attack

secure systems because that's how it finds information that's vital to national interests. the question is: who is whose? do they break other people's codes in their own house or take the fight to the world and make everyone else a little secure? >> a losing battle fwi make our own codes less secure, we are not only hurting our own security, hurting america technental cal companies but we might make it easier for foreign intelligence. >> we are going to take a short break. when we return, we will talk in greater detail about the president's specific proposals. can data be collected? when it gets collected, who gets to keep it? and what are some of the tools involved and the oversight involved? this is "inside story." stay with us.

>>. >> welcome back to inside story. i am ray suarez. on this addition of our program, we are talking about nsa reform. the president gave a major speech on intelligence gathering and the balance between security and privacy, and ben chan's it

was a ringing endorsement of the idea of privates because during these months of debate and revelation, transparency became a commonly used word. the president, himself, said intelligence agencies cannot function without sec res which makes their work less subject to public debate. did he close the sale? >> it's interesting t i listened to the speech with a census of a cuplet the president had throughout and what he was talking about, our privacy, your privacy and mine, alan's, raney's and the privacy or sec reece that apt sees like nsa. it's this tension, this inevitable tension that is at play. what i think is important were his different audiences. he clearly understood that he had to address the concerns of many different stake holders here in this country and overseas, not just leaders but citizens living overseas as well. so that was an interesting discussion as well on the privacy. >> rainey rightman, one of the very interesting parts, both of

the commission report that came out earlier and then the president's response to it, what's the handling of foreigners and not only the embarrassing details about foreign allies whose phones we have been tapping, but, also, weather a person from a foreign country gets the rights of an american extended to them when they are either in this country or being watched by our government? >> yeah. i think that obama really articulated a sensitivity towards the privacy rights of people around the world. i think fill solvecally, he was able to at least showcase that he understood the concerns of people everywhere about their rights to privacy, but i -- i did not hear specifics about whether or not that was going to functionally turn into policies that effectively protected the communications of people all over the world. i think that, you know, as a --

when it gets down to the nuts and bolts, we heard a very specific, you know, commitment from obama not to be hanging on to the telephone meta data of americans. we did not overhear something as specific and as firm about how we would be treating the dictal data of people all over the world. so, i think there is definitely a potential moving forward, especially as he gets together his sort of review committees, to continue working on this project, and look into it a little bit more that will see further reforms but we didn't really dive into specifics about respecting the international rights of people to privacy would look like. >> one thing he did mention was instead of going three steps out from the telephone calls of a suspicious person, he is only going two steps out. now, to allayman, that sounds like, well, is that a big deal or not? i can't tell, but i guess mathematically, it narrows your net quite a bit. doesn't it? >> sure. makes a huge difference. if we assume none of your

friends know each other going, you know, steps out, 40 people that they can watch. go out again, 1600. you go go out one more time, you have 25,000. and then, that's two hops. if you go oat three hops, you are well over 2 million. and really, that's seen -- well, that seems like a lot of people you are getting just for what might amount to a fishing expediti expedition, where you are trying to throw some math at a network to see what you discover. so a lot of people say, listen, that too many people. you need to tighten it alternates more and actually do the analysis before you go to the data. >> just in terms of craft, when you make that jump out from several thousand to a couple of million, aren't you getting a lot of junk data in there? don't you have that many more pieces of data, pages of stuff to weed through for what you are looking for? >> certainly. that's been one of the big challenges that the entire

community has faced since the war on terror took off. there are so few people you are trying to dash. you need to learn how to clean your data quickly. one could say, listen, that means they are good at throwing away data. they are going to ignore most of us. in fact, that's the arch of criptography, the science that the nsa is famous for is how do you find the signal in a vast amount of noise? on the other hand, these al gorithims are being developed without any sprchingsz and ultimately, if you have people who are engaged in the oversight don't have the technical skills to really understand what's being produced and we don't know what happens at the next stage of investigation. there are a lot of questions unanswered. >> rain e were you glad to hear that, that we were pulling it in one step from two out from a suspect to -- from 3 out to two out? >> yeah. i thought that was a big step in the right direction. i mean fundamentally m what the nsa is

doing is collecting information on millions and millions of people who aren't suspected of a crime, who haven't done anything, sometimes quite sensitive information, so i suppose collecting information on fewer of them or less of that information is objectively a good thing. there is no way around that. he specially when they haven't really been able to affirmatively show that these mass surveillance programs are effective in actually catching terrorists. so, i mean, i think it's a net good but there is just so much more to be done, you know. i -- i was heartened by obama's speech but i think there is still a lot of work that congress can do, to rein it in further. >> we will take a short break now. when we come back, we will talk about whether we are racing behind our technology trying to gauge the impact on an individual person's privacy. this is inside story.

anywhere else. >> talk to al jazeera. >> only on al jazeera america. >> oh my! he's been vice president for

almost a year and belongs to one

welcome back to inside story. on his speech on nsa reform, president obama said the effort will not be completed overnight and that given the pace of technological change, we shouldn't expect it's the last time america has this debate. alan friedman, one of the more interesting passages had to do with the collection of mass amounts of data and what happens to it after that. where should meta data live? where can meta data live? where will it live? these are parts of the story that remain to be told. one group of people said we shouldn't have anything. it would have been much easier

for obama to do is to say we are going to keep it in the nsa or get rid of it. the fact that et cetera trying to make a solution, the people inside said we will need to find a way to continue having this capacity. obama and i don't think anyone on his team has found a solution to make it work which is why they have punted it back down to the intelligence community and say you think about it and ultimately, it will go down to congress to find a good solution because it's pretty messy when you take it out of the government, you have some liability risks even if you are protected from a legal liability, no company wants to have their name linked with a breach of this kind of data. >> rainey rightman is this a big set of questions for you? what does it mean for the companies? >> one of the questions remaining right now is if the

nsa isn't going to hang on to the telephone meta data data is congress going to force companies who don't want to be responsibility for this data? there could be serious costs involved in companies having to maintain the information and harden their systems and security questions: are these telecom companies prepared to safeguard this information in addition to not wanting to have to do it and the privacy implicsdmaingsz is it that much better to have big telecom giants hanging on to this information it's in maybe three giant data basis but it's not like actually dying with the core civil liberty we canties issue, not collecting inform okay people who haven't been suspected of a crime. >> isn't very useful in

investigations. i am sure the intelligence community fought for this. i have no doubt about it. theyfo fought for it from day one. i hope that this is the beginning of a discussion that will result in congress realizing it is inappropriate to force the telecom companies to hang on to this data as well. >> there is something like technological determinism at work here. the president said there is a by answer not only within the intelligence community but among all who are responsible for national security to collect more information about the world, not less. >> i am wary of all words that end in ism. but if i can jump from this to the previous question and bridge it a bit, it will be an interesting 60 days. looking at the attorney general

and some of the work is considerable as both of our friends have said with congress as well. >> will be interesting as well because we know there isn't a clear consensus on the hill on either side. so, it will be hopefully a lively and productive debate and we'll have to see where that goes but on your question about, you know, forever wanting more, as i understand it, and i am not as tech nickcally savvy as either of these two, we are talking about data verptsz content and there is something for the average american like myself to realize that there is a distinction here with what is being gathered and what is being used for. what we saw was an elabration as to restrictions to increase trans piece on the use and the key part is use. >> that's an important distinction to have out on the table. >> alan, as of today, should an individual american be any more confident than they were last week that once a gathered piece of data is no longer of any use

to the government that they are going to get rid of it, erase it, dump it quickly? >> we haven't really seen much about this to say we are going to get rid of data. in fact, that's one of the largest threats in this big data era is that data is around and it's really cheap to store, to want to keep it there. the challenge is to say, well, what are the risks and what are the protection and really comes down to trust. >> alan friedman, ben chan g, rainey wrightman. >> brings us to the end of insi "inside story" thank you for being with us. in washington, i am ray suarez.

fast, cheap and easy, and that's not the case. >> american chef and action visit alice waters said we should return to eating local and seasonal food. >> you know, it's celebrating life. >> the owner of the world renowned restaurant is famous for her pioneering use of organic ingredients. >> we are part of nature. we depend on it. >> for deck caused, she has championed the slow food movement. >> the idea of eating in your car is something just