consent. a combination of low-cost chinese hard ware and the indian business model that lets you sell local service to people who earn two dollars a day and make a profit. so, pakistan just the other day was one of the last countries to approve 3g networks. so a lot of those people by the early 20s will have smart phones and be connected to the internet. it's really going to happen. it's hard to imagine how transformative that will be. but i think i.t., along with smart approaches to biology, but biology takes a little longer. i.t. can make positive changes very, very quickly. >> in your question is imbedded the notion that information technology is a thing, a separate thing. that is somehow distinct from nano robotics, genetics, order life. i wonder. everything that we seem to be heading towards is smaller, more

ubiquitous, more -- and if we're not carrying it on ourselves personally, nor we're being watched by somebody else who has a reason to do that for us. when it becomes that ubiquitous, when the chair becomes smart, the water glass becomes smart, is it useful to think of that as information technology or is this a new state of being and how does hewlett-packard make any money off this? >> the question is, who controls all of the information, whether it's individuals, the government, the companies themselves. i think we have time for one more question. before we take this one, i want to remind all participants that's meeting has been on the record so everything said will be held against you in a court of law. yes, in the white jacket. >> i'm emmy with the johns hopkins applied physics lab.

can you talk about the educational of policymakers on the state of the science and scientists on the state of policy and how to make sure there's not a gap between the two communities. >> good final question. >> i'm less interested in regulation than i am in ethics, frankly. we're at this amazing point in history where we can do just about anything with material science, with energy and even with biology. when you can do just about anything, then the core question is what you should do. the -- and that's the core question of ethics. and i -- i mean, in my optimistic moments, it's because i'm seeing more people asking, given the opportunity to do anything, what should we do? and that's why i'm glad to see government entities like the military, like the navy, like our foreign policy

establishment, asking more "should" questions and if you can arrive at what we should do -- some consensus or some novel thoughts about that, that strikes me as being much more important than writing regs. >> i think it's a really interesting thing that can start in scientific education. one example is for the last few years i've gene to cold spring laboratories forks are those who follow jeanettes ticks, the wellspring of a lot of interesting work. just to talk to some graduate students about how society and science and the media work together, and a direct connection to policymaking there. but it's a little like -- i think as science and technology affect us more and more quickly, that should be part of the curriculum, and we're seeing that shift in medicine. medical school educations are more holistic approach.

journalism education. that would clue entrepreneurialism so you can figure out how to make a living. so educations are shifting and the scientific education should as well. it's got to come from that side. the policymakers, it's hard -- you need someone to go to them. they don't necessarily come to you. >> are you seeing enough of that conversation happening? should be doing it but is enough happening to make the most necessary changes? at least from the policiesmake -- poll policymakers' side. >> generalizing for the university -- a biodesign at arizona state university, 350,000 square feet of creatures that do not exist in nature. they're out there. and increasingly you're seeing people who are imbedded in biodesign who are in the ethics game, and an example is, for example, some woman scientist

was involved in learning everything there was to know about some disease, and she want -- for which there was no cure. and the emphasis said would there be something interesting for you to do that might involve a molecule or an organism for which we could create a cure? i don't mean to dump on scientists, but this is so classic. never ocoward to her. scientists do not wake up in the morning thinking about how they'll change the human race. they wake up in the morning thinking about how to wire the goddamn monkey. they don't read news. they read journals, and the idea of opening up their world to a much larger consideration of the impact of what they're doing is, i think, crucial, and i think it see it happening. >> slowly. >> has to be fast enough. >> the i.t. world right now, one of the big questions is net

neutrality. the fcc, tom wheeler, dealing with this. i'm pretty convinced the fcc is hearing all sides of the question, and we have advocacy groups on all sides. some a lot richer than the others. but all sides of the argument are being brought to the fcc. can the regulators do the right thing? probably sent the right thing, can they do something that causes the least damage? i think that's the case. >> at least in the short term. >> exactly. >> i think we're at our end. i want to thank our panelists, michael and joel, for joining us. [applause] >> thank you all for attending.

>> a discussion on technology and policymaking. >> the state department confirmed that secretary of state john kerry agreed to testify before the house oversight committee about the 2012 benghazi attack. secretary kerry had been subpoenaed by in the committee

earlier this month but could not testify because of his schedule. this statement came from a daily briefing. here's a portion. >> i'm going to ask you because this letter that has been sent to the hill has just popped up. why don't you explain what it is. the secretary has agreed to appear before the committee but can't do it on the 29th when the response for so you're asking for a different day. >> yes. so, today we sent a letter to the house oversight and government reform committee, saying the secretary's prepared to appear before the committee on june 12th or june 20th. we have been clear we're willing to work with the committee, despite the fact that they benghazi oversight has been consolidated under the select committee. we believe the secretary's appearance will eliminate any need for the secretary to appear a second time before the select committee. he will not be appearing on the day they subpoenaed him for, which, again, they issued when he was overseas traveling, doing

the work of diplomacy. he had critical diplomatic work going on that day. we offered two other days as well. we were also surprised by the second subpoena when he had been engaged with the committee to try to find a date. still believe there are more appropriate witnesses but in an effort to be cooperative, have offered some dates. >> so you offered four dates? >> two. >> when you said two the 12th 12th and the 20th. >> june 12th or june 20th. >> okay. now, if you still believe that there are more appropriate witnesses to talk about, the document presumption aspect of this, which apparently is what congressman issa wants to talk about, why not just ask hoggard to drop the subpoena entirely and agree to have him testify before the select committee, which is going to be looking at the much broader -- >> as i said we don't believe he should testify twice we don't

think he should have to appear before the select committee in the interest of accommodation to resolve once and for all any outstanding relevant questions we're prepared for the secretary to appear before of the house oversight and before the reform committee. we have said there are more appropriate witness put in the interests of being accommodating we offered other dates to appear. >> is this an either/or proposition -- >> eking he go hard or the select committee. >> we believe that if he appears being hoggard, it will eliminate any need for him to appear a second des moines before the select committee. >> so essentially this is a challenge to congressman issa, get -- ask for or get a more appropriate witness from your point of view, or the secretary will not appear before she select committee. >> i wouldn't read that way. we're working to accommodate the house oversight committee's request. but we don't think it's appropriate for him to have to testify twice on the same topic,

so we have gotten a subpoena, which we have now in our letter back asked them to drop because we offered two other dates. and that will be where he appears. >> but the whole point of you think can that there was -- there are more appropriate witnesses to appear before hoggard -- >> we still believe that. >> i don't see how that's appearing before two committees on the same thing. if hoggard is limited only to document production and that the select committee is looking at the entire, before, during and after of the actual attack -- >> i don't note that made clear that is what he will be himmed to up there. >> i thought that was the whole opinion -- >> i would let counseling congressman issa speak for why he issued the subpoena. i suggest there will be questions about benghazi not related to document production. >> the reason you opposed the subpoena or him appearing before

hoggard was because there are more appropriate witnesses because it related to document production, which is not something she secretary of state is involved with. >> a couple ropes. he is not involved in the document protection, and we believed there were more appropriate witnesses. also the way in which it was done. the first one was withdrawn. when we worked with the committee find app an accommodation, the manner in which it ways done we did not find appropriate. so he'll testify on the 12th 12th ortho 20th. >> would you prefer to for them to decide not have him appear at all and then he would appear before the select committee. >> we believe there are more appropriate witnesses to appear before hoggard but we hid sea would appear and takes away

reason to appear before the select committee. >> don't want to bee labor this -- injury you will at bit. >> i don't want to venture to guess what we will happen in that see narrow you laid out. >> if there are more appropriate witnesses to appear before hoe guard, do you think there are more appropriate witnesses to appear before the select committee. >> i don't want to chair the two or get into who might appear before the select committee. that is a process that is starting. we're responding to a pick subpoena itch don't want to get into who will appear before which committee and won't. >> i understand but the letter does get into who will appear in terms of the secretary. >> right. he will appear once on benghazi. >> either or -- >> yes, believe appearing been hoe guard -- idon't understand why it's wrong to spent this as a secretary or state department

challenge to congressman issa to either drop this, don't insist on the secretary appearing before your committee, because if you do, then the select committee won't be able to hear from him. >> well, as we said, benghazi oversight is consolidate committee and they can work out how to deal with this issue going forward. all we are doing here is responding to a subpoena. if they want to withdraw the subpoena or ask him in from of the select committee, we would look at that request then. but that's not where we are. >> but you do agree that secretary kerry would be an appropriate witness for the select committee, which is covering the whole -- or no? >> i'm just not going to say whether he is or is not. all we're seeing if he appears before hoggard it would taken away any need for him to appear in the over -- >> aren't the subpoenas he was offended by it? >> well, we asked in the letter today dish have it here in front of me -- that we have asked the

committee to withdraw the subpoena for a specific date because the secretary can't make it on that day. they didn't ask us before the issued the subpoena, commanding him to appear. so we asked them to draw up the subpoena for the 29th because he can't appear that way. we offered two alternative dates instead. >> can you explain why he would not be able to appear. >> there's a couple reasons. obviously on may 25th there are presidential elections and ukraine, a lot of work on those diplomatically, and engaged in meetings preparing for overseas travel, including the nato meeting in brussels in june, and a presidential visit to poland, and other travel where we're working on issues from syria to libya. a lot of his plate. when the second subpoena was issued we were working with the committee to find an appropriate date and we have offered two other dates. >> he will be will washington. >> he will be in washington but has a lot on his plate.

in the before of accommodation offered two alternative dates. [inaudible] >> i'm sorry i ambe laboring this. which committee is the secretary a more appropriate witness to appear before, oversaying or select committee -- oversight or select-dirk. >> don't think that a useful comparison to me a. when the spine was issued for the document production, we thought there were more appropriate witnesses. i don't want to get into a comparison between the two. but i did note that oversight responsibilities had been consolidated under the select committee. so, again, their caucus needs to figure out who they want to handle this issue and it appears they have done so by consolidating it under a select committee. so we'll see how that plays out but they have to work out their

internal issues as well. we're just respond dog an individual subpoena. >> okay. but if you don't think -- if you think that -- >> its not about and committee is more appropriate. it's about -- if he appears once, testifies on benghazi, he appears before congress. >> right. but if you take congressman issa at his word he wants to know -- he wants to ask the secretary just about the department's response to the request. this is all post-incident. >> post-incidents -- >> right. and the secretary is not the most appropriate witness to talk about that. >> right. recognizing -- >> still will -- >> yes, we are working with the committee and he hill appear and talk about that if that's what chairman issa wants to talk about. >> it's a trick accommodation. if you say all right he'll go and testify before the that committee and then won't testify before a committee that he is a more appropriate witness to appear before.

>> two points. the first is that his time is very valuable. and it's very limited. and he has a whole world of pressing diplomatic issues on his plate. >> yes. >> so the time and energy that it takes to prepare for these kind of hearings, obviously they're important and we want the secretary to be able to talk about it. that's why we offered two dates. but this has to be a situation where it doesn't go on forever and over ever and where he testifies once on it and continually get asked the same questions over and over again. the second point is they need to figure out how they're going to handle oversight of this issue. and where they want to use their resources and call witnesses and whether oversight -- that's an issue their caucus has to decide. >> why didn't you write to representative issa, the congressman issa, and say, listen, the secretary is willing to appear before your committee, please drop the subpoena.

we've offered two alternative dates but we think that he is not the most appropriate witness for your committee, why don't you work with the caucus so that -- work with -- drop any request for him to appear before oversight and suggest to the select committee, to representative gowdy, they ask him to appear. >> in the letter we sent we actually made many of those points. we did say we don't believe he is the most appropriate witness. he did say he would not -- it's not appropriate for him to testify before the select committee if he testifies here wimp can't tell them how to work their internal caucus politics. we have been working with the committee for weeks to demeanor the best bit and when and who. so we have had those conversations, but ultimately they need to make decisions and we have said the secretary's willing, happy to testify on this issue.

>> happy? >> one one of those dates, july 12th or 20th because we believe oversight its important. this can't be the secretary gets called up by -- continually by different committee. >> fair enough. seems to me you could suggest to congressman issa, we'll send you official x and the secretary we think is a more appropriate witness nor select committee week we certainly said he wasn't the most appropriate witness for this hearing. >> right. >> and they proceeded. they proceeded with their request and so we are responding. >> all right. so, i presume -- have you got an reply. >> not to my knowledge but we just sent the letter an hour ago. >> the oversight committee accepted secretary kerry's offer to testify. the everything is currently scheduled for june 12th. >> if we don't step up the enforcement side, the phoners --

the enforcement side brings the media attention. so if we say the only thing we're going to rely on to make these universities and college does what they should be doing is for them to get a bad story, first of all, that's a lot of victims. >> yes. >> and that to me would be a depressing conclusion. so we have to figure out some way to up the ante that is short of waiting for another tragedy to hit the front pages. >> i almost say the dollar amount more than the folks with the department of ed, to do the work. 1a13-team person can't do it. the changes institutions are making is when they're meetly under investigation. so we don't know if the fine is 30,000 or a million. so i would only rather see that investment in a bigger team. >> all fairness, the fines will be paying for this. we have an issue with budget in our government.

where does the money come from? we can't just endlessly hand it occupy. they can fund their own enforcement. that's justice, and everybody survivor would back that up. >> this weekend, senator christopher mccaskill in the first of several discussions on combats explain sexual assault on college camp puts. and then lynn cheney, and senior fellow at the american enterprise institute, examines the political philosophy and presidential tenure of james maddison, sunday morning at 11:00 on c-span2. and american history tv, saturday morning at 10 can the life and work of american red cross founter clara barton, we'll visit her missing soldiers office in washington, followed by her questions and comments live on c-span3. >> next, former mass director michael hayden and journalist

glenn greenwald debate whether state surveillance is a legitimate protection -- and joining them is -- alan dershowitz. this is an hour and a half. >> imagine a world without religious faith. no prayer no scripture, that no men or women who bus of their faith, dedicating their lives to others -- >> want to assume a creation and a plan it makes us objects in a cruel experiment and over us to supervise this is a celestial dictatorship, kind of divine north korea.

>> ladies and gentlemen, welcome. [applause] >> welcome to this extraordinary debate on state surveillance. i am roger griffith. it's my i privilege to act as the organizer and your moderator. i want to welcome the north american live radio and television audience tuning in from the canadian broadcasting corporation to cpac to c-span, across the continental u.s. a warm hello to thousands of people watching the debate live right now on the internet on the intercepts.com, and munk debates.com. terrific to have you as virtual participants in tonight's proceedings. and finally, hello to you, the

over 2500 people who have once again filled the hall to capacity for a munk debate. we just thank you for your enthusiasm for what this series is all about. bringing together big thinkers to debate the big issues, transforming the world in canada. the presence on the stage in a matter of moments of four really outstanding thinkers on the topic of state surveillance, would not be possible without our host tonight, so please join me in an appreciation of the ore ya foundation and its cofounders, peter and melanie munk. [applause] >> well, the moment we have all been waiting for, let's get our debaters on stage and our debate

underway. speaking first for the motion, be it resolved, state surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms,, acclaimed trial lawyer, harvard scholar, professor alan dershowitz. [applause] joining professor dershowitz on the pro side of the contest is none other than former head of the nsa, the national security agency, the former head of the central intelligence agency, a retired four-star u.s. general, ladies and gentlemen, michael hayden. [applause]

now one great team of debaters deserves another and we have not let you down tonight. ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, serial technology entrepreneur, the cofounder of the global social news phenomenon reddit, and best-selling author alexis ohanian. alexis. [applause] alexis' partner is a person who has been at the very center of this global debate since edward snowden stunned the world last june with his unprecedented leak, his exposure of america's most intimate cyberespionage programs. in the ensuing year our presenter has become in the word of the financial times of london, the most famous journalist of his generation,

ladies and gentlemen, first look media's glenn greenwald. [applause] >> okay. before we call on our debaters for their opening statements i need the help of everyone in this hall and those watching at home, with three simple tasks. first, don't often say this and a gracious concert all like this, power up your smart phones. we have a open wi-fi network broadcasting throughout the hall, you can tweet to our hash tag munk debate and a ruling opinion survey of the audience, those in the hall and watching online. pop open your browsesser, enter the urrwww about number

kdebatesford slash vote. and third, in the hall, when you see our dastardly countdown clock appear on the screen at the end of the allotted time for opening statements, rebuttals and closing statements, please join me in a round of applause for our speakers. this will keep them on their toes, and of course, our debate on time. one last thing. before we get to opening statements. let's fine out how all of you, the 2500 of you, voted at the outset of this evening's debate. on our resolution, be it resolved, state surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms. let's have those results now. our opening vote. 32% agree, 74% disagree. 21 -- 47% disagree, 21%

undecided. so, a debate in play. now, very important question because this is about which team can sway public opinion, who can change the mind of the 2500 people in this hall over the next hour and a half. so, who is open to changing their vote? what percentage? let's have those numbers. wow. 87% of the audience gathered here are very open-minded crowd. only 13% of you are committed, resolutely, to the pro or the con side. great set of results to kick off opening statements which i'll do now. as per convention, the pro side will speak first. six minutes for each opening remark. general hayden, the floor is yours. >> well, good evening. thank you for coming and thanks for the warm welcome. after i read your morning newspaper and hsu alan were tied

as two of the most pernicious human beings on the planet it wasn't shire. >> state surveil surveillance, is its legitimate? it depends on the totality of circumstances which which we find ourselves. what kind of surveillance, for what purposes, in what kind of state of danger? and that is why facts matter. in having this debate, in trying to decide whether this surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedom, we really need to know exactly what this surveillance is, and i freely admit that's hard. this stuff has been push out into the public domain, and you have had a chance to look at it, and sometimes it's been pushed out there in a way that, to be kind, it's not clear. and other times it's put out

there in a way it's just wrong. let me give you an example. no one has to have ill intent to make it wrong. this is actually really complicated stuff. there's one slide that was push out into the public to main over a program called boundless informant. if i were actually thinking of names that is not one i would pick. but what it was was a heat map of the world, and it showed the metadata events that nsa in one way or another acquired in different parts of the world, and it cooked off tens of million metadata events that nsa was getting, according to the map, from france, spain, and norway. so immediately the story was, these guys are ripping off to the phone bill0s of whole bunch of europeans. the reality of the story was

that the french, spanish, and the norwegian services were providing nsa metadata that their services had collected, not in their own countries but in internationally recognized theaters of armed conflict. it was a team ball effort but it got rolled out as very aggressive collection on the part of nsa. so it's hard. it's complicated. sometimes, though, this stuff just gets rushed to the darkest corner of the room. all ties to the most ominous description of what is happening. and sometimes it doesn't even have to be a tie. just good goes to the most ominous description. some call it the prism program, nsa having access through google and knauft and yahoo! to materials on their servers in the united states, materials affiliated with a legitimate intelligence target. that got shoved out the door that nsa is free are ranging on the servers of google and

microsoft and yahoo!. it is an uncontrolled nsa exploration of this data. that is just not wrong. now, that was pushed out. the "washington post" pushed it out. they corrected it on their web site over several days without notifying people the article hall beside changed. but let's just all assume we can get to hard truth, that we can actually boil this down to what csect is doing and nsa is doing and gchq in great britain and in australia. even then you have a problem because you're walking into a movie theater late in the third reel and you're looking at a snapshot of the third reel and you're saying, ah-ha, the butler did it! actually, you need to look at the whole movie. you need to into what went on before because if you know what

went on before you may have a different interpretation of what it is you think the butler is guilty of. three or four things that happened, that nsa and all these organizations have tried to solve. the one was volume. how do you conduct intelligence to keep you safe in a tsunami of global communications. the answer to that is bulk collection of metadata. another issue that is out there prominently is nsa is mucking about in those global telecommunication grids with your to that, the answer to that is bulk collection and metadata. "proliferator terrorist narcotrafficker moneylaunderer e-mails coexisting with yours and mine" another issue that's out there prominently is, you know, nsa is mucking about in those global telecommunication grids that

have your e-mails! no one complained when nsa was doing soviet strategic rocket forces microwave signals. well, the equivalent of those soviet microwave signals are proliferator terrorist narcotrafficker moneylaunderer e-mails coexisting with yours and mine out there in g-mail. and if you want nsa to continue to do what it was doing, or csec to continue to do what it's doing, what it had been doing to keep you safe, it's got to be in the stream where your data is. there's a couple other things too. after 9/11, the enemy was inside my country. that's the 215 program metadata, who might be affiliated with terrorists inside the united states, and finally when the enemy wasn't in my country, his communications were. it's an accident of history, but it's a fact. most e-mails reside on servers in the united states. they should not deserve constitutional protection if the e-mail is from a bad man in pakistan communicating to a bad man in yemen. and the prism program is what allowed us to get those e-mails to keep everyone safe. there's a lot more to talk about, but you're going to start

clapping in about nine seconds, so i'm going to go back to the podium. thank you. rudyard griffiths: the command presence of a four-star general. it's bred in the bone. alexis ohanian, you are up next. >> all right. hello canada. thank you for the basketball game going on. i really applaud you. >> now, we americans and canadians have a long history of shared values. neither of us wants to take responsibility for bieber, but that notwithstanding, one of those values is a right to privacy. it's something encoded in our governments and in our societies. it's something fundamental to who we are. we balance this with security, but the technological leap that we have made in the last couple of decades has enabled a surveillance state that goes at odds with these very fundamental rights. and the internet has made my career possible, as an entrepreneur, as an investor, but it's also enabled a surveillance state that is

simply unacceptable. you see, state surveillance is a threat to us for three reasons. it is a threat economically, it is a threat technologically to the very backbone of the internet, and finally, and somewhat paradoxically, it actually undermines security, it actually makes us more vulnerable. let's talk about that. both of our countries are huge draws for talent and money from all over the world because our tech sectors are leading the way. right? it made my career possible. it's made so many others. forrester, however, in light of our surveillance state, has estimated that the u.s. tech sector, the u.s. economy alone stands to lose over 180 billion dollars because now our global user base is thinking twice before signing up for our services. they're taking it to other servers where they know they still have that integrity. you see, i just got done visiting over 77 universities across the united states and canada, even the university of

toronto and waterloo. and i got to meet with founders who have every right to believe they can create the next google. however, now their users are going to think twice about running that search query because they don't know which intelligence agency is using it. this is a real cost. there is national security in economic security, and that has been undermined by this mass surveillance. in the nsa's insatiable appetite for data, it has polluted the network. and we're all on line now, right? as citizens, as companies, as governments, we all share in this online network, but the very infrastructure, the technology behind it, has been threatened, and it's no longer healthy because of our brazenness. now, what do i mean by that? well, from a technological standpoint, the worldwide web only works if it has worldwide in it, right? and now we hear countries like germany and brazil talking about balkanizing

the internet. steve and i never could have started reddit with the hope of it being a truly global platform if we thought that we didn't have access to actually anyone with an internet connection. right? the internet works because the more people that get on it, the better it gets. and this is the environment that we've created. you see, we're not just talking about law. we're talking about the very technology. we are keeping things insecure for the purposes of hopefully using it for surveillance somewhere down the road. let me put it another way, all right? in layman's terms, it is as though law enforcement found out that there was a flaw in every lock in every door in the city of toronto, and they didn't tell anyone. they kept it safe so that one day they could maybe use it to take advantage of some unsuspecting bad person. now, the obvious problem with this is there's nothing stopping some other bad actor from taking

advantage of that very flaw in the system, except we're not just talking about the city of toronto, we're talking about the world. and this is a reality right now. and this is simply unacceptable. a rising tide, when it comes to online security, a rising tide really does lift all boats, or secure all locks in this case. and this is something we are undermining by our actions. and it is done in the name of counterterrorism, but it's actually making us less secure, and that's a technological fact. now, speaking of security. it's not that there is this tradeoff that i'm talking about between privacy and security. i'm not talking about that tradeoff. i'm talking about the tradeoff between security that works versus security that does not work and security that does. instead of encouraging our government to leave these flaws open so that we can one day exploit them, we should be fixing them. because if we were to invest even just a fraction of those dollars in making the network more secure, we would also be making our governments, our free societies more secure. and that brings me up to an interesting point. you see, i was lucky enough as a teenager to get my first modem. changed my life. dorky kid in suburban maryland. i was able to get on line and it changed my life. it's made me the entrepreneur that i am today. it's allowed me to invest in over a hundred companies that

are hoping to do the same that steve and i did with reddit. but it's enabled so much good. it's also enabled so much bad. and that is where the surveillance state has gotten out of control. and that is the problem. because, you see, in the last century technology and the laws gave us a certain amount of direct surveillance that was possible, right? the laws allowed for a very specific type of direct surveillance and the technology was rather limited. there was only so much we could do. now, thanks to the internet and thanks to some poor decisions on the part of our government, the laws are now much weaker and the technology is much stronger. thanks to the internet, it is now cheaper and easier than ever before to conduct mass surveillance on innocent citizens. and so while the internet must be defended, while the values we hold so dear that make these stories possible in canada and the united states must be protected, it must not be done at the cost of our security, and that is what the surveillance state is doing. and the internet is a

fundamentally global, democratic platform, and it must stay that way. it embodies all the values we as citizens in a democracy love, and we have not been good stewards of it. but now is the chance to change all that, and i hope you will work with me and glenn to go against this motion. thank you. >> and i got to say, alexis, those shoes are killer. professor dershowitz, your opening statement, please. >> thank you very much. i know some of you may be wondering whether i'm on the right side of this debate. i've devoted my life to protecting privacy and civil liberties, yet i'm for this proposition. i am because i sincerely believe that surveillance, properly conducted and properly limited, can really and genuinely protect our liberties. look, no state has ever survived without some surveillance, and no state deserves to survive if it has too much surveillance,

particularly against its own citizens. a balance has to be struck, but that balance cannot eliminate the power of government to obtain information necessary to the defense of our freedoms. a proper balance requires a proper process for deciding when surveillance is justified, when the need for preventive intelligence is greater in any particular case than the need for privacy. and in striking that balance, it's important to distinguish among different types and degrees of surveillance. there's a considerable difference, for example, between street cameras that observe the external movements of people in public places, and hidden microphones that can listen to what you're saying in your bedroom. there's a difference as well between accessing the content of phone calls and e-mails and cataloging the externalities of such messages, to whom they're sent, when they were sent. there's also a considerable difference between surveilling our own citizens and surveilling foreigners, including foreign

leaders who are probably trying to listen in on our leaders' conversations. to fail to base our policies on this difference is to fail in the very act of governance, which requires nuance and calibrations. matters of degree matter, and differences in degree can differentiate pragmatic democracies who are genuinely seeking to protect their citizens against real harms from self-serving tyrannies that seek only to protect their leaders from accountability. we will hear tonight that terrorism and the need to protect our citizens is only a pretext, that there are other motives, sinister motives, for why we collect this information, so i will throw a challenge out to our distinguished opponents. what are those motives? why would the obama administration have continued this policy of surveillance after being briefed? was it because president obama has some sinister motive that he won't tell anybody about for gathering this information and is only using terrorism as a pretext the way the nazis in germany used

the reichstag fire as a way of suppressing civil liberties? i don't believe that. i hope you won't either. motives matter, though they too are difficult to discern and are frequently mixed. many who supported the surveillance conducted by the fbi against the ku klux klan and other racist groups during the civil rights movement opposed the very same surveillance techniques when they were used years later against the black panthers, and many who now applaud the decision to publish the illegally recorded private statements made by donald sterling to his mistress would express outrage if equally pernicious statements made in private by people they admire and respect were subject to public disclosure. privacy for me but not for thee is as common as it is cynically self-serving. now we ought to be concerned about surveillance. there's virtually nothing that's immune from the pervasive eyes, ears and even noses of the new generation of big brothers. it's absolutely true.

but the most dangerous approach to our liberties is the all or nothing one proposed by radical proponents and opponents of all government surveillance. those who oppose all surveillance are as dangerous to our liberties as those who uncritically support all surveillance. we need to know what harms our enemies external and internal are planning in order to prevent them from carrying them out, but we also need to impose constraints, and that's why process comes into play. we need a demanding process, but we need to make sure that the burden is realistically designed to strike a proper balance between two equally legitimate but competing values, the need for preventive intelligence to stop attacks against us, and the need to protect our privacy from those who place too high a value on security and too low a value on privacy. i believe it's possible to strike that balance in a manner that protects our freedoms, and

that is where our efforts should be directed. surveillance properly limited and appropriately conducted can promote liberty, protect life, and help us defend our freedoms. our enemies, especially those who target civilians, have one major advantage over us. they are not constrained by morality or legality. we have an advantage over them. in addition to operating under the rule of law, we have developed through hard work and extensive research technological tools that allow us to monitor and prevent their unlawful, illegal actions. such technological tools helped us break the german and the japanese code during the second world war. they helped us defeat fascism. they helped us in the cold war, and they are helping us now in the hot war against terrorists who would bomb this theater if they had the capacity to do so. you are going to hear again that there are only excuses that are

being offered, that terrorism is really not a serious problem or that american policy is as terroristic as a policy of al qaeda. i don't think you're going to accept that argument. we must not surrender our technological advantage. instead we must constrain it within the rule of law by constructing appropriate processes governing its use. i urge you to vote against rejecting all state surveillance properly regulated as a legitimate defense of our freedoms. i urge you to vote yes. thank you very much. >> you can tell a trial lawyer through and through. right down to the final second there. congratulations, alan, that was terrific.

glenn, you're going to get the last word in the opening statements. this next six minutes is yours. >> good evening. so i want to begin by doing something that i'm very unlikely to do again for the next hour and a half, which is vehemently agree with something that general hayden said, and what it is that he said at the beginning is absolutely right, which is that in order to assess the resolution that we're debating tonight, which is, "is state surveillance a legitimate defense of our freedoms?," the first and i think most important question to ask is, what is state surveillance? and the reason i say that is because if state surveillance were about targeting in a discriminating and focused way people who are plotting terrorist attacks against our country or other countries or are otherwise planning harm, there would be no debate. there would be no controversy.

we could all end right now and go home. professor dershowitz referenced the sinister radicals who are opposed to all surveillance and never want the government ever to spy on anybody. i've been writing about this topic for eight years and i have never met a single person who believes that. that is a straw man fantasy that does not exist. unfortunately the actual system of state surveillance that the united states and its surveillance partners have constructed almost entirely in the dark has almost nothing to do with that. it is not what professor dershowitz spent the last six minutes defending, a limited system of focused surveillance designed to protect us from people who want to blow up the auditorium. if it were that, there'd be nothing to debate. what state surveillance actually is is best understood by the nsa's own documents and own words, which i think as you know i happen to have a lot of. [ applause ] zing!

and that phrase that they use over and over again to describe what the system of surveillance is that they've constructed is "collect it all. "there's this remarkable and very poignant point, which is that the united states government and its defenders and officials like general hayden have become extremely adept, because of the secrecy behind which they operate, at presenting this very mild, pleasant, moderate picture about what it is that they do when they talk in public about those programs. they're very good at doing that. unfortunately those descriptions are wildly disparate from what they actually do and what they actually say in private when they think that nobody's watching them. over and over in the documents of the nsa are not these mild paeans to the need for targeted surveillance. it's the opposite. it is aggressive boasting about the system of indiscriminate suspicionless surveillance that they have constructed in the dark where entire populations, hundreds of millions of people

who are guilty of nothing, have their communications routinely monitored and surveilled and stored. there's one particular document that i find incredibly striking that was presented by the nsa in november of 2011 at a conference they called the signals development conference where they boast to their four partners about what it is that they've done, and this document is entitled "our new collection posture," and it says in a chart: "collect it all, sniff it all, know it all, process it all, exploit it all. "a federal court in the united states, a george bush-appointed right-wing pro-national-security federal judge, in december of last year ruled that what the nsa is doing is a profound violation of the rights of millions of americans, and he described this program as, quote, "the almost orwellian technology that is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979. "william binney, a mathematician

with the nsa for 30 years who resigned in protest over what the nsa has become, told the democracy now program in 2012, quote: "they've assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions between u.s. citizens with other u.s." citizens. the washington post in 2011, before edward snowden even emerged, reported that the nsa every single day, every day, collects 1.7 billion e-mails and telephone calls simply between and among american citizens, let alone what they collect on foreign nationals. that is the surveillance state that we are here to debate. it is unlike anything even science fiction writers in the 1950s can conceive of, and it is the opposite of the limited and focused program that our opponents are attempting to convince you exists. now i just want to make one point before our time is up, about something professor dershowitz asked, which is, what

is the reason for this? and of course they need a reason, because as citizens i think we all understand the inherent inappropriateness of having the government monitor and collect data about all of its citizens and with whom we communicate and who is e-mailing us and what it is that we're saying. and so the answer they say over and over again, that they're going to tell you tonight over and over, is one word: terrorism. they use that word because it packs a very powerful emotional punch. and professor dershowitz said, if you understand it, if you want to claim that it's a pretext, that's some sort of conspiracy theory. the u.s. government has used terrorism as the pretext for everything it has done in the past 12 years, from erecting a torture regime, to invading and destroying iraq, to imprisoning people without charges in guantanamo, to collecting the communications of all citizens throughout the globe including its own. one need not be a conspiracy

buff to think that is a pretext, but just have a basic knowledge of history, and u.s. courts and government institutions over the last year have all said these programs have nothing to do with terrorism. thank you. >> wow. [ applause ] ladies and gentleman, four very formidable debaters. what a -- what talent on the stage tonight. we're going to allow them to extend their arguments a little bit further now with timed two-minute rebuttals where they're going to weigh in on what they've heard from their opponents. we're going to ask the pro team to go first, as a pair. general hayden, you spoke at the top of the debate, so let's hear your rebuttal now. >> okay. two minutes is not long enough to unpack all the inaccuracies of the last 24. alexis, i actually agree with a lot of your stuff. the balkanization of the

internet would be a human tragedy, and we can talk about that in the after-prom party how we might want to do that. glenn, i don't agree with anything that you said. a couple of quick points, because time is short. alexis, you just kind of put the surveillance state out there as a given. you need to define that. i agree that the american industry has suffered because of the stories that some people have written. um. american industry is doing nothing more than what industries around the world are doing for their own intelligence services, and american industry is being unfairly singled out and punished because of that. a whole bunch of other things. you mentioned massive surveillance. we do bulk collection. that's different from massive surveillance. we can talk about that later. glenn says we collect everything there is. nsa actually on any given day

collects - listen up carefully, it's a big number - collects 0.00004% of global internet traffic. i have no idea what 1.7 billion intra-american e-mail collection means. that is simply not happening. what we have here are people trying to keep you safe, and i've got an image coming out that the people who work and lead nsa are like that character in the simpsons, you know, mr.burns, after finally they get to go, "excellent, excellent." we've got a lot more to unpack, but you get the drift. thank you. >> extra points at the munk debates for any simpson references from this point forward on. alan dershowitz, your rebuttal. >> i think we've heard two straw men from the other side. the first straw man is raising the issue of torture and rendition.

that proves my point! i'm a liberal democrat who voted against president bush and voted for obama. i hate torture. i hate rendition. i'm against all of that. but does anyone doubt that that was motivated genuinely if erroneously by a desire to stop terrorism?! do you think that president bush ordered these horrible things to be done just because he likes torture or likes rendition? he may have been wrong, but that was his motive, that was his goal, that was his purpose, to stop terrorism. and so let's debate the merits of whether surveillance is good or bad, not the motives. second, the argument is that, "well, if we only could just surveil terrorists, if we could only just point terrorists, if only we could live in a world like that." that is a real straw man. of course we wouldn't be having this debate, because we wouldn't be debating you. if you can figure out a way of identifying terrorists and only terrorists without the need to

sometimes intrude on the conversation of somebody who might be talking to a terrorist, or who might know somebody who is a terrorist, i would be thrilled. but it's in the nature of life that of course one has to overpredict. we all know when it comes to guilt or innocence or punishment, better ten guilty go free than one innocent be wrongly confined, but that's not the rule for preventive intelligence. when it comes to preventive intelligence, it's far better that a few people have some intrusion than that one innocent person whose death could have been prevented by an act of terrorism is prevented. we have to overpredict. we have to overuse. the question is, how much? how to control it? how to constrain it? i think we can have enough surveillance that is consistent with liberty. thank you.

[ applause ] >> glenn, let's have you up, and then, alexis, we'll allow you to close at the other side. alexis is chomping at the bit here to get at alan and michael. >> so just on the question of motive, i actually don't care at all about motive, primarily because i don't think i or anyone else can divine it. i don't know why george bush and general hayden and the other officials in the united states invaded iraq and destroyed it, or why they tortured people, or why they put people in prison without charges. i only know that it was incredibly wrong to do, and that is the same of surveillance. and i bring it up because it is the same mindset, the idea that if you say the word "terrorism" over and over and over enough, you can put people in fear and justify whatever it is you want to do. as far as whether or not this

surveillance is actually about terrorism, let me share with you what people inside the u.s. government have said on that question so that you don't have to take either our word for it or theirs. the federal court i referenced earlier that ruled that the nsa was violating the rights of americans said about the claim that it was for terrorism, quote, "the government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the nsa's bulk metadata collection actually stopped a terrorist attack." a presidential review panel appointed by president obama of his closest aides, on december 18th issued a report saying, "our review suggests that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of metadata was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional court orders," which is my answer to professor dershowitz about how else we can target people and find out what we need to know. three democratic senators in president obama's own party who are on the intelligence

committee and have access to all classified information wrote an op-ed november 25th in the new york times, and they wrote, quote, "the usefulness of the collection program has been greatly exaggerated. we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security." they hope that they will blind you with emotion, and i hope you will focus on the evidence and the facts. >> now it's my turn. all right. bring in the nerds. all right, well i'm happy, i'm happy, general hayden, i'm happy we're in accord at least for the technological cost to this. i spoke earlier about the economic costs, but i want to reiterate the fact that i am the nerd here, right? and you all didn't hear a rebuttal about the real technological problems, the fact that the mass surveillance we are doing actually makes us less secure, and this is from a technological standpoint here, and this is something that we as canadians, as americans have every reason to be worried about. we should be working to make the internet stronger, to making it more secure, because it benefits

all of us. and on the issue of, "oh, well, i suppose everyone else is doing it too," i don't know about you all, but i don't want to settle, our nations have never settled for, "oh well, that's good enough for everyone else," right? our nations have been founded on principles that cherish things like a right to privacy and a right to freedom and encourage the kind of amazing things that have come out of it as a result of those policies. and so what we're offering you here is this. the surveillance state has run amuck. technology that's enabled us to send selfies 24/7 - not that valuable - has also enabled us to be spied upon 24/7. and there is a way, there is a way for due process. it was good enough for centuries before we had this technological innovation, and there is still a method to rein in this madness, but it starts by making the network more secure and not less, and not doing the things that makes everyday canadians and americans wonder who's listening, who's watching. that's not the america i was

raised in, that's not the canada i presume you all were raised in, and i hope, i hope with all of us together, we can get this right. thank you. >> well the battle lines in this debate could not be clearer. now we're going to move on to our cross-examination period where we're gonna get these two teams of debaters to engage with each other directly. i want to start with a question that comes out of i think the real points of clash here in the opening part of this debate. it's around, what are the risks that we're defending ourselves against by virtue of having these programs? and, you know, general hayden, let me ask you. you were there at september 11th. if these programs were in place back then, what we have now, could you have stopped that attack? could you have prevented it from happening? i think

that's the bit litmus test that's on a lot of people's minds. >> yeah. first of all, let me point out, and i appreciate the question on terrorism. all right? but this isn't just about terrorism. all right? this is about legitimate foreign intelligence activity on the part of free people to keep themselves safe and free. terrorism is a big deal, but we do this for lots of good, legitimate reasons. now, to answer your question, if this program - and here we're talking about the metadata program, which is about terrorism, because the only reason you can use the metadata is to stop terrorism. no other purpose. if we'd have had this in place, we would have known that two of the muscle guys on the pentagon flight, the plane that hit the pentagon, the american airlines plane, we would have detected that they were in san diego. that was nawaf al-hazmi and khalid al-"midabar. "they had gone from a meeting in kuala lumpur. we had lost lock on them there, shame on us, i wish we had kept it, but then they came to the

united states unbeknownst to us. nsa actually intercepted their phone calls from san diego, where they were staying, back to a known al qaeda safe house in yemen. we listened in. now the trigger, okay, the selector as it's called, why were we listening to that phone call, was because we were covering the safe house in yemen and as the call was being made and, you know, those electrons were flitting through the global grid, nsa collection devices saw the number of the house in yemen and we listened to the call a little more than half a dozen times. three or four times there was enough stuff interesting on the call that we actually completed an intelligence report about it, because the safe house in yemen was notorious. nothing in the content of the call, nothing in the physics of the intercept told us that the other end of the call was in san diego. the way it was intercepted, the san diego number doesn't show up in the technology. and they didn't say anything in the call like, "love the

weather, the fleet's in, we're going to the zoo tomorrow" -- that would have suggested they were in san diego. if we would have had the metadata program, the 215 program, as a matter of routine we'd have thrown that selector, the yemeni number, at that mass of america phone bills and phone connections and simply would have said, "hey, anybody in here talk to this number in yemen?" and ka-jing, the san diego number would have popped up. now that's all nsa can do with that. nsa then would have handed that number to the fbi. the fbi would have kicked in the door in san diego and would have found nawaf al-hazmi and khalid al-mihdhar, two people legally in the united states. they probably would have leaned on them enough, though, and found some reason to push them out of the country, and off they would have went, and so two of the muscle guys on the pentagon flight wouldn't have been there.

to answer your question, i suspect al qaeda then may have called the raid off. "we don't know what these guys gave up to the fbi, we don't know what else the americans know, they found these two guys, what if they're laying in wait, call up mohammed atta, call the other guys, we're off."i suspect that would have happened. i can't guarantee it. but wait, there's more. >> yeah. well - >> michael hayden: one more point. >> i want to bring the other side in. >> one more point. >> very brief. >> all right. >> if that would have happened, we still would have not gotten credit for stopping a terrorist attack because we would not have known what we had done. thank you. [ applause ] >> so, glenn. sounds kind of convincing. >> well, i have a lot to say about that, although i'll try and make my remarks actually brief, and i understand why

general hayden wants to claim that he didn't have the capabilities to stop 9/11, because he was the head of the nsa at the time the 9/11 attacks took place and wants to say that "i didn't have the ability to stop it." but that claim, that's incredibly inflammatory to americans and people throughout the west, that we could have stopped 9/11 or disrupted this plot had we had the nsa programs the nba programs as offended the leader experts on al qaeda who almost always defend the united states in the war on terror. one of them, peter bergen, about this claim wrote on cnn on december 30, 2013, really the case the u.s. intelligence community didn't have the dots and in the leadup to 9/11? hardly. the failure to respond to the warning was a policy failure by the bushed a energies, mott al intend generals failure by the u.s. intelligence community. the other expert, would wrote, the definitive book on al qaeda

in 2003, wrote in "the new yorker," after reviewing evidence that the reason 9/11 happened is because they had collected so much information they had no idea what they were collecting and didn't share with each other the information that could have stopped the employment think that's a vital point, which is that the more indiscriminate surveillance you do, when you're collecting billions of calls a day -- that's from the "washington post," presnowden, throughout all of the snowden documents, that the nsa collects billions of calls every day. their main problem right now is they collect so much that they can't even physically store it all. even though you can start huge information on a small little drive. when you collect that much it's impossible to know, and to detect when somebody is plotting to attack the boston marathon, or to blow up a plane because they're collecting everything about all of us rather than the people they should be keeping their eyes on. [applause]

>> so alexis, you're the self-professed tech expert here. are we buried in data? general hayden is saying that's the challenge too. much data. we have to respond it to. we have to systemize it and drill down. are you just saying, the technology is overwhelmed by the data snuck. >> yes, this is a very, very hard problem to solve. the gift and the curse of all that data, aside from the civil liberty violations there may be some signal in there but there's a lot of noise and it's a very hard software problem to solve. that still only part of it. through the efforts of this mass surveillance we also undermined so much of the technology that make this internet work, that keeps every one of us safe. so it becomes more than just a rather offensive use of surveillance on innocent civilians. it becomes much more because it threatens how to internet, the technology of how the internet

works and works well. >> professor dershowitz. >> this intelligence is always a work in progress. intelligence in the context of newly developed technologies, always a work in progress. i think we're asking for too much right now. and that's why motive is so important. and that's why it's so important to understand -- and mr. greenwald conceded his major argue. he said this is all a pretext. now he says i don't carry about motive. but pretext is all about motive. if you're prepared to conceit that the motives are good, and that it's a work in progress, we have to work to make it better. now, not greenwald. he says, it's a pretext, and if it's a pretext, there's no use trying to make it any better. i argue that it's well intentioned, well motivated. there are problems of too much gathering, perhaps not gathering the right information, that is

why we need reform the fisa court. that's why we need to have a range of other changes that allow us to take this work in progress and make it fit in a nice way into our war against terrorism without diminishing civil liberties. i think we can do it. we have done it with other technologies in the past. let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. not restrict ourselves from your o our tremendous technological advantage that we worked so hard to achieve. let's work to strike the appropriate balance. applause... >> so glenn, to understand your argument can you see a policy where bulk data exists that strike this right balance? ... the indiscriminate mass collection, keeping track of who it is that you're talking to, who's calling you and who is e-mailing you, and the

government, a legitimate government, has no business monitoring and surveilling entire populations who are guilty of absolutely nothing. there is this attempt to suggest that, well there are different kinds of surveillance and you can listen to telephone calls and read your e-mails, or you can just collect metadata. they're doing both. but when they say "just metadata," there are all kinds of studies, including from a professor at princeton, edward felten, who has demonstrated that collection of your metadata can actually be more invasive than reading your e-mails and listening to your phone calls. imagine if you call an abortion clinic, or an hiv specialist, or a drug addiction hotline, or if you call someone who isn't your spouse late at night repeatedly, or you call a suicide hotline. why should general hayden and all of the national security state officials in your government and mine know that

i'm calling those people so that they can use that however they wish? i do think that's illegitimate. what is legitimate is to have targeted, focused surveillance on people who courts have become convinced are actually guilty of some wrongdoing. it worked to keep us safe when the soviet union had massive intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at every one of our major cities. it can certainly work to keep us safe from a few thousand people hiding in some caves. >> now, general hayden, in interviews and elsewhere you said there was a fundamental difference between collection and surveillance, and these are two different activities. >> there's a difference between massive surveillance and bulk collection. all right? let me piggyback on a thought that glenn put out there. he just suggested to you that the way we conducted surveillance against a slow moving, oligarchic, technologically inferior but incredibly dangerous nation

state is the way we should protect you against a nimble, agile, fanatical, individually motivated, low threshold in terms of ability to detect, threat. and my point at the beginning was, you know, doing that soviet icbm signal thing kept you safe then, but the new threats cannot be attacked the same way we attacked the old threats. now, back to the metadata where i'm going to find out who's calling their abortion clinic, you - i mean, i started out with facts matter, so i assume in the metadata issue we're talking about the 215 program, about the phone records, all right? because frankly that's the only bulk metadata nsa has on american citizens, but it - [crosstalk] glenn greenwald: but it collects a lot on foreign nationals too, though. >> well, we'll talk about foreign nationals - >> we should talk about everyone, especially in this room. they're all foreign nationals.

>>not just americans matter. >> accusations fit on a bumper sticker. the truth takes longer. >> alan? >> so the nsa - >> you keep going. >> okay, yeah, keep going. nsa gets from american telephone providers the billing records of american citizens. what happens to the billing records is actually really important. i didn't make this phrase up but i'm going to use it. they're put in a lockbox, all right? they're put in a lockbox at nsa. twenty-two people at nsa are allowed to access that lockbox. the only thing nsa is allowed to do with that truly gajillion record datafield sitting there is that when they have what's called a seed number, a seed number about which they have reasonable articulable suspicion that that seed number is affiliated with al qaeda, you roll up a safe house in yemen,

he's got pocket litter and it says here's his al qaeda membership card, he's got a phone you've never seen before - gee, i wonder how this phone might be associated with any threats in the united states? so i'll be a little cartoonish about this: nsa gets to walk up to the transom and yell through the transom and say, "hey! anybody here talk to this number i just found in yemen?" and then this number, say in buffalo, goes, "well, yeah, i call him about every thursday." nsa then gets to say, "okay, buffalo number" - by the way, number not name - "buffalo number, who did you call?" at which point my description of the 215 metadata program is over. that's all nsa is allowed to do with the data. there is no data mining. there are no powerful algorithms chugging through it, trying to imagine relationships. it's, "did that dirty number call someone in the united states?" the last year for which nsa had full records is 2012 - i'll get the '13 numbers shortly - but in 2012 nsa walked up to that transom and yelled, "hey! anybody talk to this number?"

288 times. now that still may offend you, but that's not what was described over there. >> alexis, come back on that. [ applause ] i mean, he's describing in a sense a fairly minimalist system. you and others have described something that's pretty maximalist and pretty scary. >> yes. >> who's right? "who watches the watchers?" >> well, i mean you could listen to the technologist about this. as a technologist i'm telling you, yes, that metadata poses a very serious threat to us, because it is simply being gobbled up, sucked up, without any concern for due process, without any concern for the fourth amendment in the united states, without any concern for our rights to privacy.

and in aggregate, yes, it is far more surveillance than is necessary, than is required to do that job, and i, i think, i can't help, i can't help but wonder, well, who watches the watchers? at this point we are going on, what, trust? we know plenty that we've learned now, and now the response is, "oh, well, don't worry. it's okay." and i don't think that's good enough. it's not good enough because in democracies we rely on transparency, we rely on knowing what is going on, and for too long we have had no knowledge of exactly what was going on, and then when we found out, well, it was not the kind of thing we wanted to be done in our name, and it was like i said from the very start actually making us less secure. at the end of the day i think we all agree we want security above all, but the actions we've been taking through mass surveillance actually in fact make us less so. >> so, alan? you know, the

... among the new primitive technologies we now heave silent cameras on street corners. that has had a major impact on reducing street crime. those cameras capture the images of innocent people, walking

along the street. doesn't capture what we say but watches it. it's big brother small, and it doesn't focus only on guilty because criminals don't walk around with big cs on their heed. we have to have these cameras in order to send messages to criminal, you commit a crime there will be a video and you will be captured. that has an impact. so you don't have to be guilty in order to surrender a little bit of your autonomy and privacy in the interests of preventing major crimes. so, we ought to understand we live on a continuum, continuum of dangers, a continuum of rights violations. not all rights violations are the same. having yourself monitored, walking through times square, is, as i said in my opening, very different from having the government listen to what you say in your bedroom. and that is the kind of debate we should have. not have debates about innocents or guilt.

due process is very nimble and flexible, the process due you based upon the degree of intrusion compared to the degree of benefit for the government. that's the way we ought to have this debate. ought not to end all surveillance and intrusions, and although mr. greenwald keeps denying this, he really sounds like he is against all surveillance unless you can find a guy with the al qaeda card, wearing an al qaeda baseball cap and al qaeda unform, and if you can't identify them, don't you ever dare to try to fine him by intruding even slightly on the privacy interests of innocent people. that's not the way government works, nor it should work that way. [applause] >> i completely understand. i do. why professor wants to

aattribute to these to me. it's easy to debate people when you claim they have more ronic -- >> i would urge you to vote against me if believe what he just said. i don't believe any of that. there's a process in place, from the time the united states was telling the world that the soviet union is this evil empire, the greatest threat known to man. going to a court before you surveil somebody and listen to their phone calls. and not present definitive proof positive evidence they're guilty of something but enough reasonable cause there were safeguards over who was being monitored and surveilled and have the ability to listen to see if they should continue to be surveilled. >> would you require a warrant for the camera i talk about? >> no.

i want to complaint why. -- explain why. invading what you do on the internet is radically and fundamentally different. the internet is not simply a place you pass by on the street. one reason why around the world younger people have been so supportive of edward noden and view him as a hero and so supportive of the disclosures, they understand what the internet is for the world, which is not simply a place we pass by to do other things. it's the place where we explore who we are as human beings, make our friends, everything about who we are, and to allow the internet, not a street corner but the place of this virtual reality where we exist and grow and explore to have all privacy removed or collect it all mentality. it's there. it's a kind of invasion unlike anything that has taken place. let me leave you with one quote from james -- an national

security agency historian who has worked on the issues for a long time. he says that if you allow the nsa the ability to invade people's online activities, you are allowing them to invade people's minds, their thoughts, and their very persons. i think we all understand the value of privacy. even those of you who voted yes on this revolution at the beginning. i can guarantee you all put passwords on your e-mail and locks on you doors and you want went us trolling through it because we all understand that privacy is a unique guarantee of human freedom. it's where creativity and defense and exploration reside, and when that is gone, so, too, is a crucial part of human freedom. [applause]

>> a perfect segway to now call for a video created especially for tonight's munk debate. touches on what the internet means, how surveillance impacts it. it is brief but focuses on accountability. please listen now to edward snowden especially for the munk debate. >> this is a poll what today's state surveillance looks like. it's important to remember it doesn't stop with phone calls. it covers your e-mails, your text messages, your web history, every google search you ever made and every plane ticket you bought. the books you buy at amazon.com. the transactions are sent in plain text and unencrypted and anyone whether the nasa or some other foreign service can collect and it store it. it includes who your friends are and how you communicate with them. shows where you go and what you

want to do. it also shows people in charge of state surveillance who you love. and it shows them where these people live. not defenders of this kind of unconstitutional dragnet surveillance might say there's no room for abuse because we have policies in place to address these concerns. but policies that change with every new president and every new congress and every new director of the nasa, -- nsa, really direct the threat building inside of our country this kind of architecture of oppression. what about other countries that don't abide by our policies? is reefing our communications insecure so that the nsa can monitor them and those of our adversaries, really work the cost? and you have to remember the policies are not perfect, and despite policies, i, sitting at my desk had the tick neck cal

authority to wire tapp anyone. from a federal judge and the president. and that's not a boast. [applause] >> that is a snippet of a special seven-minute statement of that mr. snowden recorded for the munk debate. it's on our web site for those watching online, have a look. so, alan, let me come to you on -- a number of points we covered but a key one i think is on the minds of this audience, which is accountability. to what degree do we have a system in place now that is powerful enough to harness the technology in the ways you want to see it harnessed when edward is claiming he can get on his computer, not even as an nsa employ year but as a contractor, and log in to the president's

e-mail. >> general hayden should answer that question and then come back to me. but whether or not that's true or false. >> general hayden. >> fact. okay. >> edward snowden were able to do that, that would not only be a violation of the laws of the united states, it would also violate the laws of physics. he had access to nsa's administrative network. he did not have access, thank god to nsa's operational network. that's not the first time he has said that. there's no one in nsa who believes there's any possibility that that could be true, factually true. he may claim it's artistically true in the sense that somebody in nsa who actually had authority, who was on the right network, might do that. that's my segway to alan. because this is very, very

carfully overseen. you can't -- the rest of the snowden statement is actually quite interesting. for the first time -- i think this might be snowden 2.0 because he actually makes a distinction between what is possible and what is actually being done. something that a lot of folks don't do. >> let me follow up on that. the united states supreme court, on tuesday of this week. heard one of the most arrange. s it will hear this year, and the issue that was before the supreme court is if i were to get arrested, say, for jaywalking, or or driving my car without a seatbelt, under current rules, the person, the policeman searching me, can seize my iphone. and can access all the data in my iphone, including my medical records, my tax records. this isn't the nsa. this is what happens when modern technology confronts the fourth amendment. the supreme court heard argument, nine justices, eight

of them suppressed views and then justice thomas. bus -- but eight of them expressed their views and it was really divided. you can tell they were deeply confused, deeply troubles, and trying to figure out a way of finding the intending of the framer who wrote it in and he 1700s and couldn't imagine this technology to the modern technology and the supreme court doesn't only write just for today but they write for the next decade and the decades after that. this is a work in progress. we must get accountability. we are trying to get accountability. technology is always ahead of the law. i try to teach my students in 50 years at harvard, not how to pro law today but how to practice when you're my aim, 50 years from now. always a quest, the struggle for

justice, never stays one. but that doesn't mean you make cell phones or iphones illegal. it means you try to work to constrain them and create accountability, the answer to your question is we don't have enough accountability but we're getting there, and you can help us get there. this is not an american problem. the five is work told, united states, canada, new zealand, australia, and england. they share intelligence information. you're not foreigners when it comes to your own government. your government is trying to protect you as well and your supreme court is trying to struggle with this issues, don't make it a debate between good and evil. there are good people struggling to do the right thing. let's keep the struggle going. but let's not throw out surveillance which requires sometimes surveilling innocent people. for example, the video -- >> alan -- >> people catch a woman going to

an abortion clinic, it will catchdome donald sterling -- >> quit talking and let me bring glen in. [applause] >> u.s. national security state officials are very adept and skillful at presenting a public image that is wildly different than the reality. the whole nsa scandal ban when james clapper went before the senate and was asked whether or not the nsa is mass collecting data about millions of americans, and he looked senators in the eye and said, no, sir. and then the very next -- the very first story we reported from snowden archives two months later prove the nsa was doing exactly that, which, the top national security official in the united states government, falsely denied to the nat and the public. so when you hear things like mr. snowden. -- not telling the truth when he says sitting at his desk he

could have wire tapped anyone. i guarantee you that's exactly what the nsa analysts have the capability, and the evidence -- don't rely on my word or his. a program which we reported on shows an analyst training manual, walking them through and say when you want to eavesdrop on a particular e-mail, here's the screen where you do it, and you enter the e-mail and the justification. nobody checks what it is you're doing. you simply then start getting the e-mails exactly as mr. snowden said, and the question of whether there's really any so ifguards. he said it's in a lock box. we're collecting all your data but it's very well-protected. aside from the fact that history proves you cannot trust government to collect nat information and not abuse it. think about this fact. the nsa is an agency where edward snowden sat for many months and downlead all of their most sensitive documents. they had no idea he was doing it. [applause]

to this day, they have no idea what he took. they say that all the time. even though they spent tens of millions of dollars trying to figure it out. does that sound like a very well-managed system to you, that you can trust with all of your data not to be abused? and the last point i want to make

>> >> are you prepared to withdraw your accusation because motive doesn't matter and you cannot have pretext without a bad motive? >> my pretense i doubt you

want me to read that again although i would like to use the federal court judge president obama is own panel i quoted senate showed me the word pretext. >> i quoted them saying. >> show me the word. >> you can keep screaming but it doesn't change the points. [laughter] that everyone has said these programs have virtually no role to stop terrorism. because it does not receive back it is instantly laid their fruits point they're well-intentioned but no evidence that it were to be do understand the difference between those two statements that really are what you being. tyourself [laughter] >> that is greatly aaggerated. that is what three democratic senators with access to classified information that you don't haveeb says she.

>> before rigo to closing statements i want to provide the opportunity to reflect on his statement. >> this has gotten spicy. [laughter] i am the nerd. fac i still want 2.0 like my first opening remarks about what we are doing undermines the strength and security of our nation as well was oversteps the boundaries and privacy it is still a fundamental truth and on top of that remember canadians canadians, americans our government works for us they are emp beholden to us. and we employ them, sometimes we hire them or fire them but they- work for us.

the way this entire thing has been handled even with the perception how b technology has because of hoch e the enter nate plays in our lives is this surveillance state, and principles we used to keep our nations, our free nations, safe, in the 20th 20th century, don't work in the 21st. they're causing abuses that we can do something about. and i hope that's why you will vote with us against this motion. [applause] >> okay. moving the debate along, it's now time for closing statements. we'll give each debater three minutes. they'll speck in the reverse order of the opening so, glen, that means you are up first.

>> so, i feel like i anticipated moderately well one problem this debate would spill, which is the ability of each side to make claims about what the thing is that you're supposed to vote on, which is the surveillance state. is it this nice, well-motivated work in progress where we just try to eavesdrop on the terrorists but, oh, accidentally, and very occasionally, bump into your gmail account by accident? or is it what the nsa actually described it as being when they didn't know that you were listening. when they were talking only amongst themselves. when they were planning on what their institutional aspiration actually would be. collect it all, snip it all, process it all, know it all. exploit it all. those are not my words. those are the words of the nsa working in a top secret environment because that is actually what you should be voting on, what they're actually

doing. and not prefer's aspirations for what one day he hopes might be. the way to get to that point is by rejecting what it now is as excessive and menacing and dangerous. the second point that is vital to make is the one that alexist talked on. this mockery over what keeps us safe from sovietupon is inadequate. mainly not getting proof that someone is wearing an al qaeda hat but going to a court and have evidence be presented someone is a legitimate surveillance target before allowing the nsa to invade their system. if you look at what was said by ronald reagan and world leader inside the '70s and '80s, the soviet union is the greatest threat to man kind. we went to wars to prevent them -- and now it's those are nice reasonable people we can imagine. it's their terrorists in a cave

who we have to dismantle our system of liberties to protect ourselves from, and hayden keep -- general hayden keeps asking for facts in 2009, the global new york service characterized the threat of terrorism this way, quote, undoubtedly more american citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intel until illnesses than terrorism. harvard, march 2011, the number of americans who died in terrorist attacks last year, eight. the minimum number two died after being struck by lightning, 29. terrorism is a role threat. it is not anything to make light of. but there are all sorts of threats that we guard against and keep ourselves safe from, not by dismantling our fundmental liberty like the right to privacy and the limitation on the government's ability know what we're saying but by balancing them and affirming the values we're trying to protect in the first

place. thank you. [applause] >> professor. your closing statement. >> i think we need less surveillance than what we have now, but more than what we would get from the other side that would require a warrant to specify with particularity the suspicion level against anyone on whom we would surveil at all. we need a reasonable middle ground on which we can use some surveillance based on less than probable cause, in order to target people who are trying to do harm for us. now, terrorism is real. and it's different than viruses. it's different than being struck by lightning. it's an essential attack on the very core of our country and our people. i actually believe and the rope i'm on this side of the debate,

one of the greatest threats that civil liberties faces in this country would be another terrorist attack like 9/11. even if fewer people are killed than in traffic accidents, if we had another attack like 9/11, the devastating impact it would have on our civil liberties would be incalculable. if you don't believe me, think back to canada in 1970. some may be old enough to remember this. when two terrorist kidnappings resulted in the invocation of the war measures act which deprived canadians all over the country of some basic civil liberty. i know, because i served as a consultant to to try to figure out a way of reducing the impact on civil liberties without diminishing the prevention of terrorism, which was a real threat in those days.

it's the interest of every person who cares about liberty to take reasonable steps to prevent another mass casualty attack. a surveillance system directed against terrorism and those facilitating terrorism, which will have falls positives and result in intrusion on some privacy of some people who are innocent is essential to the protection off our citizens and protection of our liberties. i urge you to vote for this proposition and to allow our governments, all of our governments this five is, to work together to allow us to have the intelligence necessary to prevent a recurrence of 9/11. will it prevent it? nobody knows for sure? will it decrease the likelihood? -- we need to improve our system of surveillance, we need not scrap it because reasonable state surveillance is a fair protection of our liberties.

it's a real war against real terrorism. vote yes on this proposition if you want to see a proper balance struck between the legitimate need for surveillance and the equally legitimate need for privacy. [applause] >> alexis, your three minutes. >> thank you. well, professor, sounds like we might be winning you over, at least with the idea of some less surveillance. now, look, technology has enabled so much. it's made any career possible so many others. with that technology, as i've said before, we have enabled a surveillance state that is out of control. i started this from the very beginning and said this is a problem because, one, it affects our economic strength, and economic strength is a core part of our national security. it affects the underpinnings of the very technology that makes the internet work. the things we're doing along -- have huge impact on data

protection, only localization and gives comfort to leaders of countries that want to use the internet to spy on their citizens, to surveil them. this is important, hearing all of those things, still doesn't cover the fundamental point here, which is that what we're doing in the name of security actually makes us less secure. patients us more vulnerable. remember the example of the key? that is the layperson version of what we are doing. we are finding flaws in the system and we are holding on to that key for ourselves, leaving every one of our homes vulnerable. and, yes, i am from a generation that can't imagine a world without the internet but i have a feeling most of you feel like the internet as become pretty indies spencible and the place we good to start companies and have discussions, sometimes combative ones to make new friend to have relationships, to find there are other people all over the world, all over the

worldwide web, that have ideas we can benefit from and then remix and share and all of those things are possible because we have a flat internet. sorry, tom freedman, the world is not flat but the world wide web is and our nations have done so much to lead the way in innovation because every one of us as citizens have the belief that our private most thoughts were safe and secure. and i'm saying they state surveillance is not acceptable in this age because for all we have had -- all of this innovation, it can all be undone. we're doing father more of it, on far more innocent people, than we have ever done before. and in the past technology include it wasn't possible and the laws kept us doing direct surveillance. today the laws have been weekenned and the technology make it cheap and easy to gobble up all our data, and this is

unprecedented. surveillance disproportionately affects innocent people and there is a technological answer but notice what is being done. and so i leave you with this. eye know there are good people at the nsa trying to keep us safe. i know they have our best interests at heart. i know the surveillance state is full of people who are maybe preoccupied with whether or not they could but they didn't stop to think about whether they should. thank you. [applause] >> final opening statement goes to you, general hayden. >> thank you. well, i started out as -- apparently as a former u.s. intelligence official i'm a good story teller so here goes. talk about scare tactics. we need to run the tape sometime. and count how many times alan and i said terrorism and how many times glenn and alexis said

surveillance state. what do they really mean by surveillance state? 1.7 billion u.s. e-mails day collected? no. that's just not true. surveillance state is out of control. monitoring -- every single one of us are gathering up the information on far more innocent people. i need to know the what. it's hard for me to counter that. what is it you think we're doing? i love the snowden quote. it kind of -- it cover yours text messages, your web history, your searches you ever made. that's google. that's not nsa. okay? >> austin bombing. visited web sites. after the attack the american

establishment gets slapped around by the political leadership. how come you don't know they went to jihadist websites? because we're not allowed to monitor internet activity of american and lawful citizen and we're not allowed to monitor your internet activity either along with the canadians and australians and north dakotaers. --s new zealanders. i said that communications on a dedicated isolated network where yours never coexisted and that creates a new dilemma. with guard to oversight, glen mentioned judge lee whereupon who -- leon who said program was unconstitutional...

see me, if what glennon says is true and what alexis claims is true or trio, i would vote for them as well. thank you. >> i would vote for him also. thank you. [applause] >> what a superb day. on a complicated and important topic and we could not have done it without these gentlemen.

a big round of applause. [applause] here they are. [applause] and a big thank you to our host tonight who year after year has supported this debate tirelessly thank you so much. [applause] >> now for a crucial part of tonight's proceedings, which one of these two teams has been able to sway opinion in this talked? let's review where the vote stood at the beginning of tonight before we had listened to the last hour and 40 minutes of debate and conversation. so if i could have your numbers for the initial audience vote. dirty 2% agreed with the motion,

47% disagreed, not insignificant. 21% undecided. we then asked the percentage of you that would change your vote, depending on what you heard. a debate very much in play, 87% saying that they are open to changing their vote. so for those of you who are watching online, this debate is not over. we have a postdebate analysis starting up right now and you can share your opinion over what has happened with a top reuters technology journalists and candidates great cyberexpert at the musk school of global affairs. you are all going to get another a paper ballot, and we are going to have to choose yes or no on the resolution and we will announce the second ballot results shortly before 9:00 p.m.

you can also purchase books by some of our debaters and for those of you want to watch the full edwards noted tape that he provided for tonight debate coming up on our website at www.musk debate.com/snowed in. so let's see how it turned out. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ciro l them but also make changes to the nsa practices an

discussion today. this is a little less than an hour and a half. >> thank you for joining us on the heritage foundation. and also those joining us to heritage.org website. if you would