fact that the house bill does not ban warrantless searches through americans' e-mail, and here, mr. ledgett, if i might, we are talking about the back the loophole, which allows nsa, in effect, to look through a giant pile of communications collected under 702 and deliberately conduct warrantless searches for the communications of individual americans. now, this loophole was closed during the bush administration, but it was reopened in 2011, and a few months ago the director of national intelligence acknowledged in a letter to me that the searches are ongoing today. i am particularly concerned about it because as global communications at increasingly interconnected, this loophole is going to grow, and grow, and grow as a threat to the privacy of law-abiding americans.

for the purposes of getting on top of this and working with all of you, my question today is how many of these warrantless searches for americans communications have been conducted under section 702? for you, mr. ledgett. >> july, senator wyden -- thank you, senator wyden. the searches under the onlyment, section 702, are conducted under unlawfully acquired data and under approved procedures. the searches are not just conducted by nsa. they involve other agencies as well. we have provided, as you know, detailed information to the committee on the background on this, and we will work with the to and the rest of the ic provide information to you. >> so, when will i get an answer to the question?

it is a specific question. the director admitted to me in a letter that the wireless searches are taking place -- that the war and this searches are taking place, and i am asking how many -- warrantless searches are taking place, and i am asking how many? i would like it within two weeks. >> yes, sir. >> can we have it within two weeks? >> we will work on that, sir. we will get you a response within two weeks. >> thank you. making some progress. now, the only other question that i had for today was at this moment, your agencies continue to vacuum up the phone records of millions of law-abiding americans, and this is because the executive branch has not taken any action to stop these practices. this others consider enormously intrusive, and the

inflated claims of its value have crumbled under scrutiny, but yet right now the constitutional rights of americans are needlessly being violated while, in effect, i guess the administration waits for the congress to act. i think this is a case of bureaucratic inertia at its worst. you,he question for all of and maybe we start with you, mr. cole, would be that given that the government could use regular pfizer orders and national security --fisa orders and national security records to obtain the phone records of terrorist and their associates, which i support, why has the bulk record collection not been ended? >> i think it is the same question that senator udall asked. the authorities we have under national security letters and other authorities absent the 215 orders we have been talking about do not really give us the

tools that we need. the legislation, hr 3361 gives , --nows, including the hops , prospective information that we would not have under certain authorities. we would only get a phone number, and at the key and what it has been in contact with, and then you would have to go back and do separate items for each terrorist and associate that is there. it is not the same tool. , i understand your agencies desire for clear statutory authority, and the chair of the committee, i think, has been constructed here in urging changes to the gives the government broad authority right now, right now, to obtain records quickly. fisa court, unquestionably, has been inclined to give the government and enormous amount

of it. the fact that surveillance has taken place right now is unacceptable to me. i will continue to keep working on this and i will have more to a about it, wrote very thank you. qwest iq. -- >> thank you. -- wrote. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you for holding an open and public hearing. myself withto align the senators. everyone in this room and other senators know i represent the nationals 38 and he. people get up every day. we have seen the revelations of

eric snowden and we are not here to debate whether he was a traitor or a whistleblower. but i will say this. i am deeply disturbed that, while i support the need to review the to 15 project, to actually even examine it, i do not see the continual immunization of the nationals cured agency, whether in the media or in other forms. -- national security agency, whether in the media or in other forms. people do a whole host of other things to keep america safe. eric snowden had his time. he gets an hour on tv. row from brian williams. we ought to say to the national security staff, that while we looked at the persecution à la the of other issues here, that we do not -- i have always maintained our must be constitutional,

legal, authorized, and believe youo you are doing your work using the q 15 program, you believe there are cost to shuttle programs, legal, authorized, and did you deem them to be necessary? >> thank you to the -- for the messages. yes, to answer your question. i believe it was constitutionally authorized and done within the legal and procedural constraints under which we operate it. i believe every investigation has shown it to be the case. >> yes. i concur. i do believe the oversight of that program is expensive.

>> we will not discuss the constitutionality there and i've urged the administration to find any x the dated -- expedited procedure to find what program is constitutional. i presume the usa act is constitutional that i will go to questions of the sets the. i will go to the nsa and the guy. do you believe what we did under 215 was necessary? you have now reviewed this usa freedom act. do you believe they say what you deem necessary to protect the people of the united states of america, that this will enable and that your job will be able to have the choice to continue to do what you think is necessary to protect the people?

>> yes, i do. i believe it helps to mitigate the gap that sanctioned 215 fill,ation is enacted to which is the x journal with the u.s. nexus, detecting that an avoiding a repeat of the 9/11 sort of attack where you had folks outside of united aids who were talking to people inside the united states and we could not identify them. the program was designed to address that. hr 361 does as well. we allow them do the job. >> yes. i concur. use ours the fbi to authorities. it strikes the right allen's. -- right balance.

the telephone company -- i am not sure. we find a telephone company. who is to say -- does all this come under the of ready of the fcc? >> to an extent. >> in other words, will we say they release all of these things and we will tell the fcc to keep an eye on it? >> you have to break it up in different pieces. the telephone companies already hold the data. we are not doing anything new. there are already under the control of how they hold and how they do with it and things of that nature. what will remain subject of oversight is how we

to acquireious tools some of that data, to use some of that data. restrictions on how much can be looked at, what it can be disseminated or, how long you can keep it, those are the kinds of things and what the standards are for getting it. those are the and wharton questions. a lot of oversight by the executive ranch, the justice department, the a the eye, the nsa, ig offices, there is a civic provision to do reviews. still be robust reporting by congress on what is done. let's thank you. life enqueue. -- >> thank you. >> thank you. >> it seems to me we're doing something unnecessary and

unpredictable here, which might , butthe public feel better which would be not good for national sick erie. that is what our job is. it seems to me we are taking a program the president determined as a legal, and important, counterterrorism tool -- a program that has audit, tax, andns, judicial other pressure systems built and. program currently in a highly , operated byon highly change professionals who have taken an oath to defend the constitution, and who have lived up to that oath, and we are shutting it down to move the

storage of that for intelligence sectors, to a private system that does not yet it this. what is the sense of that? i could and will ask you to describe the various queries and , to protectexternal american privacy as it relates. let me ask three things. on top of that. can you describe it ivc oriented training that has to be undergone for 215 databases? or the training internal rules and external audit designed to protect privacy taken seriously at the nsa? the answer to that is yes.

if this is the case, asked in why we should be moving the process to a new and system that is a free enter rises them which does that no matter how they testify, not want to do this. we went through that in i said. that's why we have to do amid the -- immunity. they did not want to do it. it is not their training. it is not their practice. it is not the nature of their workforce. it is a high concentration. 22 people are making serious .ecisions it is a private sector operation and it is huge. not everybody is verizon and eight. there are a lot of small telephone companies that have to do the same ring. i do not give make sense. how do you compare the security pop -- possibilities of the system it does not yet exist,

which i promise you is not welcome by those who would be asked to do it, to prevent -- to replace a system working well, which the public is naturally .uspicious about 39% rating , butublic never trust us if we're doing something for national security which is trustworthy, by trustworthy evil, who were trained, and they in ae their lives to this, particular place, why cash it out? >> thank you for the questions. the current system involves a host of safeguards, to close it starts, policy procedural safe guards him a training safeguards, and safeguards around eliminating the number of

people allowed to ask if the database. very restrictive, completely audited, and with software in place that prevent them from making an erroneous query that has not been authorized i the court. record in that arena is outstanding in that regard in privacy. iotecting think those were necessary for two reasons. it is the government with the data, as opposed to someone with -- who is not the government. closelyeed to circumscribed those. the second reason is because the data was aggregated. under the new program, the data is not aggregated or held by the government. telephone companies are holding data they already possess today or there is no additional data

they are holding except queries from us that have it to civic number of interest. we will work with the countries to put protections into place so our influence in a particular number does not leak out and provide warning to potential terrorist. the companies already have this data, so the implications are just in this regard. >> it is a large order for an untested series of companies. the art and the struggle to get people trained, to have them locked in on their duty as they go to work every single day, ashley those 22, but nsa in general, where nobody has complained about the private violations. everyone is worried about what might happen. everyone is always worried about what might happen here in that it has not happened. it all comes to an end at the end of next year.

we will have to look at it again. profit-making, and i have dealt with telecommunications a long time. they say many things. they do not do many things. when we started the program, which was really controversial home of a road me letters -- controversial, they wrote me letters. it ended up in the supreme court and they all lost. i would just assume not give them the chance. i am sorry it has taken along. >> no robbie there it enqueue. >> enqueue. like many of my colleagues, i want to see our intelligence collection was strength to provide more trans and the, torove ivc, and also

increase oversight. at the same time, as many of us have it best, we need to ensure we have the tools necessary to help her tech our nation from terrorist attacks. i want to follow-up on some of the questions that have been raised by senator rockefeller. under the usa freedom act, the private sector would retain phone records rather than nsa. that is a major change. i believe it was mr. cole who pointed out, yes, but they are already saving these data. they are doing so for a completely different purpose than what we are contemplating. essentially, they are doing so

for billing purposes for the most part. some experts warned us that data held in the private sector are at much greater risk of being breached by hackers, being for purposesused other than that for which they were collected, were being missed used by personnel than if the data were continued to be held by federal entities. if only to look at what has year, wherethe past the security firm called 2013 the year of the mega-breach. that had million and their personal information compromised in the target case. there was a very compelling ,eport put out by our colleague senator rockefeller, the chairman of the commerce

that found private companies already collect, mind, and sell as many as 75,000 individual data points on each consumer. there was a recent report by the fcc that found that companies group virtually every american by race, hobby, medical, conditions. things we would all think were private. there was a story a couple of years ago by the new york times that described to father of a teenager learned she was pregnant because he kept seeing all of these flyers for chris and baby clothes coming to her in the mail. thosetrast to all of searches the nsa database, are limited to a very few, highly trained personnel. limitedngle search is him audited, and logged.

there are have the coal safeguards. technical safeguards. you cannot do a search that will not work here at compliance issues have to be reported to the fisa court and congress. my question for you is, how are we going to ensure that these same kind of robust protections, even greater that many of us want to see, are in place if we are going to have the data scattered across all of these companies? i just do not see how you will datae the privacy of that and is it not inevitable that many more people will have access to the data than they do under the current is him?

-- system? >> thank you. the data is and has been in the possession of the telephone company since they started giving records however many decades ago that was good what we did at nsa was get a periodic seat of the data, which we then aggregated and held in a database. describedings you were held on a copy nsa held on it database. the billing records existed before and will continue to this regardless of the future of the 215 program and all those to hacking and that sort of thing, the telephone companies you with every day. there will notis be a government held aggregated that of telephone numbers we apply all of those protections to. we make the database go away and

then rely on the billing the telephone him pennies have held for decades and continue to hold or their own purposes and we query against the. -- those. >> don't you think there is a difference between the telephone companies holding this data for billing purposes, versus holding it and knowing the government pacific to them selectors, which will make them. about why the information is being written vested? you will have to go across a large number of companies to find the information here it is teams to me to inevitably involve more people. that is very different from the kind of .ata dump you were receiving i just want to make sure, as we privacy,g to increase

strengthen the safeguards, that we do not end up doing the opposite by having this data, these data, held by the private sector. now,w they are held there but they are held for an entirely different reason. asking thosebe private sector employees to do the queries that are now done by an extremely limited classified number. ofextremely limited number federal employees. >> i understand. we will work with the telephone companies to ensure our queries are kept in a secure fashion by people who have gone through the clearance process the government runs, to ensure they are protected the right way. >> also, if i may, in

traditional law enforcement, we are regularly going to phone companies with subpoenas and things of that nature to acquire some of their billing records and him of the various and kinds of information. we go to them for pin registers on the lawn was meant i. we work with phone companies to do wiretaps on the law enforcement side. there is a long history of working with phone companies and using their data and fist roadies from a law enforcement perspective that has given us confidence in that regard. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. i have a question or two in light of the recent revelation that the senator referenced that the nsa has in using a loophole of the fisa amendment act to search for americans private medications without a warrant.

what some people have dubbed the search loop old, and i think it was for target reform medications. the government based on that letter believes it has the authority to deliberately search phone also were e-mailed of specific americans and to circumvent the traditional protections hearing the five with amendment. i would ask mr. legend and old, do you believe the government should be allowed to conduct searches of his mission on u.s. citizens, collected under sections of an o2, without having to seek a warrant for that information? the way it has been viewed and has an interpreted is the first issue is whether you are legally off arise to collect the information in the first race. this is what sections of an o2 allows us to do. we target only

non-us or since and only people believed to be out by the united date. those are the strict limits or there will be communications at involve americans that are incidental. they are not targeted. >> you end up collecting incidental information you're the authorization under section 7022 let the information trumps the profession of the americans who -- would typically be afforded under the for the moment? process. is a several you are first allowed to protect the information. it is like a criminal law wired that. you collect calls a make from other people, who may not even target of your invest in addition. but you will collect those calls as well because they involve the person whose phone you are

tapping. if you are legally permitted to collect the information, then you have got it and then the session is whether or not you can access that information, used information we legally possess, and this is what is different from the root i'm in the is that is going to search for the american, the u.s. or since records, which we are not doing. we get those in deadly. we have them legally under 702 and in the russian is whether or not it look through and those records because they are already illegally hours -- illegally hours. we have not done out to the them illegally in any shape or form. legitimate from investigation, to further legitimate antiterrorism investigations and things of that nature am a we certainly have restrictions we try to

waste internally on those and we try to make sure they are users on we and we try to make sure they are only used or specific possess already legally it. >> you have made the government's division very clear and i appreciate that. it is something we should probably look at, given the at forave is opportunity reform right now. i want to get to my idle restaurant. we're running short on time already. i want to go back to the issue raised early on and hr 3361ons around how to find a specific selection term. looking back at the old draft from the house, it could set a term used uniquely to describe a person, and be, or account. that is a pretty tight version, andhe new

election term means a just read terms such as, and there is a laundry list of items there. i have validation every time i see such as, because it is up to the risen reading to decide whether the next thing they imagine is are the poor is not. >> under your interpretation of the definition, passed by the house, what are some records secluded collection on a civic election term? >> any bowl collection. what is currently being authorized by the court of the collection of all records, and internet metadata records, indiscriminately, that would be certainly,hibited. if you went to collect all the telephone records within a certain zip code, indiscriminately, that would be prohibited.

focus.nt is to limit and it is to prohibit indiscriminate collection and only authorized focus and intentional collections for ace this the purpose. the reason that such as is in there is that it is very difficult to predict what you may come across that you might need, that will for you ample involve a larger number of records and just one specific telephone call to once the of the person that once the of a kind. some of the examples i gave in my opening damon. you have somebody who you know will build an improvised explosive device using ball bearings and fertilizer or you may want to go to the stores in the area that sell ball bearings and fertilizer. it is broader than a pacific item, but it is much less than every store in america, regardless, and then sort through it. if you know a

terrorist suspect stated a particular hotel for a couple of nights, but you do not know who it was only you might get the hotel fusses records for those couple of nights, to see who all the guests were at the hotel to then cross ref is that with other information to identify who the terrorist was. it is focused and discriminating. it is not indiscriminate. but it is larger than a specific identity of a pacific person. so, we need to have enough room to do an investigation that is effective and, we need to have enough restrictions so we are not indiscriminately collecting records in bulk. if there are better ways to define it, and it is a tough one to define, but if there are better ways to define it come a we are interested in working on that. we think this doesn't. >> i appreciate your willingness to work on this. the chair brought up the issue early into the discussion.

i would end this by saying, i weekend to get it right when we do a good job of defining the terms very specifically. i do not give a lot of trust to his attempt and legislative history being the that described -- that ends up holding the day in court years from now. holds a lot more sway in the room. thank you. >> thank you, madam chairman. i have a couple of quick questions and i really appreciate so many of my into this who dug very deeply, trying to plow through these critically inortant privacy protections the essential needs of national .ecurity

there are a lot of good folks at nsa in terms of their work. on senatorollow-up rockefeller and senator collins, since this is an open hearing, to at least make clear or further understand what i think we may be doing with this house bill. it was reported, when we think about 215 in the previous program that that collected metadata that was, with those entities, those companies, that entered into some relationship , and while large , in many were involved cases, the fastest growing set , wirelessne calls calls, were actually a

relatively small percentage. is that an accurate description of how the press has presented the 215 program priory i go >> yes, that is how the press representative. >> and if that was an accurate representation, wouldn't the universe of calls that are now potentially exposed to these kinds of inquiries be dramatically larger since any telco, regardless of whether they had a relationship or not, and any type of call, whether it is wired or wireless, be subject to the inquiries now made through this process? >> that is accurate. greg so, again, with the notion here that under the guise of --ther protect they privacy

a further protecting privacy, i think the number of calls would be exponentially larger than what the prior system was. is that an accurate statement? >> i don't believe so, because the only calls that the are those will see directly responsive to the predicate information we have. >> in terms of actual inquiries, but the universe of potential , whenthat you could query prior to the calls are only queried out of the database from ,he nsa, which the report said in many cases, did not include the fastest growing number of new calls, wireless calls. now even though the number may be the same because the protections are still the same, the actual universe of potential calls that could be queried against is dramatically larger than what 215 has right now.

>> potentially, yes, that's right. let me just go to one other item. one of the things, again, i will check with staff to make sure this is all appropriate to be after, one of the things to 15 did not include was location information. and in the nature of wireless technology, you can identify where a cell phone call originates. protections privacy do we have to ensure that location data will not be queried on a going forward basis -- who holdlco to this data hold not only the billing information, but the location data as well. be up tok that would

specific requests and specific court orders. right now, when we have a good basis, we can get good location information, and sometimes it's very valuable. instancenk of one where it save somebody's life who had been taken hostage, being able to get that information quickly. it will not be collected in bulk. it will be collected in the individual circumstances that warranted. 215ut in the previous section where the data was held, not -- tion data was >> that's right, we did not get the location data with what was held in the database of the nsa and could be queried with nsa's protection, but we would always have the ability to go back to the telephone company providers in an appropriate circumstance and ask them for individual location information that we but thatoriented. >>

would require an additional step. willght, and that is what happen now. >> would they be combined into a single step or a dual step? >> i think it would require the court to take a look at whether or not it was appropriate to provide location information as well as call data records, or whether or not only call data records were appropriate. it just depends on the circumstance. andgain, my time is expired i appreciate that. it is essential to the public that while we are trying to get ,his balance right and understandably, the public has a great deal of concern about the government holding the data, there lies a number of concerns

the privacy act to vests should also -- activists should also be concerned about in terms of the scope of the data as well as greater access, if we are able to go at the telcos, and reemphasizing a couple of my colleagues said, the hope is that there will be an additional, higher-level of security standard and higher level of training, and higher level of commitment from the telcos of these individuals who are going to have access to data, that they will have the same -- i don't think the leverage will be to the standards of the folks of the nsa, but this is an issue that needs to be thoroughly vetted. thank you, madam chairman. >> thank you very much, senator warner. we have completed this panel. wyden has asked in a more charming form, then

sometimes, to ask one more question. agency a to ask your question relevant to a matter that has taken a lot of our time. for each of you, just go right down the row, do you believe it would be appropriate for your senateto secretly search files without seeking external authorization or approval? >> no. >> now, if i understand your question, by definition we are authorized to conduct a authorization of some manner. >> you would have to have the appropriate legal approvals in every instance. >> so would we. >> thank you very much. >> if i may, let me thank the

audience for their attention. this is a controversial subject and i know people feel strongly. it is very much appreciated. i would also like to thank the capitol police for their attention to this. we will change panels now, and i will introduce the next panel. i would like to thank them. thank the witnesses very much. do we have someone to change the name tag ec? [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> i would like to introduce the panel. i will introduce everyone and then begin from my left, you're right, and go down the line. the first person to be introduced is worth the senior counsel for the center of democracy and technology, mr. geiger, deputy director for the freedom, security, surveillance project at the center for technology.d mr. geithner has written extensively on the subject of collectionrm, bulk and surveillance in general. second, mr. garfield, president and ceo of the information technology industry council , an advocacy and policy organization that

represents a number of tech companies, including google, facebook, yahoo!, microsoft, and many others. mr. garfield has previously appeared he for the house judiciary committee to discuss pfizer reforms. the final witness is michael woods, assistant general counsel for verizon. safetys the public policy team. before joining verizon, he was chief of the national security at the fbi. he published a number of peer-reviewed law articles on national security, including articles related to section 215 of the united states patriot act. and finally, we have stewart baker, a partner in the washington office of steptoe and johnson. he creepy as lee served as the first assistant secretary for in the department of

homeland security. from 1992-1994, he served as counsel for the national security agency. he brings a wealth of experience in both telecom and national security law. we will begin with you mr. geithner. once again, i will point out the five-minute clock. if you could adhere to it, it would be appreciated. >> thank you, chairman feinstein. members of the committee, thank you for holding this open me tog and inviting testify on this very important issue of surveillance reform. i wish to say that i appreciate the dedication of the members of the intelligence community and of this committee to protecting both national security and civil liberties. anhough i am here as advocate for civil liberties, i recognize that the intelligence

and law enforcement communities for those who wish to cause us great harm and i also realize that a major terrorist attack is just about the worst thing that can happen to civil liberties. at the same time, in the decade since the 9/11 attacks, the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of broad surveillance and it is time for a correction. the answer cannot be mass surveillance of individuals with no connection to a crime or terrorism. congress has an opportunity now to establish meaningful privacy protections without weakening security. whatever reform congress settles on is unlikely to be revisited for many years, so congress should not just focus on surveillance programs and technologies of today, but those of tomorrow. the freedom act as the legislation that has made the most headway in this regard. addressough it does not

all surveillance issues, it does seek to address bulk surveillance. however, there is serious and widespread doubt as to whether the bill as passed by the house accomplishes its goal. bulks not use the phrase collection as coded jargon for existing programs or nationwide surveillance dragnets. bulk collection, as any normal person would understand it, means the large-scale collection of information about individuals with no connection to a crime or investigation. in that respect, the bill does not and bulk collection. this is not just the opinion of privacy advocates, but also more than half of the cosponsors of the usa per freedom is usa privacy freedom act as well as a

number of corporate leaders. is a requirement that the government use specific selection terms in its demand for data. however, the definition of specific selection is openerately ambiguous and ended and ambiguous language is what led to bulk collection in the first place. there is nothing in the bill that would prohibit, for example, the use of verizon or gmail.com or the state of search as a specific selection term. i can believe that this current government is sufficiently's done -- sufficiently stung by in thisto address this decade, but we will be left with language that is ambiguous. we recognize the need for in making flexibility

surveillance requests. with my time remaining, i would like to propose an additional safeguard and path forward. rather than trying to find some magical definition for his pacific selection term, congress should strengthen other parts of the statute, in particular existing minimization procedures, and establishment them as a and or privacy procedures where there are none establish and privacy procedures where there are none currently. then the bill should prohibit retention of information of individuals who do not meet specific criteria as outlined in the statute. foreign powers, agents of foreign powers or in contact with foreign powers or agents of foreign powers. compliance should be subject to oversight and revisited throughout a clean if procedures

-- revisited periodically if procedures change significantly. drafted properly, this could provide for both privacy and flexibility. thank you very much and i look forward to your questions. >> on behalf of 58 of the most innovative and dynamic companies in the world, we thank you for the opportunity to appear before the panel today. it is our firm view that we have a timely opportunity to advance surveillance reform in a fashion that both reflects who we are as a nation and is well advanced our geopolitical and economic interest. it is our hope and we strongly urge the senate to see this -- i seize this opportunity, and reaffirm our commitment to doing whatever we can to be helpful in achieving that goal.

my testimony today will be focused onto things, one, why it is important to act and act judiciously, and second, the steps that are necessary to be taken to ensure we have a strong bill with broad support. with regards to the first, the reason to act as because it is in our national self-interest. i am proud to represent a group of companies that are the global leaders in innovation. as such, they compete all around the world and see firsthand the wide ranging impact of the nsa disclosures. they are able to see firsthand the economic impact, the lost business sales and lost business opportunities that most experts will be in the tens of billions of dollars. they experienced firsthand the growing contagion of persistent protectionist policies that aim to limit their ability to whether it isly, forced localization requirements limitzil or attempts to

cross-border data flows, these laws are the first step to creating an internet that is creasing lay vulcanized -- is increasingly vulcanized and no longer the global internet we have all come to appreciate. if that were not bad enough, we have experienced firsthand the growing distrust of whether the united states is willing to adhere to global norms as it relates to surveillance. all of these reasons that we think it is important to act to regain trust as we move forward expeditiously. what should we do moving forward? fortunately, there is a growing consensus as to a path forward. we released principles in january that seemed quite forward leaning at the time we release them. today, they have been largely embraced as being the way we should move forward. usa freedom act incorporates many of these principles. however, in two respects, the

usa freedom act needs to be improved. two sections need to be addressed. first is one that mr. geithner addressed, bulk collection. usa freedom act endeavors to end bulk collection. the language of the heart of that, they came out of the house intelligence and house judiciary committees, we think achieved that goal. however, the language is missing in the final bill that came out of the house, and it is no longer clear that the language will achieve the goal of bulk election. ending bulk collection. >> can you tell me exactly what language you're speaking of? >> it is the same section we have been talking about. i will conclude that by making the point that there is an opportunity to changing that definition in a way that will move forward through the house

in a way that addresses the concerns we are raising without violating the interests of national security. >> the second area is transparency. >> let me just say, we would welcome any suggestion you might make in writing on an amendment to the specific selection. the same goes for anybody else. it would be most helpful if when you say things, if you want to us in legalhing to language or not legal language, we would appreciate it. know, there isy a fair amount of conversation happening both inside this room and outside this room with the aim of coming up with language that is acceptable to the intelligence community, and there is good progress as far as i can tell being made in being able to do that. last issue is transparency. transparency is a key part in

rebuilding trust both nationally and internationally. the usa freedom act takes steps to addressing that with the resolution reached between the department of justice and many of the most impacted companies who happen to be our members. there are still additional steps with regard to the bands -- with andrd to building trust maintaining national security. let me say that i too deeply respect the work being done by the intelligence community and offer my testimony with a great deal of humility. i recognize that there is a lot we don't know. for usy, it is important to play a leadership role in finding them have forward. we look forward to working with pathcommittee -- finding a forward. we look forward to working with this committee to achieve that. >> good afternoon.

i am very pleased to testify before the committee on the topic of intelligence surveillance act reforms this afternoon. i name is michael woods and am the vice president and associate general counsel for verizon communications. i am responsible for the national security and public safety portfolio in our office and the chairman has also kindly ed my prior government service. the revelations this past summer about the ball collection of metadata have eroded public confidence in legal structures that are meant to oversee intelligence activity. there is significant concern about the impact of surveillance activities on the privacy and civil liberties of americans. for verizon, customer privacy is a top priority. we believe that any collection by intelligence agencies of our customer data should be compelled under a set of clear

and agreed upon rules. we believe these rules should be backed up with effective as mucht and have transparency as possible consistent with national requirements. we support the usa freedom act because we see it is largely achieving these objectives. transparency rules that verizon has already implemented and firmly rejects the idea that verizon or any other communications providers be compelled to maintain or collect data for these purposes. we believe the collection and analysis of data for intelligence purposes is an inherently governmental function. compelling us or any other private entity to perform this function on behalf of the government is utterly inconsistent with the protection of our customers privacy.

if verizon has a legal obligation to provide customer data to an intelligence agency or a law enforcement organization, it should be limited to that data which verizon generates in the ordinary course of business, and a production of data should be compelled at arms length overseen by a court. we appreciate the careful balance congress must achieve here. we are confident this is something you will accomplish. we stand ready to assist this committee in any way we can. in fact we very much appreciate the open channel of cooperation this committee has had with parties interested in this legislation and we appreciate the bipartisan way in which the committee has operated. thank you for the opportunity to testify today. i would be happy to answer any questions committee members may have. >> thank you, mr. baker? >> chairman feinstein, vice chairman chandler, and it is a

pleasure to be here. i would like to make two points. first, i do not believe we should end the bulk collection program. it will put us at risk, it will pass senator king suggested slower our response to serious terrorist incidents and with respect to this data as senator collins and senator rockefeller make clear and senator mikulski as well we do not know how the data will be stored or protected and the security of the searches being conducted it is of very serious risk we are taking for a payoff that in my view is minimal. what i would like to talk about in the main part of my presentation is the second step, the piling on step the house undertook to say not only will

we end balks collection but require that you shows that you have one of a magic list of five identifiers you are asking for. if it is not on that list or doesn't look like something on that list you cannot ask for it for terrorism purposes. the list is person, entity, account, address or device. we will talk about some actual searches that we wanted to take, did undertake in live terrorist incidents. the subject of cross-country chase was brought, investigated in part because someone reported it was a guy buying large amounts of household chemicals in be resupply shops with a shaky sorry. it was appropriate for the fbi to say we go to all the house will be the shops for someone

buying this stuff. and that is an improper search. where is the magic selector. we are not searching for an entity, and you can't do it according to this. and we want to ask as we should, if you don't have any indication of somebody whose phone was active and every one of those shooting sites at the time the shootings occurred? of course we should ask that question. and yet that is not a person, that is not an entity, it is an aggressive easing and address is everyone who is in touch with a particular cell power but at that point you are starting to stretch the concept of address in precisely the way senator

widen -- wyden has argued against. we cannot imagine all the clues we need to follow up in order to catch terrorists. writing a list with words like such as in front of it does not actually accomplish the goal i think was intended to reduce balkan indiscriminate searches and at the same time will prove to be a straitjacket not withstanding what the did the the attorney general says. i would like to see his justification for each of the insurances he gave us about how he would conduct those searches. i think it will require him to immediately become creative about the meaning of those words in a way i think senator mikulski -- wyden would not approve but all of us believe should be carried out and i would suggest to the chairmen who suggested that if we if i understood her correctly instead

of a list of magic words that even harley geiger won't defense we should try to find a principle that says what we think is necessary to avoid bulked election ended is something along the lines of narrowing the search, avoiding unnecessary collection of innocent parties's information. and we don't look for things like that. weiner rosa search, and that is probably the way to get out of a solution that satisfies no one. >> thank you very much. let's go to questions. this is off the top of my head. let's take the case that mr. baker just mentioned. and wholesale beauty product

companies and buying certain amount of chemicals, and this looks very suspicious. the fbi goes to query him and find he has been in contact with a known outside at member in pakistan. what problem do you have with that? >> let's see if i understand your scenario correctly. they have phone records of an al qaeda member in pakistan and found out they are trying to find the name of the suspicious individual, they find out if they had any contact with each other. i don't have a problem with that. i don't see why that would be prohibited under this bill they have all records in pakistan they should have the effect on record that he was in contact with this other subject. >> on this specific point, it

seems to me that that is exactly the kind of thing that we are looking to enable this collection. >> if an individual is in direct contact with a foreign power, there is a legitimate reason, what we are concerned with and everyone at the table has expressed concern with the ambiguity of the definition, the way it goes out presenting bulb election we are concerned at least what i am concerned with this collection of individuals who have not been in contact with the agent of a foreign power, individuals who are not connected to the investigation. >> let me stop you. my understanding whether it was 2012, 288 cases or query's, 2012, the database was only query 288 times. out of the 288 times, 12 cases

where sent to the fbi for a warrant. it was very selective. this was not anymore than that. >> i trust the department of justice, the administration, when the u.s. a freedom act would provide this capability. what we are concerned with is it provides this capability plus other unknown capabilities that undermine the goal of bulk collection. >> what is that? you said it enabled them to do other things? >> like what i mentioned in my opening statement. the definition is specific, open ended enough that it begs the question what counts as a specific selection, it could be the state of maine, could be verizon, could be something that would sweep and a large number of individuals not connected to the investigation and i understand the need for flexibility and it would be

unavoidable to gather information from people not connected to the investigation. we could come up with scenarios like that and in that case i mentioned this in my testimony, they should be requirement at the front, the least intrusive means possible and not >> reporter: the information as they currently do. not retain the information of people who are not in contact with the suspect. >> you also mention strengthening minimization. how would you strengthen the minimization? >> there are minimization requirements in section 215, there are none for the statute, the u.s. a freedom act would put in privacy procedures, there are no minimization procedures in statute for national security letters. what i propose doing is what i just described which is the requirement the government used the least intrusive means

possible, a clear prohibition on dissemination of individuals who do not meet certain criteria. section 215 of the three authorities adjust mentioned have the most detailed minimization procedures and it requires minimization of retention and dissemination or minimization of retention of prohibition of dissemination, nothing about acquisition. i am proposing an upgrade to that at least in certain circumstances where the risk that the information gathered will sweep in a large number of people. >> what do you think of that? >> clarify the search i had in mind which is the fbi here is that somebody is buying all these chemicals and decides to go to multiple stores and say have anybody been buying quantities of these chemicals? the only search is for the chemicals, not for name or an

entity. >> that is the conflict and this is a real case. >> that is open to question, whether or not the chemicals will work. whether the store would be a specific selection term. part of the problem is that specific selection term, something agencies use in practice the there's not a lot of public information. this has not been built into statute before. >> if you knew that a known terrorist or someone who is a likely terrorist was coming into this country and the fbi wanted to get hold of the manifest, would you limit it to one plane or would you say they should have access to all the manifests at a given time for some reasonable limits? >> i believe law-enforcement does give manifests but i would encourage the least intrusive means possible, all the people whose records you have fooled if

they are no longer not relevant or no reason to suspect they are connected to the investigation. >> the purpose would be to get a specific name, they're looking for someone. it is limited. pardon me? >> i want to add that ultimately what you are hearing is the language, the final language in the u.s. a freedom act doesn't fully balance the equities we are talking about. about privacy or mr. baker raised about protecting national security so a concerted effort needs to be made to improve that language so both of those equities are better balanced. the concluding thing is it is feasible to do that. >> mr vice chairman? >> happy to yield to senator king who has to leave here shortly. >> a couple of questions.

first, i think i heard the answer to this but i wanted to be clear, do you feel the u.s. a patriot freedom act is superior to the current law? harley geiger? >> i believe it is an improvement, yes. >> i believe it is an improvement as well that can be improved. >> yes, i agree. >> mr. baker, i didn't ask you because you said unequivocally you don't agree. i appreciate that. second question, mr. woods, you heard my question to the prior panel about duration and i think in your testimony you sort of said we will do this but not if we have to change anything. how would you feel about a provision that said 18 months or two years of retention. >> we would be opposed to. our position is as now we produce the records we retain for business purposes, we do not want to be compelled to retain records beyond that.

>> i don't see how we can make this change if you are not willing to make that commitment. what if you change your policies and say we will keep records for tweet to month? then we have lost virtually all the intelligence value. >> as technology develops, people and companies will transition from older to newer forms of technology. the kind of records that were generated by the old switched telephone system are not the same records that are generated by the wireless system and as the bulk of people's telephone usage moves from one system to the other the kinds of records we have changed, they will probably change again as things evolve. >> the thrust of my question, you are recommending we go from the government holding the data, you are not willing to commit to holding the data for meaningful period of time in order to make it -- otherwise the protection of national security becomes a loser.

>> you can't tell us to switch but do what as we choose. >> i don't think we are saying we are doing as we choose. we retain records generated in the ordinary course of business. we are not in intelligence agency. we don't collect any records to conduct surveillance of our customers. we have all 4 requests for records that we have. we are not, we are opposed to being compelled to collect records for reasons that are completely unconnected. >> no one is asking you to collect records that maintain records you already have. >> general principle in these records is we do not keep them from moderate than the business purpose because we learned the longer you keep records beyond what we need from the greater the risk to the privacy of our customers of the best protection for our customers's privacy is not to retain records be on the period for which they are needed in the business. >> did house examine this question when this legislation was passed?

>> whenever asked we made this position clear. >> thank you, madam chair, mr. senator chambliss. >> senator rockefeller? excuse me. going down like that. wyden is at 13. >> as i work that. >> thank you. thank you for getting me in such deep trouble. you said in your statement for the record which we do not have which i regret, very unusual we don't have statements for the record, the bottom line is, quote, national security is of fundamental government functions that should not be outsourced to

private companies. i have to agree with that. verizon is the business of providing service to your customers, not acting as an intelligence agency and many companies in rural states like west virginia which are not called at&t or verizon or frontier but have very small operations but nevertheless they cover people, my farm in west virginia is such a place. they have to go into this business of becoming nsa trained professionals to be able to query and go through all the processes we talk about with the previous panel. and the nsa's role in storing and searching this data, transferring the responsibility for the query is from an intelligence agency to the

telephone companies. i have not necessarily have a great experience with telephone companies. cramming all kinds of things because i started investigations unit in the conference committee, we never had one. i got myself subpoena power. and was a joyous moments. the experience with telecommunications companies, you yourself have used this set longer than a business reason. you wouldn't keep the business reason. it may have nothing to do with as senator king said, intelligence reason. it sounds to me like it diminished national security for the nsa and expanded national security for verizon and i am wondering is that right? particularly wondering how does that call relate in any fashion

with the first statement that i read that you felt should not be outsourced to private companies. i never believed no matter what you tell me because i was chairman when you did the pfizer thing, as any lawyer and i did a lot of that and verizon and at&t were kicking and screaming when they got liability protection. by that time they built up so much ill will, they didn't want any part of this. it is not your business. nsa people go to work every day with only one purpose in mind. they were trained for years and years. they are looking -- and the free enterprise system is an entirely -- my family has done very well. in the intelligence business, a very different view, what you

think should be doing this but i don't think you want to be. and you said you shouldn't be. >> the first statement you made reference to in response to the idea that the telephone company should be retaining more data and performing the search or analysis on behalf of the intelligence community. that is not in the u.s. a freedom act. it is the proposal that has been discussed as part of the larger reform discussions. we do not want that. we do not believe we should be doing that. what we are prepared to do and have done for many years and all sorts of telecommunications companies do is respond to targeted requests by law enforcement or the intelligence community and what we see in the u.s. a freedom act is not a shift of the national security role to verizon but a change in the kinds of requests that we get from the nsa instead of

requesting all the detail records we will get a request for a targeted list of call detail records which we will deliver in the way we deliver in response to law enforcement subpoenas and other authorities. as to the -- >> can i ask the question? my time is running out. what about these little companies i called verizon, at&t and frontier? you don't do -- you don't get their billing, they get their billing. they have to set up systems which are comparable to what you are going to set up if you set it up which i am not sure you can because of comparison to the nsa. so all of their customers and all of that building information is free and clear. >> we are subject to other authorities, the fbi could go to very small companies, many of

them don't have the infrastructure, drawing from fbi experience law-enforcement agencies and agencies like the fbi used to dealing with that. in some cases they have to do more work on the government side. i think these requirements, security requirements already exists, not just peculiar to collections, other orders require we handled this in environment that we observe all the security procedures that are mandated by the government, by the attorney general and director of national intelligence and i agreed that is a different burden for giant telecommunications company. >> unit which specializes in this. those companies don't have a unit. >> i have had that experience with the fbi, someone who didn't know. it is -- that is all true, the

kinds of information the intelligence community is most after reside largely in a small number of large providers. you can see that reflected in the programs that existed to now. >> maybe and maybe not. >> senator wyden. >> question for you with respect to the economic implications of these overly broad and as a surveillance practices. the way i come to this is companies that are part of your organization, technology sector, this is advantage america, this is an area where we consistently leads, cutting edge technologies, a host of exciting developments, cloud computing is just one of them. these are all areas where we have a chance in a fragile

economy to create good paying innovation oriented jobs and my kate is if of foreign enemy was doing the damage to the american economy that some of these over the broad practices said doing our citizens would be up in arms, people would be up in arms, literally from coast to coast and you have highlighted page 3 of your testimony, the forester, technology foundation, $35 billion loss to the cloud computing industry, just one part of the technology sector over three years, talk about the balkanization of the internet. it would be helpful if you flesh that out. what you are touching on is when countries like europe and brazil and others are applying various

restrictions and opportunities for access to digital goods and services that this makes it hard for us to have that kind of seamless internet but flush out the concept of the balkanization of the internet because i think it is important for people to really understand the implications of the economic harm being done to the american branch. your companies have gone to great lengths to constantly innovate and by and large they like to be left alone by government. >> that is an accurate statement. >> and go innovate and i read about john chambers in the last few days, a host of technology leaders of the arms. so this question of how these overly broad and as a practices damaged companies -- what do you mean by the balkanization of the internet you feel is taking place. i feel so strongly about this that i am investigating it as chairman of the finance

committee because this has been implications on the global competitiveness, we will be following that up as well. >> we appreciate that. the two concepts are interrelated so the internet as i mentioned in my testimony is built on open global platforms and heavily reliant on trust and so what we see in a lot of international markets is a move toward creating barriers to that openness, interoperability which would lead to new governance structure is where you have essentially gardens that are separated from the broader global internet which is highly problematic, the benefit of the internet is it is global and interconnected. the loss of trust as well globally which i mentioned in my oral testimony is problematic because the reason we have --

u.s. companies of done well globally is we innovate but also because there is a trust in what we are innovating advancing. if you undermine both of those things then it results in economic loss and those losses are not theoretical, they are real and have broader implications not just for our companies, the foundation of the internet has changed and all social good that derives from it is also impacted. >> thank you, madam chair. >> thank you, senator collins. >> thank you. mr. baker, first of all it is good to see you again and i very much appreciate the fact that you gave us some real life examples to contemplate as we attempt to get this right and that is what everybody on this committee wants to do.

how long does verizon currently retain call record data for business purposes? >> that is a complex question to answer because we have many different systems for retaining data. i would take the opportunity to say number of witnesses referred to an fcc requirement that we retain for 18 months. >> that was going to be my next question, whether you are retired to retain the data for 18 months. >> the answer is no. the fcc requirements requires us to maintain billing records for 18 months and when their role was enacted in the 1980s, our billing records integrated lot of called detail records. if you remember what telephone bills used to look like, pages and pages. there was a difference between long distance and local. as the system as evolve to most

of our customers, 70% to 80% of wireline customers and wireless customers are on unlimited plans. it is no longer part of billing records we retain. >> we are moving more and more toward monthly calling plans. i am trying to figure out how this is going to work if you are not going to have the kind of details phone numbers that could be queried and if you are not keeping all of the data for at least 18 months though there is no -- sounds like you are collecting or keeping less data than you used to. individual calls that you are charged for.

and you are keeping them of varying lengths and don't accept that there is an fcc requirement to keep that data for 18 months. >> to the first point, we are not generating fewer call detail records. our systems generate them even when our customers are on the unlimited plans the systems whiches and the gate weighs automatically generate those records. we use them primarily for network management for managing traffic across the system and we have many different systems generally retaining those 12-18 months for business purposes. we satisfied the fcc requirement by retaining actual copies of the building paper work. the fcc requirement is all about resolving billing disputes with customers so we literally keep copies of the bills but the call

detail records are still being generated and -- >> excuse me for interrupting, but if after 12 months, you are purging the call detail record and just retaining the billing record which doesn't have the call details in many cases then wouldn't the government be losing access potentially to six months worth of data, there seems to be this common assumption that there are going to be 18 months of data, it is not in the bill and you are telling me you don't keep that kind of data across the board. >> that is correct. if our law-enforcement agency came to us and asked us for call detail records from three years ago we might not be able to honor that request but that is

the position that all law enforcement is in right now, the bulk collection for a longer period of time because it is a is doing a continuous feed and keeping it themselves. we don't have data five years back. it would just all collection would be from our ordinary business records. >> mr. baker, do you see that as a problem for the intelligence community? >> it is a step in to the dark and seems like a long step down. we don't know how much data we will be able to get by serving these orders. whenever verizon's practices are we don't know what the practices will be with frontier or comcast or a smaller providers so it is going to be a very bumpy ride.

>> thank you. >> your comments to a great extent crystallized, just the four of us, have a brief -- >> five minutes. >> i am sorry. take ten. >> mr. baker gave us a couple of examples about the positive use of 2015. i could give you a couple more. do you know of any abuse of the use of 215? >> if there was an abuse it is unlikely the public is going to know about it because that abuse would be capped -- shrouded in secrecy. certainly the oversbroad use resulted in loss of trust in american companies and translated to real dollar loss

in lost jobs. moreover, mass surveillance itself is an abuse of privacy rights and americans and human-rights of people abroad and the government has a history of abuse, not just this government but the government worldwide where surveillance power is too broad. there's not a lot of evidence that the authorities are in fact affected. we had multiple independent review board including privacy and civil liberties oversight board and the president's reviewed group and members of this panel who have reviewed the classified evidence and determine pleasantries of means could achieve the same ends so i would say not only do i not have information about abuse but i have information that the authorities you are asking about are not effective. >> i would strongly disagree with you and just as a simple example mr. baker gave about

this case, had we not had 215 i am convinced if we had this bill through in place under the facts we would have had an explosion in the subway in new york city. and it's the reaction we had after 9/11 is that you referred to that may be overstepped and i understand what you are saying, the reaction would have been to the point in my opinion where we wouldn't be here today talking about modifying it in a softer way. we would talk about modifying in a stronger way. mr. baker, you and homeland security, in till 2009 or so, i am not sure how much access you had to reviewing cases that may

have involved the use of 215 but can you shed any light on this from the standpoint of any abuses or reasons, even stronger reasons why 215 should be maintained. >> he said he did know of any abuses and i agree with that. i did not see abuses and i will say we felt so strongly about having a large data set that we had bitter battles with the european union to make sure we could get information on everyone who was flying into the united states and most of them were innocent but we needed the data to go through and look for the most suspect passengers and give them a middle more questioning at the border, enormously effective program that relied on having a comprehensive database, not a

selective database based on five magic terms. >> if i can clarify my earlier statement, what i said was the oversbroad views are problematic. i could see it being used in a variety of circumstances that are not collections and can be useful in that context but the evidence that has been compiled, the programs are not problematic and is that that we are trying to end. >> i understand that. i am going to ask you is this. it would relate to practices of your competitors but i assume there are some generalities in your industry. let's say you were mandated to keep records this law the we are debating and the ultimately may pass. if you were mandated to keep

records for 18 months do you have any idea what that would cost your industry? >> no, i don't have any reliable figures. >> would there be a cost? >> certainly increased storage space would be a cost. no idea the magnitude. >> let's say we don't mandate it and leave it wide open as the house did, and let's say you received a query on one of your customers who was in conversation with the customer of at&t who was then in contact with a customer of sprint.

under this bill, if you had a query and you would give information on your customer, doj would go back to the pfizer court to get authorization for a query on the at&t customer and have to go back and get a query on sprint customer. is that your understanding? >> i am not sure exactly how the process would work. we would respond with the call detail records of whatever we have. we would have called the set records on our customer. we have records on telephone calls that are not by our customers the transit our system as we handle what we used to call long distance and international calling so we would respond with as much as we had which might be the call for a verizon customer to the at&t customer. it might conceivably include

other cd ares that are relevant. >> but it might not. >> totally dependent on how the call is routed through the telephone infrastructure. >> which makes my point as that as mr. baker said or use it too right now we have at all collected at one point and there's only one query and that one query gives us all of the numbers in that little spiderweb when a terrorist makes a phone call to somebody who makes another call and the information is available instantaneously as opposed to may be being received by whoever may requests it over a period of hours or days conceivably.

this is -- i understand both the problem that you, mr. garfield, and you, harley geiger, have raised relative to the economic issues and what not but let's not kid ourselves. we are not the only ones to do this. we have got folks across the pond to do this. it has been necessary to say something, mr. garfield. >> i want to be clear we are not in esting not engaging activity that would protect our national security interests. he thing we're suggesting is particularly as it relates to the language in the bill that there are ways to do that while addressing the equities related to privacy. behind you is the seal of the united states.

it tufrpbs out the american people have lost trust in its domestically and internationally and the impacts be he programs will significant. and i think it is important to come up with language that want but hat you ensures we are not doing it in an indiscriminate way. >> and i don't think there's anybody here that disagrees wit interests, national security interests >> nobody disagrees with that philosophy. there will be some disagreement over how we get there. of day. >> if i could respond to your point about data retention. as was noted earlier, the telecommunications company and many internet services already receive millions of requests for law enforcement around the country every year and they are responding to that and law-enforcement does not have the ability to build such a gigantic database. there has not been any evidence

we have seen that data retention mandate is necessary for the companies or facilities request for law-enforcement use data from these requests to catch criminals. moreover, the mandate would be an enormous burden in terms of technological infrastructure particularly for small startups but also loss of user trust and potential problems with privacy and data breached. we urge you not to go down a road of the data retention mandate. >> the problem is they may not keep these records more than two months next year and things are going to change five years from now or three years from now. we know how fast technology changes and if there is not some requirement for some period of time, we may not have this program. we will lose and lose the ability to disrupt terrorist activities. there is going to have to be

some kind of understanding or mandates or some kind of understanding that is firm or some kind of mandates in the law in a period of time, otherwise we simply will not be able to gathered the information. these guys are as smart as you are. lot smarter, these guys want to do bad things to us. they will figure out their way around it. it is already happening. we see it. mr. woods could tell you some things that would scare folks to death about the way some folks in a terrorist world, revelations by ed snowden. as we sit here today giving away this kind of information to terrorists i assure you folks are watching this, making notes,

going to use those notes to try to avoid the system we ultimately come up with so we have got to be mindful of that as we try to craft this legislation that protects privacy rights, we all agreed that needs to be done better at the same time protect americans. >> just a quick thought. the influence of negative public thinking about the activities of government shared by most people. you have an approval rating of 9% in congress. i think i was quoting correctly. it varies between 11% and 9%. and i think we have a

responsibility to consider what that means but at the same time looking at this committee whose job is not to measure public reaction but to do the very best job to do something called protect our national security and privacy at the same time. senator chambliss made a point that terror is breaking down all over the world. it is the biggest growth industry in existence and it has the enormous emotional advantage of being based upon tribal hatreds, ancient vengeance, retributions from 200 years ago, flat out racism, territorial

disputes. look at what is going on north of china, the philippines, taiwan, south korea, all of them claiming a piece of rock. is going to increase and increase and increase and therefore the need to for broad and highly professional lives analysis of the intelligence if we are able to collect enough, remember it was some years ago we close down a lot of our station chiefs in africa. paid a terrible price for that. terrible price for that, measurable terrible price for that. so that i am conscious of being on the intelligence committee and other committees too but the intelligence committee has a responsibility to do in secret

for the most part, very rare occasion when we have an alternate meetings and i don't consider that bad. i consider it good the we do our work privately because we can talk to each other in ways that we can trust and we can talk to the government in ways the cia and the nsa in ways that we have disputes that are understood by all of us as we try to adjust to extremely malevolent, fast changing events. my only point is that we better be good at collecting and using intelligence and collecting privacy. i am convinced if somebody wants to say nsa is collecting so much bulk they could become a loveland's is a usable argument in this country. it is like if tootsie roll's

tasted like lemons people thought they wouldn't buy them but they don't. we have not had problems with privacy. we have the perception of problems with privacy that we can't stop. that is not our job. our job is to protect through intelligence and protecting security our people, and that is what this hearing in a sense is about, it is not reacting to public distaste for government or collecting information, just that people are afraid of government and always have been. and that in no way diminishes our responsibility to collect, analyze, query, whenever with a

firewall build, the pfizer act, the patriot act was an extraordinary act of firewalling, people being able, the chair could say there were very few cases where we had to go after folks. very few cases. it wasn't even 25. i want to put that plug in for the importance of the job of the intelligence community and why we cannot be swayed by public opinion, we can listen to it and not be swayed by it away from a more protective and i think better protection to privacy course. thank you. >> thank you very much, both of my colleagues. i very much agree with what you

said. if i had my druthers, do i believe the privacy rights are better served by having the telecom holds this or the government hold it? i believe privacy rights are better served by having a limited number of people do you know who you train, who are supervised, no more than 22 who do the actual querying other than hundreds that you don't know out in telephone companies. i am really very concerned that we are going to end up next year with this whole program going down and that is a very real concern. both my colleagues have said comments and what we see we see the intelligence.

we read the intelligence. we know terror is up around the world and we know that they will come at us if they can so the only way to stop that is by gaining intelligence, to be able to disrupt a plot. that is what has been happening and so far, so good. in the main. having said that, either so many different views in this body that when the time comes for these sections of the patriot act to sun set next year, it will be chaos and that concerns me greatly and there is a high likelihood that we get left with nothing. so my hope he is that the various parts of our community can come together and wheat can find a way.

the private sector isn't perfect in terms of privacy at all. i know people that don't want their homes on the google mack because of privacy concerns and there is nothing they can do about it. facial recognition. all of the internet going on that take place. hacking, which is epidemic and so privacy everyday is threatened. i think you want to limit the numbers that have access to this. you want to limit how you do it and this is what we are trying to find a way. there are a lot of telecoms now and if we have to go to a mandate which we may have to do and mandate the length of time

which we may have to do, i suspect there will be a court battle somewhere and that is not going to help us. we have a limited period of time to solve this problem and it is up to when all these sun set. there are people who want to do away with these programs until someone gets blown up at a big sports match, a number of people, bid buildings get blown up, planes get blown up and people have to understand i am really concerned. there are bomb that goes through magnetometers. the person who makes these bombs is still alive. there have been four attempts to get these bombs in our country. one was in 2009. it misfired. wanted to explode the plane

over. there was enough explosive to explode the plane. two were found in printer cartridges in the dubai airport headed to the united states and one was an asset that helped recover this bomb that was headed for the united states so these are real things out there and the only way we have to disrupt this is intelligence and so i beg people, please come together, enable us to do the right thing for both, for privacy and protection of this country. the telecoms have to come board, you know, the big companies have to understand what we are trying to do. i have been visited by members of the european community.

i have heard from many of your companies that they are concerned, and yet half of what was produced by this program went to europe to help them disrupt plots third. that is the irony of this. so i hope we can work something out. not easy to get something passed through the house and when the house passes something 3-1 with both political parties and two committees, if we could work from this and could make certain amendments to it and could strengthen it and could pass it, the chairman of the house intelligence committee has said we conference it right away and

get it done because there is a sense of alacrity i think that we need to do this so bottom line, we would like to have your thoughts but we are dealing with bill language now so having bill language submitted to us to solve problems you have made if you don't like minimization give us some language. i don't know what to do about the telecoms. i think i know where you are going but this is based on the telecommunication company's understanding that there is a problem out there and my sense is if there is flow will, we mandate it. because you wouldn't want to be responsible if there were three planes going down loaded with people or buildings hit by them. that is really where we are.

so i really thank you. i will look forward to working with the. we make ourselves available. we will make our staff available land you are just an example of what is out there. anyone that has concrete thoughts, please contact us because this is the one opportunity i see to be able to sustain a program which certainly disrupted saudi --s z --sza --szazi. there's no question where he was going with this was to blow up the new york subway system. with that in mind, i say thank you very much. it has been a long hearing that you have been terrific and thank you very much. this meeting is adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

>> russia and the united states is a nation which believes in its mission. given our mission we believe in freedom, we believe in our values which suddenly disappeared. didn't go anywhere. the biggest nation, all those years, was victory day. that is our main national policy and that is what united all nations, the fight against oppression. how it was presented to the

nation by vladimir putin is ukraine, those westerns sessions came to power and illustrated that with former ukrainian liberation army who were allied with world war ii and used that to prove that these are fascists who are fighting against russian and ukrainian nations and what we are looking to protect russians or russians speaking minorities, no, for the overwhelming majority of russians we are continuing world war ii and liberating, really liberating ukraine from the fascist threat. >> this weekend on c-span a look into the politics of vladimir putin's russia on c-span2's

booktv, live two day coverage of the chicago tribune lit fess starting today at 11 eastern and on c-span2's american history tv the 72 anniversary of the d-day invasion of normandy beginning today at 10:30 eastern. ..