disrupt terrorist threats. third speaker will be martin baron. executive director of the "washington post." for that time, he was the executive editor of the "boston globe, " the "miami herald," and the "new york times." he'll talk about the press and how the press deals are reporting sensitive national stories and how it reacts and negotiates with the government regarding such stories. perhaps martin and matt wihave engaged in some interaction in the past. peter feaver is a professor of political science at duke, where

he is known for his work in peace and conflict studies. he's director of the duke program, an american grant strategy. from june'@ 2005 to july 2007, feaver was on leave to be the strategic adviser for planning at the white house where his responsibilities included national security strategy, regional strategy review, and other political military issues. he's written widely on such matters as national security, military civil relations, and the military cost of war. it will focus on the larger politically and public dynamics and how these dynamics impinge on policymakers' decisions.

each panelist will present -- we said five minutes, but they may bleed over their particular matters, and then we'll have an exchange where they apply to one another. then we'll have a qa open to the audience. without further delay, let's start with laura donohue. >> first, i'd like to thank don it's a wonderful opportunity to come together to discuss these issues and i'd like to thank my fellow panelists in advance. there are two central programs that have really captured attention. the first is the bulk collection, section 215, and the second section is section 702. what i'll say upfront about 702,

my concerns is how 702 is constitutionally being exercised without any of the protections one would otherwise see in a fourth amendment context. don also mentioned there are two articles, there's a two part series of law and public policy. the first one was just published. the second will be published in a couple of months. as far as the forest goes, at 160 pages each they're pretty much in the forest. feel free, if you want to take a look, if you have questions, have a look. first it violates the whole purpose of the foreign

surveillance intelligence act, second, it is illegal, and third, it is unconstitutional. i don't have a view on bulk. >> other than that. >> other than that nsa top marks, right? here's why. first it violates the purpose of fisa. in the 1960s there were programs that had to do with the collection of bulk information on u.s. citizens. the nsa in a program collected information on a total of 1,650 people, no more than 800 people at the time. in operation shamrock, they intercepted all international communications looking for ties for foreign intelligence. now one characteristic of these programs is they started limits. one project started by only monitoring americans traveling to cuba, but they expanded to

anyone involved in civil disturbances, criminal activity, individuals suspected of international terrorism. this spurred congress to say they did not want to create opportunities for executive branch agencies to collect bulk information on u.s. citizens. that was the purpose behind fisa. they were also concerned with the developments of technology to exploit americans. fisa established four important protections. first, any information from electronic intercepts in

particular had to be specifically tied to an individual. second, that individual had to be identified as a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power prior to collection of information on that person. minimizization procedures had to be put in place. that is the numbers one dials from ones phones and the number ones receive on their phone. finally business record and tangible goods, which is of issue because this is the provision under which bulk collection takes place. under section 215, many of these basic principals and the

approach of congress and the purpose of introducing fisa has really been countered by nsa's actions. first, there's no particularization prior to collection. the orders issued to verizon are just bulk collection. there's no probable cause that the individual was involved in any sort of criminal or foreign intelligence activity. before, they had to know the target to get the information. now they get the information to know who the targets are. third, there is not a higher threshold for u.s. persons for the collection of information. and the role of fisk is shifting. this is really contrary to the

principals of fisa. it violates the statutory language itself. the first one i want to focus on is the actual language, which says that the government must have reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation other than a threat assessment. so, again, there have to be reasonable grounds to believe that the information, the tangible things sought, are relevant to an authorized investigation other than a threat assessment. what's happening in this regard is the government argues that all telephony metadata is relevant to investigations. but that makes the phrase relevant to completely

meaningless. than what is irrelevant to an authorized investigation? it also makes the reasonable grounds provision -- you must have reasonable grounds to believe that all records are relevant to an authorized investigation. it makes the prior cause out of existence of a statutory matter. if all telephony metadata is relevant, e-mails are relevant. social media, on and on. what is irrelevant? and this contradicts congressional intent. an authorized investigation is also part of that phrase. the way it's being read by the nsa treats the search of the data, not the collection, as being relevant to an authorized

investigation. the information to be obtained must be relevant to an authorized investigation. an authorized investigation under the attorney general guidelines requires a level of specificity prior to an authorized investigation. so the investigation might not have been yet authorized and you are now granting the authority to obtain any information without that information actually being in existence. but the statute is very clear that an authorized investigation must already be established. the statute requires that the nsa, not just nsa but anybody using section 215, that could be obtained during ordinary

subpoe subpoena duces tecum. that type of use of subpoenas has been roundly rejected by the supreme court.dth3 they're not just a search for information on potential criminal activity or of potential criminals that might have been of interest and there's an emphasis with subpoenas on past wrong doing, occurred. the third statutory argument to consider with regard to the bulk collection is pen register and trap and trace information. so numbers called and numbers received on one's phone. reading section 215, the

government has done an end-run around that statutory language where congress restricts and sets up guidelines for how that information can be collected. in my view, this is unconstitutional and this is why. so the government relies in this case on the case that don reference, smith versus maryland in 1979, this is a local case for us up here in d.c. a woman was robbed. at the scene of the crime, she saw a 1975 monte carlo car. he called her.

she went out on her porch and a 1975 monte carlo drove very slowly by her house. she called the police. they took a look at the car and they said -- from the license plate, they figured out who owned the car and they went to the telephone company and said, may we place a pen register on the telephone line. at that time, local calls were billed in minutes. it was because the police had this special device and gave it to the phone company they could do that. the next morning, michael smith called her on the telephone. they used this information to get a warrant, went into his house, and there's a phone book dog eared to her telephone number in the phone book, right? they use this evidence in trial

against him. so the supreme court says michael lee smith had no privacy interests in the purposes of the fourth amendment because it was in the telephone company's purview. that gave rise to third-party doctrine in the law. we're just recording this information that the telephone company has, which includes not just numbers dialled and numbers

trespasser doctrine and cat doctrine, under either approach, this is intuitiunconstitutional. on the trespass side, this is a general warrant. this is exactly what gave birth in many ways to the revolution. in england, it was seen as protecting the rights of englishmen against warrants. they could go into people's homes and look for evidence of possible criminal activity. james argued that this was the

worst instrument of arbitrary power, the use of general warrants. john adams, who was at the argument later said, liberty was born. we will not accept general warrants. the virginia declaration of rights included a prohibition on general warrants. virginia and new york and a number of states as a condition of signing the u.s. constitution, said there must be a condition on general warrants. so giving the government the ability to collect all telephony metadata, that looks an awful lot like a general warrant. one can also go to kats. jones, he said, one cannot read the fourth amendment out of the

rights -- there was a recent case, u.s. versus jones, where a gps chip was placed on a car outside of the warrant -- the ten days that had been required by warrant outside of washington, d.c. it was on a suspected drug dealer's wife's car. they decided the case on trespass. but there were five justices who came out and said that under kats, one has to take account of the reasonable expectation of privacy and that technology is changing this picture. that technology is changing what these things look like. they took on board this point directly and said this is something different. she would overturn third-party doctrine in light of the intrusive nature of these technologies. now there are a number of cases one can point to. i'm going to wrap it up because i know we're on limited time.

there's a case that deals with thermal imaging. we have a ninth circuit case looking at personal information in digital form. we have this growing body of case law where the court is starting to recognize and say, wait a minute, there is a privacy interest in this digit information, and this is a heightened interest in something different than what we have previously seen. my primary concern is using the information for criminal activity. i see it as contradictory to congress's purpose and as unconstitutional. >> all right. i'm going to follow, laura. it's not going to be easy, is

it? as the nsa general counsel to follow laura, she's done a lot of very extensive and interesting work on this. i'm here in some ways more in my current role as the director of the national counterterrorism center. i'm going to stay in that lane a little bit, but i'll talk about a law at some point. i'm here primarily because my daughter is now a junior at the university of wisconsin and took professor down's class. as i look out at you all, i hope you are easier than that group was on my arguments. they had a lot of good questions. so i'm going to stay in the forest and not the trees for a moment. i know we'll get down into the trees. i look forward to having that discussion.

i look at this nsa surveillance from an operational role. post 9/11 clearinghouse for analysis terrorist information. i do have a particular perspective now on the consequences of that surveillance. my view is that surveillance is absolutely indispensable to protecting the country. i had a threat briefing this morning. we go around the world and find out what's happening from a terrorism perspective. one of the primary, if not the primary source of information about terrorism, comes from the collection of information that nsa carries out around the world. it's really through these reports, nsa reports, that we have to opportunity to see the actual communications of the people who are targeted.

the targeted terrorists that are seeking to carry out attacks against our interests around the world as well as in our home. obviously, i understand there's a lot more to it than just the operational side and laura's remarks make that clear, but let me make a few preliminary comments. let me devote my preliminary comments to the nature of the threat. professor down's referred to the comment when that balance gets out of whack, you have that problem. what's the nature of the threat? what's the nature of the adversary that we're trying to learn more about to protect the country? and i'll talk about that, then i'll talk about nsa surveillance fits into that, then i'll touch on very briefly the impact of the disclosure of the stolen

documents and how that's effected our capabilities. the short answer on the threats is it is increasingly complicated and it is diverse and geographically different. basically al qaeda and al qaeda senior leaders that established a safe haven there. we're talking about a number of groups and individuals who have varying degrees of affiliation with al qaeda. you cannot see this today when you turn on cnn or open a newspaper. the group that was responsible for the christmas day 2009 effort to take down a plane over in detroit.

you have al shabaab, an official affiliate of al qaeda. boca haram in nigeria. isis, that's a group that splintered off from al qaeda. it used to be al qaeda in iraq. and beyond that, you have a number of individuals in places like libya, egypt, who have varying degrees of adherence to the ideology. you have people here in the united states who adhere to the ideology of al qaeda. it is much more diverse and fragmented ten or even more yeayea --

three, four years ago. this threat now spans a wide geographic area going from south asia, to the middle east, to the area in north africa. this geographic diversity presents a real challenge for us from a terrorism perspective. the third feature of the threat is it has proven to be quite adaptive. where we were concerned ten, five years ago, about centrally planned plotting from al qaeda leaders in pakistan, we're increasingly concerned about the change in tactics where they're looking to carry smaller scale less sophisticated attacks and less central planning. so they've changed their

tactics. they've also changed their tactics in how they communicate. understanding that's a vulnerability for them. so the question then is, the second thing i wanted to mention, why is nsa so important? why is it important for us to be able to collection communications? the reason flows directly from the nature of the threat. it is very difficult to infiltrate these groups. they are inherently suspicious. they kill people who they suspect are spies. one of our primary ways to understand their intentions, identify individuals who belong to those groups, perceive the plotting that's taking place, is to be able to get access to their communications. it's also the case with the geographic spread of this threat, our ability to have sources, human sources, is

limited because we can't get to all these different places. it is another reason why nsa collection is so critical. third is the inherent reliability of this type of intelligence. so it's really the gold standard, right? we're not relying on someone to report what they hear where they have inherent bias or limitations on what they have access to. we're getting their actual e-mails or telephone calls. and all of this really goes to the point, the fundamental point that i started with of, nsa surveillance as a general proposition is indispensable to our ability to counter the threat that we're seeing and that's continuing to proliferate. a couple cases and point. syria, we're seeing what's happening with syria and iraq. in syria, the unrest has led to

a magnet for foreign fighters. we have over 12,000 foreign fighters going into syria. more than a 1,000 of those coming from europe and more than 100 from the united states. our concern is as these individuals go to these places, they're going to get trained, further radicalized, and then return home. one of our greatest challenges is identifying these individual, understanding what their intentions are, and if they are involved in plotting, being able to disrupt that. that's a very good example of where the types of intelligence we get from nsa is critical to our ability to understand this emerging threat. another point or example i wanted to share because it goes directly to what laura talked

about in terms of the particular programs i know folks are more interested in talking about section 702 and 215. the specific example that's been more widely discussed and many of you may be familiar with is an individual in aurora, colorado. in 2009, nsa using section 702 was targeting an individual in pakistan that was connected to al qaeda. they intercepted an e-mail between the individual in pakistan and this individual they didn't know anything about living in aurora, colorado, in which they were sharing a recipe on how to prepare an explosive device. because the nsa identified that identified that individual,

shared that information the fbi, he was days away from traveling to new york. eventually, he was arrested by the facebook as he was on his way to blow up the new york subway. in addition to identifying him, the nsa and fbi used section 215 to corroborate the identity of an accomplice of this individual by looking at the phone records. the attorney general called this one of the most serious threats since we faced 9/11. it was a plot that was real. it wasn't aspirational, and it was stopped because of the nsa and these programs. and the third thing i want to say is a word about the impact of the disclosures. the bottom line is documents that were stolen from the nsa and disclosed had an extremely damaging impact on our ability

to collect information. we have lost the ability to intercept communications of key terrorist operatives and leaders. we know they are suspicious of our ability to collect our communications. it is not news to them that the nsa and the u.s. government are trying to collect their communications. but what this information did is essentially confirmed in excruciating detail the scale and scope of our abilities. in many ways, it revealed information that had nothing to do with the privacy or civil liberties of americans. it was purely information about the technical abilities of u.s. intelligence agencies. we have specific examples of terrorists who have adopted greater security measures. they have changed internet service providers and dropped and changed e-mail addresses and

ceased communicating in ways that they have before. again, extremely damaging impact on our ability to collect these communications. so look, we're at a point now, though, where we're dealing with this. and the president has made significant changes in the 215 program, so it no longer looks like what laura described, but we have a lot of work to do to address the erosion of trust that's been created. i think that's something that is part of why it's important to have discussions like this with informed and influential audiences like you are and why i welcome the opportunity to have this discussion, so thanks. >> great. well, thank you, matt. so what i'll try to talk about here is how and why we decided to publish, how we went about our work, and how we think about national security issues in our

coverage. i'm not a lawyer. i'm not going to pretend to be one here or play one here, butic speak at least in broad strokes about the role we see for ourselves and the coverage of this national. national security, as you can expect, is an area of intense focus for us at "the washington post." it's one of the greatest powers of government. to make war, to spy on people, to interrogate people, to prosecute, and kill. all of those are the greatest powers of all and they are vested in our government as they are in every government around the world. we have to cover the federal government, and in covering the federal government, those are not activities that we would choose to ignore. and nor are those activities, in

my view, we can defer to the governments, which is on what we should report, how we should report it, what not to report whenever the government asserts a national security rationale. the government has shown a remarkable addiction to classifying documents of every sort. an enormous amount of information now is classified, including information that is relatively innocuous. there can always be a rationale for keeping something classified. as a result, very sweeping government policies with profound complications for individual rights, the fourth amendment we have talked about here, the first amendment as well. those have been put into place

in secret. you know, the constitution of the united states begins with phrase with the people. it predisposes that people will be involved in self-governance. they have knowledge of that. so our purpose is to try to provide that information so that we can actually have self-gov n self-governance in fact and not just in name. at the "post," we have a highly experienced security staff. i think the people on this panel are aware of that. they do rely on their expertise and navigating the most sensitive subjects imaginable. we recognize there is a tension

between national -- between self-governance in this country and national self-preservation and self-protection. there's no question about that, and we are not dismissive of national security concerns. we do take them very seriously. we recognize that it's a dangerous world as we have heard already. we certainly know that. nor, do we doubt that the government needs to engage in intelligence activities and surveillance as well. this is not an issue of whether we should have intelligence activities or no intelligence activities or whether there should be no surveillance whatsoever. as a result of that, our reporters communicate regularly with the pentagon, the white house, the intelligence agencies on the nsa documents that are at

issue here. i think there was one occasion where there were 16 officials with our one or two reporters from pretty much every agency in government at the time. then on many occasions at the request of the government, we have withheld information that might disclose very specific sources and methods. we have got criticism from specific segments of the population that they felt the public was entitled to have. the intelligence agencies obviously would have preferred we not publish a single word on this subject at all. so the director of national intelligence and a leading

congressman have said chillingly the journalists that revealed these documents were the accomplices of snowden. one congressman says we should have been prosecuted under the espionage act. i think what we saw in the documents that we received from snowden was something that went beyond the specific sources and methods that the press has traditionally guarded on grounds of national security. the documents that revealed that the nsa was engaging in surveillance of breathtaking scope and breathtaking intrusiveness to a degree that many in the public could never have imagined and certainly

would never have approved. what we had here we believe was a national policy, not just sources and methods, and a policy that had dramatically shifted the balance toward state power and shifted the balance away from individual rights, including privacy. there had been no public knowledge. there had been no public debate. and knowledge within the government itself was sharply limited. knowledge is not just limited to a select group of powerful individuals within the government who are shielded from oversight by the people they represent. and i'll turn it over. >> thank you, marty. it's an honor to be on a package like this, even though i realize my appearance diminishes the

actual salary of it. i'm going to speak of five propositions about someone -- a group referenced in martin's remarks, namely, "we the people." what's the broader political and public opinion context for this issue. the first proposition is the public is not nearly as ron paulish on this issue the "new york times" might think it is. by that i mean, tired of war, the government is a bigger threat to their freedom than terrorists are. a forthcoming chicago poll that surveyed the public on national security matters is going to be released shortly, if it hasn't

already, and the data there is striking. this was before isis became a household name or spike in coverage and concern. only one in three thinks that the restrictions on the national security agency should be increased. more people think it should remain the same and there's a small number think that there should be fewer restrictions. the plurality of the public thinks the budget for general information gathering, the nsa's budget and matthew's salary, should remain the same as it is. a super majority says it is more important for the government to investigation national security threats than it is on individual privacy pursuits. they tilt it in the direction of securi

security. more want to keep gitmo than close it. very positive affect toward snowden. the general public doesn't view snowden as a hero. put another way, this is a public that the nsa could work with. i mean, this is more of an nsa kind of public, i think, than a ron paul public. there are, of course, are very outspoken minority groups that hold to a ron paul view, but in general, the public, i think, is more sympathetic to what the nsa is doing. the second proposition is that the public is not panicky about terrorism, but nor is it passive. they're actually more worried about terrorism than they've been in a decade.

that is, the 2014 data is higher than a decade ago. 34% say terrorists have a greater ability today than terrorists had on 9/11. and a decade ago you would have had only 24% that said that. only 30% of the country thinks the president has made the country less safe in this area. before secretary hagel, the secretary of defense, described the threat in apocalyptic terms. this is a public before the most recent revelations. third, my third proposition is because of those first two propositions, the politics do not favor poo-pooing the threat.

i think the president ered when he dismissed -- as a jv team problem. the president, i think, understands that that was a mistake. his communications team does. that's why they have gone to such extraordinary techniques to distract and deflect the problems in syria have contributed to the problems of this group. and that effort by him is going to get harder and harder to do, because the more criticisms are coming from former members of

his team. former secretary clinton, steinberg, ford. they've all registered very compelling and thoughtful critiques and many more democrats have spoken on aattri. if this group does successfully attack the u.s. homeland and the president has not authorized

previously authorized strikes against them in syria and elsewhere, the question will be why didn't he use tools that were successful for him in iraq to deal with the threat in this group when his own adviser said you're not going to be able to contain this threat without confronting them in syria? the fourth proposition flows directly from that. these poll numbers are likely to spike in favor of a more counterterrorism robust effort rather than the otherwise. i don't think we're heading into a period where the public will be clamoring for even more restrictions on nsa. i think the global instability trend lines point in the other direction. the public concern about this will increase dramatically than it is for me to imagine scenarios where the public will

become more passive. and that intensifies further the political pressure on the administration. particularly the pressure to be more expansive on intelligence collection. one of the reasons that the bush administration in the fall of 2001 moved as quickly as they could, accelerating, and actually throwing out existing war plans and creating a new war plan in order to attack al qaeda in afghanistan on an accelerated basis, the administration was very concerned that al qaeda would go up 2-0 on the u.s. that they would get a second strike in before the u.s. had been able to avenge the first strike, and they were concerned in such a climate, if al qaeda had gone up 2-0 on the u.s., that the pressure from the public for an unrestrained, for an overwhelming response using

all elements of national power, including perhaps even weapons, the pressure on the administration would have been even greater. part of the reason for moving so quickly was to bring the political environment back into align with a more coherent and more reasonable counterterrorism strategy. and ironically this president, president obama, has put even greater pressure on the intelligence community. ben rhodes, who is the president's chief spokesperson in the national security area recently said, this was about a week ago, at that time, there was no need to attack this group in syria and the reason was that they didn't have clear indications and warning yet that this group was going to pose a direct threat, imminent threat,

to the homeland. if we did get clear indications of that, then the president would authorize a strike. that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on your warning capacity. that quote saying that -- because that was in political terms saying, we don't need to act now because the intelligence community has not told us we need to act now. if we're wrong, if there's a strike, the intelligence community hasn't warned us adequately, it's setting the political predicate for a blame shift. there so this leads me to my fifth and final proposition. that there is an interesting

policymaker and academic gap in this area, in the study of this issue. let's stipulate, just for the sake of argument, but for the sake of this panel, let's stipulate that some level of homeland risk is irreducible. even if the team does all the work, there's some irreducible threat that remains. i've heard many academics accept that threat but then say, why are we doing so much to reduce it? including accepting tradeoffs on security and privacy from nsa. why are we doing so much to reduce it? the policymakers see it in mirror image. they say the threat is at this irreducible level because we're going to such extraordinary lengths to reduce it. that's why we have to maintain

these extraordinary lengths so it is remains at this level. i close by saying that i think the pressure on the president will increase in this area, and i call to your attention what the president said a day or what the president said in a day or two ago in a speech to veterans. e he said that if isil killed americans, he would avenge their deaths. and no one should doubt his willingness to do so. and i accept that at face value. i certainly don't doubt his determination. he's proven he will use all elements of national power to avenge the deaths of americans. and americans do want the president to avenge those deaths. but they even more for the president to take all reasonable measures to prevent those deaths. they are not just interested in avenging. they want prevention. so go back to my political vice

problem for the president. if the president does not take angst against isil because he's waiting for clear indications and warning of a homeland attack, and if he doesn't get those clear indications and warning because of restrictions that have been placed on the nsa, then in that hypothetical, the blowback will be severe and debates as to whether the approval process is overly general i don't think u will have much resonance with the voters. >> thank you, panel. very interesting. we want to see if there are any questions. let me launch our discussion by asking another question. given the assessment of the political vi political vice, can we expect to e see any type of reform of nsa? and if so, what would it look

like? >> i think the president made an important speech earlier this year in which had he outlined the challenges that we faced in this area along the lines o of what we discussed. he identified, for example, the speech took us back to the american revolution, through the civil war, world war ii, talked about intelligence gathering and the inherent difficulty that we have in trying to balance national security and privacy and civil liberties. one of the points i want ed to make today that's really crucial from my perspective having worked on these issues for several years including under the past administration, is that this discussion didn't just begin with the post story or the guardian story last year. this is an ongoing debate with

lawyers and policymakers, members of congress and with the public. we can talk about how much can be public and how much should be public, but this debate has been going on. and the president pointed out there have been some big changes. that the changes in technology, laura talked about, the fact that after 9/11 we're talking about threats inside the united states. the biggest adversaries are actors and those have put pressure on our system. that led the president to announce a series of reforms in his speech earlier this year. so the quick answer then is, yes, there will be changes. yes, congress has undertaken legislation right now. there were changes that didn't require legislative changes including going to the fisa court for approval every time we look at the data collected under 215. but notwithstanding laura's

points about the ways in which 215 is out of whack with fisa, illegal and constitutional. the reality is and you may not realize this, but it is legal and constitutional and it is consistent with fisa because every judge who has looked at it with the exception of one judge but every fisa court judge has said so. as long as i'm in this seat at the center, as long as i'm part of the counterterrorism community trying to present the country, we're going to take advantage of those laws and p l policies and rules that allow us to do these things. this is maybe where laura wants it to go but it isn't there now. the president said we're going to end bulk collection. we have gone to congress and worked with congress on legislation that will end bulk collection. but we'll still maintain an operational capability that is similar essentially to what we have now. >> quickly, maybe yes or no, can you live with these changes?

>> so we're working through that now. some of the legislation that the house passed and that the senate is considering now is within the range that will maintain that operational capability, so yes. >> so i'd like to highlight a political and constitutional reason why we have to have those reforms. so marti referred to we the people and need to know the importance of this. it's a problem when the law says you have to have reasonable grounds to believe that information is relevant to an authorized investigation. and it turns out that all telephone calls are relevant. it's a problem when the law says you may not knowingly collect domestic conversations. e we collect tens of thousands of conversations, but in any one instance we might not know at that time, so we're still going to collect it. it's a problem when the law says you have to be able to obtain that and no court in any district in the united states would allow you to collect for seven years of the citizens living there. . it's a problem for democratic

governance when the law says one thing and inside a classified world that only a handful of people have access to, something very different is being done in the people's name. the second point, so disclosu disclosures -- i agree on this point. but so does the use of the law in a manner that looks so different from what it actually says on its face. that also creates great damage. the damage done there is democratic governance. something we haven't touched on is 702. and what's being done under 702 is it's not just information to or from. so section 702 deals with nonu.s. persons located outside the united states, a collection of information on them. 703 deals with u.s. persons outside the united states and the domestic collection of their information. 704 is u.s. persons outside the u.s. and the international collection of the information and different standards apply to each category. 702 you're collecting on

non u.s. persons. one concern was this would be used for reverse targeting. they would say the concern is that the intelligence agencies would say we're targeting foreigners and we're going to collect all communications, but we're just going to target overseas and use it to reverse targets in the country. that's why they introduced these other provisions and other mechanisms to try to e prevent this from happening. what is actually happening is this is being interpreted not just information to or from targets overseas, non u.s. persons, but information about selectors related to those targets overseas, which is a broader understanding. you can collect more information. so if i communicate with somebody and there's reference in the context of my communications to a selector, that information can be collected and mined for further information even though i never kpun indicate with the target itself. it's called to, from or about

communication. this tfa allowed the government to collect a lot more information that it would otherwise be allowed to collect. it's now allowed to kwir ri that database. names, affiliations, titles, formulations. you can actually query this da it base and there's no record being kept of this. now under the fourth amendment, the right of the people, it ref refers back to the people, which is understood as the political entity of u.s. citizens, not non u.s. citizens to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure shall not be violated. we have this right and yet u.s. person identifiers are being used to query the database. now the foreign intelligence surveillance court offered reasons saying why there was not a warrant in the first place. when the purpose of the

surveillance is not garden variety law enforcement, when the government's interest is particularly intense and there's a high degree of probability if you were to require a warrant, it would hinder the ability to collect time sensitive information. the fbi then goes back to see if there's any evidence of criminal activity. it's hard to get warrants for a collection overseas. the international impact, there's intelligence officials being seen as complicit. there's a danger of alerting foreign affiliates. but when we already have the information in our hands and

th they there's no probable cause required. so we have to have this system to bring it within our constitutional purpose. >> a couple things that peter said. i felt there was a bit of what we think at "the washington post" and how we are and all that sort of stuff. so let me offer some, i hope, clarifying remarks. we never said snow den was a hero. we suggests in these documents that he provided us that there was information that the public had a right to know. and that had important public policy implications. and that probably should lead to a debate like the one that we're involved in here today.

we never suggested that the public is not concerned about terrorists. we are concerned about terrorism. we cover it every single day. and by the way, we feel it very acutely the individual who was recently beheaded by the islamic state was a journalist and there are other journalists who are being held by terrorists throughout the world. so we're not polly annish about that subject. we didn't say that a majority of americans favored greater restrictions on the nsa. we conducted our own polls, which showed pretty much what was reflected in the polls that peter cited. nonetheless, to say that 1 in 3 say restrictions should be increased is a significant amount of the population.

and we have said that and do feel that this level of surv surveillance does raise important constitutional issues. as laura has been talking about, and is potentially subject to abuse. there's no question that we're in a period of terrorism threat and there's no question that in a period like that individuals are willing to give up their rights in favor of security. but that's a decision that the american public can make through debates such as this one. the american public can arrive at a policy that they think appropriate. if they choose, they can do so. although we have a constitution and those things have to be contested and discussed in courts and in forums.

i do agree with laura that while the disclosure of these documents has had an impact and perhaps a very serious impact on the american public. it does do damage to our civil liberties and our ability to govern ourselves. >> peter, any response? >> i think he misunderstood my point. i was not attributing those to "the washington post" distinguished as that is. but you're right that there's been a marked change in the tone of coverage of these issues. even since the tragic beheading. the reporters that i talk to,

their approach on this issue is different this week than it was even two or three months ago. certainly at the height of the snow den revelations when the outrage was mostly directed at the nsa and i think that there's been sort of a return to a more balanced perspective that you just articulated, i think there has been since then. they voted to reelect president bush, voted to reelect the people that passed the patriot act, voted to reelect president obama. both defended these kinds of actions so now there's obviously a lot of reasons why the public votes for a president. but the gist of my or the

distillation of my argument is that the public outrage at the nsa probably hit a high water mark at the height of the snowden coverage and that world events are likely to push them further and further away from that then to push them more and more in the direction of laura's camp. that doesn't speak to the policy wisdom. they have been made and there will probably be more tweaking on the margins and certainly if there's oomp for new action it will be much more tailored and restrictive. so there's not to say that the public will force the politicians to be unrestrained, but it is to say we're moving in

more in the direction of taking more risks to confront terrorism than it is accepting more risks from not confronting terrorism. >> based upon the circumstances, supreme court follows the headlines. overly simplistic, but not untrue either. perhaps for us, to some extent what it publishes. there's a relationship between politics and the law. the panel laura would be the most uncomfortable with that proposition. is that fair to say? >> that the courts follow politics? >> or that politics influence what courts do? >> that's very difficult. when you teach -- which i'm

about to start on wednesday, constitutional law, you're aware of the political context in which decisions are made and of the general orientation of the justices. but also the effort to reconcile propositions before with constitutional provisions. >> any comments before we go to the audience? >> i would just throw out i think both an observation and i may have a question for marti that i wanted to be able to ask. the observation is, look, this is really important discussion. laura's points, where the law is heading really interesting and important part of this debate. but i think it would be wrong and it's really a myth that it's been widely viewed that nsa is lawlessly making these arguments and going for it on its own. the fact is that on 215, for example, the fisa court, 37 times have upheld includesing

since the revelation of the snowden documents and the debate in the public. the federal judges have upheld 215. on the 702 side, congress passed 702 fully understanding after a debate how it would be implemented. and the judges that had looked at it has upheld it as constitutional within the statute. so some day the law review article will make its way into a court or into congress and change the law, but that day is not today. and so we from my perspective, we have an obligation to execute the law in a way that protects the country and takes full advantage of the laws and tools that are on the books. i just think it's a misimpression to say these are just arguments nsa is making or ways that nsa is implementing these laws because there are lots of people within the

executive branch, the judicial branch looking at these programs, volume dating them, reauthorizing them and determining that they are within the statute and within the constitution. i think it's a really important issue. i'd like to be able to ask marti. the hardest thing about this, you made a very reasonable opening comment about how -- and i agree with the way "the washington post" approaches these issues. i had interaction about classified information they have heard. the challenge, i think, is that the initial or at least one challenge is the initial story that "the washington post" broke, i think it was the initial story, said that nsa had directly tapped into the servers, the central servers of internet companies. this was based on the slides that snowden had released. this turns out not to be true. so a lot of people might rightly think then and even today that

that was the case. in fact, what that program was talking about was section 702 of fisa which had been debated and validated by the courts. and i understand there's pressure on the press to publish when you have something like that based on what you know and there it may be timeliness pressures as well. the problem is unringing that bell. you would be forgiven if you think it is true that they have tapped into the servers of american internet companies. not true. but it was the lead paragraph of that initial story. it's very hard to change that impression once it's out there. i think there's real pressure. i know there's back and forth. maybe we have gotten better at it in working with the press, but the other problem is that not every press outlet is "the washington post" and "new york times" and is engaged in that type of discussion with the government in an effort to be responsible. so that's my sort of question.

>> first of all, we had discussions with the nsa before publishing that story. the second point is that was an actual nsa document that could tap directly into it so it was an account of what the nsa is telling its own people and its own documents. so in addition, the story did not stop there. it actually said that the nsa and that the government denied that it was doing that and it quoted extensively from technology companies, google, and the like saying that they were not aware of this. this did not happen. so it did not stop it saying the government can tap into these networks. it actually quoted from the government saying this was not the case. it quoted from the technology company saying it was not the case. but it also quoted from the actual nsa document in which it

said it was the case and this was what they were doing. as far as the every media outlet not being "the washington post" i appreciate whatever deference there to "the washington post." the reality is that snowden could have done what was done in the case of wikileaks. . all of this information without any intermediary being involved. that being us and the guardian and other publications over time. he could have posted it all. put it all out there for anyone. to look at. any terrorist organization, any other country, to take a look at and pour through and look at it to their heart's desire. for reasons that he has articulated, he gave it to us to exercise our judgment and in exercising our judgment we

spent, as i think you know, an enormous amount of time with the government going over this information. and actually withholding information that the government felt was far too sensitive. and we spend months on some of these stories. we have spent an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of money and taken precautions with the security of the documents that we have. i don't think that's an act of irresponsibility in any way. . and i think that certain ly the government would argue that nothing should be out there. that the government should essentially know everything and the public should know almost nothing. >> that's not my position. >> that is the position i think of some. and that's not a position that i think feel is consistent with the very principle of self-governan self-governance. >> laura would like to make a

quick point. line up behind the microphone. >> so just to comment on the foreign intelligence surveillance court. this reliance concerns me. and the reason why u if we look just across the board in the past ten years of 20 judges on the court, only three were democr democratic appointees to the court itself. of the judges on the foreign intelligence court of review, all of the judges on the courts of review that have issued these important decisions bringing down the wall between criminal wall, two of the judges on the three panel that brought down this wall, i had said fisa was unconstitutional in the first place. the applications that come before the court in the past decade have ruled 18,000 applications. only 8 have been denied in whole and only 3 in part. out of 18,000 cases to come before the court. there is no advocate opposed to

the government at the court. these are proceedings. so there's nobody to argue against the government for these orders that are put into place. there's no advocate or advocate that may challenge this at the time the orders are being put forward. you see the impact of this. the judges that have released opinions, one of the opinions when it treats, it spends a page and a half dismissive of any data with no treatment of advanced technologies and other ca cases that have been handed down. and none of this is being cited, but there's no contrariy opinio being expressed to the court at the time. i would add to this that they were not designed to be a court to create precedent and not a warrant exception, which is what has happened. so the court of review now finds there's a warrant exception to foreign intelligence collection, which has never been recognized at a domestic level and since

1978 fisa has controlled those collections. when you have a secret court, which is skewed towards one direction in terms of the appointments, which tends to agree to all of the order requests put before it and these are secret to then look to that as precedent for a court that wasn't designed with no council to rely on this as a state of the constitutional provisions i find concerning. >> you would support an advocate? >> absolute i. let's go to the q&a. >> i'm from the cornell law school. i have a question. i want to push back a little on the third party doctrine argument. they were absolutely compelling. on third party doctrine, you argue that it's different. and the argument is that it's a

greater invasion of privacy. and it strikes me. i'm opposed to third party doctrine from the beginning. and third party doctrine knew there was a violation of privacy, but said it's irreleva irrelevant. you can take people's trash, you can get their bank records, you can get their e-mail, you can get the bank records, telephone records, we know that invades priva privacy, but it's not within the scope. it's not a search. so if it's different, it doesn't make a difference. the second point is it's not clear to me that it is quality tatively different. if you give me a choice between

having the government get my bank records, phone records, searching more trash and so forth, versus their knowing who i called, there's a a much deeper invasion of privacy. it's qualitatively different in the sense more people are involved, but in terms of the particular invasions of privacy the third party doctrine was already doing greater invasions of privacy than the e metadata of the nsa. the final point i want to raise with respect to this is a question. the requirements for a subpoena are not constitutional. and i'm wondering if verizon says you can't get this without a subpoena, what is the relationship between the requirement for a subpoena and probable cause? i ask that because i don't know.

>> feel free to jump in. >> try to be brief because there's a lot of people. >> so probable cause is not required for a subpoena. it's not. and i have a discussion in the paper of the subpoena cases that are relevant. to this. the ones with the longest period is two years focused on a particular individual doing money orders in chicago. that's the longest period of time and probable cause was not required in that particular instance. on this broader point whether there's a difference, we have information available to us that wasn't available then. so social network analysis. when you put one tap on a phone to see if he calls somebody who he is suspected of sexually harassing and robbing and so on, that is different from saying, let's look at the social network and who is related to whom in this network. who the nodes are. what the centrality is in this network. which ones levy the most power.

that's the kind of information one can get. you can also get trunk identifier information. before when we had land lines, you couldn't tell where michael smith went during the day. now we have cell phones. so the tracking technologies that allows us can pinpoint where we go. it's different kinds of information that one can get through these same third-party records. i would say even the records are different from before in terms of the privacy interests. and beyond this, the type of information that we now digit digitally house with third parties is different. so on the cloud, the amount of information we put up about our private lives, personal correspondence, private dealings with others, the concept of inside the home, the filing cabinet, you need a warrant to go into the filing cabinet. just because we keep the contents on our pocket, this is what this recent case was about. whether or not you have this

privacy interest in a cell phone when the police arrest you. the court said, no, you need a warrant. similarly in the intelligence community, the idea that just because we give this information to apple or to google or whoever it is and store it on the cloud, there's not a a search for the government to go into and get it and therefore don't need a warrant, i think that doesn't understand the privacy interests by how technology has changed the context in which we live our daily lives skblp it's important to emphasize one important, which is when the government seeks for intelligence or not intelligence purposes but for under fisa of u.s. persons, they have to get a warrant. so nothing that we're talking about undermines that basic proposition. the government is going to get the contents of that information, they must get a warrant. >> leslie francis from the university of utah. this is a question about the contemporary structure of data

and analytic techniques. with sin dromic surveillance in health, you don't know what you're looking for until you see a pattern. you don't know whether there's something of significance or who might be the relevant entity. now i'm actually very interested in privacy and this question is to ask you, are there any ways given that feature of analytics to try to craft reform so that when you can't identify the target in advance so that we can figure out ways to think about relevance and the use of subpoena power and so on, given that fact about the power of data and analysis. >> so my thought in response to

that, this presents a national security as a hay stack argument. this is senator whitehouse is big on this. so don't we need all this information so we can find the needle we're looking for in the hay stack. that's a general warrant. a general warrant is something that allows you to collect a lot of information to try to find some sort of evidence of wrong doing. as a constitutional matter, that's barred as a criminal matter under u.s. law in the fourth amendment. there's no automation exception. so if the government were to put cameras in all of our bathrooms and record us and they would say but we don't. access it. only when we suspect there's activity and we're just going to look at general patterns of behavior. that would be a privacy violation. so the fact that you build this hay stack using computers and

panel, i'm pretty sure, we are, in fact, targeted by google, by facebook, by private company who is are actually doing precisely the things you just described. they have assembled the hay stack and looking for things. if you have any doubts about this, check out the ads that pop up when you watch pandora or whatever. the internet companies do this

and i recognize there's an important distinction between the government doing this and private companies doing this. we all clicked that we accept that the companies will do this so that makes it legal but i think the public will get increasingly uncomfortable with that level of targeted surveillance and that you may see pressure for reform coming in through that door and then maybe migrating over to the national security area. >> this has been a great panel. thank you very much. i'm an international relations guy. so that underlies the thrust of my question. so it seems like the terrorist information data environment is the primary repository for ct information. we know that the nsa is one of the primary collectors of that information and i assume feeds

nctc that information. we also know that the u.s. has information sharing agreements with other countries. in fact, there's a foreign partner extract of the terrorist watch list. it seems there's an international dimension here. can you comment a bit, i know you're going to be limited on what you can say, on how foreign partners are benefitting? and is the nctc database becoming a global counterterrorism information clearinghouse? >> pretty well informed question. know or business well where we have the responsibility under the statute that created us to maintain government's consolidated database. we share that subset of that

database with the screening center which is then responsible for using it for various screening purposes, airports and the like. some of that information is shared under sharing agreements with other countries. i think the important point is that when it comes to u.s. person information that nsa collects that they have a series of rules and laws and policies that limit what can be shared about u.s. persons. so that at every step in the process from the initial collection of that information to its use in classified databases to its use for screening purposes and finally potentially sharing it with other countries, there are a number of steps all designed to protect the privacy and civil liberties of persons that are taken along the way. so i think that's about the best way to answer it. it's probably a longer answer to

get to the basis of your question, but again, there's a number of safeguards built into that system to protect privacy and civil liberties of u.s. persons. >> my name is grant from george mason university. i was wondering what reforms we could do to optimize both the need for the people to provide oversight to the nsa and also the nsa's need to protect ways and means. >> what we touched on is possible changes to the way the fisa court operates. one of the suggestions there when judge bates of the fisa court wrote a letter recently that touched on this, addressed this issue. and advocating a role. so a friend of the court role in certain cases at the discretion of the court. that seems to me a reasonable way to increase public

confidence in the work of the court. the work of the court is necessarily classified much of it. it's not a secret court. we know the court exists. we know who is on it. but it does operate much of the time in a classified environment. but one way to build additional trust in the work of the court would be to have an am my cass role. >> one of the problems on the court is they don't have the expertise. they don't have the resources to really monitor the things that they are asking the nsa and others to do. so for almost three years the nsa was clearing data without suspicion, even though the court had required it. when the new administration came in in 2009 they realized what was happening within a week,

rorpted it to the court and that's one thing i do want to say. although there's no contrary council or advocate on the other side, nsd has done an exemplary job in terms of presenting arguments. so the structure is not a denigration on the way people have tried to carry out their responsibilities. this is a great example of that. in 2009 nsd found out the nsa was clearing the database without suspicion and told the court and there's a whole backlog of back and forth trying to sort that out. and the reason they didn't understand was they were relying on the nsa to police itself. i don't think they should do that. that's not their role to kick that to somebody else to say are you doing this appropriately? nor should they be in an oversight capacity. there should be somebody with the tech knowledge call support.

i think a lot the technology is hard. there's one more point i want to make and that's congress. i have been surprised by somewhat disingenuous response from certain members. they say we didn't know that this was going on. and the reason that's remarkable to me is the executive branch has made it clear. you could argue in 2008 congress did not realize what they were authorizing with the fisa amendments act with section 702. you could make that argument based on congressional members statements. many members of congress got it wrong when they portrayed what they were doing. this doesn't allow programmatic collection objected on those grounds. so nobody supporting the legislation was saying this will

be used for programmatic election. we said we can't do this. that might be true in 2008. by 2012 there were enough times that the executive branch had had gone to them and said, look, we're doing this. look, we're doing this. the fact that congressional members say it's hard to go to a skiff or i don't have enough staff to do it. if you're going to renew legislation, you better know how that legislation is being used. so i've been surprised by the extent to which certain congressional members have advocate advocated that responsibility which is so central in a liberal democratic state. >> i have to take issue with the idea that there was a responsibility on the part of congress. in 2008 there was a full air in of what exactly was going to be implemented following based on that legislation. and congress understood it in 2012. it wasn't a matter of whether they couldn't go to a skiff or read it. they actually thought it was the

right thing to do. those who voted for it, i don't see that as an advocation of responsibility by congress. >> thank you very much for coming. i know i'm going to look at future events along these lines with a much more informed ear. [ applause ] counting down until the

midterm elections less than two months away. c-span has been covering several debates. one of those is for the open house seat between staci apple and david young. here's a quick look. >> first of all, you have to take a look at how we got there. it's out of control. i have outlined some budget pribs principles such as auditing the federal government so we can get those programs. setting legislation, a balanced budget amendment. when it comes to the debt ceiling, over 40 times there have been other items tied to the debt ceiling. i think there are opportunities you could add that. maybe it's the keystone pipeline. maybe tax simplificatiosimplifi. but i think it would be healthy

to get something out of this for those who are not in favor of raising the debt ceiling. >> would you vote to raise the debt ceiling? is there a point at which you would say, okay, the credit limit has been reached? and also address the issues that he brings up. tying future debt ceiling votes to other issues. >> well, i think once again we need to work on where the money is being spent and how it's being spent. when i was in the state senate, i became the chair of state government. we worked with democrats, republicans, the senate, the house, managers of departments, employees, citizens and we found ways to save money for the iowa taxpayers. >> that sounds to me like you wouldn't be in favor of raising the debt ceiling without some cost savings being in that bill.

>> dean, what i think is we have so much gridlock and people that are elected that are not working and not doing their job. they need to sit down and work together and do their job. so we're not coming to a shut down. they will be working to do their job. that's what we need to elect. >> part of a debate held last night for iowa's third congressional house seat. you can see this debate and several others any time online at c-span.org and continue watching for campaign 2014 coverage. on tomorrow's washington journal, nate cohn will join us to talk about republicans gang the hougs. also anthony will analyze president obama's plan for defeating isis in iraq and syria. also your phone calls, facebook comments and tweets. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

this weekend on c-span networks, we are live for the 200th anniversary of "the star spangled banner." and then we'll tour fort mchenry and hear how war came to baltimore. about the british barrage and why francis scott key was there to witness the fight. saturday night at 8:00 on c-span, the presidential leadership scholars program with former presidents george bush and bill clinton. and live coverage of the harkin fry. and then pik pearlsteen. and saturday night at 10:00, ken silversteen on the secret world of oil. and then on book tv, democratic senator from new york on her

life in politics and her call for women to rise up and make a difference in the world. find our schedule at c-span.org. let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400 or send us a tweet or e-mail us. join the c-span conversation, "like" us on facebook, follow us on twitter. in august the islamic society of north america held their annual convention in detroit. one session looked at various influences of american culture. this is an hour and 45 minutes. >> thank you so much for coming out tonight. we have a wonderful panel of speakers and we're hoping this is going to be an informal discussion, but one in which we can really be open with each other and really explore not only culture, but where we are head z in the future. first of all, we're going to begin each of our panelists has been given a question ahead of

time. they prepared a brief sort of response to that. after they are all done talking, we'll do follow-up questions. in addition, if you have your cell phones, please turn them off. we don't need any interruptions. if you have twitter, we're use ing #isnaculture. please post those. we'll go through those and address them as well throughout the conversation. we're going to start over here to my left. she's an activist scholar artist whose work explores the intersection of race, religion and popular culture. currently she's assistant professor of anthropology and african-american studies at purdue university. she received her ph.d. in cultural anthropology from princeton university and is a graduate from the school of foreign service at georgetown university. she has published numerous writings and has also worked on artistic endeavors including as

a consultant for a documentary and as a published poet. you can also find her on the cover of a magazine this month where the focus is on discussions about race in the muslim community. a brooklyn native, she's unashamedly black and unapoll jetically muslim. >> i want to first thank you for the great introduction. also everyone for the invitation to participate in this conversation tonight. so should i read the question? here, read the question. >> i forgot to ask the question. what i wanted to know is what is

the basic premise of culture. not just sort of the basic premise of culture, but jumping into our present day and exploring what we're currently seeing with the next wave of american muslims. it seems as though they are testing boundaries and expressing themselves in ways that 20 years would have been controversial. what's going on? >> so i like to begin to answer that question by really addressing a fundamental misconception that dominates the ways american muslims talk about culture. this it misconception is this idea that we're in dire need of an american-muslim culture. we don't need it, we already have it. we are already doing american-muslim culture. this is because culture is about meaning making. it's the way human beings make

the world make sense. so culture is made in the values we attach to those things that we can see, touch, taste, hear, feel and also those abstract and symbolic things like ideas and concepts to be developed. so culture is made by living. and so the minute people live in this place that we call america as muslims, that is the moment in which we begin having american muslim culture. at the same time, however, i think we also want to think about this notion of american-muslim culture in two ways. first, we want to think about sort of american-muslim culture with a capital c on culture. these are the cultural things that we share across our different cities of race, gender, class and so on. and then there's this second level of american-muslim culture. american-muslim cultures. because this plural form is

necessary because of our diversity. and so there are many different sort of cultural forms may look different for different communities. take an example that happened here, i think, last year. so last year the chaplain at northwestern university read the koran. i think for this organization and the communities that's attach attached to it, this was a ground breaking sort of thing. yet in other communities, such as the community of mohammed, i don't think there's ever been a moment where a woman was denied the opportunity to cite the koran. so while we celebrate the leadership on that particular choice in this particular community, we don't identify it as this new thing, but rather sort of a shift in one

american-muslim culture that's representatives of an extension of a culture with a capital c. at the same time, we don't lose sight of the fact that gender and equity is a persistent problem with an american-muslim culture with a capital c. so whether it's other communities, we still have challenges in which how many women are on a panel, for example. or things that are much more heroing like the silence around domestic violence. so gender and equality is a challenge within the culture with a capital c. like wise, i think you didn't mention this, but in the question that you gave, you talked about some examples of things that this new wave that muslims are doing that is sort of testing boundaries. so you might have, for example,

a young american woman who decides to tie her scarf in a turbine-like style. it may be very true that in her particular community, she is testing a boundary. but she's not doing something that is new. despite the fact that "the new york times" might like us to think. i think i posted on facebook. how many time cans they write the same article? american-muslim women like to look nice. and every sort of quarter they are discovering this again. so there's a way in which we want to identify shifts that happen in communities. we want to understand this notion of american muslim culture and what that is as one that's something that has always been in existence and continues to exist as long as we sort of live in this place we call america as muslims and also we want to pay attention to the

fact that there's something much more powerful about a narrative of american muslim culture that is one of continuity. this muslim woman is extending a stylistic choice that may predate her from her african-american counterparts. then this narrative of, look, i woke up one day and decided to put my scarf in a turbine. and more importantly, i think for me, the question that i'm interested in asking or the question that i'm interested in posing is what kind of boundaries are being tested? are people testing boundaries in ways that are just remixing white supremacy? so for example, does hip hop become the backdrop to their own fantasies if they are the center of the universe, right? can american muslims now clim to belong because just like everybody else we use blacks as

props. and i think i'm asking that question because in our community and across our difference, there's a lot of anxiety about representation, right? how we are being seen or featured in the media. and the anxiety is warranted, right, because everyone is tired of seeing the woman who is being beat by her tyrant husband who eats babies for lunch. people are tired of seeing that. but at the same time, we can't just sort of exchange one overly simplified narrative of who we are for another. so maybe a victim of domestic violence now we have this kind of uber yuppy or hippy, but she's still one dimensional. and when it comes to questions of race in particular, she's

still not -- she doesn't believe that black life matters. these things are still a part of the story. and so for me, i think that what i'd like us to think about, there are two points i want to make. one point is so the question of representation, right, i think muslims often articulate for these simple representation of what this one american scholar called simplified complex representations. so they look good, but if you think about them, they are not really good because they don't shift the status quo. so she says for example, there will be a muslim on a television show because she focuses on tv. the muslim isn't the terrorist. it isn't the person bombing the thing, but it's the one calling the fbi to say the other is the terrorist. so that's great, but it's not great because the only way we

can understand or see a muslim is in the context of this idea that they are a good muslim in comparison to the bad one. and so muslims, i think, we want these good representations or cultural representations that are better, but i think we have to sort of -- basically, we have to crush the pipe dream that if we act better, if we look more peaceful, that the people who don't like us will like us. and i think from that measure, we learn from the black experience. african-americans have learned that respectable politics, you can be a harvard university professor and still profiled by the police. they will still shoot you, leave you in the street, and then call your community animals because they stand up for your life. so these things will continue to happen. so it's not about sort of replacing one overly simplified notion of who we are with

another, but it's about creating culture production that offers something that's both excellent in its quality, demanding, righ transformative. i want to give a short example. i'm going to close with this. so there is an american muslim woman, she's a grammy nominated artist, and she's from baltimore, maryland. and she did a cover of a song that came out, i don't know, a year or two ago, by a young white british woman named lorde. and the song that lorde released was called "royals." it's like we're not royals. and the song many people read of a critique of hip hop culture, in particular in black culture and the idea of that all it's about is money and bling and there's no substance or meaning to it, right?

so she covers the song and is a dope mc and she's an amazing singer. so the song is excellent, right? but she also makes a point, and so i wanted to sort of share the point, one of the points that she makes, right? so she says, we don't know that old true blood slave money, war heroes take it to their grave money, cotton money, cane money, diamond blood, stain money, and then she asks what about that tax money, oil money, africa's rich soil money, so thick you can't fold money, british eats indian company money, old money, gold money limestone coal money. what's genius about what she's doing is she's saying there's a discourse at this country that looks at the 0 pressed, looks at those who have been marginalized

and flips it so that they become the responsible for their own situation. right? so you black people, you don't know how to spend your money. you don't know how to save your money. you don't know how to be married, et cetera. but she's like what about that cain money. what about that money that was gotten through the enslavement of human beings? what about that money that was given, that people still benefit from today, right, in those who colonized people. right? her narrative is both pointing to the particular critique or responding to the critique that lorde gave, right, through on sort of this black urban culture, but also connecting it, right, to the realities of other oppressed marginalized people throughout the world. and that i think is a genius that is representative of black general use but also

representative of american muslim jean use. when you think about culture, what culture is, what kind of cultures we have and what kind of culture we can create, i think this is an example, right, of the kind of dynamic incisive intelligent and really robust, right, sort of cultural production that is possible for our community. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you so much, dr. suad. we did just get a tweet maybe for you guys to think about pit but muslim culture should by cultured lie the lens of assad. why are we here? our unity means nothing without it. we can address that after we go through the panel lists. i want to introduce dr. sherman jackson up next. he's director of the islamic center for thought and culture and practice at the university of southern california. he's also a poor and founding scholar of the american learning

institute of muslims. been named as one of the most 500 influential muslims in the world. the question for dr. jackson -- >> after that introduction? >> -- is somewhat tied in to what dr. suad addressed. at the time of the prophet, culture was a respected part of life. can american culture be a part of the muslim american identity? so it's as if we're battling two things right now. american muslim culture as it pertains to people who have been here for generations. a lot 06 the stuff we're going through has already been done before. what about the muslim culture as it pertains to immigrant muslims? where is the balance and what is the place in islam?

[ speaking foreign language ] >> i want to start off by saying first of all, that's not quite the question i remember receiving but i'll try to respond to it to the best of my ability. i think this is a very complex question and i'm trying to sort of read between the lines so that i can get at what i think is actually being offered. and perhaps one of the best ways of doing that is to pick up on something that dr. khabeer said. and that is that we are muslims. and before we're muslims, we're human beings. and as human beings, there is nothing more natural than cultural production.

human beings are naturally cultural producers. and we may draw some instruction in this regard from something that the prophet said. the prophet says that the most truthful -- not the best, but the most truthful names for a human being are two. one is the one who's constantly toiling. human beings toil. they work. they occupy themselves with production. the other one is the one who is angst. and culture production in some ways is really about taking the edge off the sort of cosmic anxiousness that we feel as human beings. this is why the german

philosopher once said that it is that cosmic fear, you know, where do we come from, why are we here, where are we going, he said, that is the mother of all culture. and all human beings are involved in that. in terms of the whole enterprise of producing culture, i don't think that is our problem because we're just as human as anybody else. but i think that we have a number of hangups, if i might be permitted to use that word. and those are as following. on the one hand, we are, as an american muslim community, in a sense in a transitionary phase. in some ways we are stuck in a certain allegiance to what may be called a back hoem culture, a back hoem expression of islam.

by the way, you don't have to be an immigrant to have that attachme attachment. many converts are equally attached to that because they don't know of any alternative to that backhome compression as to what is likely to be accepted or recognized as quote unquote islamic culture. and then we have the other side of the equation where we are a bit anxious about this whole business of too ready or too intimately identifying with a sort of culture production that might be just a bit too comfortable in an american space. and i think that here, if i might be permitted to be frank, i don't think there's any point in having any discussion among us as modern muslims that seeks to do away with or ignore the reality of our history. all right? i mean, we are where we are today as a certain particular moment in history. and that is a post colonial

moment. that is a post-slavery moment. and those moments produce their own sort of dynamic. and part of that dynamic is ensuring that we no longer are seeing or see ourselves as the object of some other's will. and that can put us in a position where we're not quite sure where to draw the boundary between well, how much of this american thing can we partake of and how much must we reject. how much must we keep a hold of and how much can bedump off in the atlantic on our way over. that's part of the challenge that we face. the other challenge that we face -- how long do i have? >> seven minutes. >> seven more? that's generous. the other challenge that we face, you know, has to do with this whole appendage of islamic. and here i think i'm going to shock some people because i'm about to make a 180 of sorts.

but i hope they'll still be my friends afterwards. i think that there is a certain amount of diffidence, a certain amount of anxiousness, discomfort about the whole enterprise of cultural production, particularly cultural production in what i consider to be that narrow understanding. and by the narrow understanding, i mean cultural production that is really sort of about the use and deployment of our imaginative energies, our expressive energies, our inventive energies to sort of, to sort of take us beyond the everyday dredgery of everyday life. i mean this is leisure and interstatement. we think of art as culture. we think of music as culture. we think of comedy as