7:00 eastern time. we will now take you to the floor of the u.s. house of representatives. they will have a brief pro forma session. no major legislative business. no business at all. they're out for two weeks. when they come back, it will begin your it. they will be talking about the budget spending bills over in the senate. enjoy the rest of your day. happy holidays to you. we will have this brief session and be on with our regular program schedule for the day. enjoy the rest your day will be back tomorrow. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from the speaker.

the secretary: the speaker's rooms, washington -- the clerk: the speaker's rooms, washington d.c., december 23, 2013. i hereby appoint the hobyorble fred upton to act as speaker pro tempore on this day. signed, john a. boehner, speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: the prayer will be offered by the guest chaplain, revved rend eugene emrick, catholic university of america from washington, d.c. the chaplain: lord, we thank you for yet another year, the awesome blessings you have showered on us. we pray that as we enter 2014 you will bless this congress with unity, creativity, and the american spirit that has made our country great. we pray especially for the next generation who will inherit the works of the u.s. congress. may you bless it with heartfelt concern for the world they will live in. a world of peace, justice, and

in awe of the god who created us, amen. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to section 6-a of house resolution 438, the journal of the last day's proceedings is approved. the pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentleman from alifornia, mr. denham. mr. ken ham: -- mr. denham: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house a number of sundry communications. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives the clerk received the following message

from the secretary of the senate on december 20, 2013, at 3:07 p.m. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 3343. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 3487. that the senate agreed to senate concurrent resolution 30. with best wishes i am, sincerely, karen l. haas. the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on december 20, 2013, at :50 a.m. that the senate concurs in the house amendment to the senate amendment to h.r. 3304. that the senate passed senate 1614. that the senate agreed to without amendment house concurrent resolution 71. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 623. that the senate passed without

amendment h.r. 767. that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 2319. with best wishes i am sincerely, karen l. haas. the honorable the speaker, house of representatives. sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on december 19, 2013, at 11:37 a.m. that the senate concurs in the house amendment to the senate amendment to house joint resolution 59. with best wishes i am, sincerely, karen l. haas. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the following enrolled bill and joint resolution were signed by speaker pro tempore thornberry n thursday, december 19, 2013. the clerk: h.r. 1402, to amend title 38 united states code to

extend certain expiring provisions of law, and for other purposes. house joint resolution 59, making continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2014, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: for what purpose does the gentleman from california rise? mr. denham: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to take from the speaker's table the bill, senate bill, 1614, and ask for its immediate consideration in the house. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: senate 1614, an act to require certificates of citizenship and other federal documents to reflect name and date of birth determinations made by a state court, and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: is there objection to the consideration of the bill? without objection, the bill is read a third time and passed. and the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. pursuant to section 6-b of house resolution 438, the house stands adjourned until noon on

thursday, december 26, 2013. >> all this week in prime time we are bringing you on core presentations of the "q&a" program. reagan at 7:00, former budget director david stockman. here is a brief look. >> i think the success that has been entered into reaganomics -- attributed to reaganomics is totally unwarranted. we had the biggest keynesian year duringnge

those 12 years, the reagan program. the economy rebounded because of all curtailed inflation and the deficits were norman th -- were enormous and stimulated the economy but they established a precedent for continuous, chronic, massive peacetime deficits and put the republican party, the old defender of the treasury gates, into the soaked inhat cheney eloquently expressed, "deficits don't matter." in a democracy, if there is not defendingtive party fiscal rectitude, you will have a free lunch competition during , replicants, and spenders, the democrats come and that is why you have $17 trillion of national debt today

and why we have a doomsday machine. the entirewatch "q&a" interview with former reagan budget director david stockman tonight at 7:00 eastern right here on c-span. up, we are here on the west front of the u.s. capitol to tell you about our look in review" series, a at 5 important issues we have covered over the past year. here is the lineup. tonight, immigration laws. on tuesday, senate filibuster rule changes to nsa surveillance on wednesday. thursday, look at gun laws. we wrap up the week on friday with the u.s. budget and the government shutdown. starting tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. >> the thing i care about most is to make it more of a museum with more pieces of beautiful furniture that belong to or presidents -- old presidents.

there is very little antique furniture here now, and most of what is your dates from 1902. >> why isn't there more antique furniture? i would've thought they would've collected this since the beginning of this republic. is, thomasg jefferson did the most wonderful thing of putting in beautiful furniture, and the sad thing was the war of 1812, when everything was burned. then they had to start piecemeal since then. every president who came could sell what he didn't like, what was there, and they used to have auctions. and then every president could change that the court -- to change the decor if you wanted. when president grant had the blue room pilot, chester arthur had at robins egg blue. that was stopped with thomas theodore roosevelt, 1902. ladies: influence and

image," season 2. jacqueline kennedy, 9:00 on c-span. journalistrdian" glenn greenwald, who published edward snowden's security leaks, told the european parliament -- they have been focusing on privacy issues following allegations of an estate spying and surveillance on european citizens -- nsa spying and surveillance and european citizens. this is just over an hour. >> we don't seem to have a connection. can you hear me? >> hi, how are you? >> we can hear each other now. good. mr. greenwald, welcome to a session of the committee of inquiry of the european parliament. we have about an hour for this session.

i'm first going to invite you to do your presentation, and then afterwards we will take questions and answers. very pleased to have you with us here today. i will give you the floor, or the video link, rather. the floor is yours. good afternoon, and thank you to the committee for convening this inquiry and for inviting me to speech you as well. there has been a virtual avalanche of stories from reporters over the past 6 months regarding espionage and electronic surveillance by the nsa and its partners, and each of these stories has been extremely important, but i think that the quantity of them has sometimes endangered the ultimate point from being obscured. i wanted to spend a little bit of time discussing what i think

is the primary revelation, the crux of all of these stories that ties them together and is the important thing for us to realize. and that is what the ultimate along with nsa is, its most loyal, some might say subservient, and junior partner, the british agency gchq, when it comes to the suspicion of surveillance and build. the objective of this system is nothing less than the elimination of individual privacy worldwide. at first glance, that might seem like a bit hyperbolic, like it is a little bit melodramatic, but it isn't. it is a literal description of what the nsa and its surveillance partners are attempting to achieve. the reason that i know that is what they are tempting to

achieve is because this is what they say over and over and over again. on occasion they say it publicly , and repeatedly they say it in their private documents, which were written when they thought nobody was able to hear what it .as they were saying there are instances where keith alexander, the general who is the chief of the nsa, has made comments along the lines of "the objective of the nsa is to collect all signal into legends, all forms of electronic medication by and between human beings." when this was first reported in "the guardian" and elsewhere, the nsa tried to dismiss it as sort of a literary allusion or even a joke. it's no joke. throughout the nsa documents, there appears continuously all sorts of references to the fact that the goal of the nsa is captured by the phrase "collect it all."

whenever the u.s. and its surveillance partners meet each year at the signal the roman conference -- signal development conference -- the part is being u.k., canada, australia, and new zealand -- there are constant slogans like "collect it all" or "know it all" or "exploit it all." this is the mission of the nsa. one of the ways that you see this mission manifest is that there are numerous programs that the nsa envelops and pursues that have no real purpose other than to identify the few pockets of communication that still exist on the planet that the nsa hasn't yet quite successfully invaded. the nsa is obsessed institutionally with the idea that there are still places in methods that exist that are impervious to their invasion, and they work every day to try to rectify what they see as the

problem am of the problem being that there are still places on the planet that human communication can take place without their collecting, storing, monitoring, and analyzing that communication. there are documents delivered, for example, to trying to understand how better to invade the wi-fi systems on airplanes based on the concern that human beings can still go on airplanes and use the internet or mobile phones for a few hours in their lives and not be accessible to their surveillance net. there are documents that discuss ways to circumvent advanced encryption tools out of fear that individuals will develop the means to be able to communicate with one another privately without the nsa being able to invade those communications. and so what we are really faced with is not just the creation of the most pervasive system of

suspicionless surveillance in human history, although we certainly are faced in that, but it is beyond that. it is an institution that has embedded into its mandate the mission to ensure that human beings can do no longer communicate with one another electronically with any degree of privacy. simply through institutional inertia, there is an effort to collect everything. months i have6 done a lot of reporting in many different countries about espionage targeted at many different populations thomas and everywhere i do this report, i do interviews with newspapers or television programs in those countries, and i'm always asked why -- in sweden, why are they arenterested in what swedes discussing, or why is the nsa obsessed with collecting communications of brazilians, or any number of countries.

the answer that comes your click on the nsa -- the answer that comes directly from the nsa's documents is that the nsa and its partners don't need any specific reason to collect anybody's communications. just the fact that human beings are communicating with one for theis reason enough nsa to decide it should be collected and stored and monitored. they don't need specific rationales. their only rationale is that nobody should be able to communicate without the nsa being able to invade the communication. every one of the stories we have done is driven by this overarching theme. that is why it is fair to say that the significance of supporting what mr. snowden revealed to the world really can't be overstated. if governments are devoted to the elimination of privacy worldwide -- the u.s., the u.k., and its partners are clearly devoted to doing -- that has profound consequences for

everybody who communicate electronically, which is most people on the planet. at the very least it is something we ought to be discussing and debating openly, if not figuring out how to stop. the second point i want to make is i wanted to discuss a little bit what some of the reaction has been to our reporting, especially in europe, but also because itworld, bu reveals an important point. it was back in late june -- five months or so ago -- that "der the nsa reported that was targeting ordinary germans by the hundreds of millions, or collection of the metadata of their telephone records. the reaction of the everman was very muted. -- the government was very muted. there were symbolic gestures to objecting, but by and large it was a very restrained reaction. there wasn't much of an effort to do anything about it. it really wasn't until "der spiegel" was able to reveal that

not only ordinary germans, but the german chancellor angela merkel was the target of this surveillance system that the german government reacted with indignation and decided it needed do something about it. and that is a pattern that has in other places as well, a sort of apathy and indifference when it is revealed that the population is being targeted with mass surveillance, but anger when the governments find out that they themselves are targeted. part of what explains that interesting dichotomy is the fact that political officials often tend to eat concerned about their own interests and not the interests of the citizens whom they are yxtensively -- ostensibl representing. but the more ou -- but the broader point is that as long as the nsa is "only -- [no audio] -- then we can live with their

intrusion. i want to spend a moment addressing this point, because it is probably the single greatest misconception in the report that we have been doing. if you talk to surveillance experts, as i know you are doing, what you will hear i think almost by consensus at this point around the world is simplytadata is not almost as invasive as content interception, or even as invasive. in most cases, and most meaningful senses, collection of metadata is now more invasive than content. it is not just surveillance experts who think that way, it is the nsa itself. documents the there is the recognition that collecting metadata is the supreme priority of the agency, not because it protects people's privacy, but precisely because it enables the nsa to invade people's privacy more effectively than the interception of content.

i think sometimes it is difficult to understand that in the abstract, but 80's easy to iserstand that when -- it easy to understand that when concrete examples are used. if you can imagine, for example, a woman who decides she wants to get an abortion. if you are listening in on her phone calls, what you'll hear is her calling the clinic, the clinical answer with a generic-sounding name. youwill hear the woman who decided to target for surveillance ask for an appointment tuesday, 2:00, get the appointment at tuesday at 2:00 and hang up the phone and you will have no idea why she called or what kind of clinic she called or what the purpose was. but if you are collecting her metadata, you'll see the phone number she called, you will be able to identify it as an abortion clinic, you will know how many times she called that clinic, and you will have exactly the information that you wouldn't get if you are simply listening to her phone call. somebody who has

hiv and calls a doctor specializing in hiv once every three months, as hiv patients often do. if you are collecting the metadata you will know every thing about the medical condition. the same with somebody who calls a suicide hotline or a drug addiction clinic or somebody who is speaking with someone who is not their spouse late at night or any number of other types of intimate activity that human beings engage in that you probably wouldn't be able to if you are reading the e-mails or listening to telephone calls but that you will instantly be able to understand by collecting their metadata. beyond that there are very sophisticated, and increasingly sophisticated, tools for analyzing metadata when it is collected en masse to not only

understand who your targets are speaking to but who those people are speaking to -- [no audio] and to develop a very comprehensive picture of the network of associations and friends of the various individuals, but also of a society generally, to have a very invasive understanding of the private behavior, private associations, either thoughts of the -- private thoughts of the people whom you have placed under surveillance by collection of metadata. it really is the case that if you are somebody who values privacy, it would almost be preferable at this point you have the nsa listening to your phone calls and reading your e-mails than it is for them to collect all of your metadata over the course of many years and being able to link it to everybody else's metadata and analyze it in secret with virtually no restraint, as the nsa, the gchq, and it's surveillance partners are doing. there is a point i wanted to , theit talk about briefly

-- [no audio] -- of individual privacy. there is often a sense that western governments inculcate people to accept that privacy doesn't really have much value that it is essentially a luxury, that if you have done nothing wrong with nothing to hide. all the sorts of clichés that have been manufactured and disseminated to get top elations -- to get populations accustomed to an invasion of their privacy. i think that although there is a perception -- [no audio] is that people instinctively understand why privacy actually is vital. that is why they put passwords on the e-mail accounts and social media networks, why they put locks on their bedroom and --hroom doors, white why if you propose to put video cameras in their home to protect

them from invaders and criminals, they would react with repulsion because human beings instinctively understand that privacy is a critical component of what it means to be a free human being. i think, though, that it is worth spending a minute to underscore why that is. i think we all have this understanding that when we know that we are being watched by other people, when we know that other people are testing -- casting a judgmental examination upon our choices and behaviors, our behavior is much different than when we act in the private realm. when we think other people are watching us, we make choices to conform to orthodoxy, designed to avoid behavior deemed to be shameful. essentially, we make choices to fulfill the expectations that other people in broader society have of us. we become conformists. we conform to mores and norms. if we have a realm where we can go into where we are confident that we are not being watched,

can we engage in creativity and dissent, can we violate is essentiallyat the realm in which human freedom exclusively resides, when we decide for ourselves what kind of choices we want to make. it is a society in which the private realm is abolished, in which human beings know that they are susceptible to being watched at any time -- i think that is the key, not necessarily that every one of the e-mails is being red, but that their e-mails and telephone calls can be monitored by an agency, just the knowledge that your behavior is subjected to the possibility of surveillance is a society that breeds conformity, a society in which individuals will have a range of choices available to them severely constricted. it is why every tyranny, every desperate, every oppressive government loves a surveillance state, precisely because it eliminates human choice and breeds conformity and really

severely reduces the amount of .reedom that individuals have that is quite beyond the political applications and theoretical applications, there are serious consequences to what it means to be every individual to live in a state like the one we are moving to in which surveillance is both indivisible and yet ubiquitous. the final point i wanted to make that i i began by saying am glad that this committee has convened this inquiry, and that we are able to have this opportunity to discuss all of these issues. i just want to remind everybody that there is only one reason why we are able to have the discussion we are having today, and why we have the knowledge and information that we now possess about this system. and one reason is the brave self-sacrificing decision of my

source for this story, edward snowden, to risk everything in his life that he had -- career stability and personal relationships and the ability to toa free citizen -- in order ring it to all of our attention. there are governments all over the world -- in fact, most governments all over the world who are extreme beneficiaries of mr. snowden's choice. human beings all over the world consider him a hero, governments have been able to realize how their privacy is being invaded, to take steps to reform the ,buses that we now know about to convene investigations like the one we are here to participate in today. all sorts of people, all kinds of governments all over the world exploiting for their own interests and their own benefit the very great sacrifice that mr. snowden made. i am glad to see they are doing it and i'm gratified that the

permits are taking searcy what it is he has shown them -- that governments are taking seriously what it is he has shown them. although governments have examined the choice is made and the sacrifice and bravery he has shown, you are very few timelyents -- in fact, a -- tiny handful -- who are extending reciprocal courtesy to him by protecting his rights the way he has decided to protect all of ours. because of that, he is currently in a situation that is very uncertain where his own government has threatened to subject him to prison duchenne and put him in a cage for decades if not the rest of his for having shown the light on behavior that is illegal and abusive, and most governments have decided to turn their back not only on him but their own obligations ethically and legally to protect people such as mr. snowden from persecution by granting him asylum. i think it is a very strange and

disappointing dynamic to watch governments in europe express indignation over what he has revealed and take steps to protect themselves against it while at the same time turning their back on him and allowing his own government to threaten him with life in prison. i would hope that governments around the world would not only decide to try to exploit his revelations for their own interests, but also to express gratitude for what it is that he did by protecting his basic human rights, which is the right to come forward as evidence of secret -- with evidence of secret wrongdoing on the part of the worlds most powerful factions and not be sent to prison for the rest of your life for having done it. with that, i thank you once again for inviting me and i am happy to have a discussion -- if any of you have questions. >> ok, thank you very much for your introduction. now we are going to go to questions and answers, and i hope that the connection will remain stable enough. i had a