it is my goal to return to the united states. unfortunately, there are no provisions in the charges that aren't doubled against me. that provides challenges. i am working with the government to find out if we can do this in a manner that serves the public good. unfortunately, everything we have heard blessed are they want to use media scare everybody in the world out of ever saying that the public as a fit of the -- seat atvernment the table of government. it is becoming clear and the united states that i should never have had to do this in the first place. so we will see. drinkcond thing was, do i ? no, i have never been drunk. it is not a religious thing or an ideological thing, i do not like the way it tastes. citizen for.

-- four. i am neither the first or the last. the point that i wanted to reflect was that this is a tradition in the history of .ociety people have to put themselves on the line. people have to take risks. citizens have not just an , notest but nomination just believing in idea but standing for it in challenging the government when it goes to backfire. if we see our constitution being a violated on a massive scale by we have been demanded our officials to smirnov that they will protect becomes diffusion against all enemies not just foreign but domestic as well, we have a duty to stand up and do something about it. i tried my best to do that. i will hope that others will do the same in the future. i hope that will have no need for something as dramatic as we

have seen in the last year. the last one, i have lost track of. sorry. >> are you working on a tool to protect journalists? >> that is still an area of active focus. i am doing a lot with the freedom of press foundation and doing other things as well. there are active projects i am helping. i am actually beginning to develop in my thinking where we should not develop tools that are specific to journalists. we should provide tools in general that provide value and service everyone but they also -- serve everyone but they also the uniqueotect cases that come to journalists. whichhave provided tools say, all right, journalists, your sources can communicate with you on this and they will be bulletproof. it is much more nuanced than that.

suddenly, you stand out like a sore thumb when people are looking. ofn you look at the analysis the systems, they go, who is using the communication signature of this one program that we know was associated with journalists or communications? been said that encryption is like the one ring. it makes you invisible to ordinary mortals behind a visible to the nazgul. >> suddenly every intelligence group in the world says, why is this person different? we see this increasingly changing and we are normalizing encryption. after create an environment in which we provide heard immunity and hide within the crowd. this is being done through userts like tor, which i myself. i trusted my life to it in history shows that it did work although not bulletproof.

hcbs for transactional things, what you use for your bank transactions online. peer-to-peer communications. i will say one thing. i have to point out that i am disappointed in amazon.com. they so use unencrypted communications by default. when you go on look at a copy of "19 84" online or look for a book about committee organizing, testing, petitioning the government, wherever you are at, wherever the jurisdiction is, .hey can see this is incredibly dangerous and morally irresponsible and as a business is problematic for amazon to allow this to continue when we know for a fact that they have the capability to provide more secure communications. because as soon as you go to purchase that book, isn't as money is involved, they turn it over to encryption. i would hope that amazon would

take a look and say, we have waited too long. let's encrypt the library. >> our friends from the "washington post" and convey this. -- can convey this. i would love to do this for another hour but we are at the end of our allotted time. i would like to thank you both for taking the time to talk to us and thank you for sticking the risks you have -- taking the risks you have for informing the public. [applause] >> tomorrow on "washington journal," reverend al sharpton

talks about police brutality and grandeur decisions not to issue criminal indictments in the death of michael brown and eric garner. he is in washington to the day protest called the justice for all march. pratt, -- lead a protest called the justice for all march. larry pratt will talk about public opinion on guns. to theer, we will bring justice from march in washington organized by civil rights, labor, and church groups. live coverage beginning at 11:30 a.m. eastern time. >> here are some of the programs you will find this weekend on the c-span network. sunday evening at 8:00, political reporters share ico reporterslit share stories about being on the campaign trail with mitch mcconnell. afterwards, lindsay mark lewis on it money in politics.

sunday, senior correspondent for the daily beast shayna harris on the military's use of cyberspace to wage war. on american history tv on c-span three, a panel including david on how ronald reagan's career as an actor and spokesperson helped tony's munication skills to be a successful politician and president. -- helped hold his communication skills to be successful politician and president. find our complete television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs were watching. call us -- you are watching the. us, or tweetil at us. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter.

>> speaking at a christian science monitor breakfast, house intelligence may share mike rogers the senate intelligence committee's report on cia and miketions -- chair rogers criticized the committee's report on cia interrogations. just -- our guest is representative mike rogers. this is his second visit. he was here in june. we thank him for coming back. after serving in the army, he became an fbi special agent, specializing in public corruption cases in chicago. he returned to michigan in 1994 and was elected to the state senate. the next year, rising to become the majority floor leader. in 2000, he won a hotly contested race. he was reelected six times. he became chair of the house intelligence committee in 2010. in march, he announced he would leave at the end of the current

session to host a radio show for cumulus media. so much for biography, now onto the ever popular process of our progress. we are on the record. no live tweeting or filing while the breakfast is underway. so we have time to listen to what our guest is saying. there is no embargo when the session ends. if you would like to ask a question, please do the traditional thing and send me a subtle signal and i will call one and all. we will allow the guest to have opening remarks. we will start with chris straw and guy taylor, and mark thompson. thanks for doing this, sir. >> thank you for having me back. i would like to believe that you came because you want to hear what i have to say but i know the breakfast here is pretty good.

i thought i would not say to offer much. as the chairman of the intelligence committee, it has been a rough couple of years in the intelligence business for those who choose to serving in -- to serve the united states in that capacity, and hopefully we can get through this and get this behind us so we can continue to get out and do what they need to do. i thought it was unprecedented to have the cia director have a press conference at the cia to defend the cia. i'm still trying to figure out what all that means, i think, as we move forward. with that, i thought i would give more time for questions than hearing from me. i do have a very riveting 4000-word two-hour presentation on the u.s. tax code. that is pretty good. i brought the slides if you need to see them. >> in terms of figuring things out, let me do one or two and then we will go around the table. at director brennan's press

conference yesterday, do you agree with his assertion that a cause-and-effect relationship between eit's and useful information is unknowable? >> unknowable? >> that's what he said. >> no, i think it is probably better than that. i was an fbi agent so i was trained in the rapport building, interrogation technique, which i think works. however, given the circumstances in which they found themselves in the time in which they found themselves in, with the great unknown of another attack at the time, and remember, we did not have -- at the time, we did not really understand all of the way that al qaeda operated. we had pretty good intelligence, but not great intelligence. and so, after that event had happened, there was a time-sensitive era, and one

thing about rapport building is that you need time to make it work. to say it is unknowable, we know there was certainly the events that happened and information that was gleaned that was later used in everything from fully understanding and being able to put pressure on al qaeda to -- so when you talk to the people who were in the program, and they adamantly and passionately believe that the information was helpful and useful from enhanced interrogation techniques. >> let me ask another. then we will go to my colleagues. you said before the release of the senate report that its release will "cause violence and death." the initial response seems to have been not overly strong. do you still think there is going to be violence and death as result? >> yes, and i base that on the fact that foreign leaders said that it would incite violence,

they believed. that foreign intelligence leaders said it would incite violence, and our intelligence people said it would incite violence. we believe that the information is and will be used as a propaganda tool for those who will seek to incite violence against westerners and the united states. just knowing the change in posture in certain operations on behalf of the cia and other organizations, the state department trying to figure out better security for its embassies to deal specifically with this new threat, it is hard to argue that it will not have that impact. >> chris strong from bloomberg? >> thanks, mr. chairman. in response to the question about when director brennan talks about, that the -- that the value of the eits is unknowable, that could be a much more nuanced position than

previously stated by other people like yourself that the value was essential and it was was critical. your comments now seem to be a little more nuanced as well. could you just clarify about what you think the eit's were in terms of the value and what was actually gained from them? >> well i believe information , that was gleaned through those enhanced interrogation techniques served to stabilize -- save lives and provided intelligence on al qaeda we had not previously had before. i believe that because everybody i talk to at the agency, when you follow pieces of information that came out of those interviews that were used in the near term and sometimes in the long term had inherent value in ways that they did not have before. i do not know how you say -- you may have said if we had taken 90 days and talked to them, maybe we would have gotten the same information, but that is not what happened.

they went through this process, they have got information that clearly that -- clearly can be attributed to saving lives in the united states. i'm not sure how much more unnuanced i can become, and that is from talking to people. one of the things that we are reacting to the report, they did not interview one person that was involved in the interrogation program or the information that came out of the interrogation program that was used in other investigations in order to put the pieces together. and i think many people have the notion that in one event there were going to, somebody was going to say i am in, osama bin laden is at 123 main street, and here is this whole network. that was never going to happen and no one was going to believe that because it was an organization based on compartmentalization. if you get a piece of

information that is very, very valuable the name of the , courier, the description of a courier, all those things, you can use that information that to put together the conclusion, but if you do not have it, you cannot get to the conclusion. and so to say that it is unknowable, i am not sure -- i would disagree with that. i think it is knowable. again america has made the , decision, we did not want to do it this way, which is what we had legislation and all of that. that part to me we have settled. i do not know why we would debate the value of it. that to me was clear by all of the people we talked to who participated. >> i am going to go back further in time to benghazi and the benghazi report. one of the conclusions you reached in it was that there was no intelligence failing, and yet the report describes a number of instances that i do not know what they are, and i would like to hear what you are

characterizing them as, the cia apparently was unaware that their route to the diplomatic compound had been blocked. that evening. so it took them 42 minutes to travel a mile. they did not know the libyan general who set up transportation from the airport was untrustworthy and turned off his phone. and they allowed the analysts here in washington reading bad news accounts to dictate what had actually taken place there instead of asking the station chief and other witnesses, which is why we had the talking points problem for so long. so if that is not intelligence failing what is it? , >> and this is the broader question of what is an intelligence failure. if every time there is a successful attack in afghanistan, iraq, or syria, that is an intelligence failure, we ought not to get out of the bed in the morning.

the intelligence that was provided on the ground, the strategic intelligence saying we had a higher threat environment and here is why, was actually done. and it was done for months. and what we did was we reviewed, i think it was 4000 cables, leading up to the 9/11 event, and it clearly outlined a deteriorating security posture in benghazi and libya in general. and you could see it when you started at one end and got to the other, you could see the deterioration happening over time. certainly they had referenced that the other nations, the brits who had pulled out, and the others who had pulled up out because of the security posture was not great. we had testimony from some of the security, cia security officials at one time in august when they wanted to merge that two facilities, who said we are not coming, this is an unsafe facility, and you need to fix it, talking to the state department regional security office personnel on the ground. none of that happened.

so to say every time there is a specific event is an intelligence failure, i would disagree with that. they had the context right. the event on that night we did not know, or they do not know, i -- did not know, i should say, to clarify, but to say it was an intelligence -- there was a notice on the cia wall that night that you should be in a heightened posture because of the deterioration of the security footprint and the likelihood that something was going to happen on 9/11. with that memo, that memo was posted at the cia that something bad was going to happen. no the problem was they were not prepared for it. that is a different question indeed. clearly, the state department was not in a configuration for the security environment in which they were in. that was very clear to me. that was out of the lane of the investigation for us other than it was the cia who loaded up their cars and headed over

there. in any change in conflict on the -- changing it conflict on the ground, it would be crazy to think that in a changing battle environment, which it was, that the roads were blocked were not blocked. they were blocked because people moved in because there was clearly an event that had been at least some level of preplanning going into that particular night. >> but they moved very quickly. let me follow up real quickly on this. are you saying the cia was not prepared for 9/11? >> no, the cia annex was never breached. they took casualties, and that was a tragic loss of life, but they were never breached. their facility was never breached, and they had a fairly significant assault on the facility. the temporary mission facility, maybe i misspoke, the temporary mission facility was woefully unprepared.

not only were agents assigned for the security -- they were not prepared, and probably not the right experienced agents to be there, but they had not not even configured the compound in a way that would be safe. the cia had told them that in august before the september attack. as a matter of fact, one of the striking quotes to me was that one of the security officers told one of the agents, the state department agents, that if you do not change what you are doing here and get some help, you are going to die here. i mean, i do not know how much clearer you get, that you got a problem. their problem was they told the cia we had asked for it and we had asked for it and we are getting no response. >> another quick follow-up. isn't chris stevens, who was in all of this key? , he would have been responsible for making sure the security was ultimately ok at that temporary

facility. i mean, ultimately that was his responsibility -- >> that was out of the lane of my investigation, so my investigation -- >> i mean, the ambassador himself, he is the ultimate security officer. >> it is our understanding, and this was out of my lane in the investigation, that they had requested, including the ambassador, that they get more help from the state department. so i think that is a huge question that needs to be answered. if we do not want this to happen again, and you want to completely understand what happened at the temporary mission facility, than those questions, i think, have to be answered. there has been no investigation into that thread, which is where the select committee is going to -- appears to be focusing. again, my report was very narrow, it was only on the intelligence activities, and i think we answered those questions. we have never put one piece of information in if i could not corroborate it.

so, and it is hard, because people do change in a very high-adrenaline combat environment. two people can see the same things in two different ways. it does not mean one is wrong or one is being misleading. it means that in that crazy environment, the high-adrenaline environment, you might recollect things differently. so that is why we use all of the levels of corroboration that we did for each of the findings in the report. >> aaron kelly, "usa today ergo -- today erg." >> i want to ask a question on -- do you think that congress will or should bring up the nsa report again, or do you think the threat of isis or other groups will put a damper on that -- efforts to do that? >> they had to do something. in june, the 215 portion of the bill and the 702 portion expire, and not having 702 and 215 or some shape or variation of it would certainly hinder the national security of the united

states. i hope they can work it out between now and next year. i think there are still some hurdles to remain. i think they will come to a conclusion before june. i think the adults in the room will understand that we have got to have these provisions and push back on what i believe is the wrong narrative on what is actually happening or not happening in that space. and i think -- the whole notion of that program, which i find ironic now facing the threat that we have, was to make sure that if somebody overseas, a terrorist identified overseas, was a calling into the united states, we had a way to figure out who that was and who they were talking to. when you think there are 20,000 western passport holders fighting and becoming more radicalized in eastern syria under the isil banner, that is a significant tool that we better have in our toolbox or we are

going to be in trouble, because those people are going to come home and you're are going to have known identified terrorists calling somebody saying saying, operation is a go, get at it. if we do not have the ability to figure that out, we are going to have some problems here. at home. so i think we are going to get to a place where people understand the threat versus what we are actually doing and what protections are on that information, and i think americans, if they have the facts and we all agreed on the same set of data facts, will be with and support of these programs, because they are well overseen. >> jordan. >> thank you, chairman back to a question -- [indiscernible] and more broadly, the couple years in the intelligence community, what can congress do, the administration, or intelligence community do to

move beyond this? >> the intelligence community needs to get up every morning to get information to protect the united states. thankfully, they are incredibly dedicated people who believe in their mission or would not do it, and it is a difficult one on its best day. as far as the european union and all of the barking of the u.n. about prosecuting and all of that, obviously, that is incredibly disappointing. this is not the definitive report. the department of justice it a -- did a criminal investigation and found no wrongdoing. they even said in a statement that when the report came out there was nothing in here that was new to them that would change their outcome for that. and so unfortunately, one of the , again, the collateral damage of releasing a report that is partisan in nature, the methodology is certainly in question. they interviewed zero people. i do not know how you come to a conclusion on anything without interviewing anybody.

but just does not make sense to me. this is that collateral damage where these countries will take full advantage of it and find one more reason to kick around the united states. i think it's unfortunate. we ought to push back on every opportunity, on any efforts that would make to go after u.s. citizens who are working on behalf of the u.s. government to protect the united states and stand up for our national security. >> bbc. >> hi, i had a question about the reports. have you read it? >> i have read the summary. i have not read all 6000 pages. >> what surprised you? >> surprised me. hmm. again, they they took raw -- pardon? >> did you know everything? >> i never claimed to know everything even though i am a member of congress and they will tell you that know everything.

[laughter] of the, just some graphic in nature of the description and what surprised me was the strong conclusion s that they drew in the report without corroboration of evidence or testimony. that not only surprised me that -- but shocked me they would draw those conclusions without corroboration besides a cable. and again, two people can see the same event and have a different recollection. that is why you do eyewitness testimony and put it together. i was surprised -- there was no -- >> to follow-up. about the press conference yesterday at the cia. it was very strange. it was weird. you said you tried to figure out what it meant. one possibility is the idea of -- i was wondering looking back, what areas of secrecy could be

improved upon? what do you think that does not need to be secret? >> by the way, the next time you come, we promise to -- promise to pay the electric bill so the light does not keep going on and off. exactly. >> you said it did not provide context or interview the people who were there. so you had the information that could have been provided -- not the report itself but what extent of the american people -- >> and my argument on this is we went through this already which is why we ended up with a army field manual. as the interrogation document for the intelligence community. we went through this self-loathing period were we kicked ourselves. i am not saying there are things they did not exceed their

authority, but, we went through this process. and we corrected it and we legislated on it. and the department of justice reviewed it. and so i do not know what we gained. i know what the consequences were. first, second, and third order. but i do not know what we gained. we already had this discussion. as the chairman, my job was oversight of the 16 agencies and budget authorization and policy review and making sure we were successful in their mission. gets left off the table often. they have a tough job to do. we need to be sure they have the tools and resources and the classification to get their job done. it means sometimes disclosure if it hurts your friends and allies trying to help you, you do not do it. it is just like your family. you don't tell everything that happens to your family in public at every occasion. right? it would be interesting to read. right? but when you think about what we

have done, yeah, there were some issues. we corrected them. it was, again, no criminal wrongdoing in the context a -- of right after 9/11. by the way, one of the people interrogated said, he answered the question, are there any other imminent attacks planned? he said, you will soon find out. now, if it is right after 9/11 and we just lost 3000 people and those folks are told, stop another attack, how would we sit back in the comfort of our non-attacked country for 10 years and say, i wouldn't have made that decision. it seems a little bit hypocritical. to me. aired things that were not right, that were partisan and showed sometimes the dysfunction of our congress more than the dysfunction of

what happened at the agency. they went through the process of cleaning up and making sure it doesn't happen again. what we have done is hurt our friends overseas. now we are going to have to deal with this notion of what we do when the eu and united nations tries to find out the identities and goes after our intelligence officials or makes it tough on our embassies to do their jobs. there's only one force left for good in the world and that is the united states of america which it does not ask for much. other than we would like to sell you something. it has been a pretty good role for us. now we find ourselves, will be less able to provide information to our european allies. i don't know why that help anybody. we have stopped real attacks there. and so that's my frustration. that somehow, it was new information. no, we knew it. at some point, you have to stop talking about the things we corrected to move on.

my argument was we didn't, stop talking about it. now people who had nothing to do with this program will pay the price. that just hardly seems a good decision. >> "the washington times." >> thank you, mr. chairman. you sound pretty frustrated actually, by this. i want to take it in another direction for a moment and give you a unique opportunity given you have had this position presiding over dozens of classified briefings from the intelligence community, cia. probably more than anything else on the threat posed to the united states by al qaeda and isis. and now that you are leaving, moving on, walking out of that spotlight. [laughter] i wonder if you might indulge us

with your own -- >> enhanced interrogation. [laughter] >> i'm really good at timing. i wonder on your personal view of if the united states is winning the global war on terrorism that the bush administration created and the -- in the weeks and months after 9/11 that has been the background of so much of this back and forth the heated debate. and can you give us -- say why? and if not given your unique position and what we could or should be doing differently as new threats like the islamic state appear. >> i will disagree about the premise of the question that the war of terror was created by george bush. america was at war with radical islam long before 9/11. we just didn't know it. we just yawned it off.

r tower bombings, the east ever go bombings, -- east africa bombings, these were terrorist acts that took innocent lives. the 1993 bombing at the twin towers. the -- my memory fails me at three or 4 others i could tuck in. and what happened was, it is really interesting. after the 9/11 commission took the review of this, they said one of the things that struck them was that every time the united states didn't really react, al qaeda got more emboldened. america is not going to do anything, matter-of-fact and some of the interrogations, they thought america was weak and soft and presented a good target for them. and so, which fit within the same understanding that the 9/11 commission found leading up to

9/11, because they had been attacking us. they had been trying to kill us. they are trying to engage us. we didn't do anything about it. that's how we got to 9/11. the uss cole, that is the other one that i think i forgot. and so this notion that it was new, the approach to handling once they slaughtered 3000 people, we thought we'd better do something about it. so that changed, the fundamental approach to it changed. and isis was not created by us being engaged or us being there, this was an organization that had pledged allegiance to al qaeda in about 2006 and they have relationships in 2005. because they wanted that, and -- bat that america and -- that

anner and credibility of al qaeda that brought to the terrorists fight in their minds. with it came resources and recruiting and other things beyond the region which is why we have some 21 al qaeda affiliates we track. and so, what happened in the change with isis or isil was the fact that, and many people argued it was about brutality. al qaeda decided they wanted no part of it. .hat is nonsense what it was, he wanted to start doing attacks outside syria. -- it is nonsense. the leader of al qaeda said, no, i wanted to stay in syria and attack assad. he knew he had something interesting happening. because they were holding ground, people were being recruited like crazy. so in the early days, they had a couple of thousand people with western passports. if you think about 9/11, they

didn't have the ability to easily get into the united states. they had to have an elaborate plan. they raise money. will be playing together to get people who were not western gas passport-- western holders into the united states. he looked at it like i have a lot of money and lots of people am winning the fight on the ground and i have the ability to get these people back into the west and in the early days, it was europe. so that's how they split. he decided he wanted to go into the holding of ground and as -- that is when he decided to go into western iraq. he thought he could count on the western sunni tribal leaders to be with him and they were. because of the al-maliki issue. this is about confluence of events that led us to where we are today. when we disengaged from the world, we didn't answer the

sunni arab leaders's call of trouble rising in eastern syria, al qaeda that we know as isis that was there. we made conscious decisions to disengage. when you did that, they took full advantage to run rampant in the eastern syria and western iraq. and so, the threat matrix i never saw as bad as i see today. i have been on the committee for a decade i have never seen it so , bad. you have more individuals who are associated with radical islam, who are saying they have either an aspiration or capability to do a tax in the -- do attacks in the west. meaning europe and the united states. some are credible and summer in the aspirational stage, meaning -- some are in the aspirational stage, meaning we don't think

they will have the capabilities to pull it off but others we believe are. here is the dangerous change. about half of the al qaeda affiliates have expressed overtly or covertly support for the goals and aims of isil. you say, what does it mean? who cares? that means if they connect to their logistics framework and that gives them the ability if they need something to pull off an attack, money or were -- or people or certain capabilities, now my reach has expanded pretty significantly. so i do think we have huge challenges. and i think we have spent the past few years -- i have had significant disagreements with the administration about how hard we make it on the people in intelligence services, our special operators to do the work they need to do to disrupt. their activities. and so, it's a combination of pulling back, deciding were not going to engage in a hard and

difficult places, and i mean through muscular diplomacy, not military engagement. and we weren't going to rally of bringingole sunni nations into the fight early on against this. those mistakes had huge consequences just like i argued would not do anything prior to 9/11. we just let it fester. and we got 9/11. well, we are in the process of letting it fester. the longer it goes, the more likely there will be a successful attack in the united states or europe. and that's my frustration. we have certain capabilities we leave on the table because we debate among ourselves and not -- ad nauseam about making sure every little detail is perfect. you can't fight a conflict if every single detail is perfect. some would say, maybe we need to take the risk at home. that's great if you are , you know, someplace that isn't

the highlight of one of the suggested attacks. but it will eventually cause you harm and pain economically if there is another attack. i saw some estimates of $1 trillion in lost economy after 9/11. $1 trillion, with a t. that impacted us all. i argue we still -- [indiscernible] that was my rent. -- rant. we are not configured today to win the fight. if were still having this conversation five or six or seven years from now, we're going to be in worse trouble. because the longer that the world sees them as winning, the more recruits that will get and they will be western recruits and that's what we see happening. that's just the fact. so we see more people showing up still. because right now, the current plan is, let's not let them take kobani. even though they did. but let's not let them do that or take village a or b. that's not a plan for victory.

they are constantly moving their strategy, they are moving their logistics. they're functioning like an organization that wants to be there for a long time area were -- time. we are functioning like a country that is tired of it. the problem is, they're not tired of it. they're still in the fight. >> we will go next to mark thompson and david, robert, elena, paul, and david. >> was that a hint to keep it shorter? >> no, just a logistical note. >> mr. chairman, continuing on that line. your career has an interesting arc. you were sworn in eight months before 9/11. you ran in one of the most interesting and valuable seats to pay attention to what is going on.

i am wondering over the span of time what you have seen and what you have learned. we looked at 9/11, we had bad guys that hit us with our airplanes. maybe there were lucky the first time and they couldn't get lucky again. we now have isis and see thugs with social media skills scaring us to death. my question is the military said -- says we cannot do it alone in iraq or syria. you might've heard that in 10 years ago we didn't. and as hillary clinton says, we need to pay attention to what these guys are up to. but given the current state of the global war of terror, do you believe in tone and track, we are on the right course to deal with this? >> no, not currently. i don't.

and remember, some notion you will sit down and drink tea with people who cut people's heads off and use rate as a political cool, it is nonsense. we are absolutely we are fooling ourselves at a cocktail party with rpt is up. these folks are fully committed to using violence to subjugate populations. they have killed more muslims than christians or jews. i think -- which is why we have lost an opportunity about a year and a half ago to pull our sunni nation leaders, this was the opportunity to stand together with our sunni nation leaders. our arab league partners. to start pushing back at what is extremism which risks more muslims than it does christians or jews or americans or europeans.

and so, we missed it because we thought we were going to disengage from the world. what is so striking to me, i had that clinical philosophy before i became chairman, but to -- political philosophy before it became german, what to watch it from the inside with all of the access from the classified information to watch that unravel. just absolutely reconfirmed why i believe engagement in the world is so absolutely important. and i watched it happen. and we didn't again respected in -- didn't gain respect in the world. in fact, i would argue we lost respect in the world. when i have foreign leaders -- let me tell you one anecdotal story. i befriended a middle eastern intelligence official overtime and we were working through cooperative issues we wanted to trying to help our intelligence community builder the relationships as well. and after one particular meeting, this very senior

intelligence official grabbed my arm and said, when you do me a favor? tell americans not to give up on themselves. who else would help somebody like us in a place like this and ask for nothing and risk your lives to do it? the russians? the chinese? he said it can only be americans. you know, unfortunately, he was killed maybe six months later by a suicide bomb attack. to me, it was a great way to sum up what they saw happening. america pulling away saying it is too hard and too difficult and we don't want to be sympathetic or understanding. we just want out. the problem is in the world we live in, that is an unconscionable decision. and i see the same happening in afghanistan. we have asked half of the thelation to come out from

back of their houses were they are imprisoned, women. we have more women in school and their lifespan has gone from something like 41 to 63. access to health care. that is what america is. but we spend most of our times talking about how bad we are and how terrible we are and we never get it right. i think that's dangerous and dangerous for the world and the russians love it and the chinese love it and the iranians love it. and they can't wait to continue this narrative about how bad the united states is. and i think we are making a serious mistake. it is that change. >> when you say the united states, you seem to be saying the obama administration. >> they kicked it off but a wing of my party is isolation. very much pushing this notion we should disengage from the world. i am not sure -- wing is probably the wrong description but it is group of individuals in my party joining with a

larger group in the democrats who decided isolation is the answer and nobody has explained why. it kicked off under president obama. and his rhetoric has not been great. i do not hear any lofty rhetorical speeches about the greatness of america. i hear a speech about every two weeks about how we are doing something wrong. think about it. if you turn on the tv and you don't live in the united states, you'd think we have massive race problems across america. we are locking people up and throwing them in the basement and torturing them on a daily basis, and we can't quite get our engagement overseas rights. we should just leave. afghanistan and iraq. that's what the world is seeing. that's what i've seen over time. i have a great distinction to see not just from a 30,000 foot level but from the folks who are actually in the gritty side of

international engagement. and i think it has cost more lives than it will ever save. >> mr. sanger? >> thanks for doing this. let me turn you to to subjects two subjects you have not talked about today. one is cyber and one is iran. would you look back as you have been doing over the course of your time, one of the issues in trying to develop a cyber deterrent has been our troubles in attributing attacks. think about the sony attack underway now. we have gone through a week or two trying to figure out if it's the north koreans or someone else who is releasing salary records and e-mails about angelina jolie. we have had the same problem with the attacks on the white house and state department.

unclassified systems. -- on classified systems. in the same problem with jpmorgan chase. i'm going back to the summer. if you go back further, a longer list. i'm wondering, first on that one, if you can tell us a little bit about why this problem has been so difficult for the united states to solve and how it fits into the overall strategy your -- strategy that you have been pushing? all, americans have a healthy distrust of their government and i say that in a good way. and it is a healthy distrust of their government. and so the narrative on cyber, we got on the solution, the wrong side of the narrative of what it meant and what we're trying to accomplish as a government. but i can tell you why sony is a game changer when it comes to cyber in the united states.

i do believe our attribution is getting much, much better. but me tell you why, and i think it went relatively unnoticed. i saw some reporting on it. but if, in fact, you take at face value according to public reports that this was a nation-state that did this in retaliation for some wrongdoing they believed or perceived, they didn't go and steal, we have been getting ripped off at breathtaking pace as many countries get in on it because there's no consequence. they destroyed data on the machines. they try to take pieces of the company down. that was the first, again, if you take it at face value , public reports, the nationstate decided retribution act could result in us to storing data and breaking down a company. we have said before with iran. -- seen it before with iran

which is why, i am sure, the nationstate may have better capabilities that people assumed they had. so you have this very destructive attack with the iranian government attacking and almost taking you down. 30,000 computers. imagine showing up at work and not one computer works and you are not getting the data and not getting data back off of it. that's a huge, disruptive problem to your business. that happened in sony. they did not get all of it, they took some of it for the sheer fun of releasing the information and the chaos and damage. >> you still believe it's a nationstate? >> i am saying the public reports indicated is a nationstate. >> on the nonpublic side, do you believe it is a nationstate? >> listen, i'm not in a position to answer that question. our attribution is getting much better. it's getting much better. >> even though would've not been able to publicly attribute? >> there are security companies that have attributed.

and i would argue, as a former fbi guy, that when a nationstate says this group and does not know who it is indeed on behalf of the north korean people because of the great leader and we appreciated, i would say, and we would say in the fbi, that's a clue. [laughter] >> to iraq question. we have these negotiations going on and could argue we are in a better place than we were a year ago. iran. because a good deal of material they were producing a could be used for bomb materials. it's now blended down. what is your assessment with the actual weapons side? the group that has worked so hard over the years to work on the design? not as a part of the negotiations, do you have a

sense we have not been forwarding,re fast what is your sense? how does that match will what the administration has been saying? >> i have had concerns from the very beginning. mainly, if you recall, the very first flop over this was when the iranians came after this first secret deal which was the first problem and said, we have the right to enrich, and secretary kerry said we never agreed to enrich. and now in the negotiations we are talking about how the right to enrich looks. the whole point of sanctions was to get them to not have the ability. how we don't look at as a major setback and we rarely talk about the consequences of a nuclear iran. we are already seeing it. eua, under the 1-2-3 agreement which was the gold standard on how to move forward, a nuclear

enrichment program, they agree would happen separately and the removal of the material. why we would do this to our friends and then engage and allow enrichment for people known adversaries into our friends, i don't know how we say this is successful. we have no view into the -- into trigger research. without that trigger, you can do -- can't do it. or the weaponization modeling. all of that happens at a facility which they told us we can't get at. we've given them the right -- >> you think they are at that? >> i think there's a reason. they are not wanting us at that facility. i'm not that bright. it seems when the iranians saying you can see everything but what we are doing here. and by the way, they continue to do ballistic research. that has gone unabated, which tells you that they are maneuvering the table to get to a very short period of time. so you can do a lot at testing through computer models.

more so than you used to be able to do. you know, the hardest part is getting the materials and configuration of which can function on the head of a missile. that's really one of the most difficult things to do. you don't necessarily have to have that test in order to get there. trigger research, modeling, and andnization, ballistic missile research continues. we have given them extensions which is one of the things that they needed to continue their bad acting. we've told our allies in the region, first of all, we told them we do not trust our allies enough that we will give you information which i will use a onked themterm, hyonked off. it was a sign of disrespect in their minds and we didn't trust them.

and they are suffering under the weight of iranian actions through the region. if you saw the arrests in saudi arabia, certainly concerning, what the iranians were doing with hamas at a time when they were engaged in exchange of gunfire, or missile fire, with israel. you see where they're at in the bad acting in baghdad. think about it from their perspective, they are sitting there saying we're getting killed over there by those guys , they are absolutely engaged in activities that are dangerous to the stability of our countries. and you're marching them down the path of [indiscernible] that's why the saudis are going nuclear, the uae is going nuclear, and i guarantee that turkey will do this. if were under some naive notion it isn't going to cause a nuclear arms race if they get a nuclear weapon, we're fooling

ourselves. .hey are setting the table that is why i am so opposed. we have given a law and we have gotten very little other than that they keep talking. that's to their advantage. >> a two-part question about the question of could we have gotten the information that came from these techniques. could we have gotten it some other way. matter, inophical the abstract, is it ok to torture if it provides actual intelligence that we deem useful? and the second part is, do you think that things like bleedingding, rectal and things like this, doesn't qualify as torture? >> to me, with answered all of those questions. we did after all of this happened. we have changed it. none of those techniques exist today or will be used. to me, you don't have to be

hypothetical. it's done. we've answered it. it is gone. we haven't done it for decades. the cia hasn't done it for a decade. so i think with answered the question. i think americans have answered that question. i think where americans are upset, there looking back and the government told them they would protect them, gave them authority and information from individuals who are hardens, brutal, mass murderers. toy did it and now we want ruin their lives and careers and put them in jail. i think that is what most americans are upset. they get we did not want to go that way. that is why it just shocked me -- why, why now? we had all these reasons for no, very few reasons for yes, why we

released this report. [indiscernible] >> i have a couple of security related questions. pass -- whoplan to do you plan to pass on your cyber mantle to? [indiscernible] sharing that should be a focal point in congress or other things? >> our bill collapsed last weekend, on friday. it didn't pass in the senate and what it allow the information sharing a bill which was unfortunate. showed that now there is a disruptive part of the cyberattacks which is very dangerous and imagine you are a financial institution.

that has economic consequences. it should keep us all up at night. [indiscernible] it has to come that the next year. we are in discussion with folks with what it might look at. cause for cyber sharing. , easy way youck can get at a big part of the problem. the narrative has been so distorted. most americans, i went back to my district and talked about cyber sharing what they believed the nsa was doing. they believed the nsa monitors private networks. that's against the law for them to do it. the rhetoric was so overwhelming the other way, it was very difficult to get to that conclusion. what we were trying to do and why it's so important, nsa goes overseas

and sees really nasty source code very always tried to do was say that if you can do this in real time, and only share them ,- the malicious source code you could stop a lot of problems to witness have them all. so a lot of them. that collapsed around misguided toions of what they believed the nsa is going to monitor private networks. >> [inaudible] >> go figure. level of the attacks only get worse to will only get

worse. i fear that they will be able to pull off a significant attack that has real financial consequences. if you just take the public information by private security companies, we know that nationstates have been on our critical infrastructure truth they are waiting to cost-effective capabilities in case of a conflict. we have a penetrative it. we know they were successful. we know they were successful on getting into our financial networks, large financial institutions, not once, but twice. is somebody at some point is going to decide to flip the switch. when they do, we will have a significant economic, catastrophic event.

actuallys we are just fat guys. that is a losing equation from always. i fear it would take something like that to get most members of congress to understand the real threat. that i will say stop the nsa spying on you. because they don't silently. -- because they don't spy on you. we are finally seeing how sophisticated these gosar. it was an international state capability. it went to others. now it's medical records, financial records. sony, maybe because it's the entertainment business, but the psycheis on the public

is i want to be a movie producer . those guys like a lot of money. my fear is that if we don't fit here,ill, i think you are i'm not sure what it was a good idea. again, i fear if we don't start getting on the defend ourselves side of the trouble. parts we're out of time. thank you for doing this. we are out of time. i want to thank you for doing this. in a form commentary january. >> daunting. thank you. thank you everybody.

tomorrow on washington journal, reverend al sharpton talks about he.ase retell it he is in washington to lead a protest called the justice for all march. will discusstt public opinion polling on gun regulations. washington journal begins live at 7:00 a.m. on c-span. later we will bring you that justice for all march organized by labor, church, and civil rights groups. that will be at 11:30 a.m. .astern time

we will have more on the senate intelligence committee report on newsmakers with john you, former deputy assistant attorney yoo.al -- john you can watch the interview sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> here are some of the programs you will find this weekend on the c-span networks. "q&a" journalist discussed being on the campaign trail with senator mitch mcconnell. lyndsay mark lewis on money and politics. and correspondent for the daily beast tim harris on using

cyberspace to wage war. including, a panel david keen on how ronald as an actor and spokesman helped hone his communication skills. 8:00, a former aide to president nixon shows clips of an interview with the president. find a schedule on www.c-span.org and let us know what you think about the program to or watching. call us. e-mail us. send us a tweet. join the c-span conversation. like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. >> yesterday the cato institute cussingonference is

issues of surveillance, national security, and civil rights -- discussing issues of surveillance, national security and civil rights. kentucky senator thomas massie rein about his efforts to in surveillance efforts. he is introduced by julian sanchez of the cato institute. >> good morning. welcome to the cato institute. by name is julian sanchez. fellow here, and it is my signal privilege to welcome you to the inaugural cato institute surveillance conference. this is been called the information age, which almost by definition means that our era is

also an age of surveillance, surveillance is how information is gathered and assembled. information is the central in our era,power which means it is how we strive to protect ourselves against novel threats in a uniquely decentralized era where small threatsf people propose to a nationstate previously reserved for other nationstates. at the same time, the architecture of monitoring and potentially the architecture of the control that we are constructing in order to make ourselves safer threatens to undermine really the liberaltions of democracy and a free society. tracked in our daily

lives as a side effect of the technologies we use to .ommunicate every day almost accidentally. it is a byproduct of the way that as neverork, before, when we talked to a friend or lover or a family member, when we read the newspaper, when we investigate topics of interest to us, global they involve geopolitics or our own most intimate medical conditions, a trace is left. in many ways, the entities that gather increasingly minute and

vast quantities of data about our activities thanks to sophisticated bulk data analysis may in some ways know us better than we know ourselves. these issues have come to the forefront of our national conversation recently, in significant part because of the disclosures of mr. snowden regarding the incredible scale and scope of collection by the national security agency. but the technologies used in intelligence and in the name of national security are also increasingly finding their way into domestic law enforcement efforts as has often been the case in our history. we find the cutting edge military technology is within a widely deployed law enforcement technology. and so of course this presents difficult questions.

that you are forced to deal with and the men which of science fiction. then of course it involves projecting forward the of theseons technologies, not just as individual novelties, but in on ourggregate effect economy and our relationship with the state. looking back to the middle of the last century in our history, we also know the terrible price that can be exacted when secret surveillance tools are used without adequate oversight. we know that across many presidents with many parties in power, we have seen how the ability to secretly surveille not just enemies of the state but enemies of the regime in power can be used to entrench that power.

we know of course most famously, the fbi used the power to surveille as a tool of power against martin luther king and the christian leadership conference but also a whole range of antiwar, feminists, leftists, dissidents as a way of trying to ensure that democracy did not progress more quickly than the people holding the reins of power were prepared for. as we face a world in which, not just because of what intelligence agencies do but because of what the services we rely on to provide us with our calendars to arid daily minute provide us with everything from our calendars to our daily minute conversations are doing,

we need to think very carefully about how this unprecedented aggregation of information can be made compatible with liberal democracy in every society. -- under a free society. that is why it is again my extraordinary pleasure to be able to introduce someone who has been at the forefront of the fight to ensure that the imperative to gather information and protect ourselves from those who would do us harm cannot be used as an excuse or a pretext to broaden monitoring of innocent and peaceful american citizens. congressman thomas massie, as many of you know, along with his colleagues, is responsible for

an amendment that by an overwhelming partisan margin passed the house of representatives and aims to ensure that information gathered for national security purposes by targeting foreigners could not be used in routine investigations by the fbi or other law enforcement agencies to spy on americans unconnected with those foreign intelligence purposes. that amendment was, despite the enormous margin by which it passed the house, was recently removed in conference from the intelligence authorization bill. again, that it is a pattern again, those of us who have been watching the legislative effort to rein in the intelligence agencies find all too familiar. it's important to recognize especially in the house of representatives, defining an

essential group willing to work across party lines to protect the essential liberties that lie at the foundation of our republic. we are a country come in many -- we are a country, in many ways, found it because we did not like government agents prying into our business. i can think of no one better to launch the really astonishing lineup of experts and practitioners we have assembled today than the congressman from the fourth district of kentucky who, in addition to his profound commitment to civil liberties, is an m.i.t. graduate with multiple degrees and a founder of a technology company and someone who it is my extraordinary privilege to introduce to you, congressman thomas massie. [applause]

>> well, there are a lot of experts in the room today on this legislation and what the government has been doing. what i want to share with you is the battle that we are fighting in congress. to give you a peek behind the curtain of what we do when we try to reform some of the unconstitutional spying that has gone on in this country. i will defer to the crowd on some of the -- particularly julian who is an expert -- on some of these finer points of these issues. and then i also need to give credit to zoe lofgren who is one of the cosponsors and they did probably more work on this amendment than i did but we felt like a republican had to introduce it and i was the only republican that was willing to introduce this bill, this amendment we had all worked on. i want to give you an overview

really of three different legislative efforts. amendment thethe , dod appropriations bill in 2013, the freedom act in the house -- i will not get into the senate version -- but what happened in the house and then that massey-lofgren amendment in the house. let me give you a bit of my background and tell you where i am ideologically. in 1993, when i was finishing my thesis at m.i.t., i looked up at the television and saw something happening in waco, texas that disturbed me. what i saw was there was a group of people that was easy to vilify. the left did not like them because they were clinging to guns and religion. the right did not like them because they were not clinging to a religion they recognized. the individuals probably a polygamist at waco. but that did not justify what i saw. what i saw were tanks running

over children's go karts and dozens of people dying in a fire. i decided there is something wrong here with the left-right paradigm and something wrong with civil liberties in this country and that's when, looking back, i decided i would be a civil libertarian. another point i want to make is that in republican primaries across the country, the districts have been so gerrymandered that most of them are either red or blue and it ends up being a race to the right or a race to the left in many of these congressional districts. in my case it's a republican district and there were seven candidates in the primary every one was trying to be more conservative than everyone else. fortunately, thanks to the efforts of some of you in this room to inform i constituents and thanks to the efforts of rand paul who had just finished two years earlier running in kentucky, people in kentucky were in tune with the fact that

our civil liberties have been violated by the patriot act and other pieces of legislation. i campaigned on that instead of trying to be more to the right than the next person. it was obviously -- it worked and i am here. i'm extremely frustrated some days at what happens like last night when the massey-lofgren amendment was stripped behind closed doors from the appropriations bill. it was an amendment to the dod appropriations bill. it was stripped from the omnibus part and parcel. there was nothing left of it. that was very frustrating to see. of course the omnibus passed , without that legislation on it but i will get into that in a little bit. let me describe my colleagues and myself as well. i include myself in this. when i came to congress, i'm an engineer and i thought if you had all the facts on your side, you could win the day. and your case would be closed. what i discovered is that we are not voting algorithms, we are

soft mammals that go there and press buttons. we possess fully all of the faults that the general population possesses. no additional intelligence to speak of and a greater degree of hubris by virtue of winning the election. some people think they have a chip that instructs them how to know everything better than their congressman. when i first got to congress, one congressman told me that he was advised by an elder congressman when he got there that i always felt the way my constituents would have me vote. unless, of course, i know something about the legislation that they don't. which is always the case. they use that mentality to their advantage in congress. i say they. i mean the leadership which generally opposes any reform to the intelligence community's

activity. they use this on congressmen. i will start with pre-snowden legislation, the cyber intelligence protection act. we were working on that in the house and it had just been debated in the house and adjust -- had just passed when the snowden revelations came out. it was helpful the timing of those revelations and disclosures. if we can see this is what we were talking about could happen, if cispa passes. when they did it come it was interesting, we had classified briefings. they bring the generals in and the computer experts from the cia and nsa. i remember one comical briefing where there was a computer geek -- i have a lot of nerd pride so i can call people geeks -- he was sitting there and doing a demonstration how the russians could hack into your computer.

it was running two programs on the computer at the same time so he is actually hacking into the computer he was typing on. that was interesting to him, but i don't thing it made sense to any other congressmen. to him, he was running two different threads in his computer so this was a novel thing. he was typing in hexadecimal numbers into a c prompt, down at the root level but he could see what was going on in the window and his program crashed. his simulator crashed. and he was like, oh, darn it. the general is standing there shaking his head. i am standing there thinking nobody realizes your program , crashed in this room. you could just think this whole thing. -- you could just fake this whole thing. [laughter] anyway, they convinced everybody in that room that now they knew something nobody else knew. they were qualified to vote on cispa would not have them vote for this.

then we had the snowden revelations. then congressman amash who is the person people go to in the house when i want to know what the legislation really does. he has an excellent staff. he himself just pours through s throughls -- pore these bills. he introduced an amendment to the dod appropriations bill to try to stop the all collection of your metadata. as he points out, the metadata is probably more dangerous than the actual content. when they can realize how you are interacting socially with. he sought to rein that in. that is the first of the three bills i will discuss. let me tell you why this was an amendment to an appropriations bill. the leadership and all the chairmen of the committee's of respective jurisdictions do not want to reform the intelligence

community's activities. they just don't want to do it. in the house of representatives, because the committee structure and leadership structure, they have so much power. we can introduce all the wonderful bills we want. we're up to like hr 5600 in this congress. the leadership and the chairman decide which bills go to the floor. those of us who are trying to get legislation to the floor, we have to look for opportunities. they are few and far between. in fact, it reminds me as an engineer of the first invention where they tried to do movies and this thing rotated. it was called a daedulum but it had slits in it and a slit goes by and you can see a picture on the other side of the drum. that's -- occasionally photons

pass through that draw him, and that is the way i look at our legislative opportunities. occasionally, there is a slit in the drum and you can get a few photons in there. one of those opportunities is in the form of a limitation amendment to an appropriations bill. congress has the power of the purse and the democratic thing the leadership has agreed to do merely to keep their leadership because there would be a revolt if they didn't is to allow anybody in the house, it's a rare democrat aspect of the house, anybody can offer any amendment they want. you can write it down and your handwriting is submitted to the clerk and any appropriations bill. it's very constrained because there are all of these rules around it. you cannot legislate. you cannot affect existing code. all you can do is limit how the money is spent. that was how justin amash's amendment was drafted and it's hard to achieve what we want to achieve. it would be better if we could write a bill that change of the

u.s. code. that's not what these limitation amendments do. boy he caught the attention of , the world. he caught the attention of the leadership. he had the world bearing down on him for his efforts, no good deed goes unpunished. one of our colleagues called him -- in the media -- al qaeda's best friend. that that used against him in a campaign in a primary. this is what you run up against when you try to introduce legislation. that bill failed by only seven votes. but it was heroic that we got within seven votes. let me tell you who voted no. nancy pelosi and steny hoyer, the minority leader and the minority with full -- the minority with. john boehner who was the speaker and rarely ever votes on legislation decided to vote on this piece of legislation. he voted no. eric cantor voted now and the majority whip kevin mccarthy voted no. the entire leadership voted

against it. all of the committee chairman en that had any jurisdiction over this voted against it. yet we almost got half of the house of representatives to go against all of the leadership on both parties and all of the committee chairmen and ranking members. that gets us to an interesting point -- these folks who voted against that bill, it was like watching them put their hands in a wood chipper because i knew they were voting against the will of their constituents and they went home and did town halls, the ones that would still do them. i watched town halls from other congressmen on youtube for the same reason most people watch nascar. [laughter] it's for the pileups. if you try to convince your constituents you are pro-liberty and you're not and have a voting record that shows you're not, you will have a car wreck.

side ofs on the wrong this vote, they went through the wood chipper back home. this presented an opportunity. it came back. they thought, might -- my gosh, we have got to do something. said, what do we do? just in a mosh was the leader. we got jim sensenbrenner, who was the original -- actually this was his bill -- but he was the original author of the patriot act, and he feels like misled whenor less he passed the patriot act. they told him they would not do it thatith him -- with they actually went and did. he wanted to write that wrong, -- thentroduced the free freedom act area we got 151 on this thing, which

is tremendous. it had great reforms in their. closed backdoor loopholes, stop the bulk collection of metadata without tying the hands of the .ntelligence community .id not tie their hands at all this gives me to another point. another while the slits in the drum. a great bill on its own. it is not going to make it to the floor of the house. another great opportunity is to attach it to something that must pass. the patriot act, provisions of it will expire. permanent.is some is temporary. provisions will expire. this was attached --

reluctantly, it was attached to the reauthorization of this retreat act revisions that we're were to expire -- that going to expire. here is what is going to happen. the bill goes into committee and it got eviscerated. it was got it. was gutted. to add insult to injury when it came out of committee -- some of us were asking, is it worth passing? should we take some now and get more later? we waited on the sidelines. we did not condemn yet. when it came out of committee, they took it to six different intelligence organizations in this government and it got rewritten again, and then they brought it to the floor of the house and there was no opportunity to offer amendments to it. at this point it had been got it so much that 75 of the original

151 cosponsors would not vote for the bill. you know it has changed a lot if a cosponsor will not vote for the bill. the primary sponsor bills, they give this zeal for the deal, and their billo see passed. they will tolerate more tinkering than any other cosponsors. it, butenner stuck with to tell you how bad it was, all of the people who voted against the amendment -- the chair of the intelligence committee, the majority leader, the minority leader -- they all voted for the freedom act, the modified though they even were not cosponsors. it passed the house and recently there is activity in these tenet. that's in the senate. someone else will have to talk .bout that i did not track the changes. i am not sure if i would or would not have voted with these

and it will. it was a tough call. bill ors us to my amendment, which was an amendment to the dod appropriations bill in 2014. we are a full year after the snowden revelations and nothing has been done. to describe the mountain that you face when you try to reform the nsa or any of the intelligence activities from the tell you a need to story or a joke, if you will, and it comes from the 80's, so it is a little bit dated, but it still applies. you remember in the 1980's when you bought a computer? there was no internet. you did not go on to tell's website. ll's website. you went into the ibm store.

would tell you all of the wonderful things the computer could do for your business. at the time there was a joke that said what is the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman? anyone know the difference? a car salesman knows when he is lying to you. [laughter] had no shortage off car salesman or computer salesman on team in congress. they are the ones to explain to what the bill does. some know that they are lying to you. probably the majority do not even know. at it is their job to get you to vote for or against that. view from the majority whip. this is an e-mail sent to every

congressional office from the majority whip. legislative amendment alert. amendment. dear colleague -- and this is sent on behalf of the house judiciary committee in the house appropriations subcommittee on defense. the leader ofs, isil has threatened to attack america. syria has become a vortex of jihad. the director of the national security has one of the growing threat. te control has collapsed in syria and meanwhile in afghanistan and pakistan, the qaeda continue to fight. moreover the administration has fighter a tell event from guantanamo in bolting the terrorists. threat is not

contained overseas. this amendment would create a blind spot for the intelligence community, tracking the terrorists with direct contacts to the homeland. last month, the congress overwhelmingly passed the freedom act which is wesley for business communications -- for bids medications. the house voted are overwhelming bipartisan basis to provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs to keep americans restoring american confidence that appropriate safeguards are in place. now is not the time to stop intercepting the communications of known terrorists. vote no on this amendment. -- that is the leadership

that is the memo that my leadership sent to every member of congress. that went to the legislative team. the ones responsible for reading the bill and letting congressman know. congressman do not have time to read all of that. they get one sentence when they show up to the floor of the house. here is the sentence. speed round. two minutes per amendment. one sentence here. republican, kentucky, prohibits funds from being used lawfully collected intelligence under section seven at two under the foreign intelligence surveillance act. basically prohibits us from catching terrorists. did wasamendment require them to have probable cause and a search warrant or that is all it did. they could do everything they were previously doing. part of the main amendment. there was a second part of the

amendment which would prohibit forcing ourernment companies to put backdoors, security backdoors, in their products. whether it is encryption technology that you trust -- it would keep the government presumably can make companies brain damage their products so it is easier for the government to get to your data. they can do that with hardware and software. prevent theld government from forcing companies to do that. whip effortf this to keep everybody off of this bill, it passed. i think the reason it passed with such a large margin is people are becoming more and more confirm -- and firms about this and congressmen go home and get tore up about this. it is like an electric fence. the cows put their nose to it

too many times and they want no fencef that sent -- anymore. i would concede that most of them probably did not read my bill. but they voted for it because they are intuitive creatures and they felt it was the right thing to do. i appreciate that. sensenbrenner was the cosponsor. we had a lot of good cosponsors of the republican side and on the democrat side. the holt really worked on provision to keep the government from forcing companies to put actors in their products. so, that passed. that was a limitation amendment, which by all rights should have been in the omnibus that passed last night. but it got stripped the had closed doors and never showed up in the final bill, which is very unfortunate. i will have good news for you at

some point in the speech i guess. so, that brings us, i guess, to where we are right now. what are we going to do in the next congress? we have all of these caucuses. the diabetes caucus, the tea the ready mix caucus for concrete. there is a caucus for your constituents are always calling me saying, why argue on this caucus? don't you care about my issue? i want to tell them, you're caucus never meets. i do not. i do what they tell me to. there is one that meets, the liberty caucus. it was started by congressman ron paul and it was taken off.

it is invitation only. you cannot join it to burnish your potential. that is the problem with caucuses. of the tea party caucus to appeal to the tea community. this is invitation only. we have about 36 people who are invited and we regularly have 24 who show up and this is every other week while we are in action. -- an session. this is our opportunity to 24 members and debate what should be in the ,egislation or in the amendment and it is a great group for us, and the good news is -- we invite democrats, too. it is not just a republican thing. depending on the situation, like cispa, we invited democrats to those things.

these primaries that happened that nobody pays attention to. everybody is watching senate primaries and races. no one is paying attention to house races. i think we picked up a lot of civil libertarians or at least people who are informed about civil liberties in this last election. i'm excited. we will probably grow that caucus-people at least on the republican side. i am not sure. i have not met with the democrat freshman yet. i think we will gain members there. -- it break this down does not break down republican or democrat. there is an island the middle of congress. left and right side of the. it does not break down that way. down, how it breaks long of you been in congress? how recently did you get there? more in tune with this issue and representative of

the will of the people. ise good news, cispa stalled. support for it -- i am sure there are a lot of people who voted for it in the house that after the snowden revelations came out wished they had not voted for cispa. it will be hard to get that thing moving again, hopefully, given all of the new information we have. finally, the patriot act is going to expire. good news. or provisions of it. what it means is, there is an opportunity, one of those slits that passes right where you can get if you photons in -- or you can get a few photons in. good news. those of the opportunities. i will close in and tell a quick story about my daughter. i have four children. 18, 16, 14, and 10. the youngest, i think, is the

biggest civil libertarian of the grip. she was nine when i had a tree on my farm as a staff retreat on my farm. my wife said, where in the heck are they all point to leap -- going to sleep? i said we will kick the kids out of their bedrooms. my daughter, my nine-year-old daughter, i have --n surveilled everest in ever since she has been born, so i'm used to this. she comes out of the shadows and says, dad, are you really going to make me sleep on the floor just so those people from washington, d.c. can visit you? it will be just like camping. she put her hand on her head and said, dad, what you are really -- telling me is you are letting government get

in my bedroom. [laughter] even a talking point i use on the campaign. she is listening to some other news outlet. i do not know if i have a minute or two that you take questions. do i have time? are audience questions. we have time before the first panel. please identify yourself and speak into the microphone. >> my name is ed and i'm from north carolina. thank you for your comments. , if i had a party at my house i would ask, edward snowden -- euro or traitor? what do you think your colleagues on the hill with say

-- would say? >> when i am asked that question, i think it is sort of a distraction. i will tell you what i think, but i think it is a distraction. or they tried to create animosity toward him to downplay the issue. regardless about what you think about what he did or how he did it, it does not ameliorate the fact that we are all being spied on and something needs to be done. it is a little bit of a distraction. i can tell you, they think he is a traitor. i can tell you, they would love to try him for treason. they are infuriated. i own personal opinion -- think he did a tremendous service to this country by getting this information out. -- itwill also tell you isn't part of the good news -- but there is more to know.

a complete release of everything that i think is being done that is wrong. are privy ton, we things. i know about things that disturbed me just as much as the revelations we heard from him. so, i think he has done a great service to the country. question.e have -- yourwould amendment would have required a warrant. by the way i am david isenberg from connecticut. required would have warrants and stuff like that before certain surveillance ask took place.- acts but we also know there is a parallel construction activity

moreis going on in the civilian oriented law enforcement organizations. would your amendment have construction?el and more generally, could you speak to the issue of parallel construction? absolutely. let me tell you more about the amendment. the u.s. government collects tons of data, terabytes of data, under the presumption it might have foreign communications and it -- in it. we're not stopping them from doing that. this would not stop them from collecting the haystack of data. to doe do not want them for civilian purposes, like the fbi or irs, to go into that data -- start mining it for u.s. persons.

or if they want to do it, they have got to have a warrant and probable cause. you can go our fishing .xpeditions if we could stop them from doing that, then it would somewhat to reform theed parallel construction. they are doing parallel construction because they found out about something in an unconstitutional way, and then they are trying to construct a constitutional way, like a -- for stop or in instance. just to be honest with you, i think some congressmen -- maybe not a lot of them -- are afraid of this issue because they may end up in a parallel where theon situation intelligence community knows something about that and then we get to thehey fbi, who pulls over the congressman for one reason or another area i am very troubled about parallel comes action. and

-- i am very troubled about parallel construction. i think it is wrong. i think the best way i could stop it is from them having access to that information that is unconstitutional. they are trying to reconstruct a constitutional way to come up with that information. that is what my amendment would do. require the constitution to be followed for them to get the data in the first place. >> thank you. . >> thank you so much, congressman. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> thank you again and welcome audience.pan this is the inaugural cato institute surveillance conference. a program note -- unfortunately one of our guests was delayed by the weather. flights were canceled. he will be arriving in a few inutes and joining us media's rest. the second panel, of course, when we talk about surveillance, nsa, intelligence surveillance, often foremost in our minds, the tech knowledge he they use and -- the technology they use and the large-scale collection finding their way to your local police department as well. in a way you are more likely to be surveilled by your local police department then the nsa probably. it isn't worth not to focus on

the sexiest forms of surveillance, but also the small, but persistent surveillance that is happening at the local level. so, we will discuss that importance topic. i am pleased to say that we have jack kill him from the associated press. hi, good morning. can you hear me ok? for the last year, year and a half, i have covered technology and surveillance. particularly government uses for social networks and cuba -- in cuba. the last panel, we talked about foreign surveillance and there was something that really hit home. and that is what is happening with nsa. not just nsa of course, but will local release their part --

local police departments are doing. last week at an eric garner protest in chicago, there were chicagoweeting that a emergency vehicle, it miraculously started disrupting people's cell phone and there is wasspread speculation this a stingray device that gathers data on those devices in the area area -- area. i wanted to introduce the panel. running late. i'm going to read so i do not screw up anybody's job title. harvey is the advocacy director for the center of democracy and technology. to my right, we have the policy analyst for homeland security and the liberties at the cato and to.

at my far right, a law enforcement from george washington university. we will have a discussion and leave about 20 minutes for questions. i am sure that there is a lot of interest. these are fine and person i am sure would love to answer these questions. maybe we can start with warren. this idea -- this paradoxical idea that we are in both a where nsace society, or domestic law enforcement will scoop up what they can -- that juxtaposed with the idea of going dark. a few months ago the f dei director-- fbi suggested that using secure messaging will really be damaging for law enforcement. i am curious if we can start by framing it that way.

even the technology spewing the --chotic misperceptions skewing these dichotomous misperceptions. >> we see the testimony and they are often collecting digital evidence. and oftentimes that means a lot of data that is helpful to them and they might want to do that anyway. sometimes they cannot collect the data that they really need. so i'm one hand, you may have the government not able to solve what it wants to solve. maybe they can use data that they are used to being able to get in other contexts. we are seeing a real shift. are less than before. others more than before. what is interesting, the computer hacking. int regulates all hacking the united states. if you go online, you are

probably aware. there's a lot of computer hacking. for computers hacking or unauthorized access more broadly? or number is remarkably 70 80 cases a year and has been for the last 20 years. that is because they are extremely difficult to investigate. from the fbi's perspective, they cannot find who is behind the attacks. it muchrnet has made harder to do our job, they say, thathere are other ways more data is available. i think we see a shift and we're trying to work it out. is reallythink interesting and this goes to what has happened with the snowden revelations. in addition to these other -- it he has referred to is what i referred to as a digital resistance movement.

secureans things like messaging applications. you have clinics that are bidding -- that are being put onto teach the public about things like user encryption, things of that nature. we see a real rise in this. this is also with public polling. it shows that folks are changing their behaviors because of the surveillance activities. necessarily going .o websites they are not necessarily associating with people they would have associated with. so, when i hear folks talk about a lakh a real harm or -- lakh of harm, just the

act of government surveillance itself is having a chilling >> when we talk about surveillance, we talk about the n.s.a. that is a lot that local, federal and state law enforcement are doing. could you speak to wicker and the other apps that are becoming mainstream, and the push that tech companies like apple ios-8 is encrypted. even my mother "fantasy football now" who hardly follows the news knowing that barack obama may be sniffing her e-mails. this is part of the public perception now, and i am curious how tech companies are responding to this. >> in your original question you asked the perceptions of going down