>> 11:30 eastern, the white house coronavirus response team is set to brief reporters. we will hear from dr. fauci and cdc director dr. walensky. watch live coverage here on c-span immediately after today's brief house pro forma session. at 1:00 p.m., former secretary of state condoleezza rice and former defense secretary james mattis will reflect on the 20th anniversary of the september 11 terrorist attacks. we are expecting comments on the recent u.s. withdraw from afghanistan. watch all of these events live on c-span, online at c-span.org, or with the free c-span radio app. >> sanchez is back with us for a conversation on how 9/11 changed

the world of government surveillance. he's a senior fellow of national security technology at the cato institute. start with a reminder of what the u.s. approach to surveillance was before 9/11. what did the security apparatus look like on september 10? guest: sure. the framework for national security surveillance was provided by a 1978 statute called fiza, the foreign intelligence surveillance act. until the passage of the usa patriot act expanded a number of authorities, there were a couple of features that defined that. the first is an authority that permitted, established oversight for the first time in response to abuses of surveillance power

in the 1970's. it provided the foreign intelligence court to authorize surveillance of persons believed to be agents of a foreign power. there were authorities for full wiretap surveillance, full electronic surveillance, but also a number of other authorities to get things like telecommunication records and financial records, which can be extremely sensitive and quite intrusive. following the usa patriot act, the decision was made to significantly widen the aperture of the surveillance authority. one thing that was done was to enable them to be used in a greater variety of cases. previously, this had really been a suite of authorities that was supposed to be used on the primary purpose of surveillance

was foreign intelligence. these were permanently overt surveillance, unlike ordinary search warrants and wiretaps where they have to tell you after the fact that you were targeted. these will -- work over. in many ways, there had been concern. you did not want people trying to circumvent the restrictions of ordinary surveillance by using these intelligence powers for a regular criminal investigation. the patriot act said it no longer has to be the primary purpose of surveillance for foreign intelligence. it has to be a significant purpose so now you can use these permanently covert foreign intelligence tools for investigations where maybe the primary purpose is ordinary criminal prosecution. another significant thing it did was to broaden the universe of people targeted by other authorities like national security letters and the

authority we had in section 215. these were authorities that previously permitted with respect to a fairly narrow range of defined types of businesses for communications records to be obtained or bank records to be obtained. it was for targets who are believed to be an agent of a foreign power. the standard of proof for that was lower than a full-blown search warrant or wiretap order but the idea was these were authorities to get sensitive records for the target, someone you thought was a foreign spy or terrorist. the really big change that was made with this is these authorities will be available for any records that are relevant to a national security investigation, and authorized investigation. the definition of that broadened over time. what that meant was you had an enormous and very quick increase in the use of these authorities,

national security letters don't require any traditional approval and section 215 which we now know was used for programs disclosed by edward snowden. the nsa collected all domestic telephone records, records of who was calling who and when. it is enormous numbers of people and their information who were not suspected of being spies or terrorists or having any connection to terrorism. they were now swept in on the premise that you need to collect this kind of enormous haystack of information and it's an inversion of the classic model of what we think of as law enforcement investigation and surveillance. you have a suspicion associated with particular people and then you obtain authority to confirm your suspicions by investigating

those particular people. the idea post 9/11 was captured in an nsa slide that was part of the files disclosed by the former nsa contractor who described their new model as collect it all. you will gather large amounts of information about people's communication networks, internet networks, financial networks and use that huge pool of data to try to get a picture that would help you zero in on individuals. host: as we talk about the change to that collect it all mentality, we want to invite viewers to join the coversation and focus on government surveillance programs since 9/11 over the past 20 years. julian sanchez is joining us for that discussion. (202) 748-8000 for viewers in the eastern and central time

zones. (202) 748-8002 in the mountain and pacific time zones. you mentioned the usa patriot act of 2001. viewers might not know that it's an acronym. the uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism act of 2001. it was passed in the house just about six weeks after 9/11 and passed in the senate the next day and signed into law by the president on october 26, 2001. this is president bush signing the patriot act into law and his remarks from that day. [video clip] mr. bush: we are dealing with terrorists that operate with highly successful methods and technologies, some of which were not even available when our existing laws were written. the bill before me takes account of the new realities and dangers posed by modern terrorists. and as importantly, we are changing the culture of our

various agencies that fight terrorism. countering terrorist activity is the number one priority for both law enforcement and intelligence agencies. surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. existing law was written in the year of rotary telephones. this new law that i signed today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists including emails, the internet, and cell phones. as of today, we will be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this proliferation of communications technology. host: president george w. bush from october 26, 2001. julian sanchez, this idea of opening the lens of collecting it all, is this something that congress just came up with in the six weeks between september

11 and the usa patriot act being signed into law? how much had this idea been in the discussion before september 11 happens and this giant new law moves forward? guest: the nsa has always engaged in a fair amount of all -- bulk collection. part of what changes here is it used to be a fairly clean division. the cia operates overseas. the fbi has a mandate to do both law enforcement and intelligence investigations domestically. bulk collection might happen abroad, but there was a relatively clean distinction between the kind of methods you would use overseas with foreign targets and the methods you would use domestically and this became somewhat blurred as you start dealing with the global internet where you have the communication facilities that

may be based in the u.s. that would be used by people all over the world. you have ordinary american civilians and foreign terrorists using the same communication facility. it is important to stress that kind of collect it all model is not what congress had in mind. some of the most fervent supporters of the patriot act and its original inception were shocked and appalled when they discovered that the statute they had defended was being used for this large-scale indiscriminate collection. while congress was authorizing the usa patriot act, it turns out that nsa was secretly at the same time allocated to itself

with the blessing of george w. bush authorizations that involved the warrantless collection of telephone and internet content, the messages of the calls, as well as essentially indiscriminate bulk collection, telephone and internet metadata. none of that was authorized intentionally by the patriot act. what happened over time is that pieces of this began to be reported. i'm a hundred time -- in 2005, "the new york times" began reporting on warrantless wiretapping, which is one component of this stellar wind program. as that disclosure started making telecommunications companies skittish, essentially this program of bulk metadata collection and targeted warrantless content collection that was outside of fisa started to move into and be shoehorned

into patriot act authorities that had not really been intended for that purpose. some of them, they ended up needing new legal authorities because they could not find a way to shoehorn it in the patriot act. the indiscriminate bulk collection of telephone records was not what congress thought they were authorizing when they passed section 215. as companies started saying we want the judge's signature on a, -- on it, these authorities got repurposed to take over the burden and provide legal cover for components of this stellar wind program that originally existed really outside of any kind of statutory authorization. host: as we talk about the evolution of surveillance, we want to bring in some callers. we have plenty already for you this morning. kyle is up first out of buffalo, new york.

caller: good morning, how are we doing today? host: what is your question or comment? caller: my comment is sadly, usually start off the school year always starts off about 911 and that is one of my ways that i introduce the students slowly about our constitution and rights and different stuff. the one thing i will say which i will focus on today is surveillance. during that time, there were a lot of groups targeted, drug dealers, people who spoke arabic and that's how they tried to use that patriot act to kind of surveil them. there was a lot of drug dealers arrested under that and i would like the power to speak to that. with that, i will use some of your information that i can add

to my curriculum today. host: what grade do you teach? caller: high school. host: what subject? caller: i teach criminal law, business law. business law and criminal law, i always start out with the to inl issues because of the patriot act. it's one of those things that we kind of lost a lot of our rights and more surveillance and cameras everywhere. host: thanks for the call. guest: i think that's a very astute point. it is a pattern we see repeated that authorities that are justifying just -- investigating

terrorism are being repurposed for more mundane types of crimes and investigations. there is a non-fisa authority that was part of the patriot act. the fisa authority is only for the fbi and now sometimes in cooperation with nsa step there was an authority that was usually referred to as a sneak and peek aren't that was more broadly -- warrant that was more broadly available. when you execute a physical search, you are supposed to present the warrant to the person whose property you are searching. there are rare exceptions. this part of the patriot act was to make it easier to engage in this kind of sneak and peak search where you do the search secretly and you only notify the person whose property you search after the fact. this was sold on the basis that you need to make this easier because investigations can be

done without tipping off terrorists if they are investigating a terrorist cell. by a huge margin, this is an authority that was used to investigate ordinary drug crimes and a tiny number of terrorist investigations. it's hard to quantify this exactly but we know that a common practice in these kind of investigations is something called parallel construction. it is hidden from courts and criminal defendants. nsa or some other intelligence agency will pick up information related to a non-intelligence crime and then usually, they will funnel that information to a local police department who will then, in order to protect the intelligence source, essentially gin up a fake account of how they became

suspicious and white is they thought it was worth looking into the activities of a particular person or group. for obvious reasons, this is secret so it's hard to make a direct connection but we know this is a widespread practice where you have huge amounts of information being collected under intelligence authorities but it then ends up making its way to local police or local law in force and who use this information for routine criminal investigations. they are supposed to be governed by ordinary criminal process but it's to protect sources and methods. they fabricate a story about where their information came from all step it's hidden from courts and hidden from defendants. host: from enid, oklahoma, max, good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for taking michael.

c-span metadata because they knew who i was and where was calling went and i didn't give that information on the call. the point is, i know about the cato institute and i am on your mailing list. what you are trying to say is that the federal government is not allowed to collect data that they don't have warrants or suspicion on and they do anyway. the organizations that do it, they lie about it to congress and they lie about it to the intelligence community and they lie under oath to the american people they don't suffer any consequences. the people who expose the lies and give us the information that's the truth, the journalist like edward snowden is in jail which is internationally appalling step that hurts our country by putting journalists in jail or capturing them in absentia. just to tie this back to 9/11, this surveillance is obviously

possible but the pentagon apparently had no surveillance of what happened on 9/11 in 2001. there is one photograph and so everybody knows in 20 years, the trade towers fell down and a third building fell down. thank you and i will take your comments off the air. guest: that's right. he was expressing doubt as to whether these attacks happen. i don't share that and clearly there wasn't this there was an attack on 9/11. i think that story is accurate but otherwise, most of what he said is effectively true. we see a pattern of authorities being used for purposes that congress did not intend. we see it as a constitutional matter. we see surveillance without a warrant and sometimes without

any kind of statutory authorization that constitutes a search within the fourth amendment which should be authorized. and we see very frequently officials in the intelligence community either lying to congress as the former director of fbi intelligence james clapper did when he denied congress that there was any kind of bowl program collecting data about hundreds of millions of americans and he knew there was. more frequently, using extremely misleading or technical terminology to effectively say things that are technically true if you know the definition of the terms they are using. these terms are extraordinarily

misleading. sometimes they will talk about collection. they say we are not collecting information and until relatively recently, that was a way you could shave the truth because they were not counting information as collected until a human reviewed it even if they were sucking up huge quantities of data sitting on a computer waiting to be reviewed. host: what was the usa freedom act? guest: we need to talk about the fisa amendments act because this is something that happens in between those two. host: go for it. guest: in 2008, some of the stuff we were talking about comes a little bit later so there are 2000 for additions like the so-called lone wolf

authority to essentially use pfizer for suspected terrorists who are not to a terrorist organization. as far as we know, it's never been used but remains on the books. in 2008, as more and more of the components of stellar wind are exposed, it becomes clear that one part of stellar wind, the targeted but warrantless collection of certain international communications traffic is not really something that you can adequately shoehorn into these existing brought authorities. in 2008, the pfizer amendment act is passed. the most significant part is section 702. what that does is authorized what our founding fathers would've pulled a general warrant. the premise behind 702 is that it creates a kind of authority that could be used to target non-us persons who are residing

overseas and intercept their communications as they transit or the united states even when those people are talking to americans. it used to be if you had a foreign target and had a phone call with the u.s. person in the u.s., you would need a warrant to listen to that communication domestically. if you weren't listening to overseas. under section 702, what's now authorized is instead of having to get a particular warrant, as the fourth amendment wires, -- requires, you would establish broad targeting and minimization procedures. the director of national intelligence and attorney general would develop not a particular target and a particular justification or rubble because for surveilling that target but broad procedures

for how you choose the target and how you limit access to the information once you collect it in the pfizer court would sign off not on an individual target but on this kind of general warrant, this broad set of targeting procedures. then nsa would choose who the targets were under that doherty. you would have one warrant that would now be used to target, the most recent numbers, about 200,000 foreign targets. they are intercepting a huge number of u.s. person communications. anytime though target just those targets talk to someone in the u.s. and people sometimes cross -- talk across international boundaries. once the data is collected, the intelligence agencies are retailer -- routinely clearing his database for the u.s. side

of that. you have authority that's being sold on the premise that this is just an authority to target noncitizens outside the u.s. as their communications happen to flow through google or yahoo! or microsoft servers or u.s. telecom wires. once this enormous quantity of data is selected, they are saying we will not search the database for the american person side of that. even though a probable cause or particular search warrant if i wanted to target that person on the front and. it's an authority that's sold as , is really about foreign terrorists and spies and people outside the u.s. and don't have u.s. rights but we know it's routinely used with an eye toward specifically searching for u.s. person data that could not have been targeted under the authority, at the front end.

host: let's stop the story there. i will take a couple of calls we will come back to you and you can respond. rich in hickory hills, illinois, go ahead. caller: thank you. thank you for your show and your soup or on the topic. the question that comes into mind for me is the price that we pay. it's like trying to find a balancing act with her second -- with protecting yourselves with surveillance but using that surveillance to take away the right of the citizens that we lose by trying to protect us. the thing that bothered me was when i manipulated the election between jimmy carter and ronald reagan i think it was.

we wanted our people back and he took the iranians took that situation to actually manipulate ronald reagan getting elected because he had this tough stance on that particular right. it was manipulated and now suddenly, they manipulated our election and ronald reagan be name elected president. these policies and politics then became an active because of who was elected. host: this is mike in glendale, arizona, good morning. caller: i am 70 years old and i think the biggest ring i have learned since i was 17 years old

is nobody really is protecting the citizenry and is not just the united states stop its china and russia and britain. it's all over and i think the real shame and the limited time i have left in my life is that we are being manipulated on such a level now. we have a guy who's president now who has cheated on tests. this is the best that america can produce, the best. i don't feel safe for my kids future anymore. host: one more call from dennis in dundalk, maryland. are you there? caller: yes, sir. host: go ahead with your questions or comments. caller: i understand that the president cares and wants to protect everybody and i work in a place --

host: we are going to hold off on the mandate for the vaccine because that was the first hour of our program. we are talking about the evolution of surveillance in the united states is 9/11. you heard from the first two callers and if you want to respond to those and pick up on where we are today. guest: the question about trade-offs is important. one pattern we have seen over time is that as various aspects of intelligence surveillance programs are disclosed, we see very ambitious claims made about their efficacy or necessity that under scrutiny over time really turned out not to be true. we know when the warrantless wiretapping component of stellar wind was first exposed in 2005, we heard vice president cheney and the attorney general claiming that this had been essential to saving thousands of

american lives. and foiling various terrorist acts and then many years later, around 2000 nine, the inspectors general of the intelligence community did a declassified version of their analysis. what they found was more modest. they said they were really unable to pinpoint any particular counterterrorism set that was attributable to this quite large-scale warrantless wiretapping and surveillance and bulk data collection program. we saw that repeat itself with the telephony program nsa was operating. it was disclosed by edward snowden and we heard initially that this had been essential to thwarting terror activities on dozens of occasions and save lives. in two different independent reviews from a presidential commission and the civil

liberties oversight board, they concluded that this enormous collection of hundreds of millions of american's private telephone data had been useless. they really could not find an instance when it provided important non-duplicates of information that was information the fbi wasn't already getting under traditional targeted court orders and other kinds of authorities for telephone records. it's not surprising. if you have authorized a fairly intrusive method and people will find offensive or an intrusion of civil liberties, it's difficult to admit that we did that for no reason step these robust claims of efficacy are made and once you find out they turn out to be not true, there are other expenses of authority

where it's a closer call whether clearly is some intelligence benefit and it's harder to weigh the equities and could you get the same benefits and a way that's more protective of silver liberties and more protective of privacy -- of privacy. the consistent pattern is sometimes you are authorizing early intrusive methods and the game is hard to identify. there is this impulse to justify it and no one wants to say we wasted millions or billions of dollars and gathered a lot of private information and it turns out we didn't get anything for it. host: about 10 minutes left with julian sanchez from the cato institute. this is michael from miami, thanks for waiting. caller: i am actually in broward county which you have seen a lot in the news.

we are basically under attack by our governor desantis here. we are trying to protect our children. what you are talking it hits at the center of libertarianism, federal versus state issues. we are focusing on racketeering action down here. they are putting out what the marching orders are for the governor. basically covid libertarian eugenic genocide. what the governor is doing is following cpac and there is a further push using children. host: let's let julian sanchez respond. guest: that is not related to surveillance. i have personally written quite

critically on a couple of occasions about governor sanchez and his policy. -- governor desantis in his apologies and his prohibiting private businesses for providing vaccination proof is not a move to protect freedom but is an unjustifiable restriction of freedom of association, freedom of business individuals to attempt to protect themselves by exercising their private choices. that's something i was harshly critical of. cato is not giving ron desantis marching orders. cato does not usually take collective decisions. many of my colleagues and myself have been critical of ron desantis. i would very much like it if he were taking his marching from us but i see very little evidence of that. host: back to the issue of surveillance, rich things for waiting in baltimore. caller: good morning, i have a

comment. it's the day before 9/11 and you guys are speaking about surveillance and what this country did wrong in response to the terrorist attacks. it's just disrespectful in my view that you are not doing more of a tribute. i'm sure you'll do more things with tributes and things that happen on that day. to criticize this country on the day before 9/11, i find it quite disrespectful. it's more to c-span for the comment for having this talk today. host: in our last hour and 15 minutes of the program, we are turning the phone lines back to the viewer to get your memories of 9/11 and programming throughout the day will cover all of the events tomorrow from new york to d.c. and

pennsylvania. you can watch it all live and call in about it all day tomorrow on c-span. there will be plenty of that. but we are running out of time in this segment and i want to give you a chance to finish the story on surveillance and where we ended up today. guest: we are starting to see a little bit of a rollback of some of those authorities in a way i would not have thought possible a decade ago. in the aftermath of the edward snowden disclosures and the revelation that some of these patriot act authorities had been used for large-scale collection that was not anticipated by congress and the discovery of a number of compliance problems with authorities like the usa freedom act in 2015 which started paring back some of those authorities. section 215 and other powers now

require specific selection terms, meaning you can no longer say we just want everyone's records or every phone record for a call to chicago. it needs to be a specific identifier that these are the phone numbers we are interested in. there was an attempt to preserve a version of the bulk nsa telephony program but that's basically now defunct. collection under 702 has been somewhat narrowed by the fisa court. certain kinds of collections that were prone to over collection have been reined in. the usa freedom act created a panel calledamici within the pfizer course of the secret court is not only hearing from the government post there are now advocates for civil liberties and technologies --

technologists that have a countervailing perspective in cases where the court asked for that. there have been improvements and we have a statistical transparency report that gives us not lots of data but it gives us much more information than we were accustomed to getting about the use of many of these authorities. the trend is in a positive direction. surprisingly, several key patriot act authorities effectively expired about a year ago. used to be that when sunset rolled around, these authorities weretemporary and had to be renewed . you would see this panic about going dark and we will be blind in our intelligence agencies will be helpless if you don't reauthorize these authorities with little debate. several of them have expired about a year ago and there doesn't seem to be that level of

panic. it's probably because there is a grandfather clause that allows many of them to continue to use. it's part of a seachange where in part, republicans have become a little bit less unreservedly trusting of the intelligence community. there are trajectories in a healthy direction but we also see in an enormous number of people being surveilled under these powers and routinely, we keep discovering compliance issues where the fisa court has not really been adequately informed and searches are improperly performed on these vast databases. the trajectory is maybe in a more positive direction than you would have anticipated in the

context of the climate of panic in the years medially following 9/11. host: we will end it there but thank you for walking is for the surveillance history 20 years in the making. it's cato.org if you want to read his work at cato institute on twitter. >> coming up at one :00 p.m., condoleezza rice and james mattix reflect on the 20th anniversary of the september 11 terrorist attacks. we are also expecting comments on the uss dock on the u.s. withdraw from afghanistan. -- the u.s. withdraw from afghanistan.

watch this on c-span, c-span.com, or listen in with the free c-span radio app. ♪ >> this year marks the 20th anniversary of his september 11 attacks. join us with live coverage from new york, the pentagon, and shanksville, pennsylvania starting at 7:00 a.m. eastern saturday on c-span. watch on c-span.org or listen on the c-span radio app. ♪ >> sunday night on "q&a," jessica long was engineered of john jay harvey on september 11 but was called back into service to aid firefighters following attacks on the 20 hours. in her book, she tells the story

of the community of mariners that came to the rescue of thousands. >> the maritime evacuation that delivered nearly half a people to safety is an incredible example of the goodness of people that when given the opportunity to help, you have the tools and the school set -- and the skill set and the availability that people made the choice to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of fellow humans and that is very instructive and something that we need to continue to remember. >> jessica dulong, sunday night on "q&a." you can find "q&a" interviews on wherever you get podcasts. >> the u.s. and it its summer break on monday for a debate on president biden's nominations

and on voting rights and election reform legislation. the senate gambles in at 3:00 p.m. eastern. the house will be back on september 20. members are expected to vote on infrastructure and government funding. live gavel-to-gavel coverage is on c-span and you can watch descendant on c-span2, online on c-span.org, or listen with the free c-span radio app. ♪