to return toke former congresswoman harman and ms. pell. the challenge of the authorization that authorizes secret activity, it almost seems like a contradiction. how do you address laws that we don't want to talk about in public? democraticke a fully function and the government will fully comply, but how do you write about things that the government doesn't want to talk about? >> we can talk about the purpose of the program in the framework for the program. certainly, i recall very specifically in the debate on the fisa amendments in 2008, that is what we did. maybe members of congress for not paying much attention, but it was out there on the airwaves what the issues were. certainly, the telephone metadata had been disclosed by the "new york times" and then partially declassified by president bush in late 2005. there was conversation out there. congress can do that and that should happen. there could be public hearings as there are now public hearings about competing versions of the lawstial fixes for the that we have. yes, a portion of t

to return toke former congresswoman harman and ms. pell. the challenge of the authorization that authorizes secret activity, it almost seems like a contradiction. how do you address laws that we don't want to talk about in public? democraticke a fully function and the government will fully comply, but how do you write about things that the government doesn't want to talk about? >> we can talk about the purpose of the program in the framework for the program. certainly, i recall very specifically in the debate on the fisa amendments in 2008, that is what we did. maybe members of congress for not paying much attention, but it was out there on the airwaves what the issues were. certainly, the telephone metadata had been disclosed by the "new york times" and then partially declassified by president bush in late 2005. there was conversation out there. congress can do that and that should happen. there could be public hearings as there are now public hearings about competing versions of the lawstial fixes for the that we have. yes, a portion of t

. >> thank you, ms. pell >> i study systems for many years and find ways where they can be exploited or where they can be bolstered, and i would like to present to high level that the systems viewing this. the first is we have heard from many people today and over the past many months about how carefully this is controlled and vetted. the information is closely guarded, and we can perhaps take that as giving and realize that we do have a number of people that are working very hard in the nation's defense and in the nations interest to you to the concerned with privacy, however, is if those system are constrained and controlled with within a very small private, closely held group, then it is possible that under political circumstances or stress, they can swing out of control beyond what we intended. this is by no means unusual given the country's history. we look at things like the alien and sedition act and the japanese internment in world war ii, the investigations, the mccarthy hearings and president nixon'