>> general, i thank you for your expression of support. i also want to thank chair feinstein who helped develop and sent a letter expressing this concern about this secrecy of the interpretations of the fisa court. i do think it's time that that become understandable in public because otherwise how in a democracy do you have a debate if you don't know what the plain language means? i do have concerns about that translation, and i'll continue this conversation. thank you. >> senator collins. >> thank you, madam chairman.

i'll wrap up with a comment. the concern here, the american public is fearful that in this massive amount of data you get that there's, the ability of the federal government to synthesize that data and learn something more than maybe what was ever contemplated by the patriot act. that would be number one. the second thing is the more

law into what is governable in terms of what you can do. i had an amendment last december that said these findings of law that translate the requirements that are in the law into what is permissible needs to be declassified so we can have the debate. i believe that what you just said is you want that information to be declassified that explains how you get from these standards of law to the conduct that has now been presented publicly. did i catch that right, and do

what i'm only getting to is you've identified for us that you can get phone contacts. i'm asking can you get google contacts, can you get e-mail contacts? i'm not talking about reading the e-mail or seeing what they're saying back and forth. i'm not at that point. but what i worry about is how far do you believe this authority extends?

contemplated by the patriot act. that would be number one. the second thing is the more personal issue, and it kind of gets into some of the concerns about cyber command, and that is you're in this hugely unique role. we've always had this view of separating the civilian leadership, politically elected, from the military leadership. and yet you've got this dual hat. and it creates a concern not

this committee, with this congress and with the courts. we have everybody there. we aren't trying to hide it. we're trying to protect america. so we need your help in doing that. this isn't something that's just nsa or the administration doing on its own. this is what we, that our nation expects our government to do for us. so we ought to have that debate. we ought to put it out there, and we've got to put those two together. so i just want to put that one caveat there. and if i can get it, if i can make it happen, i will. >> general, i thank you for your

and to meet that, what you just said, the answer is we don't get to look at the data -- >> let me stop you there, because these are requirements to acquire to analyze the data,o acquire the day. this is the application to acquire the data. is here i have my verizon phone, my cell phone. what authorized investigation gave you the grounds for acquiring my credit card data? -- my cell phone data?