cedric leighton had a 26-year career in the air force and served as deputy training director for theional security agency in 2009 and 2010. he now has his own consulting firm. welcome to both of you. kate martin, let me start with you. one reaction today we heard was, "what's new? what's the big deal?" this is a routine renewal of an order. you had a different reaction? >> well, i was astoundedded, first of all, to learn for the first time, that the government thinks the law allows this. and even more asounded to learn that they were doing it. we've engaged in debates in this country about changes to this law for the last 12 years. the civil liberties community has continually raised concerns about bulk collection, and basically, been told that it's not a problem. and it turns out, that the bulk collection that's going on appears to be beyond our wildest fears. >> brown: all right, lead me ask cedric leighton, this bulk collection, metadata. explain it a little bit more and why you think it's okay and not an invasion of privacy? >> it depends on how it's done, actually, jeff. the bas

with me is former nsa deputy director colonel sedrick leighton who joins us from d.c. and civil liberties attorney john katz also have d.c. thank you for joining me, yes. >> thank you. >> colonel leighton, you were in the agency, it appears that we not only didn't know about this, but we didn't know about the extent of it. i mean was this public or was this supposed to be a secret? >> it was supposed to be a secret, judge. and they informed congress through the intelligence committees, the house and senate intelligence committees and selectively cleared members within both chambers of the legislature and, of course, also the judiciary was informed because they are responsible for manning the fisa courts, the foreign intelligence and surveillance act courts set up to run this program and to help oversee this program. >> judge jeanine: all right. and with respect to the issue of the president and what appears to be flip flopping, john, what about the fact that the fourth amendment that it sounds like he was item petting seems to have suffered now in that way that not onl

cedric leighton is a former deputy director of the national security agency and joint chief of staffnce officer. thank you for your time here. good morning. can you explain why this would be necessary. >> sure, good morning, bill, basically what we're looking at here is the way to go through a whole bunch of information very, very quickly, and in this day and age of meta data and going through many, many reams of information there are information processors, information culling processes that nsa uses that go into finding out who is talking to whom, why they are talking to them, and how long they are talking to them and that basically was the gist of the court order that the guardian found earlier. bill: are you okay with this? should we be okay with this? >> it depend. i am okay with the basic idea of going after folks who are connected to terrorist groups and i think most americans are okay with that. what you're looking at, though, is a lot of data and it requires a lot of good control mechanisms put in place for that -- the handling of that data. so when you're looking at these k

. >> reporter: leighton says snowden could likely see outside the need to know boxes that con train somehat they see, but they can see information. >> reporter: a former official tells cnn the nsa disabled the usb drives on most computers and uses software to detect flash media. >> typically in government, there are ways of auditing those kinds of transactions if they're electronic. >> reporter: now epeople change their social networks changes people they talk to change, so they have a five-year program where they go back and recertify someone for that clearance, but the former official said these things take time and they're expensive, so doing it any more often than that would be a very expensive proposition, wolf. >> chris lawrence, thanks very much. >>> one key lawmaker says the man who admits being the nsa leaker is a defector and a danger to the united states. now that edward snowden's identity has been revealed, there's an even more heated debate about the obama administration's surveillance practices. let's go to our chief white house correspondent jessica yellen, she's got more