distinguish group of security experts led by former department of homeland security secretary mike chertoff and bill perry, g across both parties, issued a stark warning. and i quote, the constant barrage of cyber assaults has inflicted severe damage to our nationalic n national economic security and privacy of individual citizens. worse. inaction is not an acceptable option. end quote. i agree. the bill is the product of hard work across both and committee jurisdictional lines. i particularly want to thank my colleague, senator collins an s rockefeller, intelligence committee chairman, dianne feinstein forll cooperative work in getting us to this point the we are going to be privileged to hear from all three shortly. i also want to thank, senator carper, not here yet fo ldershi contributions to this effort. and i want to thank the witness whose are here, we have chosen -- the witnesses, deliberately -- because nay have hold differing points of view o legislation, we have crafted. and the challenges we face. and we look forward to their testimony. so, this act of 2012 does several important

. >> you know, mike chertoff when he was the secretary of homeland security, in fact, it may have been before this committee, as he had one foot in the door and one foot out, about four years ago testified about the threat posed by terrorist organizations, middle eastern terrorist organizations on the united states. and then secretary chertoff said that we need to maintain the focus on al qaeda. a shiny object. a very shiny object. and, you know, and a real threat. but he said the real threat is hezbollah. hezbollah has what al qaeda could only dream of having. they have established relationships with the most powerful international drug trafficking and organized crime syndicates ever faced by law enforcement. and they obviously maintain close relations with other designated terrorist organizations around our globe. congressman, whoever told you that hezbollah is now in 15 cities, i think they woefully underestimated it. part of the problem that we've got is we don't really know. that's what worries me a great deal. congressman lundgren, you brought out the importance of connecting the

chertoff, director of the aspen's institute's justice and society program. merrill? of >> thank you very much for that very kind introduction. i want to thank mike on the community of conscience and the leadership of the museum for organizing this evening and on behalf of walter isaacson and the aspen institute how glad we're partnering on this important event but partnering on this particular subject comes to us naturally. i'm proud to say harold coe was a regular moderator at the seminar for judges run for many years at aspen's white river facility by our merida director with professor lewis hankin of columbus law school two key developers and components of the modern field of human rights and humanitarian law. some of the justice and society programs' recent efforts are focused of development of the rule of law around the world including in the arabian gulf and the spring countries and i want to observe that it is through the rule of law, through vigorous legal and judicial institutions that we are able to prevent the perpetration of the most grievous offenses by the unbrideled against discrete and insular minorities. tonight we'll hear of th