mrs. o'sullivan, mr. cole, mr. guiliano, thank you very much. do we have someone to change the name tags? i'd like to introduce the panel. and i will introduce everyone and then again from my left your right and go right down the line. the first person to be introduced is harley geiger. he is the senior counsel with the center for democracy and technology. and he is deputy director of the freedom, security and surveillance project at the center for democracy and technology. mr. geiger has written extensively on the subject of fisa reform, bulk collection, and surveillance in general. second is dean dar field. he's the president and ceo of the information technology industry council, known as iti. iti is an advocacy and policy organization that represents a number of tech companies, including google, facebook, yahoo! microsoft, and many others. mr. garfield has previously appeared before the house judiciary committee to discuss fisa reforms. and the final witness is michael woods, who's the vice president and assistant general council for verizon

mrs. o'sullivan. >> thank you. we are pleased to sit before you -- the usa freedom act as passed by the house last month, but i wanted to touch on a few key points in my remarks. over the past year the nation has been engaged in a robust discussion about how the intelligence community uses its authority to correct -- collect critical for and intelligence in a way that protects privacy. we take great care to ensure the protection of privacy and civil liberties in the conduct of collection activities. nevertheless, we have continued to examine ways to increase the confidence of our fellow citizens that their privacy is being protected, while at the same time providing the intelligence community with the authorities that he needs to fulfill its mission and response abilities. to that end we have increased our transparency efforts and the director of national intelligence has declassified and released thousands of patients -- pages about the program including court decisions and a variety of other documents. we are con

stephanie o'sullivan will now make an opening statement and then we'll all be happy to answer your questions spent thanks very much, mras provided an in depth review of the u.s.a. freedom act as passed by the house last month by want to touch on a few key points in my remarks. over the past year the nation as big a case in a robust discussion about how the intelligence community uses its authorities to collect critical foreign intelligence in a manner that protects civil liberties and privacy. if we take great care to ensure the protection of individual privacy and civil liberties. nevertheless, we have continued to examine ways to increase the confidence of our fellow citizens, that their privacy is being protected while at the same time providing the intelligence committee with the authority it needs to fulfill its mission and responsibility. to that end we have increased our transparency efforts and the director of national intelligence has declassified and released thousands of pages of documents about intelligence collection programs. including court decisions and a variety of other documents. we are continuing t

mr. leggett? >> yes, sir. >> ms. o'sullivan? >> yes, sir. >> the nsa has been subjected to a lot of unwarranted abuse since snowden's treasonous disclosures. i want to publicly take you and all the patriotic americans who serve our nation by quietly performing in essays vital mission. in your opinion, is this country safer or less safe after those damaging disclosures? >> versed, thank you for the words of support. for the nsa workforce. we appreciate that. in my opinion, the country is less safe because of the disclosure of the methods that we used to conduct our authorized foreign intelligence mission. >> it doesn't appear to be -- there doesn't appear to be any requirements in the bill for service providers to retain call detail records for any set period of time as you just discussed with the chairman. mr. ledgett come if service providers decide to scale back their data retention period, how would that impact msas mission? >> mr. vice chairman, that would make it, make the information less useful for providing intelligence

generaldeputy attorney cole, who will be followed by stephanie o'sullivan, mr. giuliano will. give formal remarks unless you want to, and you'll be able to answer questions. begin.e, please >> thank you, chairman feinstein, vice chairman chambliss, and established members of the committee. we are pleased to express the for therations support bill recently passed by the house of representatives. i appreciate the leadership and the considerable effort of this committee in working with us to explore how we can increase the confidence of our fellow americans in their privacy being protected while providing our intelligence agencies with the authorities they need to acquire foreign intelligence that is so important to our national security. the bill passed by the house last month would make significant changes to the provisions of the foreign intelligence surveillance act that we believe will help us meet these two objectives. it would prohibit bulk collection of information under section 215, the national security letter statutes, and the pin trace commitments of fisa. it replaces

he is prepared to go first, and he will be followed by principal deputy dni stephanie o'sullivan. mr. ledgett and mr. juliano will not give formal remarks but will be available to answer questions. >> thank you. distinguished members of the committee, we're all very pleased to appear before you to express the administration's support for the usa freedom act, hr 3361 as recently passed by the house of representatives. i appreciate this committee's leadership and the considerable effort that it has dedicated over the past year working with us to explore how we can