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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: This program (The U.S.A. Patriot Act) was specifically designed to address what the intelligence gaps that existed after the 9/11 attacks. Because I promise you, if God, forbid, any horrifying event like that were to happen, the first question we will be asked is, why didn't we know about it and why didn't we prevent it. And if this program is gutted, we will not be able potentially to know about it and we will not be able to prevent it. Residing president of the Senate: The Senator from Vermont. Mr. Leahy: Leahy: Mr. President, of course this program does not gut it. It actually enhances it. Secondly, if this was important to stop ISIL, ISIL never would have started. The fact is, we had this program way beyond anything anybody's talking about today. It didn't -- it didn't slow up or eliminate one iota, ISIL. That is -- that's a straw man that we shouldn't even have here. It has no affect on that. Everybody who's read the intelligence knows that.
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Richard Blumenthal
U.S. Senator, D-Connecticut
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Blumenthal: This bill advances the cause of safeguarding our nation without in many way detracting from its essential operational intelligence capabilities. In fact, National Intelligence Director Clapper has said -- and I'm quoting --
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Richard Blumenthal
U.S. Senator, D-Connecticut
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Blumenthal: It advances the cause of constitutional liberty and the appearance and perception of trust in that system. And it does so by making the foreign intelligence surveillance court look like and function like the courts that we are accustomed to seeing issue search warrants in the criminal process and protect essential liberties. It does it by strengthening, in fact, installing an adversarial process so that more than just the government's version of the facts and law are presented to the foreign intelligence surveillance court. It does it by providing for appellate review, just like we have in normal civilian courts. And it does it by increasing the transparency and accountability of the FISA court system.
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Richard Blumenthal
U.S. Senator, D-Connecticut
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Blumenthal: Our founders would have been astonished and appalled to learn that we permit warrants to be issued by a secret court, operating in secret, issuing secret opinions, making secret law, much like the star chamber did. And that's why this reform is so profoundly and historically important, because we make the FISA court one that we can more aptly and abundantly trust, one that will have credibility and confidence. I support this bill. I thank my colleagues for showing that we can work together in a bipartisan way to safeguard the essential rights of Americans at the same time that we protect and preserve our national security.
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Dianne Feinstein
U.S. Senator (D-CA), Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Feinstein: I do not want to end the program. I'm prepared to make the compromise which is that the metadata will be kept by the telecoms. Senator Chambliss and I wrote a letter to the four big telecoms and we asked them if they would hold the data. The answer came back from two,
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Dianne Feinstein
U.S. Senator (D-CA), Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Feinstein: Senator Rubio sits on our committee. I listened to him with interest. I agree with him in what he has said about ISIL and others that will come after us if they can and the only protection we have is essentially to disrupt a plot before it becomes a reality in this country. And the program is not widely used, as the 288 queries in a given year would -- would indicate. Additionally, in this bill -- and this should I think be of satisfaction to a number of people -- the FISA court would have to approve a query before that query takes place rather than after the query. So I'm prepared to support the bill. And I do so for very practical reasons, because without it, I believe we will not have a program.
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Dianne Feinstein
U.S. Senator (D-CA), Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Feinstein: So this is hard for me because I have a great committee and I've tried to be supportive of those things that come out of our committee. I've talked to Senator Leahy. I've said, the one big problem I have is the foreign intelligence surveillance court is upset with the language. He has said, we will change the language. Senator Blumenthal has an amendment which I assume will pass which does change the language and the major objection of the court I believe is ended by this language. If that's the case and the telecoms agree to hold the data and the data is not held by the government but is held by the telecoms, I believe that solves what is a very practical problem. So in any event, I've agreed to support it and I thank the chair, and I yield the floor.
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Saxby Chambliss
U.S.Senator R-Georgia, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Chambliss: There are any number of reasons why the substance of this bill is totally flawed. We live in a dangerous world today. We all know and understand that. and while this bill, the provisions in this bill wouldn't have prohibited ISIL from being formed, it didn't, but what it does do, the provisions in the underlying FISA bill gives our intelligence community all the tools they need to make sure that when ISIL recruits individuals to go to Syria to fight, if it's Americans there trying to recruit, we can find out about that and we have under surveillance today any number of individuals who we think have been committed to jihad who live in America.
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Saxby Chambliss
U.S.Senator R-Georgia, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Chambliss: Secondly, there's another part of their recruiting that is even more dangerous than asking young men and women to come to Syria to fight for ISIL. They want people to go into the parliament in Canada and start killing people. They want people to walk the streets of New York and pull out a gun or a hatchet or whatever it may be and start killing people. If we eliminate this program, and that's basically what the Leahy amendment does, then we're going to take a tool away from our intelligence committee s not going to allow them to be able to interrupt and disrupt those types of terrorist attacks.
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Saxby Chambliss
U.S.Senator R-Georgia, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Chambliss: But let me just tell you what's going to happen if this amendment comes to the floor and should happen to pass. Today the metadata that is collected by the N.S.A. can be accessed by 22 individuals, 22. That means there's an opportunity for leaks to occur or for individual privacy rights to be breached by 22 people. If this amendment ever became law, all of a sudden all of the telecoms are going to be holding this metadata information as opposed to the N.S.A. holding it. All of those telecoms have thousands of employees, lots of whom have access -- will have access to this metadata. So instead of having the potential for 22 people to breach the privacy rights of American citizens, all of a sudden you're going to have thousands of opportunities for the privacy rights of Americans to be breached.
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