Ill take the opportunity of session. To begin this im not going to spend a lot of time on introductions, but very briefly, i have been with us from brookings, and this is a real opportunity because my co panelist, interviewee, im not sure what to call him, he has a remarkable diversity of experience with 702. I actually met matt way back when he was working on guantanamo issues once of upon a time, but subsequent to that he became general counsel at nsa and went from there to run the National Counterterrorism center which is fundamentally analytical but draws on a lot of sources of intelligence including, as i think youll hear of 702 material. So, let me start by just asking you, on a scale of one to ten, 702ortant is 702 the u. S. Counterterrorism missions and other National Security interests, and what other interests. If i can channel the movie spinal tap, i will say 11, for those of you who have seen the movie. On a scale of one to ten, in all seriousness, its very important. I go back to introductions for second. Its great to be here with you and weve had a lot of conversations about these issues over the years although as been mentioned, we didnt really caucus before. Im a little nervous about what they will throw at me. Well just have a conversation and it will be fine, dont worry about it. I did move around a bit in government and i had diverse experiences with 702. The truth is, i just kept moving every couple years. Anytime there was an issue or problem i would just let somebody after me deal with it or other things or other difficult issues that have come up. There are issues and we will talk about those. Back to your question, at the Counterterrorism Center i was the recipient of 702 information as we called it and having worked on it from the perspective of 2008 and getting the authority, it was oddly gratifying to sit in a room of analysts and they would say, we know from 702 information, x, y, and z. I thought its not very often that analysts would actually talk about the authority by which we knew a particular fact, but there was something about 702 that was special. It was called out but it was also often the case because of special handling around it that would be part of the intelligence information that her analyst were getting, or maybe they knew i worked on it and they were sucking up to me. That was also possible. The reality was, the statistics that are out there from a major can contributor to the daily brief, i dont know if theres a more important source of information than the authority providing a source of information and 702. Its hard to overstate. Ok, so lets break it down now, the reason the program is so important, presumably is that it solves a problem that otherwise doesnt have a solution, and so we always talk about seven or two as though its something that exists out there. Its actually only existed in current form since 2008, temporarily it existed in 2007, so whats the problem that 702 is the solution too . Its a couple problems that it solves, it is important to understand 702, to do a little bit of historical discussion in the prior presentation talked a little bit about this as well, but the basic problem has to do with the nature of pfizer generally, the statute from that teen 78 and the fact that like in a lot of context, the law that was passed in 1978 didnt keep up with changes in technology so the way pfizer works is the scope of what you can do is defined by electronic surveillance. Thats what they can authorize in terms of electronic surveillance and with that definition, it was adopted in 1978 where most of Long Distance communications were carried by radiocommunication so theres lots of technologybased language to define the scope. That changed fundamentally in the 90s and 2000s so that most of those medications were carried over fiberoptic cable or a wire as the definition uses uses, the term wire, and that meant instead of collecting information with output where we were targeting nonus persons who were not in the United States, who typically dont have for the member rights, instead of doing that without probable cause we were having to go to the court to get probable cause. That was on an individual basis. Change in technology met people who didnt have Fourth Amendment rights were getting Fourth Amendment writes it was an anonymous resource drain. There were thousands of hours devoted to getting probable cause on it nonus person in yemen who is generally communicating with other nonus people in yemen but we were developing packages to peru that they were form power. That was a resource drain but it also didnt make much sense because they didnt have for the member rights and we thought it made sense to have a more agile means of obtaining their medications when we needed to use a usbased service provider. We needed a mechanism to compel their compliance and protect them legally when they provided that information to government. Thats a long answer but thats the nature of the problem. Ok so i want to shorten it. I want to sort of isolate what it is, because we will get to the problem in a minute of what happens if you turn off 702. I want to focus on what problem you are solving with it that you then stop solving if you say on december 31 it ceases to be law or january 31. As i understand what you said, it is that large numbers of lawful intelligence targets overseas, communicating with other terrorists and non terrorists lawful surveillance targets overseas and these medications are routing to the United States but they would suddenly have to go through conventional and thus be subject to wildly increased standards of a sort that weve never decided as a society that we want to give to aliens beyond the shores of the United States. Is that fair . Thats fair. What kind of numbers are we talking about . So the specific numbers are classified. Lets use big round, i think the government says theres a few thousand conventional once. Year. I forget the exact number in the United States. Ballpark, where is the decimal point were talking about how many overseas targets might suddenly become subject to pfizer if you turned off 702 . So to assume you are able to demonstrate probable cause. Lets assume you could do it. Lets assume there are x number of people overseas that we now surveilled under 702 without an individual probable cause showing and those are the universe of people you actually want to target for surveillance and now you have to do it under fisa which were doing that 2000 a year or so. What are we talking about . The number is around 2000. That is specifically reported by the government. I dont know if that number, the broader number is public. I think theres somewhere in the hundred thousand. So its orders of magnitude. So factor of 50 or greater. In your rough guess, how many of those people could you get a conventional fisa against. Theres two dimensions to that problem. Could you establish probable cause and could you amass the resources to go through those steps. Resource question aside, just a gut feel about the numbers that would meet the standard would certainly be under 50 , and maybe under 20 . Ok so let me just summarize this. Hugely important program, 11 on a scale of one to ten, major contributor to the president s daily brief, and if you turn it off you have to scale by a factor of 50 the number of people you are subjecting to conventional fisa, and for more than half of them you couldnt do it, and for the half that you could do, you are dealing with and a intense resource allocation. Is that a fair summary . Thats right. May be insurmountable ok, so before we turn to the politics of this, im just trying to establish the scale of the problem, that the political system is about to confront. What did we do before 2007 . This is a new solution to this problem. The problem actually predates 702. What were we doing and how are we handling it before we had the solution that we have and why couldnt we just go back to that . You go back, when i talked about before, you can go back 20 years and the problem was on the scale because of the Technology Issue i described. To this person a and box one and this a in botswana person b in yemen were not communicating through a server in the United States. Thats right, exactly. Thats still true for a lot of those same individuals. The fact is many of those communications do not pass to the United States or through a u. S. Based service provider. The problem didnt exist to the same degree if you go back 20 years or ten years. Then of course you have the terrorist surveillance program. 2001 through 2007 when the government announced in any electronic surveillance that have been conducted under what was revealed under the terrace reveal program was now being conducted under the fisa court. You had a regime based on article two authorities and a controversial legal interpretation. So if you go back that far, thats what you go back to, Legal Authority so, now if you were to turn off 702 and say ok you gotta go cover the same individuals under probable cause, we go back to the brute force efforts that were undertaken when i was there to try to cover as many as those individuals, simply with the title i fisa and then the same problem we just talked about in terms of resources and establishing probable cause. In the absence of 702 you basically have a robust and maybe unsustainable assertion to do it on the president s own authority or you do it person by person under conventional fisa. Correct. All right. Lets talk about politics. Politics of reauthorization. Its interesting, the prior presentation one of the questions i think at the end with what was the vote or in 2012, i was sitting sitting here and they googled it and it was i think this it was like 73 votes for reauthorization in 2012. Similar proportion in the house. At least by the time it was december 20 looming deadline of january 1, it was bipartisan support for reauthorization in 2012. And going back to 2012, i was at nctc at the time. We were very closely following this issue, and this was at a time where there was, the tea party sort of movement had begun in congress. We had started to see a change from when i worked on the legislation in 2008 where you had a sort of libertarian streak in the Republican Party that was kind of joined with sort of critics on the left in privacy, groups on the left to question some of this, right . So that had started to happen in 2012. Obviously, those dynamics are still play today. But i do think there does feel like theres something this change from 2012 thats going to make this harder. Ok. So before we turn to the unique particularities of the Current Situation of which i can think of that, at least three, lets just talk about the general constellation of forces here. Youve traditionally had a core center, right of center, and left of Center Support for visa authorities, and you had a dissenting left Civil Liberties community, and you had a more marginal libertarian right objection. My sense, generally speaking, is that even before this year, that dissent on the right has grown in strength. You know, im interested in your sense of when you think about the politics of, you know, who were the opponents of 702 . How much do you think of sort of conventional left opponents, the sort of aclu, and how much do you think of it as a sort of russian rebellion tea party thing . Let me answer the question by going back to 2008. If you think about the law as it was passed in, first protect america act and then 702 in 2008, that was passed at a time that you had a very unpopular president , republican president , president bush. Democrats controlling both houses of congress. And as a result, i think, the law that was passed represented a pretty thoughtful balance of the various viewpoints on how to protect the country and protect privacy and other basic challenge of building a statute that gave the Intelligence Community the agility, speed to collect vital intelligence while building in a number of safeguards involving the fisa court being the procedures, the minimization procedures, Fourth Amendment. The fisa court has authority over all those. The oversight mechanisms builtin. All things we learned about an hour ago were all part of this hardfought compromise where these groups, this is not like a law that was shoved down the throat by one party over the other, given the nature of the executive branch in congress. To me that thats important as you think about the current state of play. And i guess one point to make i think in response is that itll think, my own sense is when to talk about the critics, i dont think there really is much real debate about the fundamentals of 702. Maybe im wrong, maybe im naive or hopeful, but the value of it and the sort of Core Principles of how it works, i dont think, i think theres general support for that. Theres obviously some critics of the law on some of, on some aspects of it but i think those aspects are on the fringes of how its use as opposed to the the core of not requiring the government to get probable establish probable cause for nonu. S. Persons overseas to collect foreign intelligence. That seems to me to be probably pretty broad excepted. I agree with that with the following caveat, that a think you can accept that broad principle and then caveat the broad principle so often and so neurotically that you end up eroding the underlying principle itself, and creating effectively a lot of the workload burden that the statute was designed to eliminate. But ok, if we except that there is a core reservoir of support here that is strong, whats changed . You just said you think this year is going to be harder than 2012. I share that, and also note that the aggregate legislative progress that weve seen toward reauthorization so far has been something close to zero. Right. And moreover, theres another intervening event that i think is disturbing, which is the protect america act 215 debate which different subject but also kind of flows out of the snowden revelation. And that bill was ferociously contested. The program was actually allowed to lapse for a while. You know, i dont think the legislative process associated with that was a harbinger of anything attractive with respect to whats likely to happen to 702. Im interested what you see as the current legislative politics that are different from the politics four or five years ago. Ill take a shot of that. Its not really, you are closer and better at knowing the politics i think that i am, ben in some ways. I read the papers and try to step on this but but i wouldnt hold myself out as an expert on the Political Landscape on this. My own sense is, theres some big things that changed since 2012. 2012 was harder than 2008 which in a way with sort of way was sort of odd with the libertarian sort of streak in congress that had some critics on the right which we did nothing 2008. The support of the rent was kind of a given and going into 2008. So 2012 was harder. Then the big things are snowden, 2013. We are still, if i asked, im sure people will not raise hands, but how many people not raise hands, but how many people believe that nsa is tapping directly into the central servers of several u. S. Based internet providers. I suspect many people would say yes, thats true. Because that was the lead story in the Washington Post shortly after the snowden revelation. Turns out not to be true. Not true at all and really notably not true at the time that article was written. The post to this day has never run a correction about it. And they got a Pulitzer Prize for it. I find that to be pretty problematic. I knew what he read it, thats not true. In fact, we had a very open public congressional debate when we established the authority to be able to do this, and it wasnt nsa tapping drug into the central servers of google and yahoo but it was on this life that it was snowden, a training slide apparently. So snowden, dont get me started on this obviously. So we got snowden. Thank you for pulling me back from the brink. So we have snowden. In some ways a lot of the i think has run its course is my sense. Look, you brought it the 215 debate. That was the most controversial aspect of what snowden revealed, and thats been largely addressed. I feel like much of that is sort of dissipating. But still its it still informs the current climate i think. But then you are not going to say President Trump so i will say President Trump. I was going to say it. You know, today, the tweet from the president , the real story is unmasking surveillance of u. S. Persons come something persons, something to that effect. Thats the real story. And that is something that we just havent seen before, that we have what in particular . So what is, right, such a number of different facets of the same thing but its a strong message coming out of the white house of distrust of the Intelligence Community aunt. That comes up, in particular comes out in comments about surveillance. You know, going back to general distrust around the russian story. That goes back to preinauguration, to the false statements about, from the president , that he was subject to surveillance by president obama, to comments by kevin nunes about potentially illegal unmasking. So this creates an atmosphere of distrust, what the Intelligence Community does, and you see, it seems to me people who know better i think on the right embracing those views to support the political position that the president has taken. That is the best i can say. Down. s break that you raise to issues is the messe useident alleging illegal of surveillance authorities and the illegal unmasking of people. Traditionally we have relied on the executive branch not merely not to engage in illegal wiretapping with either however many spaces, however between wire and tapping. Not merely enough to engage in it but to be the explainer of the legality of the intelligence communities behavior. And i think it does create a very difficult environment when the president is saying things that we would regard as people like me anyway, would regard as wildly irresponsible if, say, the aclu said then, which by the way the aclu wouldnt. And so i dont really understand how the executive branch, under the circumstances in which it is accusing itself of unlawful behavior on a daytoday basis, goes to congress and asks for renewal of these authorities. I dont really understand how a reasonable member of congress, under the circumstances, whether they believe the president or not, if you believe the president that the Intelligence Community is doing these things, it seems kind of nuts to invest it with these authorities, right . If you dont believe the president , the presidency tweets and comments about these things, scenes, its hard to invest him with these authorities. And so im left with as a fervent supporter of these authorities, im left with a real perplexity as to how you react as a legislative body to the executive systematically accusing itself of misconduct. So thats a think a really good way to pose a dilemma. Because i agree with both of those. On the first, does Congress Really believe that thelligenceg the things the president is saying . I think the answer by and large is no. I think theres a parallel universe. And ud believe a word of it . No. I mean, no, not in the things i said. The illegal surveillance illegal surveillance, evil unmasking conspiracies in which, so, so you believe, just for the record, i believe, but i just want to clarify that you believe that the Intelligence Community is using its authority lawfully, and the president is misrepresenting the conduct of his own Intelligence Community. Yes. And you know, i say that not just as a casual observer but as as a former general counsel at nsa and as an official at nctc. Now, which is to be careful, right, the nsa, fbi, doj make mistakes. And there are compliances and we know that that happens. Some of those are quite public, some are not known, or at least not as public a note in terms of the specific nature. Not to say the system is perfect, but the things the president is saying, you know, i believe are not true, in my unexplained are not true. The president is the only one who is saying them. Another person who is saying the same thing is not the chairman of house Intelligence Committee. This strikes me as another very peculiar element of this discussion, that this is a committee that is both an oversight body but also a body that is supposed to be able to say hey, what is and is not happening. And in the past the Intelligence Committee leadership has, particularly during the snowden revelation, so even recently, have played this very Important Role of saying, hey, weve been fully briefed on program x, and we of confidence in the legality and appropriateness of the agencies behavior under x circumstances. But here you have a situation in which chairman of Intelligence Committee goes to the white house to, i have trouble even quite understanding what he purported to do, but to receive a bunch of information and then to release a bunch of information, all of which was about, in some sense these alleged misuse of an unmasking of presumably lawfully collected either 702 are conventional size fisa material. This leads to his recusal from the russia matter. But immediately upon the happening there was discussion in the Intelligence Committees of what this means for 702 reauthorization. Does it get harder. Seems to me that makes the environment much, much more challenging, yet . Sure. Going back a step, everything is harder right now. Everything is harder. Its harder to see the nonpartisan sort of treatment of intelligence authorization bill, a bill that authorizes this authority. I do think that, look, the episode which i think, does make it harder but i dont think it is representative at all what the rest of the Intelligence Committees, particularly when you conclude the senate Intelligence Committee, you include the rest of house Intelligence Committee in particular, Ranking Member shift, this is not, his experience, again i think it was an isolate episode. I agree with you, the idea of the chair of the house Intelligence Committee 20 the white house is not in my experience but that doesnt happen. Thats a very odd, strange thing or him to do. Theres a big difference if you can compare how, what he said, what chairman nunes said to want chairman mike rogers said in aftermath of the snowden investigation, to your point of how the Intelligence Committee reacts to what the Intelligence Committee is doing. All of which is to kind of agree with you that this has made harder. The nunes episode i dont know how much stock to put in that is something that really change the dynamic. But if i could go back to Something Else you said before, which i think youre right, its a good observation. Like, if you dont think with the president is saying is true, then how do you invest in him these additional authorities. That becomes as real dilemma for people and ill put myself in that position of who worked on this authority, sort of trying to imagine sort of dangerous people or difficult situations in terms of who is in the white house, but not necessarily anticipating somebody like donald trump. So one answer to that is, is seven which reflects a law that has substantial oversight and compliance mechanisms built in so that it would not be, i think you look at it and think this would be very difficult for a president acting on his own accord to abuse his authority because of the fact that all three branch of government are directly involved in overseeing how it is used. So theres one other big seems to me legislative impediment, other than the general atmosphere of congressional dysfunction, which is something we havent talked about but as a background condition that is serious. At least speaking personally i dont know whos going to quarterback this thing. In 2008, i knew exactly who was quarterbacking 702, the creation of the 702. I knew who was doing the work, and i knew who had the clout to do the work. In 2012, i knew who had the clout to do the work, write . But right now i look at it and i say, all right, the the president is not merely doesnt have the focus, doesnt extend issue, hes actively tweeting the authorities are being misused. Right . The fbi director has been removed, and the dni is not at least as i can tell sort of highly energized and sort of being the person who is going to drive this train. So my question is, whos of the quarterback of this thing . Wheres the energy between now and the end of december going to come to get this thing done . Welfare, do you think . So in 2008 for the record i did not put it up to that. 2008, it was, the white house was fully behind it and it was director mcconnell, dni, the attorney general and then powell and the letters behind, then powell at dni especially. 2012 simile was sort of also the dni and the Justice Department together. And now say dont have anyone at nsd. So theres not Political Leadership there. Its hard to know where this comes for basic agree with you. Its hard to see where the center of gravity. I think even as of last year the Justice Department was starting to pull together the effort a bit. I know folks there were thinking about looking ahead to 2017, but, and director coats certainly had the ability and the sort of infrastructure in place, especially given his role on the senate Intelligence Committee, he understands the issues, i think its a matter of making this a priority and understanding the importance of this and saying ok, of the free things were going to work on this year, because thats what we did in 2008. You just picked a couple of things and you just decide what youre going to work on. I think thats the kind of effort that will need to take place. So one optimistic way to think about this is that the old phrase is theres nothing like a hanging to concentrate the mind, write, and that as you get into the fall, you know, my colleague always says go dark on 702 for even 24 hours as a National Security emergency in the first order. And as you get toward that actually happening, people will and focus, and a lot of extraneous stuff that seems like a real impediment now will fall away because it has to get done and it would be like a government shutdown. It has to not happen so it wont happen except of course unless it happens. What are other reasons that you can think of to be less pessimistic than the last few minutes of conversation . Well, im actually not that pessimistic. Why . As much as the dynamic is difficult. One, what i said, i do think there is broad consensus around the corporate i agree with you you can chip away at it and make it almost operationally difficult to use to the same degree. I think that the experience that weve had with 702 since 2008 has created has created a general consensus that there is true value in the way it works and not a lot of criticism about the Core Principles or corporations. I guess thats one. I guess two, as much as there our people are very suspicious, you know, skeptical of government abuse of this authority, they really arent concrete examples of it being abused if you ask folks who are real concern, show me where theres been a problem, you know, of a serious nature, compliance issues, and some of the most important or significant but not i think some of the real abuses, nothing likf the 1970s for example, anything on that order. Libertiesy and civil Oversight Board found that the law had been implemented thoughtfully and rigorously. So those, so that is one reason to be optimistic. Having said that, if i were going to be the dni general counsel or head of nsd, i would not make christmas vacation or winter break plans. I would not plan to go skiing then. I would think this is going to come down to the wire. Typically that is what happens with these sunsets. They come down to the last few minutes and deals are brokered. I guess another reason to be optimistic is i think there are some areas where there can be some compromise that will give people who have concerns greater confidence around transparency. Benjamin i want to have you spell out a little of that area. The four we do that, one thing about 702 is that it is not an on off switch. If you were still agency general counsel theres some date after which you say, if we are not sure were going to have ome january 1, we have to start winding it down now. We have to start making contingency plans. Those operational decisions are enormously enormous Time Investments for multiple agencies. Im obviously not asking you for anything sensitive, but what should we think of as that date . What is the date after which the agencies have to start thinking about, we dont know this is happening, we need to start making technical changes, winding programs down, having contingency plans in place . Matthew that is a great point. People dont necessarily realize how disruptive these sunsets can be. It is not really an option just to pull the plug at midnight. You need to start planning for this in advance. I dont know the date. I would expect that theres people thinking about that now, the career folks at nsa and doj and fbi, particularly in the legal offices. What do we need to be planning for in case this does expire . At the same time, i would have to read carefully and im sure there are folks who know this better than i do, but there are ways to think about the statute and the authorizations that have been granted that might allow for there to be continued collections after january 1 in the absence of a statute. I would have to go back and carefully read it to see but i think there are provisions. Benjamin i think what actually expires is the authority to seek new orders. So i think you could, if you went in on the right date in december and the fisa court authorized in order december 31, you could imagine that order having a year of life or six months of life beyond the expiration of the statute, but that assumes you know what the court is going to do. Matthew even with that, you are still having to deal with providers who are going to be very, they are not going to be lawkeen about an expired and trying to convince them that they are covered in complying. It is kind of a nightmare scenario. We kind of went through that with the protect america act in 20072008. Benjamin before we turn to what possible compromises look like in your judgment, im interested in how controversial within the community what youve described today is, and for that matter what ive described today is. Theres a National Debate about these authorities. Are they a good thing, a bad thing, do we need but within the community, is there any disagreement that it would be a disaster if this authority lapsed . Matthew i hate to speak for the entire community, but i dont think so. I dont know of an issue or authority around which theres so much consensus as to its value. That this is theres really no dissent within the community about the value of 702. You. Yeah. Ell that its w regulated. Compared to other authorities, this was passed with a lot of compromise built in to address concerns around privacy and Civil Liberties. Jamin so now weve got the Community Wants a clean reoff. Nothing in congress is clean these days. My assumption is, just as with sorry, the usa freedom act, theres going to have to be some compromises of some kind to get it done, if only to give people a facesaving opportunity to vote for something or not hold it up. What is the realistic latitude for compromise . What could you shave off of 702 they without damaging underlying authority . Matthew the place i would look to answer that question is reporting and transparency, to look for ways in which the government can provide more information about how it uses the authority of 702. I would try to hold the line on how, on the more operationally oriented aspects of it. That is sort of reading the debate a bit down the road. I dont know if that is tenable. Ill be specific because i know youre going to ask me. You are not going to let me get away with transparency. The issue that does strike me as one that goes to the heart of the concerns is this notion of incidental collection. Room, the ideae that when you are targeting somebody outside the United States under 702, you may collect the other side of that communication. That could be a u. S. Citizen in the United States. So you are not targeting that person, but you collect that end of the communication. That is what we refer to as incidental collection. The government has sort of resisted disclosing how often that happens, where a u. S. Person is caught up in that. Benjamin do you think the resistance is a function the government describes it as technically extremely difficult to describe the number. By the way, im pretty sure i have been incidentally collected on and ive written about that. Impression that the fundamental resistance to releasing a number is that it is just very hard to calculate, or is there something more to it . Matthew theres a couple reasons youve heard. One is that it is hard to calculate. Youve heard the argument that it is counter to the interest of protecting privacy because it would require the government to go and figure out the u. S. Person and dig into the communication further. Those are probably right. Technically it would be hard. It is a resource issue. But i do think that given the concern around this, this idea maybe i will talk about this. Theres a sense that this is somehow counter to what the statute is meant to authorize, which is not true, i dont think. Oneidea that you collect end in the United States as a consequence of targeting somebody outside the United States, theres a sense that that is inconsistent with the purpose of the statute. Should be more public reporting about how often that happens. Benjamin i think that is just wrong. Matthew that is my view. Benjamin that issue was debated in 2007 and 2008. Congress had a lot of opportunities to limit that statute to prevent exactly that and they passed them up and did it intentionally. Matthew that is what i was going to say. I think that is a myth about the statute. All you care about is foreign intelligence, overseas intelligence, or intelligence that only involves somebody who is overseas. Speaking as somebody who was the recipient of this information, we were obviously extremely interested in who that person was in the United States, who was caught up communicating with somebody overseas. That was critical. There are procedures, what you do with that information, but that was always a purpose of the statute. Been thed having incident in which im fairly certain i was the subject of incidental collection involved a situation in which i got a call from the fbi warning me that i was a Cyber Security target of some actor. The context of the conversation was opaque enough that i dont think it was a domestic criminal matter. It wasnt like identity theft. My assumption was there was some may or may not be 702, in which information about me was incidentally collected on somebodys system overseas and i got a call to one me. We have this assumption that if you are the subject of incidental collection, that is a reflection of a Civil Liberties violation. To the extent that this happened, and im pretty sure that it did, i consider that a protection of my Civil Liberties , not the other way around. I wonder if the incidental assumes a Civil Liberties violation in lots of situations in which that would not be a reasonable assumption, and sometimes it is affirmatively protected, and sometimes it is neutral. In your situation, i agree. A common way in which it matters is that the fact, the incidental collection does then train the fbis focus on the person in the United States, not just to warn them, but they are now a potential target of fbi scrutiny. That is sort of the terrorism scenario. So folks know, what happens at that point is, the government, the fbi, obtains or seeks to obtain a title i fisa and establish probable cause. The law has provision after provision that prohibits the government from trying to focus on the person in the United States without getting a fisa, this sort of reverse targeting that is prohibited in each possible permutation you can imagine. Benjamin lets take a couple audience questions. We have about 10 more minutes. Wait for the mike and introduce yourself. There may be a misperception among some people that 702 somehow wasnt supposed to authorize incidental collection. Most of us in the Civil Liberties community are well aware that is what it was intended to on the rise, that one of the main purposes of the statute was so communications between foreigners and americans could be picked up without a pfizer order so that the government could look and see which americans they wanted to focus on. Of tension between what you just said we were very interested in those communications, and then to say this authority is targeted entirely at foreigners, just foreigners. At the same time, you are saying, we wanted to know who the american was. I think theres a lot of misunderstanding about what incidental is, and part of the problem is it suggests it allows the government to say the statute is only about or interest is only in the foreigners, and that is clearly not the case. It is important to the really precise. Im not in the government now, but in terms of my own understanding, we were trying to figure out who in the United States could be a terrorist. One of the great ways to do that is see who might be communicating with somebody overseas. We are targeting the law authorizes the targeting of somebody who is not a u. S. Citizen overseas. The vast bulk of the collection is foreign to foreign. The vast bulk of what is collected when you are targeting somebody in yemen or pakistan is other communications with people in yemen and pakistan who are not u. S. Persons. Every once in a while, when your target communicates with somebody in the United States, that is critical foreign intelligence. One of the cases that has been declassified is an instance where coverage under 702 of a career in pakistan, that person in auroraicating , colorado, who was asking for bomb making instructions. It is only with 702 that person was identified. Without 702, it would have been at therd to identify time he was identified, which is shortly before he traveled to new york to carry out a plot to bomb the subway. Benjamin i dont think there really is tension, actually. I think 702 allows only the targeting of nonus persons overseas. No one has ever, to my knowledge, at least no one who knows anything about the statute, has ever argued that it doesnt authorize the collection of communications that arent exclusively overseas. It allows targeting of people who are nonus persons overseas. All communicate with people over the world including in the United States and if youre trying to protect the United States, those communications might be of particular interest. I dont see where the tension is. 702, one ofme that the virtues of it, and one of the reasons i felt this at the time in 2007 and 2008, was that it actually told you very clearly what it did and didnt authorize. It is remarkably nonopaque. The stuff was debated. I agree with you that people were quite upfront about it. Term incidental, people have this idea that it is deceptive. It doesnt seem deceptive to me at all. It just means you are not the target. [inaudible] mean,all know what they but they carry connotations which dont fit that. I dont want to take too much time. Benjamin other questions. Yes. Matt, you mentioned earlier that [inaudible] how has that affected the Intelligence Community, that disrupt in terms of their jobs or whatever . Lets get the last question, one more, and then you take the final word. Yesterday, it was reported that devin nunes issued subpoenas requesting information requeststain unmasking made by former obama officials. Can you talk about is the type of request something congressmen usually have the authority to request or would he have to issue a subpoena to get that information as chairman of the Oversight Committee . Matthew interesting question. I will take that one and you are second. I didnt see that report, but based on what you said, that does strike me as out of the ordinary, certainly the chair of the house Intelligence Committee would have the ability and the relationship with the Intelligence Community to obtain information about unmasking requests, which for everyones purpose, the general rule of the procedures is to mask or read act the name of a u. S. Person or identifying information about u. S. Persons who are part of intelligence reporting, but you can request that the name be unmasked or identified. Pretty routine for that to happen. It is a protective measure. In answer to your question, it strikes me as unusual for there to be a subpoena for that information. My own experience with the house Intelligence Committee and senate is, we were up there all the time, on a weekly basis, at multiple levels, talking about issues that were well within their oversight. This would be an issue in their oversight. That strikes me as a little bit out of the ordinary. The broader question about the Intelligence Community, i do worry about the morale of the Intelligence Community. There are folks here who are current members. Im not. I do think the statements directly from the president that appear to denigrate the Intelligence Community or dismiss the information being provided, it has an impact on the workforce. My sense is mean from folks im talking to that they are still committed to doing their job, but over time, you might see morale declined. Struck how i would go in the morning, get the briefing, and there would be this incredibly talented group of people who have been up since 3 00 in the morning to prepare a briefing, and they could have done a lot of different things. They could have gone to wall street. They could have gone to silicon valley. They wanted to fight al qaeda. That is pretty incredible. If we dont protect that has good stewards of that sense of mission, you cant take that for granted. Secondly, beyond just the workforce, the more substantive concern, here you have people providing critically Important Information about National Security and Foreign Policy interests. Is not beingmation trusted and acted upon by the primary consumer, the president , then theres reason to be concerned about whether or not policies are based in fact and based on the information that we spent a lot of time and effort obtaining to ensure we are making the best policy decisions. Olsen, thanks for joining us. [applause] today the senate Intelligence Committee hears testimony from james comey at a hearing looking into russian interference in the 2016 election. Watch live coverage on cspan 3 and www. Cspan. Org. You can also listen to streaming audio on your smartphone or tablet with the cspan radio app, a Free Download for apple and android devices. Live coverage begins at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. Liveis weekend, book tv is from the 33rd annual chicago fest in chicago. Our coverage starts saturday at 11 00 a. M. Eastern with author mary dearborn. At noon, 2016 National Book award winner even candy, and his book, the definitive history of racist ideas in america, followed at 1 00 by michael eric dyson, with his book, a sermon to white america. At 4 00, sidney blumenthal, with his book, the political life of abraham lincoln. On sunday, our coverage continues at 11 00 a. M. Eastern with Heather Thompson and her book, the prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy. At 2 00, Jeffrey Stone with his sex, religion, and law from americans origins to the 21st century. At 3 00, former congressman trey radel with his book, a true money,f weird politics, amendments, and finger food. At 4 00, author thomas ricks, with his book, the fight for freedom. Watch our coverage of the 33rd stnual printers row lit fe saturday on cspan2s book tv. Journals washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up this morning, we will preview the upcoming testimony i former fbi director james comey to the senate Intelligence Committee. Our guests include my clique, david hawkings, and Michigan Democratic congresswoman brenda lawrence. Be sure to watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern this morning. Join the discussion. The director of national intelligence, the nsa director, and the acting fbi director testified at a Senate Hearing on the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. That law is set to expire in december. In addition to answering