e-mail. and you know, your actual communications if you re skyping and discussing something with a family member. not like the phone record thing, which is just a record of who you called. right? i mean, both are controversial but one more so. all of these internet companies deny any involvement in or knowledge of the programs existence. so they say we were not knowingly cooperating with the government on this. meantime, there are new questions today about what should happen to the man at the center of the leaks. 29-year-old edward snowden came out this weekend as the administration was saying, we re going after the leaker, and said, it was me. i did it because i was working in the public interest. i think that public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. when you are subverting the power of government, that is a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy. and if you do that in secret consistn
framers didn t contemplate wiretapping but the fourth amendment applies. that s not an open process. you don t give notice to the person you re wiretapping we will try to get a warrant to tap your phone. there is an element of secrecy, if you will. it s involved historically in these kinds of decisions. again, it s all about checks and balances and i think it s all about minimizing the potential for abuse in the executive and that is why, for example, in this phone record thing, let s not it gives me the creeps that the nsa will have all of those records. let s have them somewhere else and if we need to then find out who tsarnaev called we will go and get essentially a warrant to do that. as is said this is implicated stuff and the technology is changing so fast. the executive will always justify any intrusion on behalf of security and then, of course, it falls over and gets could
nicolle, you ve been such an aggressive supporter of everything president obama has done and continues through this morning. i m a narrow supporter. it doesn t have to be in black and white. there is a middle ground here and i don t know that we are seeking it. i would ask senator king, isn t the reason we haven t 4 a debate on this issue is because the debate channels and shares with our enemies saek what we are doing to monitor their activities? well, yeah. that is one of the problems. do you really i mean, do you really want to call up al qaeda and say, by the way, we are going to be checking your e-mail on this or that server? that is one of the real dilemmas here. got to say i think on the phone record thing i do have a problem with that. don t put too much power in the hands of the government because it can and probably at some point will be abused. it makes me nervous all of those phone records are in the