Political Quotes

“There are some who would demand that a court order be obtained any time a call involved a U.S. citizen. But anybody who understands FISA or intelligence collection knows that is operationally impossible. For 30 years, the intelligence community has used minimization procedures when inadvertently intercepted calls come to or from nontargeted U.S. persons. So far, we are totally unaware of any abuses of this system. The minimization procedures have worked well. They worked well when information was being collected by radio, without a FISA Court order, and they continue to work well because the well-trained people who run the NSA operations are overseen by multiple layers of supervisors and inspectors general and attorneys from the Department of Justice. There is no way to know, when a terror suspect places a call from a location in the Middle East, whether that person is going to call someone in his country or a neighboring country or the United States. So if you say you cannot intercept that call if it goes to a U.S. person, what, in effect, you are saying is you cannot intercept that call because you don't know where the call is going.”