Ed Perlmutter: “Well, I want to step back for a second and just talk about what I think our responsibility is with respect to this…”

“Well, I want to step back for a second and just talk about what I think our responsibility is with respect to this wiretapping surveillance stuff and our responsibility as Members of Congress, and really as citizens of this country, because we each have an obligation as citizens to do these same things, to uphold the Constitution and the rights that we all enjoy under the Constitution and to make our citizenry safe, to help make our families safe, our neighborhoods safe, our communities safe. There is a way under the law as we have revised this surveillance law to do both of those things. We have fixed this technical problem that existed where foreigners were given certain rights under our Fourth Amendment that they weren't entitled to. We have corrected that in this law. But we have maintained the Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment and the Third Amendment and everything else within the Constitution for each and every American by including the courts to oversee this and supervise when the government says we want to eavesdrop on a citizen, and we are demanding of the President and the telecommunications companies, we want to see what it is you are asking us to let you off the hook about.”