Political Quotes

“The leader raises a great question, and it is really the purpose for which section 215 was created. It is the reason the NSA looked at ways to effectively get in front of threats that take us back to 9/11 and the attacks. As we reacted, through our law enforcement tools within the United States, we used an instrument called a national security letter. They produced a national security letter. They had to go to the telecoms and ask that they search their systems for this information. The leader alluded to the fact that many looking back to pre-9/11 said that had we had the tools we have today, we might have stopped this attack. But over a series of years, Congress, the executive branch, the Justice Department, and our intelligence community worked to refine the tools we thought could effectively be used to get in front of a terrorist attack. That brings us to where we are today. Over those years, we created section 215, the ability to use bulk data. What is bulk data? Bulk data is storing telephone numbers--we have no idea to whom they belong--that are foreign and domestic. The whole basis behind this program is that as a cell phone is picked up in Syria and we look at the phone numbers that phone talked to, if it is someone in the United States, we would like to know that--at least law enforcement would like to know it--so we can understand if there is a threat against us here in the homeland or somewhere else in the world.…”