Representative Heather Wilson: “And one of the ironies here is that because of this law, if we're trying to listen to a foreigner in a foreign country…”

“And one of the ironies here is that because of this law, if we're trying to listen to a foreigner in a foreign country, and we take tremendous risks with our members of the intelligence community and collect that communication overseas, maybe at high risk, may not work, and we collect that communication overseas, you don't have to ask permission from anybody in the American judiciary. You're out there trying to do your job as a military officer or a civilian in the intelligence agencies, trying to steal secrets, listen to communications overseas. But America dominates telecommunications. It used to be that if somebody from northern Spain was calling southern Spain, the route of that communication went directly from northern Spain to southern Spain. Now, because of global telecommunications networks, that call will go on the least restrictive, fastest path. And these efficiencies are running all of the time, and that call from northern Spain to southern Spain could route all the way around the world, through the United States, through whatever the system figures is the best, fastest path. So we may have situations where somebody in a foreign country is talking to somebody else in the same foreign country, and the communication might be routed through the United States.”