Political Quotes

“Yes, what I can tell you is that I think there have been some changes, some improvements. But it continues to be a challenge. The reality is you kind of look back from that period. In those early days, for example, John Poindexter made a proposal for something called Operation Total Information Awareness. It would have been the most sweeping invasion of privacy, in my view, in the country's history. We decided, much like when my colleagues talked about those early interpretations in the Bush administration, that this was an unacceptable expansion of executive branch power. But it was not until a young intern who was in our office late one night found some of the true excesses of this project--in fact, this young intern found that the program would actually encourage, as part of an experiment, debate about assassinating foreign leaders. People just found that so out of the mainstream that when we brought it to light, Operation Total Information Awareness was gone within about 48 hours. So we have seen--my colleague highlighted the Bush administration proposal to basically have unchecked executive branch power in Operation Total Information Awareness. My colleague asked about 12333, which we have been reviewing. So, yes, it is going to remain an ongoing concern, an ongoing challenge, because I think there is a sense that the executive branch is the only one that can really deal with this kind of information in a timely kind of fashion.…”