diego. the nsa s chief said if they had their current program of collecting bulk phone call records in place then. we would have known about the plot. a privacy watchdog report appointed by the government now rejects that. the information was available. they just weren t sharing it. the controversial nsa program revealed by leaker edward snowden should not exist. it s unlawful in the majority of the board s view and should be shut down after a short transition period. reporter: the board says the patriot act doesn t give legal authority for phone records in lucas the white house argues and says it s a huge invasion of america s privacy. the report is a harsh rebuke on president obama s stance on intelligence gathering. in the wake of this report, the white house defending the phone gathering records program as legal and effective. we simply disagree with the board s analysis on the legality of the program. president obama has announced plans to take the phone data colle
if they want to get you, they ll get you in time. reporter: snowden knows how every phone call, credit card transaction and airport checkpoint could be used to find him. he said from the start that he knows once he made the choice to inform the public about the programs that all of his options were bad options. i think it is safe to say that we won t be living a free and unrestrained life. reporter: in washington, congress has been receiving classified briefings about the national security agency s phone gathering and internet monitoring operations. in a public hearing, head of the nsa, general keith alexander defended the programs. we have to go back and look at these processes, the oversight. we had those. where they went wrong. and how we fix those. reporter: now there is word of more documents. the south china post says that snowden provided unverified information showing the u.s. has mounted a massive hacking operation against chinese targets. john, diana. tahman, th
time. you ve known him for a long time. you asked those questions about whether he s going to about whether he s stepping down or not. did i seem embattled to you? does he seem as if he s beaten down or did he come across more defiant? neither actually. i would say he seems rather calm about this. i should make clear that we did this interview before the story about the nsa phone gathering became public. i think what his tone is that he s had some second thoughts about how these cases are handled based on his several meetings that he s had with news media executives, something he promised the president he would do and he believes that they have made good points, that the news media should get more of a chance to challenge these requests for records of phone calls and e-mails before the government gets them. there should be more of that than there is now and the second point about how the law should be changed so the government doesn t have to use the language in getting a search wa