But also not to go too far down that line to sacrifice our Civil Liberties. You are an independent board. Who do you report to . We dont. We inform congress and the president , but there is no review of our report. We issued a report recently about the Metadata Program and surveillance report. The board voted and issued our report. We also briefed the president before his speech with our recommendations. I think that is where ellen wants to pick up. Your board got constituted and met at a very opportune time, right in the midst of the leaks by Edward Snowden, who put a huge spotlight on several important surveillance programs. One of them is section 215, as you mention. Your board came out with a 238 page report last month. I would say it is arguably the most extensive analysis of the legal underpinnings and the utility of the 215 program, which is, as most of the public now knows, a program where the nsa collects metadata, data about phone calls of americans, and puts it in a database, to search through them when they have a suspected terrorists phone number, to search for links to that number and detect plots and networks. Your board came with the conclusion and recommendation that the program was illegal, did not meet the statute that it was based on. You also recommended it therefore end outright, should stop operating. President obama in his speech only met you halfway. He said, we find the program has utility. We want to preserve the use of the data, but move it out of the hands of the government. What do you think of that . Do you think there is a feasible solution, such as putting the data in the hands of a third party . Is that feasible technologically or politically . President obama did track pretty closely with what we recommended. We recommended an interim. We would have had more protections added. I hope that is considered. We both recommended the end of the 215 program, to move the information out of the nsa. We did it on constitutional and policy grounds. We do not believe that having a thirdparty handle the data is the right way to go. Shifting the data from one box to another does not solve the problem. The thirdparty what is their Legal Authority . Are they subject to foia . What safeguards do they have . How will they operate . We think that is not the way to go. It is far better to have the information accessed through other legal authorities than held by the providers. How much of your concern has to do with the program itself, and how much has to do with the precedent the program sets . Once you have a program of that sort, why cant the government collect when i go to the supermarket and give them a loyalty card, they have the list of everything i have richest purchased in the last year. Can the government put that in the database as well . The implications are quite serious. The government could get all credit card transactions. Our concern is that once the government starts gathering so much information about our everyday lives, it shifts the power between the citizens and the government. Some people will exercise their First Amendment rights to contact reporters, religious organizations, political organizations. If they know the government is monitoring every move, it might chill their exercise of those rights. We are concerned about broad policy issues. Having telephone numbers has all those effects, and lacks Legal Authority. Would it concern you if the government expanded requirements of what Telephone Companies are required to store . As a citizen, how much do you care about what the government is Holding Versus private parties . Private parties can interfere, perhaps not as dramatically as the government. They can cause problems. If the information is there, what is the practical difference . The government can audit your taxes, put you in jail. The government can do lots of things. There is a difference between data held by a private company and the government, which can impact your life in a more serious way. The Telephone Company is already required to keep its information for 18 months. It has not been a calamity. Some have suggested it might be necessary to keep it longer. Others have suggested that might be necessary, to have the providers hold the information. President obama directed the attorney general and director of National Intelligence to come up with options, alternatives to the Government Holding of data, on march 28. And to work with congress as well. Adoptions that congress can live with. Do you think they can do that . If not, what happens then . We have been in touch with that group and plan on meeting with them to give our input on how to move forward. There are computer scientists, government officials, and others who think it is feasible to shift to others and be as feasible as it is today. We hope that will be a solution. Our program and the statute underlying it expires in june of next year. If congress does not act, the whole program will go away. You do not think there is enough support in the congress . I cannot predict that. A lot of members of congress have raised concerns about this program. I hope there will be an approach of stopping metadata collection of americans, shifting that to a more privacy protected, more focused approach. You said you think keeping this data in the hands of the phone companies, either with the current retention requirement or something a little bit longer, would be as effective and efficient as the way the system works now. How effective and efficient is the system . There have been reports by ellen and others, saying the system may be is not that effective, and certainly not as comprehensive as many people have thought at the outset of this debate. The government has put together 12 instances where they said the program was particularly effective. Our board looked at both classified and unclassified information. We even had our write up. At the end of the day, we found no plots were supported. No terrorists were identified we did not know about earlier. On those big picture issues, not particularly effective. Knowing there was not a plot afoot in the United States is certainly a value. We felt other resources with bulk data would address that concern. One case which seemed to have unique value involve material support. Not an insignificant fact, but we felt that on balance that effect did not outweigh the concerns raised on the privacy and Civil Liberties side. The program is not comprehensive. You mentioned the peace of mind argument, which the government turned to after several months of trying to argue the program have been directly effective. Now, they argue indirect benefit of ease of mind. If you had an alarm system on your home and it only operated on wednesdays and fridays, would you consider that a useful thing to have . Would you pay a lot of money for that, and would you keep it if it caused you other problems, like made your lights flash . Im not going to go down that path that information remains classified, but the government has asserted the program is valuable and effective. Our conclusion, our majority, is that it is not enough to justify the program as it is. In a sense, you got lucky. The existence of this program was leaked by a document Edward Snowden shared with the guardian. Had that program not leaked, and the government subsequently declassified it, how would you have handled the reporting of this program . Our board has the highest level security clearances. We have access to virtually every Government Program that relates to counterterrorism, which is our mission. In some cases, going forward, there may be programs that remain highly classified, where we do a report that only goes to the president and congress. If there is a version we can make public, we will. That was our goal in this report, which ended up being entirely unclassified. There is a program which still remains largely classified. We will try to speak to the American Public as much as we can about the constraints and what can be done about it. Can you do that now . Tell us a little bit about 702, for those who do not know. The 702 program, which is sometimes misnamed prism, it is focused on contents. Metadata, we did not know who was calling or what they were saying. 702 is what is being sent on the phone calls or the contents of the emails. That program is focused on nonu. S. Persons, and those outside of the United States. You have to be not a u. S. Person and outside the United States. Countries typically engage in intelligence on foreigners, particularly outside our borders. It is somewhat rare Court Approval is required. I am not sure there is any other country in the world that requires for approval for surveillance outside the United States. But we are about to embark on a review of the program. It raises interesting issues. One is, at the end of that phone call, maybe an american is on one end. How should that data be treated, particularly if the government wants to query it later on . And the effectiveness of the program. Absolutely. The program is reportedly extremely effective. But our board, being an independent evaluation board, we want to take a hard look at that and find out what metrics were used. We all agree that the only metric should not be thwarting plots. A lot of benefits to these programs. Connecting the dots. Providing valuable intelligence. Guiding the president in his actions. We are certainly going to question the government and test the proposition that this program is as effective as it is reported to be. Looking at the legality and constitutionality, two of your Board Members dissented. One of them i think said it was not the role of the board to assess legality. That is the role of the courts. What do you say to that . We are going to look at legality. The board member did not say we were not authorized to do that. It is a matter of allocating resources. If you look at our statute, Congress Told us to do two things evaluating programs related to enter terrorism. One is to balance Civil Liberties, and the other is to assess compliance with law. It is part of the congressional mandate. If it is an ongoing program, it is important to know whether it operates within the law. We will be looking at its operations, its legality, constitutional issues it may raise. And the balance between private security and Civil Liberties, how secure it is and what impact it has on americans. The you are a little bit lucky that the 215 program came up first. 702, the purposes are many. Counterterrorism is just one. There is counter weapons of mass destruction. There is gathering information about what other governments are doing. There may be other areas the 702 program is used for. It is not limited by its terms to terrorism. The board mandate, as i understand it, the statute is limited to terrorism. How are you going to do this . Are you going to be assessing this in respect to these other metrics that you do not have the Statutory Authority to examine . We are going to be mindful of our statutory limits. Looking at counterterrorism and other efforts it will be hard to separate those things out. Our focus will be on counterterrorism. Will it be useful for congress to tweak the language under which you are created, to expand a little bit, so it is not strictly counterterrorism . Because again, if Civil Liberties are being invaded, it may not matter that much with the reason is. You are talking about the other side of it is, we are a new agency with a tiny staff. We are just getting established. Expanding our mission right now certainly, we would do that if congress wanted us to do that. We are still scaling up the agency and getting started, staffing up. We have plenty within the counterterrorism program. There are 16 intelligence agencies we oversee. We already have quite a big mandate as it is. What about other bulk collection programs . Will you be taking a look at those, perhaps financial transfer programs, or the discontinued internet Metadata Program . We have not really established our agenda once we finish the 702 report. The president , as you know, asked john podesta to take a look more broadly. We are also meeting with his group and with him to discuss our perspective on that issue. In general, the collection of all committed data and its use does raise interesting concerns for us. You mentioned the legal analysis you did. There is one person on the board very qualified to do legal analysis, former judge patricia wald. Tell us about the interaction inside the board. How did that work . Did some of you take more responsibility for some aspects of the study, and others look more at other issues . Tell us a bit more about the makeup of the board and who has what kinds of expertise. We are an independent bipartisan board, so no more than three members can be in the same political party. Judge wald was with the d. C. Circuit court of appeals. She was given the president ial medal of freedom a couple of months ago. She has also served on other commissions. A valuable resource for us. I should add i am the only fulltime board member. The other four are parttime. Judge wald is a retired judge, but jim dempsey works in technology. Rachel brand works for the chamber of commerce. We all bring our different perspectives. I think you can see from our work product that we are a collegial group. If you look at separate statements, they acknowledge how well we got along. These are tough issues. They are difficult issues. You go to capitol hill, you will see different sides. The president advocates certain views. The question is, how you strike the right balance . We have sometimes intense discussions. 10 of the 12 recommendations we made were unanimous. All of the recommendations regarding reform of the Foreign Surveillance board, all but one involving transparency, and all but one involving the 215 program. That was a big one. How does your agency go about raising concerns . Is it just through this report . If you have concerns, where do you go with them . We have an oversight function. We also have an advice program. We work with the agencies as they are developing their programs. One of the things we are doing right now in addition to our 702 report is meeting with agencies to give them feedback on programs. We are in negotiation with agencies to make sure, as they develop programs or change their guidelines regarding existing programs, that we put in those. We also have to meet with members of congress, congressional committees. We try to provide input in various ways. And try to report to the American People. If these agencies do not listen to you . Interestingly enough, our statute requires us to Tell Congress that we recommended the agency do something and they did not follow our advice. We are required by law to report when that happens. I want to take you back to an earlier position about how you might have handled reporting on the section 215 program, had it not been declassified. One of your recommendations is that the government report publicly on the scope of surveillance activities that affect americans. This is one of them. How much could you have made public . Would you have said there is a program that collects telephone metadata . What came out in testimony earlier this week is our board had been briefed on the 215 program, and the person who was briefing us was hit by a car on a bike and it had to be rescheduled. We were onto to 215. We operate in an area where there is a lot of classified information. We are able to push for declassification to help the American People understand a program. You might have pushed for declassification . If we find aspects of the program or the entire program where we think there is a public benefit, we consider going to the Intelligence Community and saying, please declassify these programs so we can have a fuller national debate. We do not want a secret law where the American People cannot determine whether a program has been authorized. We also urge the government to report more on Information Collection activities. And to let customers know more about the government requests they are receiving. Some of the Tech Companies have reached an agreement to disclose more about what kinds of requests they get from the government. Are there any programs you are pushing for more declassification . We are embarking on the 702 program, and that could come up in the course of reporting on that program. You have been following these issues for some time. How do you see the countrys attitudes on this question of the balance between National Security and privacy changing . Could the debate that has taken place in the last few months have taken place eight years ago, nine years ago . We are 12 years post 9 11. We also see this in the courts. Almost all decisions in this area i do not want to say rubberstamp. 99 of the time, in the last two months, we have seen in the 215 program a significant decision saying it was not constitutional. We have seen a few decisions describing how these counterterrorism programs have gone. Do you think there is greater maturity on these issues . You think there has been a shift in how the government feels about this now . After the horror of 9 11, i think the first action was to beef up our efforts. As time has gone on, i think we have struck up more of a balance between National Security and privacy and Civil Liberties concerns. There was a poll where a substantial percentage of people said they would not give up their privacy and Civil Liberties, and that was after a horrific event, Boston Marathon