To get into that device and that is true in case after case after case which is why we have to figure out a way to optimize those two things, privacy and public safety. Well, to be candid, my understanding about some of this was that the European Community had special concerns about privacy and that some of the companies in our country were concerned, well they would lose business. That european concern is changing. I think what i read about the u. K. , what i understand is happening in france and germany, increased sharing of intelligence, the realize is, i think, that they have very dangerous people in large numbers, possibly plotting at any given time to carry out an attack has had some palliable effect and there may be a change of view point. So it would be very helpful if our Law Enforcement community could help us. And this is not to monitor, this is something that is very basic. If there is a piece of evidence that says, hey, there may be a cell, another individual out there, you have a chance of getting into that piece of evidence to see if thats true. With the judges permission. With a judges permission. Thats correct. So i thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Senator lee hasnt had first round so i have to go to senator lee. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you mr. Comey for being here today and thanks for your service to our country. I want to talk about about something about electronic raised communication records include such things as browsing history, ones history of websites that one might have visited on the internet. Yes. Would it be fair to say also that what one views, what pages one has visited might in some ways be indicative of what one is reading . Potentially. Right. Even if you dont see where they went on the page, that they went to espn or fishing magazine gives you some indication of their interest, yes. Individually and collective lirks you could find out a fair amount about a person, especially if you are able to review what theyve been reading for a certain period of time . Right. The only reason im hesitating is as i understand it, all we can get is the website visited not where they went on the page but it does give some indication of your interest, just like who you call gives you some indication of your interest. And where they went on the website is indicative of what they did on the website. If you could get that granular information about what subpart. Not just that they went to espn and they went to espn and read this or that article. Right. My understanding is that we cant with an nsl, we understand the statute, get that subcontent. We could get the web page visited but where they navigated within the website. That is i may be wrong about that, but i think that is how we are. Within the existing confines of the law. Correct. So those opposing that we change existing law to use a National Security letter to go further as was suggested by one of my colleagues earlier today, that then would allow you to get this more granular information. No, im sorry. I may have screwed this up. As he understand the way hector was int intended to be used, it is limited to the top level website visit address. Correct. So even if it changed the way we hope it will be, we dont get any deeper into what you looked at on a page. It is as if we were able to see what Sporting Goods store you called, we cant tell from the call record what you asked about. We could see what sporting pages visited, but cant see where you went within that. Based on the legislation that ive reviewed, it is not my recollection that that is the case. What ive been told is that it would not necessarily be the policy of the government to use it to go to that level of granularity. But that the language itself would allow is it, is that inconsistent with your understanding. It is. And my understanding is were not looking for that authority. You dont want that authority. That is my understanding. We want the functional equivalent of the dialing information. Where you the address you emailed to or the web page you went to. Not where you went within it. Even if you look at at the broad level of abstraction and if you are suggesting it would be used only at the domain name level. Somebody went to espn and if you follow someones browsing history, you could still find out a fair amount about that person, could you not. Yes. And i keeping i say saying this, but i admit it, as you could tell from their dialing history. And lets talk about section 402 of the Foreign Surveillance intelligence amendments act authorizes the surveillance, the use of u. S. Signals surveillance equipment to obtain foreign intelligence information. The definition includes information that is directly related to National Security. But it also includes, quote, information that is relevant to the Foreign Affairs of the United States, closed quote. Regardless of whether that Foreign Affairs related information is relevant to a National Security threat. To your knowledge, has the attorney general or has the dni ever used section 702 to target individuals abroad, in a situation unrelated to a National Security threat. Not that im aware of. I could be wrong, you but i dont think. So it is to Counter Terrorism and espionage and counter con flitteration. And that is why it has used those things. Does it to your knowledge, it doesnt currently use section 702 to target people abroad in instances unrelated to National Security threats. I dont think so. Like a diplomat, how someone feels about a particular Foreign Policy issue or something, i dont think so. So if the section were narrowed to exclude information relevant to Foreign Affairs but not relevant to a National Security threat, would that mean that the government would be able to obtain the information it needs in order to protect National Security . It would seem so logically. To me the value of 702 is exactly that. Where the rubber hits the road. Especially counterterrorism and counter pre live proliferation. And when section 702 is used, it is not metadata, this call was made from this number to this number. This is content. And so if if we were talking about two u. S. Persons, two american citizens, if i were calling you, that is not something section 702 could collect but if it is me calling someone else and that person is not a u. S. Person and that is an agent of a Foreign Government and if somebody has determined that communications involving that person might be connected to a National Security investigation, there is a chance that that communication could be intercepted. Not just the fact the call was made but the content of the call. Correct. That is what we call incidental collection. And that incidental collection is then aggregated. You have data bases that store all of theings, so there are those that have had conversations that are out there in a data base. Can you search that data base involving specific persons without getting a warren . Yes. And the fact that these communications were intercepted without any showing of the wrongdoing on the u. S. Person or without showing that u. S. Person had anything to do with the foreign with the National Security investigation at issue, does that cause you concern that that could involve almost a back door way of going after communications by u. S. Persons in which they have a reasonable expectation of privacy . It doesnt cause me concern. But maybe because of the way what i can see from where i am, i understand the question, though. But it is true, whether it is 702 or other court authorized domestic surveillance in the United States, if we are covering a particular embassy of a foreign power, and americans call in and speak to them, we record that. Because were authorized to collect the communications in and out of that embassy. And we store all of those in a data base. Or weve lawfully collected thome even though the american called wasnt a target. Same happens with 702. If you contact or call a terrorism or someone we are targeting overseas, you are an american and you have a conversation, even though you are not the target, that is collected and stored in a data base and what matters is how we treat that data and we protect it and dont use it willynilly and i dont know how we would operate otherwise. And that is i dont know how we would operate otherwise. I think what the American People want us to do is make sure we hold it to connect dots if it it turns out there is something bad in there but treat it like the information that it is, protect it and make sure it is handled in a responsible way. Thank you mr. Chairman. Director, let me let me tell you a story about a hundred years ago, literally, my italian grandparents and my irish grand parents faced discrimination because of their religion. Now that discrimination wasnt violence, it was economic. This is not unusual in this country at that time. I like to think thats gone. I like to think of my grandparents, italian grandparents, irish grandparents the discrimination because of their race and religion is not here but now we see an alarming rise of hate crimes in minorities and yesterday this Committee Heard important testimony from the department of justice, from the International Association of chiefs of police and our largest Civil Rights Organization that Law Enforcement and political leaders must send a message that toxic hateful rhetoric will not be tolerated and they must denounce bigotry whenever theyen count it. Even as a child, i was taught that. We are never to discriminate against anybody because of their race or religion. But now what bothers me, let me show you this. On the campaign trail, President Trump promises supporters a muslim ban. A Campaign Press release entitled, donald j. Trump statement on preventing muslim immigration. It says he called for a total and complete shut down of muslims entering the United States. Now i could understand that dumb things are said during a campaign. That as on his website today. That goes beyond being stupid. Do you agree with me that messages like that could cast suspicion on our muslim neighbors, can perpetuate division and hatred and if it does, does that make america less safe . Senator, thank you. Im not going to comment on the particular statement. But i do agree that a perception or a reality of hostility towards any community, would in this particular the muslimamerican community, makes our jobs harder. Because as i said in response to an earlier question, those good people dont want people engaging in acts of violence in the fame of their faith, or in their neighborhood. And so our interests are aligned but if anything gets in the way of that, it chills their openness to talk to us and to tell us what they see. It makes it harder for us to find those threats. So weve been spending a ton of time, you are right about the increase in hate crimes, weve seen the numbers start to go up in 2014 and climbing since then. To redouble our efforts to get into those communities and show them our hearts and what we are like to encourage people not to fear contact with us. And director, comey, i dont ask this to make a political point, i ask this as a United States senator, i believe the United States senate can be and sometimes has been the conscious of the nation. Were a nation that adheres to our First Amendment and we trust and allow to you practice any religion you want or none if you want. I worry, whether it is the muslim religion or any other, we have religions where people believe in it, they should not be condemned of actions of a few. I worry very much that the rhetoric and the hatred can bring about things that neither you nor i ever want to see in this country. I think wed agree on that. Hate crimes, i dont care who it is against, against somebody because of their race or their religion, you, as a head of the fbi, any one of us have been prosecutors, we abhor all hate crimes. I believe you do. Is that not correct . That is for sure. And i worry that we also give the impression that citizenship alone might be a reliable indicator of the terrorist threat posed by an individual to the United States. I think in the Oklahoma City bombing, one of the greatest acts of terrorism in our country, done by an american citizen who served i believe honorably in our military. So would you agree that citizenship alone is not a reliable indicator of a terrorist threat posed by an individual to the United States . Correct. Most of the people that i talked about that we have open cases on are american citizens. Thank you. In fact, the department of homeland security, weve heard from them. They have an assessment from the office of intelligence analysis concludes that citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity. Do you agree with that . Yes. Thank you. Another matter, chairman grassley and i have worked to address concerns related to the fbis hair and fiber analysis test that has been flawed, i think we all accept the past, investigation began i believe in 2012 after three men were sconerat sconerated oex onerated here in washington, d. C. And in order to review more than 3000 cases, the fbi has reached out to officers who originally prosecuted the cases and i appreciate that. My main concern is that cases remain closed, if you dont find the transcript right away. Ive asked you this question in writing. In any case where there is a missing transcript, will you commit to having fbi conduct in inperson visit to obtain whether there was information that was used and possibly faultily analysis by the fbi that might have brought about a conviction . Im sorry, an in person visit well to the Prosecutors Office or whoever else might be involved, if you dont have a transcript, an in person visit to say, okay, what do your records show. Do you did you use analysis that may have been faulty from the fbi in bringing about the conviction. I see. I dont know enough to react to that now and commit to it now. Can i follow up with you to see how were thinking about that. Will you follow up in. I will. Okay. Thank you. Senator layhe. Senator whitehouse. Thank you. A couple of quick matters for starters. Did you give Hillary Clinton, quote, a free pass for any bad deeds. There was a tweet to that effect from the president. No. That was not my intention, certainly. Well did you give her a free pass for many bad deeds, whatever your intention may have been. We have conducted a competent and honest independent investigation and closed it while offering transparency to the American People. I believe what i said. There was not a prosecutable case there. The with respect to the question of prosecution for classified material, is the question of the consequences of the disclosure, i. E. The harm from the writ release or the secrecy of the material considered in a prosecuteive decision. In my decision, it is. Because there was a great deal of material that while technically classified is widely known to the public and because of overclassification is a very significant problem within the executive branch, correct. Correct. And doj preserved prosecution for the most serious matters. And that would have been evaluated in looking at secretary clintons emails. Yes. So although they were classified, they may not have caused any harm in terms of who saw them . Let me get specific to that. There are emails that were classified and cause no harm if they are disclosed. Yes. That is the case. It has been disclosed and publicly reported that there was a twoday interval between the fbi interview of Michael Flynn related to his conversations with ambassador kislyak and then Deputy Attorney general report to white House Counsel about those calls. Did you participate in conversations related to this matter during that twoday interval, and what can you tell us about why that interval took two days . Was there some Standard Operating Procedure that needed to be vindicated, you think that could have flipped over to a conversation to the white house a good deal quicker than that once the agents report came back from the interview. Yeah, i dont know whether two days is right. I think it might have been a day. I could have been wrong. It could be two days. And i did participate in conversations about that matter and i think ill stop there. Because i dont know the departments position on speaking about those communications. But as you sit here, you dont have any hesitation about that delay, about any it representing any kind of mischief or misconduct . No. And given your experience, you know how this works. An agent conducts an interview and write up a 302 and show it to their partner and get it right and produce the 302 and sometimes it is next day before it is finished. So the deputy, miss yates, would have seen the 302 and that process would have taken place by the time we went up to see white House Counsel mcgahn. I think that is right, yes. And then on to the wiener laptop. As i understand it, you were informed by agents in the fbi office that there was potentially related or relevant information in mr. Wieners laptop and on the basis of that information you sent a letter to the members of congress before whom you have committed to answer if there were any changes in the status of things. You also then authorized the agents to pursue a search warrant which then gave them access to the content, which allowe