0 and presumably repealing all those benefits i just mentioned. that's hard to understand as an agenda that is going to strengthen our middle class. at least they used to say, well, we're going to replace it with something better. there's nothing even a pretense now that they're going to replace it with something better. >> president obama today talking at length and with some passion about the major legislative achievement of his first term which was health reform. what he would like to be the major legislative achievement of his second term, of course, is immigration reform. the president chose to end his press conference today on this very punchy call that immigration reform needs to get done. he said it would have the effect of adding $1 trillion to the economy. he said it would improve the housing market. it would be a boone for the high-tech industry. and this is how he decided to end his nearly hour-long presser. >> get that bill on the floor. put it up for a vote. i am absolutely certain that the votes for the senate bill, which strengthens border security, demands responsibility from undocumented workers to pay a fine, pay a penalty, get to the back of the line, reforms our legal immigration system, holds employers accountable. i am absolutely confident that if that bill was on the floor of the house, it would pass. this is one where you've actually got some pretty broad consensus. i don't know an issue where you have labor, the chamber of commerce, evangelicals, student groups, you name it, supportive of a bill. let's get it done. all right? thank you very much, everybody. >> i am certain this bill would pass if it made it to the house floor. let's get it done. the president finished with that. in his mind i'm sure he dropped the mike and then he walked off stage. in terms of strategy, what he said there about how it would pass right now if only the house would vote on it, there are enough republicans who support it that it seems like maybe he's right. an that is increasingly the line from people who support immigration reform. remember, it has already passed the senate. and just numerically it is starting to see like the president is probably right and proponents of immigration reform are probably right, that if there were a vote in the house on what already passed in the senate, there are enough votes to pass it in the house, too, which means it would become law. the longer that this goes on, the clearer that that becomes, that it would pass if they just allowed a vote on it, the longer that is clear, the more unsustainable it becomes for the republican leadership in the house to just refuse to vote on it because they know the vote will go against them. that was a fascinating moment during today's press performance. i think he should sort of stick a pin in that and see how that plays out when the house comes back to d.c. but the main point of this rare formal presidential press conference today was what the president announced at the very beginning in his formal statement at the time. it had to do with national security, with what our country is doing to protect our national security, and crucially, with how much we are allowed to know about it. the last time the president spoke at this level of detail on the issue was this big drone speech back in may which was all about how we need to be more transparent and have a better informed debate about national security and war and specifically the u.s. policy of using drones to kill people in other countries. if, after that speech, there was any suspicion that that speech means that president obama will actually start disclosing more information about killing people with drones if he gets asked about it, yeah, if you thought that that speech meant he was going to be more open in discussing these matters, apparently, no, the president today laid that to rest. >> if i can ask in the interest of transparency, can you tell us about these drone strikes we've seen over the last couple of weeks in yemen? >> i'm not going to discuss specific operations that have taken place. again, in my speech in may, i was very specific about how we make these determinations about potential lethal strikes. so i would refer you to that speech. >> so you won't even confirm that we've carried out drone strikes in yemen? >> i will not have a discussion about operational issues. ed henry? >> the rest of the press conference today was kind of slightly free-wheeling, i'll take the next question, everybody gets a follow-up. joking about your new baby. making fun of major garrett. ha, ha, ha. it's august. i'm going on vacation. somebody asked about drones and it's like, no, boom, full stop. i do not talk about that. it's like you're listening to music in an elevator and all of a sudden a metallica rift kicks in. president obama announced at the top of the press conference a number of proposed changes to our nation's surveillance programs and what we're allowed to know about our surveillance programs and how programs get approved. checks and balances. president obama called on congress today to pursue changes to part of the patriot act which okays the mass collection of telephone records. he said there may be more safeguards that would be put in place with regard to that program. the senate intelligence committee has already said it will set hearings on the issue for the fall. the president also today called for a major change to the court that grants the government permission to conduct that sort of surveillance. it's a court that only meets in secret and the way it works now is that the government, only the government, only one side, argues their case in front of the secret court for what surveillance they want to be able to do. and then the judge, after hearing their argument in secret, rules on their request. the president said that should change. today. he said the court should also hear from the other side of the argument. there should be an adversarial voice making the case against the government and the judge should rule after hearing both sides. almost like a real court. the president today also announced new efforts at transparency when it comes to these kinds of programs. he said he has directed the justice department to release new details on the nsa's bulk collection of telephone data. he said now is the time to get that information out there. >> rather than have a trunk come out here and a leg come out there and a tail come out there, let's just pull out the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they're looking at. let's examine what is working, what's not. are there additional protections that can be put in place? and let's move forward. >> while the president was at the podium speaking, the justice department, in fact, released this new 23-page document that details what the government says are the legal justifications for this kind of surveillance. and also what its limits are. joining us now, nbc news justice correspondent, pete williams who has been poring over that document today. pete, thank you very much for being with us. >> sure. >> how much of the elephant has been unveiled? what do we know because of this document that we didn't know before? >> a lot about the legal rationale. some of the operational details. for example, they said, something that officials have been saying that the only metadata that's gathered is the numbers that are dialed, how long the call lasts, certain other networking information, but not, for example, the location from which the call is made. so if you're on a cell phone, the metadata doesn't include where you were. some other things included the fact that the way this works is you get a phone number from a suspected terrorist overseas, for example, then you go into the database to see what other numbers that person has called. but the document makes clear that the nsa is authorized under this law to go out what they call three hops. what that means is they can look at the phone numbers dialed by that phone number, then they can go out one ring and look at the numbers dialed by all those people. and then go out two more rings. so three hops in all that the law allows them to do. so those were some of the operational details that we got. >> the idea of the three-hop leeway, which is a strange phrase, i see what you mean. it does call into question how important it is that a specific number is at the center of that request. i mean, isn't the basic idea about warrantless searches that they have to -- there has to be some specific amount of relevance to an investigation. you can't just troll broadly in a sort of general warrant way, right? >> well, two points about that. first of all, there seems to be little legal question that there's no search warrant required simply because the supreme court ruled a couple of decades ago that there's no fourth amendment, that you have no privacy interest in your telephone records. the question was never whether there was a search warrant. it wasn't a constitutional question. the question was a legal one. whether -- here's the problem. the law says intelligence agencies can only gather material that's relevant to a terrorism investigation. that's your point. so opponents have been saying, well, how can every phone number dialed possibly be relevant to an investigation? and that's really the bulk of what this white paper today said. they say, first of all, it's well-settled law that materials are relevant to an investigation not only when they bear directly on it, but also when it's reasonable to believe that they could lead to other information that bears directly on it. so in other words, the paper says the government can gather a big box of materials if it thinks there's a smaller box of evidence inside. they give some examples, a doctor who was ordered to turn over 15,000 patient files to look for health care fraud, or a law firm that had to turn over all the records on its clients in an s.e.c. investigation. all that upheld by the courts. and secondly, this paper says the program meets the relevance test because of the unique name of phone data, that it allows relationships to be discovered only if the government has all the records to start with. this is what intelligence officials mean when they say, to find a needle in the haystack you have to have the haystack. >> pete, on the issue of the fisa courts, senator ron wyden is one of the critics of the president on this issue. he called the fisa court the most one-sided court in the nation. what kind of judges get appointed to sit on this court in secret. the kinds of proposals that the president made today about that court, would those be radical changes to the way that court operates? >> well, it would be a radical change because for the first time you'd have somebody in the court urging the court not to do what the government wants. the problem is who's that person going to be? and, you know, the administration does seem serious about trying to figure out a way to make this work. obviously it would have to be a person who is, has all the clearances. would it be a government official? would it be somebody at the justice debarment sort of like an ombudsman or inspector general who goes in there and tells the court, don't do whatever the government asks? you won't have a traditional adversary like in a normal court because nobody would know in advance you're about to go get their phone number. so it's not like, you know, the government doesn't even know whose phone number they're getting so you couldn't call up harry and say we're about to get your number, come in here and argue against it if you want. it would have to be some institutional person. it's difficult to know how it would work. >> pete williams, nbc news justice correspondent. thanks for helping us us this. i appreciate your time. i'm going to go out on a limb here. i'm sure in virginia when someone enjoys a nice meal, usually if you're a restaurant, you enjoy that nice meal, you have to pay for it. generally it is the person who ate that meal who pays for it. this concept is apparently completely foreign to virginia politicians. how that had suddenly become very politically important is next. 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