Page 16 - Surveillance Programs News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Some of your colleagues have testified that our surveillance programs are critical, vital, indispensable to our national security doch security. do you agree with their assessments? >> speaking generally, yes, some of those programs are vital to our national security. >> do you believe there is is a tacit agreement between the american people and their government that they will allow us secertain powers for guardin the privacy of the information collected? >> i think there is certainly an expectation that would be a protection of privacy as the government carries out its responsibilities, yes....

Just do it last. some of your colleagues testified that our surveillance programs are critical, vital, indispensable to our national security, do you agree with their assessment? >> speaking generally, yes. they are absolutely essential and vital. >> do you agree there is an agreement that they will allow us certain powers and freedoms in exchange for safeguards t-- safeguarding protected. >> i assume there would be an assumption of privacy. >> even in the intelligence community as it relates to u.s. persons. i noted the times you said that u.s. persons. you could have inserted a name, but you...

Look at upcoming elections. would you agree with that. >> in general, yes. >> i yield the remainder of my time over to, i believe, mr. gowdy. >> director brennan, why is it important to protect the identify of u.-- identity of u. persons as part of our surveillance programs? >> because there is a right of all americans to privacy, and that sometimes, information is collected about u.s. persons who may or may not be involved in any manner of criminal activity. therefore, respecting that privacy of u.s. citizens, the intelligence community goes to great lengths to cover the identities of u.s. pe...

Excellent answer? >> that somebody violated their oath to protect classified information and violated an oath and shared that information in unauthorized fashion with members of the media. >> well, my friend from washington, i was impressed not only with his elconvincoquence h the conviction he just spoke but i've got other colleagues not from washington that tend to minimize the nature of leaks as if there is somehow a weighing and a balancing that needs to take place between how interesting we may find the underlying information, how interesting we may find the underlying names. i have seen ...

It on the front page of newspapers. we're talking about prohibitions that you place on yourself with respect to identifying u.s. persons as part of our surveillance programs, correct? >> correct. >> you just cited some of the very important reasons that we do that. i would assume that there is a process, a protocol, under which the intelligence community goes through if they seek to unmask a u.s. person's name. >> that's correct. >> have you ever requested that a u.s. person's name be unmasked? >> yes, i have. >> have you also either approved or denied requests of others that a u.s. person's n...