Senator Wyden Discusses the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program

HEADLINE: Senator Ron Wyden on the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program

BOB EDWARDS, host:

The Senate yesterday voted to block funding for the Defense Department's controversial Total Information Awareness program. The program, still being developed, would search computer databases for possible terrorist networks. Opponents express concern about the program's reach and its potential erosion of civil liberties. The measure to block the funding was introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon. He joins me now.

Good morning, Senator.

Senator RON WYDEN (Democrat, Oregon): Thanks for having me.

EDWARDS: Describe the scope of the program.

Sen. WYDEN: Well, this is an extraordinary program, and I think it's fair to say that in the country's history there has never been proposed a program with something this far reaching in terms of surveillance capacity. And my sense is that the country just does not want to unleash a bunch of virtual bloodhounds to go sniffing into the medical, financial and travel records of law-abiding Americans.

EDWARDS: This is a Republican-controlled Senate and a program developed by Republicans. How did you manage to win approval for this?

Sen. WYDEN: I think we had a specially unique coalition. It stretched from the Eagle Forum, certainly one of the most conservative groups in the country, to the American Civil Liberties Union and issues like personal privacy are not partisan questions. You look today at how so many private transactions are already subject to surveillance. If you or an NPR listener goes, for example, to an ATM later this morning, there's going to be some surveillance or something like that. What this really does is it takes this whole question of surveillance to a dramatically different level. You would, in effect, have a virtual centralized database so that, you know, every time you went to an ATM, every time you made a purchase with a credit card or you visited a Web site or e-mail, all of this would be part of a virtual centralized system.

EDWARDS: Now you haven't really killed the Total Information Awareness program, have you? Will the rest of the act survive perhaps?

Sen. WYDEN: I feel that we're in a very good position now as the effort goes to a House-Senate Conference Committee. This was the first time the Congress in any depth looked at a program like this. And Senator Stevens and Senator Grassley on the Republican side were especially helpful. Senator Feinstein, Senator Inouye of Hawaii put a tremendous amount of time into this and so we have senators across the political spectrum who support it and I think we can keep this when the House and Senate meet and then it will go to the president and become law.

EDWARDS: The program's being run by retired Admiral John Poindexter, who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran Contra scandal, although that conviction was overturned on a technicality. How important to the action yesterday was his being in charge of it?

Sen. WYDEN: Well, I tried to keep personalities out of this, but certainly among colleagues, that came up again and again and what, I think, the United States Senate wants to do is make sure that there are procedural safeguards, make sure that there is a sensitivity to civil liberties and certainly that was a factor among a lot of colleagues.

EDWARDS: Your measure has been approved as part of a massive spending package that funds the government for the rest of the current fiscal year. Can it survive reconciliation with the House version? And would the president sign it?

Sen. WYDEN: First of all, I think it will survive. I don't see the president, in effect, saying out of the whole spending bill this is what concerns him the most, although that's possible. It really has two key parts. We try to make sure that Congress is informed fully about the research and development phase. That's got to be done within 60 days or the program comes to a halt. And then we put very strong limits on using the system, deploying it without congressional approval. That just can't go forward except when there's a national security reason.

EDWARDS: Senator, thank you very much. Senator Ron Wyden is a Democrat from Oregon.