CNN "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" - Transcript: NSA Surveillance Programs
Interview
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CROWLEY: That was the week before last. Now, according to an internal audit published by "The Washington Post," the NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times, accessing or saving details about domestic e-mails and phone calls of U.S. citizens. "The Post" report said four months the NSA used a method that a judge later ruled unconstitutional and that officials did not report the full extent of their errors.
Democratic congressman, Chris Van Hollen, voted against an amendment that would have ended some of the NSA surveillance capabilities. Congressman, any second thoughts here now knowing that mistakes were made?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, not on that particular vote. But no one should misinterpret that vote. That was on the Amash amendment. I have serious concerns about what's going on at the NSA. I think, obviously, we need more oversight, as senator McCain said. But I think we need to change the underlying Patriot Act and the FISA amendments of 2008.
Hey, I voted against the reauthorization of the so-called Patriot Act because I believed it was too loosely written. There was room for abuse. And so, I think we need to undertake lots of reforms. The amendment, I don't think, did the trick, frankly. I think there are much more important things we need to be doing.
CROWLEY: So, are you comfortable with the fact what we know now, which is that the NSA does take in every phone call number in America on a daily basis, brings it all in, keeps it in case they need to go look at it, they'll need a judge's OK for that, and now, we're learning that, yes, they did make mistakes, some of which were in violation of the constitution, a judge later found out.
And yet 3,000 instances, 2,000 instances not big, except for some of those instances involved 3,000 Americans whose e-mails or phone calls were then monitored.
VAN HOLLEN: Right. And I think we need to make reforms to prevent that from happening. In fact, I'm working on an initiative to do exactly that. So, there's a distinction to be made between the collection of raw data, right? NSA having exactly what the phone companies have. And, what's the test? What's the standard for the NSA being able to search or query that data?
Right now, you have to have a reasonable suspicion that that phone number was involved in terrorist activity. My concern is, NSA can reach that judgment unilaterally. You do not have to get advance notice from the FISA court. So, I propose that before they do any kind of query, any kind of search, they have to go to the FISA court.
And, at that step in the process, we also have what's considered a citizen's advocate to take the adversarial position before the FISA court. So, you have that give and take. Those are important reforms. i think most people are concerned that NSA is willy-nilly getting content or doing searches. And I do believe we should make sure that that can never --
CROWLEY: Even if they're not getting content or searches, they're getting a heck of a lot of information as everyone who knows what that phone data is should someone choose to misuse it. Let me --
VAN HOLLEN: That's the key point.
CROWLEY: Right.
VAN HOLLEN: Should they choose to misuse it. So, if somebody has -- if you had reasonable suspicion that a phone number was involved in terrorist activity, I would want you to be able to query that quickly. I would want you to be able to figure out who that person is calling. My concern is that the official at NSA gets to make that judgment by themselves without going to the court, and before the court, you don't have an adversarial proceeding.
CROWLEY: Right. Pretty much, because one of the FISA judges that listens to these, hey, can we go look further into this. U.S. district judge, Reggie Walton, had this to say recently in "The Washington Post." The FISC, meaning the court, is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the court.
So, the NSA brings all its information to the court and says, hey, here's our information. And they've got no way to independently know whether that information is correct or complete. And let's face it, spy agencies want to spy. It's what they do. They want to keep us safe. And the more the better for them, we understand that.
VAN HOLLEN: That's right. And sometimes, the NSA folks come after the fact to the court and say hey, court, here's what we say happened. Here's what we believe happened. Just approve it retroactively. So, here's what I'm saying. You need to get advanced approval for even a query. Certainly, you need to get probable cause for any kind of content information.
But even querying a phone number, what number did it call? You should have to go to the court first. Second, to your other point, we should have somebody at the court whose job it is, whose responsibility it is to make sure that they're putting forward the counter argument. After all in, a court of law, you have two parties -- the court itself should not be -- they should be the person who makes the decision between the two arguments.
CROWLEY: Right.
VAN HOLLEN: Right now, they're hearing only one argument. So, I think that's really important.
CROWLEY: Let me quickly ask you about health care reform. It is kicking in this fall in a major way. Senator Reid, who is the head of the Senate majority Democrats, suggested recently during a panel discussion that Obamacare is just kind of the interim step. That in the end, he believes that the next step will be something close to single payer, that is the government. Something like Medicare for everybody. Is that where Obamacare is going?
VAN HOLLEN: I don't think so. Look, my view, Candy, is let's see how this works. Right now, we're in the process of setting up these exchanges. So, finally, millions of Americans who had no access to health care will be able to get affordable care. We need to make sure that that process works, that system works. We can look at ways to modify it down the road, possibly, but let's get that in place.
And I am very concerned you have many Republicans in Congress now saying that they're prepared to shut down the government if we continue to move forward with Obamacare and with establishing these changes. That will be a huge mistake.
CROWLEY: Right. And those Republicans would want me to add that there are also many Republican that say we're not going to shut down the government --
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VAN HOLLEN: We'll see who will prevail.
CROWLEY: September will be interesting.
VAN HOLLEN: That's true.
CROWLEY: Congressman Chris Van Hollen, thank you so much for coming by.
VAN HOLLEN: Thank you.
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