'I would be more than happy to speak to them,' he says on law enforcement. | POLITICO Screen grab 
 
 Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald said in an interview Sunday that he has not heard from law enforcement authorities about his reporting into the National Security Agency’s surveillance tactics. 
 
 “Any time they would like to speak to me, I would be more than happy to speak to them,” Greenwald said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I will tell them that there is this thing called the Constitution and the very First Amendment of which guarantees a free press.” 
 
 Greenwald reported last week that under a government order, Verizon has turned over millions of phone records to the NSA as part of a vast data-mining program. A follow-up article from Greenwald reported that the government collected 97 billion pieces of data in March. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Reporters say there's a chill in the air) 
 
 He also shed some insight into the motivations of his sources. 
 
 “They risked their careers and their lives and their liberty because what they were seeing being done in secret inside the United States government is so alarming and so pernicious that they simply want one thing,” Greenwald said. “That is, for the American people at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, and what the capabilities are, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that’s the kind of country that we want to live in.” 
 
 Greenwald pushed back against comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who called the disclosures of the surveillance programs “reckless.” 
 
 “The only thing we’ve endangered is the reputation of the people in power who are building this massive spying apparatus about any accountability who are trying to hide from the American people what it is that they are doing,” Greenwald said. “There is no national security harm from letting people know that they are collecting all phone records, that they are tapping into the Internet, that they are planning massive cyberattacks -- both foreign and even domestic.” 
 
 Read more about: Constitution, National Security Agency, James Clapper, Glenn Greenwald ||||| House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Sunday that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who broke the story of the National Security Agency’s surveillance methods, ‘doesn't have a clue’ on how the program works. 
 
 Rogers, a Michigan Republican, warned of security risks that could come with the disclosures of the programs and argued that Greenwald’s source should be prosecuted if identified. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) agreed Greenwald’s source should face prosecution. 
 
 “He doesn't have a clue how this thing works,” Rogers said on ABC’s “This Week” of Greenwald. “Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Reporters say there's a chill in the air) 
 
 Rogers said the disclosures were harmful because Greenwald’s source did not have all of the information to depict an accurate portrayal of the NSA’s data-mining program. If the sources were legitimately concerned, Rogers said they should have come to authorities on Capitol Hill instead of the media. 
 
 “Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us,” Rogers said. “It's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took.” 
 
 Read more about: Dianne Feinstein, Surveillance, National Security Agency, Glenn Greenwald, Mike Rogers ||||| On Wednesday evening, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald published a top-secret court order telling Verizon to turn over metadata on millions of business customers — length of calls, phone numbers of both parties, phone-specific identification information, and probably proximate call location, but not the content of calls — to the National Security Agency for three months, from April 25 until July 19, on a daily basis. 
 
 This is a big deal, Greenwald says, because it "shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing." It appears, Greenwald adds, to be a continuation of the type of data-mining operation secretly authorized by George W. Bush in October 2001, exposed in 2006, to great furor, then made legal by Congress in 2008. 
 
 We don't know much about how the NSA and other spy agencies work, since their rules are classified. But here's what we know — and think we know — about this potential bombshell of a leak: 
 
 The NSA can do this — legally? 
 
 The short answer is: Yes, probably. Section 215 of the 2001 Patriot Act gives the federal government broad authority to demand a number of "tangible things," including phone records, from telecommunications firms, as long as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) agrees they are "relevant" to a national security investigation. 
 
 Civil liberties and privacy groups have been arguing that the federal government is misinterpreting the law. "This confirms what we had long suspected" since at least 2006, Cindy Cohn of the Electronic Frontier Foundation tells The Washington Post. "Section 215 is written as if they're going after individual people based on individual investigations.... There's no way all of our calling records are relevant to a terrorism investigation." 
 
 There are a few important caveats here, says Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy. First, the law "says that the 'things' that are collected must be relevant to a national security investigation or threat assessment, but it says nothing about the scope of the things obtained." It would be "surprising — and troubling" — if the Obama administration is counting whole phone-log databases as a "thing," but that's the larger problem: Figuring out what this court order means. "While this is potentially a huge story," Kerr says, "we don't yet have substantial certainty that the facts are what they have been reported to be." 
 
 The Guardian has the FISC order but was unable to get anyone to say anything about its context. I don't think we yet know if this 3-page order is what it appears to be, or if there is some other document that may reveal limitations not clear from the 3-page order. Note that the order is titled "Secondary Order," which presumably means that there is a primary one that it follows; we don't know what that order said. [Volokh Conspiracy] 
 
 The other big question mark, says Marc Ambinder at The Week, is why the FBI sought the information. 
 
 The language [in the law] doesn't rule out such bulk disclosures, but it suggests that the FBI or NSA has to provide the FISC with a good reason for doing so. The court finds that an undefined "application" from the FBI satisfies that Patriot Act provision... [but] we don't know what application the FISC order responds to. [The Week] 
 
 Let's be clear, says Joshua Foust at his blog. "The NSA, despite the broad nature of its warrant request, did nothing illegal, and the supposed illegality of the FISC procedure has not been demonstrated." 
 
 Who's affected by the data culling? 
 
 The court order is aimed at all customers of Verizon Business Network Services. That is "one of the nation's largest telecommunications and internet providers for corporations," say Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt in The New York Times. "It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cell phone services, or to other telecommunications carriers." 
 
 Previous reporting, says Greenwald in The Guardian, "has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks." Martin Longman at Booman Tribune speculates that the same is true here: "Since this is a leaked court order, I think we can safely assume that all the other phone carriers received a court order, too." 
 
 Who authorized the phone-log haul? 
 
 Roger Vinson, a senior federal judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Before this order was made public, Vinson was perhaps most famous for ruling that the ObamaCare individual mandate to buy insurance is unconstitutional — a decision not upheld by the Supreme Court. 
 
 Funny how things work out: The Tea Party hero who struck down Obamacare also authorized the NSA Verizon warrant. twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/st… — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) June 6, 2013 
 
 Under the Patriot Act, such NSA requests can be approved by either a FISA court judge or "a United States Magistrate Judge under chapter 43 of title 28, United States Code, who is publicly designated by the Chief Justice of the United States to have the power to hear applications and grant orders for the production of tangible things under this section on behalf of a judge of that court." 
 
 Was this a one-off thing? 
 
 We don't know. But an unidentified "expert in this aspect of the law" tells The Washington Post that this order appears to be, as the Post puts it, "a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006." 
 
 The expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said that the order is reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency. The expert referred to such orders as "rubber stamps" sought by the telephone companies to protect themselves after the disclosure in 2005 that widespread warrantless wiretaps could leave them liable for damages. [Washington Post] 
 
 "My own understanding," says Ambinder at The Week, "is that the NSA routinely collects millions of domestic-to-domestic phone records." 
 
 It does not do anything with them unless there is a need to search through them for lawful purposes. That is, an analyst at the NSA cannot legally simply perform random searches through the stored data. He or she needs to have a reason, usually some intelligence tip. That would allow him or her to segregate the part of the data that's necessary to analyze, and proceed from there. 
 
 In a way, it makes sense for the NSA to collect all telephone records because it can't know in advance what sections or slices it might need in the future. It does not follow that simply because the NSA collects data that it is legal for the NSA to use the data for foreign intelligence or counter-terrorism analysis. [The Week] 
 
 Why is everyone making such a big deal of this? 
 
 The idea that the government is spying on its own citizens is kind of creepy. It's important to note that this isn't wiretapping, and "this sort of fishing expedition can sometimes be useful to counter-terrorism," says Juan Cole at Informed Comment, "but fishing expeditions into private papers and records are a violation of the U.S. constitution," and a recipe for all sorts of potential political abuses. 
 
 The government should only be allowed to see private information if there is reasonable cause to think something illegal is going on. Going looking into private records to see if patterns emerge that suggest illegality is the action of a totalitarian government, not a democratic one. The USA Patriot Act was a Sovietization of American law and practice and 2001 was year one of the fall of the Republic, when the Fourth Amendment and aspects of the First Amendment were abrogated. [Informed Comment] 
 
 In fairness, "the government can't keep this information forever, nor can they share information on a willy-nilly basis," says Booman Tribune's Longman. "And it's too much information for them to look at without running it through sophisticated computers." 
 
 Those computers aren't looking to see if you're cheating your business partner or fooling around on your husband. But this is concerning nonetheless, because they're using a provision of a law that is supposed to allow the government to snoop on business records in certain defined circumstances to sweep up every electronic communication in the country. [Booman Tribune] 
 
 Who's to blame? 
 
 The Obama administration, for one. On Thursday, a senior administration official confirmed that the government is vacuuming up massive amounts of phone logs, arguing that such data collection is "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States." 
 
 If you're upset about the government possibly knowing who you call and when, you could also blame the FISC judges who sign off on the data sweeps. But if you really want to nail someone, look to your senator or congressman, says Joshua Foust. "All of the opprobrium you should feel at the government's ridiculously broad surveillance powers needs to be directed at CONGRESS, which keeps approving them while voting they stay secret." 
 
 Congress voted to legalize expansive surveillance powers in 2001 (The USA Patriot Act), 2008 (retroactive immunity for warrantless NSA wiretaps in the FISA Amendments Act), and in 2012 (renewing the FISA Amendments Act). Congress declined to force administration transparency/honesty on secret interpretations of the law in 2001 (USA Patriot Act), 2008 (NSA immunity), 2011 (the [Sen. Ron] Wyden amendment to the NDAA, which would have required interpretations not be secret) & 2012 (the similar [Sen. Jeff] Merkley amendment to the NDAA). Those last two actually got voted down, which means Congress voted to enable secret government legal interpretation. [Joshua Foust] 
 
 What's the fix? 
 
 Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) — both on the Senate intelligence committee — have been publicly urging the Obama administration to lay out its interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act for at least a year. "As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows," they wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. "This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn't know what its government thinks the law says." 
 
 Other people, like Juan Cole, want the Patriot Act — or as he calls it, "the most un-American and anti-patriotic piece of legislation since the Alien and Sedition Act" — repealed, or at least greatly scaled back. This data reaping is "astonishing and appalling on many levels," says Andrew Kirell at Mediaite, but it is not surprising in post-9/11 America. 
 
 This latest example of Obama overreach is sure to rankle the feathers of conservatives.... While many of these same conservatives were rah-rah'ing the expansion of the NSA and United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during the Bush years, it is a pleasant change to see them finally care about FISA. Welcome aboard. Now it's up to the liberals who rightly lauded Obama's anti-FISA stance in 2008 to swallow their pride as well and take a stand against this administration's overreach, despite what they might see as partisan opportunism coming from the right. 
 
 As the last 13 years have proven, regardless of who is in the White House the security state will continue to expand. And it will take some hypocrisy on both sides to finally end it. [Mediaite] 
 
 This data-mining could be "Orwellian," or it could be narrower than we think, says Ambinder. "Unfortunately, we don't know precisely what the NSA can do because its rules are highly classified." At the very least, "this disclosure will hopefully force the government to clarify the rules it uses to actually analyze the data it collects." ||||| In his first American television interview, Edward Snowden defended his disclosure of the American government's use of surveillance programs to spy on its own people, and described himself as a patriot for trying to stop violations of the Constitution. 
 
 "I may have lost my ability to travel," Snowden said. "But I've gained the ability to go to sleep at night and to put my head on the pillow and feel comfortable that I've done the right thing even when it was the hard thing. And I'm comfortable with that." 
 
 Snowden met for about five hours last week with "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams at a hotel in Moscow, where Snowden is living in exile while facing U.S. felony charges. An hour-long special program based on the interview aired Wednesday on NBC News at 10 p.m. Eastern and 9 p.m. Central. 
 
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 Snowden walked out of the NSA with tens of thousands of documents on thumb drives, documents that he says he has released to journalists. These documents disclosed the global reach of U.S. intelligence, including descriptions of government surveillance of U.S. telephone and email records, tapping of undersea fiber-optic cables carrying internet traffic, and accessing Yahoo and Google’s internal user data without either company’s knowledge. 
 
 The highlights 
 
 In the wide-ranging and provocative interview, Snowden: 
 
 Suggested that a deal could be reached with the U.S. government for him to come home, either through a clemency, an amnesty, or an agreement to serve a short prison term. Legal sources tell NBC News that very preliminary conversations have already taken place between Snowden's attorneys and the U.S. government. 
 
 Said he had tried to go through channels before leaking documents to journalists, repeatedly raising objections inside the NSA, in writing, to its widespread use of surveillance. But he said he was told, "more or less, in bureaucratic language, 'You should stop asking questions.'" Two U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday that Snowden sent at least one email to the NSA's office of general counsel raising policy and legal questions. 
 
 Described his years as a member of the U.S. intelligence community, describing his training as a spy in addition to his technical work as an NSA contractor and CIA employee. U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged to NBC News on Wednesday that Snowden in fact had been a CIA employee, and had passed the routine psychological testing for employees. 
 
 Described his arc from enthusiastic supporter of American foreign policy, who enlisted for U.S. Army special operations training during the Iraq War, to a disillusioned intelligence worker who said he came to believe that the government took advantage of the September 11 terror attack to overreach into the private lives of all Americans. 
 
 When Williams asked, "Do you see yourself as a patriot," Snowden answered immediately. 
 
 "I do," he said. "I think patriot is a word that's -- that's thrown around so much that it can devalued nowadays. But being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen from the -- the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries. They can be bad policies. They can be officials who, you know, need a little bit more accountability. They can be mistakes of government and — and simple overreach and — and things that — that should never have been tried, or — or that went wrong." 
 
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 "Hi, I'm Ed" 
 
 The interview was arranged with great secrecy, as Snowden is living in Russia at an undisclosed location under a temporary one-year amnesty from the Russian government. Williams and Snowden met at the upscale Hotel Baltschug Kempinski in central Moscow, near the Kremlin. Snowden was joined there by the first two journalists he reached out to, Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. 
 
 Snowden received no compensation for the interview, and no topics were off limits. He said he agreed to sit down with NBC because it has published several reports based on the documents he disclosed: "You guys had done -- actual individual reporting on these issues. You broke some of the stories. And they were about controversial issues. So, while I don't know how this is going to show up on TV, I thought it was reasonable that, you know, you guys might give this a fair shake." 
 
 Williams said the 30-year-old with a stubbled chin and broken eyeglasses appeared to be both confident and careful. The young man said he avoided the hotel lobby, coming up a back stairway, and showed up at Williams' door by himself with a backpack over his shoulder. He held out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Ed." 
 
 Williams said, "I'd been told he was demonstrably smart in person, and he seems to be just that. He speaks with precision -- and while he admittedly has had months to prepare for this interview and has his own set of talking points, he spoke in a steady cadence, interrupted by an occasional long pause, after which he would often apologize while he gathered his thoughts." 
 
 Who is Edward Snowden? 
 
 Edward Snowden: A Timeline 
 
 "We are not here to judge whether Edward Snowden deserves life in prison, or clemency," Williams told the NBC audience. "We are here to listen for the first time to why he did what he did, what his concerns were for our society. We are here to learn some of the things our government did in our name. In the end, perhaps some of us will change our minds. If we don't, at least we will have been informed." 
 
 A bid for amnesty? 
 
 Snowden said he would like to come home, and suggested that a deal could be reached with the U.S. government to eliminate or reduce the charges against him. 
 
 "I don't think there's ever been any question," Snowden said, "that I'd like to go home. I mean, I've from day one said that I'm doing this to serve my country. I'm still working for the government. Now, whether amnesty or clemency ever becomes a possibility is not for me to say. That's a debate for the public and the government to decide. But if I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home." 
 
 Attorney General Eric Holder has said that it would be "going too far" for Snowden to receive no punishment, but that the government would discuss a plea deal. 
 
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 Snowden signaled that he wouldn't accept a deal that included a long prison sentence, which he said would make him a negative example for others in government who see violations of the Constitution and should become whistleblowers. He said he wouldn't say, "I'm going to give myself a parade. ... But neither am I going to walk into a jail cell — to serve as a bad example for other people in government who see something happening, some violation of the Constitution and think they need to say something about it." 
 
 "Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law." 
 
 He is facing three federal charges, each with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, and additional counts could be added. In answering a question about whether he thought he had both done wrong and done a public service, he steered the conversation to a "short period" in jail. 
 
 "I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal," Snowden said. "Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law. And the key there is in terms of civil disobedience. You have to make sure that what you're risking, what you're bringing onto yourself does not serve as a detriment to anyone else. It doesn't hurt anybody else. And if you're volunteering yourself to be used as a negative example, if you're volunteering to spend a lifetime in prison rather than to send — spend — a time in prison, a short period where you'll come out, you'll advocate, you'll emerge stronger and be able to inspire other people to resist these policies, are you doing good or are you doing bad?" 
 
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 But Snowden said he was not interested only in ending his fugitive status, but in making it easier for others to bring to light illegal government activities. "What I would like to see ... would be that we reform whistleblower laws in the United States to cover contractors -- we reform the Espionage Act to distinguish between people who sell secrets to foreign governments for their own gain and people who return information to public hands for the purpose of serving the public interest. If those things can happen, I -- I think overall everybody could be satisfied." 
 
 Absent some sort of a deal, Snowden said he would not come home voluntarily to face a criminal trial. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry challenged Snowden to come back to the United States and face justice. Speaking Wednesday on the Today show, Kerry said, "If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States, we'll have him on a flight today." He said Snowden should "stand up in the United States and make his case to the American people." Later, on MSNBC, Kerry called Snowden a "traitor" and a "coward." 
 
 As Williams put the question to him, "You hear often in the United States, 'Why doesn't he come home and face the music?' " 
 
 "It's a fair question," Snowden said. "But it's also uninformed, because what has been lain against me are not normal charges. They're extraordinary charges. We've seen more charges under the Espionage Act in the last administration than we have in all other administrations in — in Americans history. The Espionage Act provides — anyone accused of it of no chance to make a public defense. You can't argue to the jury that what you did was in the public interest. You're not even allowed to make that case. They can't hear it. You are not allowed to argue — based on all the evidence in your favor because that evidence may be classified, even if it's exculpatory. And so when people say — "Why don't you go home and face the music?" I say you have to understand that the music is not an open court and a fair trial." 
 
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 Government overreach after Sept. 11 
 
 While September 11 is often cited as a justification of the surveillance programs he has disclosed, Snowden said the government has exploited the terror threat to go beyond its authority. He described his reactions to the terror attack, as a son of a veteran and a grandson of a Coast Guard rear admiral who became a senior official with the FBI. 
 
 "I've never told anybody this. No journalist. But I was on Fort Meade on September 11th," he said, as an 18-year-old working for someone who lived on base. "I was right outside the NSA. ... So I remember — I remember the tension that day. I remember hearing on the radio the planes hitting. And I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the F.B.I. at the time — was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it. I take the threat of s — terrorism seriously. And I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for — for the government to invoke — and sort of scandalize our memories, to sort of exploit the — the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up and our Constitution says we should not give up." 
 
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 Snowden told Williams of his zeal, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to serve in U.S. Army special forces, how he enlisted in 2004 but washed out of the training program. "I was injured very early on in the program and washed out. And you know, I — I readily admit it. I — I don't hide that... The reality is, as you can see, I'm not — I'm not a well-built guy. ... Perhaps I bit off a little bit more than I can chew on that one." 
 
 "But the fact is that I tried. You know, I — I saw what was going on in the world. I believed the government's arguments that we were going to do good things in Iraq, that we were going to free the oppressed. And I wanted to do my part to help share the national burden and create not just a better America, but a better world." 
 
 But when he began work in the intelligence services, as he "rose to higher and higher levels in the intelligence communities, I gained more and more access, as I saw more and more classified information, at the highest levels — I realized that so many of the things that were told by the government simply aren't true. Much like the — the arguments about aluminum tubes and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Colin Powell's speech with the vial of anthrax that Saddam was going to — to bring against us. The Iraq War that I signed up for was launched on false premises. The American people were misled." 
 
 "Now, whether that was due to bad faith or simply mistakes of intelligence, I can't say for sure. But I can say it shows the problem of putting too much faith in intelligence systems without debating them in public." 
 
 Snowden emphasized that he was not contending it was wrong for American intelligence agencies to use all technological means to protect the country from enemies. The problem, he said, was not the tools, but the sloppy selection of targets, the "bulk surveillance, mass surveillance, that actually puts our country at risk for, as far as we've seen so far, no gain at all." 
 
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 "You know, I don't think anybody who — who's been in the intelligence community for almost a decade as I have been — is really shocked by the specific types of general operations when they're justified. What's more shocking for anybody is not the dirtiness of the business, it's the dirtiness of the targeting. It's the dirtiness of the way these things are being used. It's the lack of respect for the public — because — and the — the — the lack of respect for the intrusiveness of surveillance." 
 
 "If we want to be free," Snowden said, "we can't become subject to surveillance. We can't — give away our privacy. We can't give away our rights. We have to be an active party. We have to be an active part of our government. And we have to say — there are some things worth dying for. And I think the country is one of them." 
 
 "The definition of a security state is any nation that prioritizes security over all other considerations," Snowden said. "I don't believe the United States is or ever should be a security state." 
 
 Using Williams' temporary "burner" cell phone as an example, Snowden said, "The NSA, the Russian Intelligence Service, the Chinese Intelligence Service, any intelligence service in the world that has significant funding and a real technological research team, can own that phone the minute it connects to their network. As soon as you turn it on, it can be theirs. They can turn it into a microphone, they can take pictures from it, they can take the data off of it." 
 
 Snowden described how the simple pattern of his phone calls -- not the content of the calls but the time and location of those calls -- could be invaluable to a security service. And how the content of even innocuous Web searches, such as a search for a hockey score, can reveal habits and be used to build a profile of personal information. 
 
 "Do you check it when you travel, do you check it when you're just at home? They'd be able to tell something called your "pattern of life." When are you doing these kind of activities? When do you wake up? When do you go to sleep? What other phones are around you when you wake up and go to sleep? Are you with someone who's not your wife? Are you doing something, are you someplace you shouldn't be, according to the government, which is arbitrary, you know — are you engaged in any kind of activities that we disapprove of, even if they aren't technically illegal?" 
 
 "And all of these things can raise your level of scrutiny, even if it seems entirely innocent to you. Even if you have nothing to hide. Even if you're doing nothing wrong. These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual, even without the government having any intent to do you wrong. The problem is that the capabilities themselves are unregulated, uncontrolled, and dangerous." 
 
 "All because I Googled the Rangers-Canadiens final score?" Williams asked. 
 
 "Exactly," Snowden said. 
 
 He described how government analysts use electronic tools to watch a person's computer keystrokes, giving an insight into their thought process. "As you write a message, you know, an analyst at the NSA or any other service out there that's using this kind of attack against people can actually see you write sentences and then backspace over your mistakes and then change the words and then kind of pause and — and — and think about what you wanted to say and then change it. And it's this extraordinary intrusion not just into your communications, your finished messages but your actual drafting process, into the way you think." 
 
 "The Fourth Amendment as it was written -- no longer exists. ... Now all of our data can be collected without any suspicion of wrongdoing on our part, without any underlying justification." 
 
 Snowden mentioned the U.S. Constitution 22 times in the interview, saying that he believed the expansion of warrantless wiretapping had eviscerated the constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches. 
 
 "The Fourth Amendment as it was written -- no longer exists. ... Now all of our data can be collected without any suspicion of wrongdoing on our part, without any underlying justification. All of your private records, all of your private communications, all of your transactions, all of your associations, who you talk to, who you love, what you buy, what you read -- all of those things can be seized and held by the government and then searched later for any reason, hardly -- without any justification, without any real -- oversight, without any real accountability for those who do wrong. The result is that the Fourth Amendment that was so strict -- that we fought a revolution to put into place -- now no longer has the same meaning that it once did. Now we have -- a system of pervasive pre-criminal surveillance -- where the government wants to watch what you're doing just to see what you're up to, to see what you're thinking even behind closed doors." 
 
 Snowden said the government forced him to act. "You know, the Constitution of the United States has been violated on a massive scale. Now, had that not happened, had the government not gone too far and overreached, we wouldn't be in a situation where whistleblowers were necessary. I think it's important to remember that people don't set their lives on fire, they don't say goodbye to their families, actually pack up without saying goodbye to their families, they don't walk away from their, extraordinary -- extraordinarily comfortable lives -- I mean I made a lot of money for a guy with no high school diploma -- and -- and -- and burn down everything they love, for no reason." 
 
 Tried to go through channels 
 
 Williams asked, "When the president and others have made the point the you should've gone through channels, become a whistleblower and not pursued the route you did, what's your response?" 
 
 "I actually did go through channels, and that is documented. The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their office of general counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks from me raising concerns about the NSA's interpretations of it -- legal authorities. Now, I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email -- to these offices and -- and these individuals, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office. I did it in Fort Meade. I did it in Hawaii. And many, many of these individuals were shocked by these programs. They had never seen them themselves. And the ones who had, went, 'You know, you're right. These are things that are really concerning. And these aren't things that we should be doing. Maybe we were going too far here. But if you say something about this, they're going to destroy you. Do you know what happens to people who stand up and talk about this?" 
 
 "What did you report?" Williams asked. "What was the response?" 
 
 "So," Snowden said, "I reported that there were -- real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities. And I went even further in this -- to say that they could be unconstitutional -- that they were sort of abrogating our model of government in a way that empowered presidents to override our statutory laws. And this was made very clear. And the response more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, 'You should stop asking questions.' And these are — these are recent records. I would say one of my final official acts in government was continuing one of these — one of these communications with a legal office. And in fact I'm so sure that these communications exist that I've called on Congress to write a letter to the NSA to — to verify that they do. Write to the office of general counsel and say, "Did Mr. Snowden — ever communicate any concerns about the NSA's interpretation of its legal authorities?" 
 
 NBC News did contact the NSA and the CIA, which have declined to comment. Government officials confirmed that Snowden emailed the general counsel's office at the NSA with his concerns. We have filed requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and will report on the government responses. 
 
 Responsible method of disclosure 
 
 Snowden repeatedly characterized his disclosures not as a theft or an act of espionage, but as a public service done in a responsible manner, working through mainstream news organizations, with his insistence that they consult with the government to reduce the risk of harm to individuals. He didn't steal the documents, he said, but gave them to their owners, the American people. 
 
 "I didn't want to take information that would — basically be taken and — and thrown out in the press that would cause harm to individuals, that would — that would cause people to die. That would put lives at risk. So a good gauge of what information was provided to the journalists is a representation of what you see in the press. Now the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and some of these other organizations have claimed that lives are at risk, that all this military information was out there, that — you know, I — I took all this information about missiles and warheads and tanks. But we don't see any of that in the newspaper. You know, we — we — we haven't seen any stories on that. And in fact, even though we've been asking the government for a full year now to cite even a single instance of harm that was caused by this reporting, they've never been able to show it." 
 
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 He said he attached a condition to the release to protect government employees and sources, requiring the journalists to ask government officials about any harm that particular disclosures could cause. 
 
 "This material was returned to public hands, to the institutions of our free press so that trusted journalists and trusted institutions like The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times could make decisions about what within this is truly within the public interest that can be reported in a way that maximizes the public gains without risking any harm." 
 
 Not cooperating with Russia 
 
 Snowden pre-empted any suggestion that he was in Russia by choice. 
 
 With a laugh he said, "All right, so this is — this is a really fair concern. I personally am surprised that — I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. ... I had a flight booked to Cuba, onwards to Latin America -- and I was s-- stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport.... So when people ask, 'Why are you in Russia?' I say, 'Please, ask the State Department.' " 
 
 Play Facebook 
 
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 He said he is not cooperating with the Russian government. 
 
 "So, I have no relationship with the Russian government at all. I'm -- I've never met the Russian president. I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy, which is the real question. But I would ask this question, too, you know, I would also be skeptical." 
 
 To protect himself from Russian leverage, he said, he didn't bring any of the American documents with him as he traveled. "So the best way to make sure that for example the Russians can't break my fingers and — and compromise information or — or hit me with a bag of money until I give them something was not to have it at all. And the way to do that was by destroying the material that I was holding before I transited through Russia." 
 
 Williams asked, "If I gave you a laptop, could you access the documents?" 
 
 "No, no," Snowden said with a laugh. "I don't have any control. Let's put it this way. If I'm traveling through Russia, and I know I'm traveling through Russia and I know they've got a very aggressive, very professional service, and I look like Tweety Bird to Sylvester the Cat, if I look like a little walking chicken leg with all these documents — if I've got control over that, that's a very dangerous thing for me." 
 
 President Putin's policies 
 
 When asked a general question about the declining standing of Russian President Vladimir Putin in world opinion, Snowden gave an answer that was pointedly critical of his host's policies, particularly in regard to freedom of the press. 
 
 "It is -- it's really frustrating -- for someone who's working so hard to expand the domain of our rights and our privacy, to end up stuck in a place where those rights are -- are being challenged in ways that I would consider deeply unfair. The -- the recent blogger's registration law in Russia, I -- I can't think of any basis for a law like that, not just in Russia but in any country. ... The government shouldn't be regulating the operations of a free press whether it's NBC or whether it's some blogger in their living room. ... there's so much that needs to be defended here in Russia, but I'm limited by my inability to speak Russian and so on and so forth that it's — it's an isolating and a frustrating thing. And I really hope that — Russia, the United States and many other countries will work to push back against this constantly increasing surveillance, against this constant erosion and abrasion of public rights." 
 
 Damage to America's security? 
 
 Snowden did not directly dispute the idea that military information was in the documents he handed over to the journalists. But he said no military information has been released by the journalists he has worked with. "I don't think there's anything in any of the documents that would be published by any of these journalists — that would not be in the national interest." 
 
 He disputed the suggestion that his disclosures have harmed American defense capabilities. Former NSA Director Keith Alexander said Snowden has done "significant and irreversible damage to the nation." Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that the Pentagon might need to spend billions to overcome the damage done to military security by Snowden's leaks of intelligence documents. 
 
 "If, after a year," Snowden said, "they can't show a single individual who's been harmed in any way by this reporting, is it really so grave? Is it really so serious? And can we really trust those claims without scrutinizing them? I'd argue that we can't. But we should be open to it. It's fair, the possibility exists. And if this has caused some serious harm, I personally would like to know about it." 
 
 Related 
 
 Snowden docs: British spies used sex and 'dirty tricks' 
 
 Snowden docs reveal British spies snooped on YouTube and Facebook 
 
 War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show 
 
 How Snowden Did It 
 
 Snowden sidestepped some of Williams' tough questions. He wouldn't say when he began taking documents. And he wouldn't say how many documents he has disclosed, though he scoffed at the figure of up to 1.7 million documents that former NSA Director Alexander and other government officials have used. He said security at the NSA was so poor that it still doesn't know what's missing. "They have no idea what documents were taken at all. Their auditing was so poor, so negligent, that any private contractor, not even an employee of the government, could walk into the NSA building, take whatever they wanted, and walk out with it, and they would never know. Now, I think that's a problem. And I think that's something that needs to be resolved, and people need to be held to account for." 
 
 Having himself removed documents from the NSA and shared them with the press, Snowden urged the intelligence community to tighten its security. "While I brought this information to the free press, has it happened before? Could it happen again? And where are other people going with this? Is there somebody who's going to use this information not for the public good, but for their personal gain? I think these are questions that need to be answered. But I can't do that. That's a question for the intelligence community and the senior officials in charge of it." 
 
 He returned to the topic of NSA security with a boast: "While they've lost control of quite a bit of material, the last year has shown that myself and the journalists, we never lost control of a single document." 
 
 Snowden expressed remorse for the working people at the NSA, whom he called "good people trying to do hard work for good reasons." He said some observers are too quick to dismiss the NSA's valid role as a defender of the nation. "The problem — that we're confronted with, the — the challenge that — that we are facing is not the working-level guys — you know, some — some moustache-twirling villain who's out to destroy your life. It's the fact that senior officials are investing themselves with powers that they're not entitled to and they're doing it without asking the public for any kind of consent." 
 
 "Low-level analyst" 
 
 Williams asked Snowden about the government's characterization of him as a low-level systems administrator. Snowden challenged that description, naming his work as a contractor or employee for a series of agencies: 
 
 "Well, it's no secret that — the U.S. tends to get more and better intelligence out of computers nowadays than they do out of people. I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas — pretending to work in a job that I'm not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine. ... Now, the government might deny these things, they might frame it in certain ways and say, "Oh well, you know, he's — he's a low level analyst." But what they're trying to do is they're trying to use one position that I've had in a career here or there to distract from the totality of my experience, which is that I've worked for the Central Intelligence Agency undercover overseas, I've worked for the National Security Agency undercover overseas, and I've worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy where I developed sources and methods for keeping our information and people secure in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world. So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading." 
 
 In terms of his specific duties as a government employee and as a government contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton inside NSA centers in Japan and Hawaii, Snowden gave this description: 
 
 "So I don't think — anybody should talk themselves up, should rank themselves — but I can speak simply to achievements and what the government thought. The reality is — the government invited me as Dell employee — to have meetings with the C.T.O., the C.I.O., and other high-level — technical officers. Actually, the highest level — executive officers for technology in the entire Central Intelligence Agency. They were asking me to propose solutions, to solve problems that no one else could do. I developed new systems that created new capabilities — that — would protect the NSA from disastrous events around the world. For example, the site in Japan where I worked, I created a system that was then later adopted by — by the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and then rolled out — it's being rolled out now around the world, that would protect them in case any site experienced a disaster. Now this was me, as an individual, who came up with this plan, who pitched this plan — who — who — brought it to the director of the technology directorate, who signed off on it and said this was a good idea, who then said I should really push this back to — a certain internal unit. And to champion it from sort of cradle to the grave, to bring this up from nothing and I was the one, the sole one who did that. At the same time — in a completely different part of work, in — a less constructive and more adversarial position, I was monitoring the activities of foreign adversaries. And they assigned me to watch one of the most elite units of a foreign government — who nobody else could really figure out." 
 
 "Is it a large country in Asia beginning with a 'C,' " Williams asked? 
 
 "It's better if I don't comment on that," Snowden said. 
 
 Snowden spoke of feeling vindication by the twin Pulitzer Prizes for public service, which were awarded in April to two organizations he gave documents to, The Washington Post and the British newspaper The Guardian's U.S. publication. When he was asked about criticism of him by the NSA director, Keith Alexander, Snowden jabbed, "Keith Alexander isn't winning Pulitzer Prizes for public service." 
 
 "When you look at the actions that I've taken, when you look at the carefulness of the programs that have been disclosed, when you look at the way this has all been filtered through the most trusted journalistic institutions in America, when you look at the way the government has had a chance to chime in on this and to make their case and when you look at the changes that it's resulted in, we've had the first open federal court to ever review these program declare it likely unconstitutional and Orwellian. ... And now you see Congress agreeing that mass surveillance, bulk collection needs to end. 
 
 "With all of these things happening that the government agrees — all the way up to the president again — make us stronger, how can it be said that I did not serve my government? How can it be said that this harmed the country, when all three branches of government have made reforms as a result of it?" 
 
 Robert Windrem, Tom Winter and Mike Brunker of NBC News contributed to this report. ||||| 3 years ago 
 
 (CNN) - In a hearing Tuesday with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the director of the National Security Agency, Keith Alexander, said that since 9/11, there have been more than 50 terror plots thwarted with the help of NSA surveillance programs. 
 
 Four of those incidents were detailed at the hearing, including thwarted plots to bomb the New York subway system and the New York Stock Exchange by linking known suspects in Pakistan and Yemen to contacts in the United States. 
 
 NSA officials are set to disclose information about the other cases in a private session with lawmakers on Wednesday. 
 
 Still, there is a debate within the intelligence community about what can be revealed to prove these programs work versus what should stay classified for fear of burning sources and methods. 
 
 Check back here for updates from the hearing. 
 
 1:06 p.m. ET –– House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, wrapped up the hearing. 
 
 "I know this has been difficult to come and talk about very sensitive things in a public way. In order to preserve your good work and the work on behalf of all the patriots working to defend America, I still believe it was important to have a meeting where at least in some way discuss and reassure the level and oversight and redundancy of oversight on a program that we all recognize needed extra care and attention and lots of sets of eyes. I hope today in this hearing we were able to do that." 
 
 12: 40 p.m ET - 
 
 Rep. Rooney: "What's next for Mr. Snowden?" FBI deputy director: "Justice." #NSAhearing — Ashley Killough (@KilloughCNN) June 18, 2013 
 
 12:35 p.m. ET - Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, asks how damaging the leaks are. 
 
 "I think it was irreversible and significant damage to this nation," Alexander said. 
 
 "Has this helped America’s enemies?" Bachmann asked. 
 
 "I believe it has and I believe it will hurt us and our allies," he said. 
 
 12:27 p.m. ET - Rep. Jim Himes, D-Connecticut, asked how many of those 50 episodes would have been thwarted without the use of phone records. "How essential–not just contributing to–but how essential are these authorities to stop terrorist attacks?" 
 
 Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first reported the leaks, asked a similar question on Twitter Tuesday morning. 
 
 When officials claim that "Bulk Surveillance Program X" stopped Terror plots, must ask: could you have stopped it with narrower program? — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 18, 2013 
 
 Responding to Himes, Alexander said the surveillance programs are vital to preventing terrorism. 
 
 "Going back to 9/11, we didn't have the ability to connect the dots. This adds one more capability to help us do that," Alexander said in response. "What we're doing here, with the civil liberties and privacy oversight, does help connect the dots." 
 
 Alexander said 90% of the more than 50 plots were prevented in part because of the online surveillance–not phone records collection–of suspects overseas. "In 50%, I believe they were critical," he said. A little more than 10 of the 50 had a domestic nexus and were thus targeted using phone records. 
 
 Sean Joyce, deputy director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, also jumped in with a response to Himes. 
 
 "I think you ask an almost impossible question to say how important each dot was. What I can tell you is post 9/11, I don't recognize the FBI I came into 26 years ago. Our mission is to stop terrorism, to prevent it, not after the fact, to prevent it before it happens in the United States. I can tell you every tool is essential and vital," Joyce said. "You ask: How can you put the value on an American life? And I can tell you it's priceless." 
 
 12:20 p.m. ET - Robert S. Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said NSA leaker Edward Snowden "wasn't nearly as familiar with these programs as he's portrayed himself to be." 
 
 "This is what happens when somebody who sees a tiny corner of things thinks it gives him inside (understanding) into the whole program," he said. 
 
 12:01 p.m. ET - Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, brought up other controversies plaguing the Obama administration–the IRS scandal, "Fast and Furious," Justice Department leak investigations, and the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi–and asked NSA officials to offer assurance that the agency is not leaking information itself. 
 
 Responding, Alexander said all the information the NSA disseminates is "100% auditable" and they have "not seen one of our analysts willfully do something wrong." The only mistakes he has seen are "honest mistakes," listing a typo as an example. 
 
 Nunes further pressed officials, asking them to explain the seriousness of the leaks. 
 
 Sean Joyce, deputy director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, said they're conducting a "criminal investigation" and repeatedly described the leaks as "egregious." 
 
 "We are revealing in front of you today methods and techniques. I have told you, the examples I gave you how important they have been. The first core al Qaeda plot to attack the United States post 9-11 we used one of these programs. Another plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange we used these programs. And now here we are talking about this in front of the world. So I think those leaks affect us," he said. 
 
 New CNN/ORC Poll: A slight majority of those questioned in the poll disapprove of the actions of the man who leaked sensitive information about the NSA program. And a similar amount say Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong, should be brought back to the U.S. and prosecuted 
 
 Snowden: Obama expanded program 
 
 11:36 a.m. ET - Reached by CNNMoney, the New York Stock Exchange declined to comment on the thwarted bomb plot. 
 
 Yahoo: What gov. wanted from us 
 
 11:35 a.m. ET - Asked if they plan to release the court opinions on NSA requests for phone and Internet intelligence gathering, Robert S. Litt, general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said they are looking into that. 
 
 11:17 a.m ET - Elaborating further on the disrupted terrorist attacks, Sean Joyce, deputy director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, said federal agencies used Internet surveillance–known as PRISM or Section 702 of the Patriot Act–to identify an extremist who was communicating with an individual in Kansas City. They were in the "very early stages" of plotting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, he said. 
 
 Asked if their intention to bomb the NYSE was "serious," Joyce said, "The jury considered it serious since (the suspects) were all convicted." 
 
 In another instance, Joyce said they used phone records–Section 215–to identify an individual in San Diego who had "indirect contact" and who was providing financial support to an extremist outside of the United States. 
 
 11:13 a.m ET - Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, ranking member on House Intelligence Committee, asked Alexander if he feels like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a rubber stamp in the sense that it approves all requests from the NSA to pursue investigations. 
 
 Alexander said he does not think the court acts in such a manner and praised the the federal judges on the court as "superb," adding that they "go back and forth to make sure we do this exactly right." 
 
 11:12 a.m. ET - New CNN/ORC Poll: Just over six in ten Americans say they believe that government is so large and powerful that it threatens the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans. 
 
 Obama: I'm no Dick Cheney 
 
 11:10 a.m. ET - House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers asks if the NSA has the ability to "flip a switch" and listen to Americans' phone calls or read emails 
 
 Alexander said they do not have the authority or technology to do that. 
 
 11:04 a.m. ET - Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that because of the leaks, the government runs the risk of losing its capability to operate the collection programs. He did not say why but said they won't know for several months how the leaks affected the agency's surveillance abilities. 
 
 10:57 a.m. ET - Alexander said the NSA does not unilaterally collect information from Internet companies under Section 702. The companies are compelled to provide that information by law, he said. 
 
 Facebook, Microsoft disclose information on user data requests 
 
 10:55 a.m. ET - NSA official says phone record data collected under Section 215 must be destroyed five years after acquired. 
 
 10:45 a.m. ET - Sean Joyce, deputy director of Federal Bureau of Investigation, said the surveillance programs–specifically the program that gathers intelligence from Internet companies–helped stop a plot to bomb the office of the Danish newspaper that came under heat for publishing a cartoon of Mohammed in 2006. 
 
 In the United States, the program also helped them thwart a plan to bomb the New York City subway system and a plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange, he said. 
 
 Read the full accounts from Joyce below. 
 
 New York City subway: "In the fall of 2009, NSA using 702 authority intercepted an email from a terrorist located in Pakistan. That individual was talking with an individual located inside the United States talking about perfecting a recipe for explosives. Through legal process that individual was identified as Najibullah Zazi. He was located in Denver, Colorado. The FBI followed him to NYC. Later we executed search warrants with the NY joint terrorism task force and NYPD and found bomb making components in backpacks. Zazi later confessed to a plot to bomb the NY subway system with backpacks. Also working with FISA business records the NSA was able to provide a previously unknown number of one of the co-conspirators Adis Medunjanin. This was the first core al Qaeda plot since 9-11 directed from Pakistan." 
 
 New York Stock Exchange: "NSA utilizing 702 authority was monitoring a known extremist in Yemen. This individual was in contact with an individual in the United States named Khalid Ouazzani. Ouazzani and other individuals that we identified through a FISA that the FBI applied for through the FISC, were able to detect a nascent plotting to bomb the NYSE. Ouazzani had been providing information and support to this plot. The FBI disrupted and arrested these individuals." 
 
 Danish newspaper: "David Headley, a U.S citizen living in Chicago. The FBI received intelligence regarding his possible involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks responsible for the killing of over 160 people. Also, NSA through 702 coverage of an al Qaeda affiliated terrorist, found that Headley was working on a plot to bomb a Danish newspaper office that had published the cartoon depictions prophet Muhammad. In fact, Headley later confessed to personally conducting surveillance of the Danish newspaper office. He and his co-conspirators were convicted of this plot." 
 
 FBI probe: "Lastly, the FBI had opened an investigation shortly after 9-11. We did not have enough information nor did we find links to terrorism so we shortly thereafter closed the investigation. However, the NSA using the business record FISA, tipped us off that this individual had indirect contacts with a known terrorist overseas. We were able to reopen this investigation, identify additional individuals through the legal process and were able to disrupt this terrorist activity." 
 
 10:40 a.m. ET - For Section 702 of the Patriot Act, which permits the collection and surveillance of information from Internet companies, Cole said only those living outside of the United States can be targeted. 
 
 10:30 a.m .ET - Cole said that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to Section 215, the part of the Patriot Act that permits the collection of phone records. 
 
 He said people should not expect privacy on such metadata, which includes the phone numbers, the time at which phone conversations took place and the duration of those calls. 
 
 10:25 a.m. ET - Deputy Attorney General James Cole listed some of the criteria for an NSA analyst to access phone conversations. As part of the oversight process, the NSA must get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 
 
 While requesting permission, they must prove that person they want to investigate is involved with some sort of terrorist organization. To prove affiliation, the NSA must have independent evidence aside from personal writings, statements, etc, from the person they want to investigate that the individual is linked to an organization. 
 
 "You have to have additional evidence beyond that that indicates there is reasonable suspicion," he said. 
 
 Read more: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Sunday that the NSA was "not listening to" Americans' phone calls. 
 
 10:22 a.m. ET - Alexander said they will bring classified documents to Capitol Hill Wednesday that detail all 50 cases in which the NSA programs helped prevent a terror plot. As reported already on CNN, he will present two of those publicly Tuesday. 
 
 However, they will not publicly release all of the cases, saying that would give away the NSA's secrets in how it tracks suspected terrorists. 
 
 "Too much is at risk for us and our allies," he said. 
 
 Alexander described the programs as "critical" for the government's counterterrorism efforts. If they had the phone surveillance program–known as Section 215 under the Patriot Act–before the September 11, 2001 attacks, he argued, they may have been able to track phone conversations between one of the hijackers living in San Francisco and a co-conspirator in Yemen. 
 
 10:20 a.m. ET - "In recent years these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent the potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9-11," Alexander said. 
 
 10:19 a.m. ET - In his opening statements, Alexander said the leaked information about the phone records and Internet data sparked "considerable debate" in recent days, but the debate has been fueld by "incomplete and inaccurate information." 
 
 "Today we will provide additional detail and context on these programs to help inform that debate," he said. 
 
 10:16 a.m. ET - New CNN/ORC Poll: Americans are split on the controversial National Security Agency anti-terrorism program to record metadata on U.S. phone calls, but they support the NSA program that targets records of internet usage by people in other countries. 
 
 10:08 a.m. ET - House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, made his opening remarks. 
 
 "I look forward to hearing from all of the witnesses about the extensive protections and oversight in place for these programs. General Alexander, we look forward to hearing what you’re able to discuss in an open forum about how the data that you obtain from providers under the Business Records provision is used; and Deputy Attorney General Cole, we look forward to hearing more about the legal authorities themselves, and the state of the law on what privacy protections Americans’ have in business records," he said, according to his prepared remarks. 
 
 "General Alexander, you and I have talked over the past week about the need to be able to publicly elaborate on the success stories these authorities have contributed to without jeopardizing ongoing operations," he added. "I place the utmost value in protecting sources and methods, but I also recognize that when we are forced into the position of having to publicly discuss intelligence programs due to irresponsible, criminal behavior that we also have to carefully balance the need for secrecy with educating the public."
– Glenn Greenwald is resolutely standing by his story, telling ABC today that if the NSA comes calling, “I will tell them that there is this thing called the Constitution, and the very First Amendment of which guarantees a free press.” Of his sources, the Guardian reporter dismissed claims of recklessness, saying they "risked their careers because what (is) being done inside the United States government is so alarming and so pernicious that they simply want ... for the American people at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that’s the kind of country that we want to live in.” Further, he says, as per Politico, “The only thing we’ve endangered is the reputation of the people in power." Elsewhere in NSA news on your Sunday dial: Rand Paul wants to sue: I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I'm going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies; ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying, 'We don't want our phone records looked at' then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington." Mike Rogers thinks Greenwald 'doesn't have a clue:' “Neither did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous. Taking a very sensitive classified program that targets foreign person on foreign lands, and putting just enough out there to be dangerous, is dangerous to us. It's dangerous to our national security and it violates the oath of which that person took.” Dianne Feinstein wants hearings: "I'm open to doing a hearing every month if that's necessary." But there's a but: "We can't actually go in there and - other than the two that have been released—give the public an actual idea of people that have been saved, attacks that have been prevented, that kind of thing." John McCain thinks it's OK: “I believe that the FISA court system is an appropriate way of reviewing these policies. To somehow think that because we are having phone calls recorded as far as their length and who they were talking to, I don’t think that that is necessarily wrong if they want to go further and have to go to this court." Speaking of McCain, the New York Times ... has this piece on the faces you keep seeing on the Sunday shows over and over and over again.