Gen. Hayden said in a 2000 speech that US spying's ok-just follow the law

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Lt Gen Michael V. Hayden, USAF, Director, National Security Agency
Address to Kennedy Political Union of American University
17 February 2000
http://www.nsa.gov/releases/relea00057.html

excerpt:

"Those of us who have been around awhile recall hearing about the Church and Pike investigations of the mid-1970's. After lengthy investigations, the House and Senate committees concluded that NSA had not given appropriate weight to privacy considerations in conducting its signals intelligence mission.

As a result, Congress passed a law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act regulating electronic surveillance in the United States. Both houses of Congress established permanent intelligence oversight committees to ensure compliance. Moreover, President Ford issued an Executive Order which both authorized and set limits on the conduct of intelligence activities. As a result, the legal and policy context for intelligence activities was forever and dramatically changed.

Now, if you’ve seen "Enemy of the State" you might believe that the NSA’s intelligence gathering mission offers the greatest threat to the privacy of network users. Like many people, you may not be aware of the laws and regulations under which the NSA operates, and the rigorous oversight applied to those operations to ensure our compliance.

So how do we reconcile the government's need for foreign intelligence information with the need to protect individual privacy rights? We do this through a series of procedures outlined in the Executive Order, approved by the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, and vetted with the Congressional intelligence oversight committees.

The procedures recognize two important facts: first, there are times when a government needs to collect information about its citizens. The circumstances under which this is allowed to occur either inside or outside the U.S. are extremely limited and well-regulated. Basically, there must be probable cause that a person is an agent of a foreign power and a court must issue a warrant authorizing the surveillance inside the U.S. The Attorney General, applying the same standard of probable cause, must authorize surveillance when the person is outside the U.S. For example, suppose that a foreign country has recruited a U.S. citizen to commit a terrorist act against the U.S. When that person travels abroad, he may be surveilled only if the U.S. government has demonstrated probable cause that he is a terrorist or is aiding and abetting terrorists. Under our legal system, probable cause means that you must have facts that would convince a reasonably prudent person that what you’re saying is true.

The second fact that the procedures recognize is that it is inevitable that NSA will inadvertently acquire information about U.S. citizens in the course of its foreign intelligence collection activities. An example of this might be when we have intelligence of two foreign agents discussing the recruitment of a U.S. citizen. When that happens, the procedures require that NSA "minimize" the retention and dissemination of such information. In other words there are rules imposed upon us by law and regulation that say, "NSA, you may only keep and disseminate such information under a very limited set of circumstances." Circumstances like when the life of the U.S. person is in danger; they are the target of a foreign power or the agent of a foreign power.

So, contrary to some articles written about the Agency, there are rules governing NSA activities. The Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, and the Congressional committees all participate in their formulation and oversight.

But the question remains, how can the American people be confident that we abide by the rules?

First, we train our employees to make sure they know them. Each year our Office of General Counsel conducts hundreds of training sessions specifically designed to maintain a legally sensitized workforce -- to make sure our employees recognize privacy issues and know how to deal with them appropriately. If for whatever reason, an employee fails to make his or her annual training, his or her access to intelligence databases is automatically denied.

Second, there is an elaborate oversight process in place. The NSA General Counsel, the Inspector General, and a Senior Intelligence Oversight Board perform this function within the Agency. Within the Executive branch -- the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the President's Foreign Intelligence Oversight Board conduct oversight of NSA. On the legislative side, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence scrutinize NSA's activities as the people's representatives to ensure compliance with the Constitution, law, and regulations.

The bottom line is we are responsible citizens. We know what the rules are and we abide by them. We try to maintain a steady heading. Ironically, at times, we are criticized for being too conservative. My philosophy is a simple one:

1. We can't be careless or risk takers where the privacy rights of U.S. citizens are involved. We have to do it right.
2. We have to behave in such a way that the American people can be confident that we are not abusing the tremendous power they authorize us to exercise."


that all broke way down, didn't it?

[Boo Boo]

1. Interesting that he cites probable cause there. Didn't he get in

an argument with a reporter when the NSA wiretapping thing first came out where he refused to accept that language? The reporter would say it was "probable cause," and Hayden kept insisting on different language? Memory fails, but I'm pretty sure he was dodging that issue.

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2. I just heard that

Sen. Feinstein said that all she needed to hear was that he agreed with the probable cause standard, like that would wipe the past the crimes away from Hayden's bib.