How Far Should Surveillance Go? (Sen. Ben Nelson)

Listening in on telephone conversations has always been controversial.  There are going to be different ideas about where, when, who and under what circumstances is it justified, but the best thing we have going for us is that we have a FISA bill and we have a FISA court.

The question is: can we improve certain circumstances in how it’s used?  You are going to see a lot of debate on that. You saw that the Judiciary Committee wanted to have its bill, so there are a lot of different ideas, and that’s where you’re going to get a lot of controversy about it.

Everybody, at the end of the day, wants to protect this country from another attack.  The question is how far they are willing to go in listening in, and permitting the listening in, without adequate safeguards. So you have to have this system; we have to have a bill, and we can’t let it expire, but I’m going to take a look at the different offerings that have come up.