This is not a situation where we simply go into the internet and start searching

any way that we want. This is a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us

being able to protect our people and all of it is done under the oversight of

the courts. And as a consequence we've saved lives. We know of at least 50

threats that have been averted because of this information, not just in the

United States but in some cases threats here in Germany. That was President

Barack Obama in June 2013 defending what was unquestionably the most

controversial surveillance program of his administration, the mass

collection of Americans phone records by the National Security Agency. The

collection was done under the authorities granted under the Patriot Act, enacted

after the terror attacks of 9-11 and it was entirely secret until a whistleblower

named Edward Snowden leaked the document about it to the news media. The

disclosure created an uproar revealing that the US government with no

public debate had created a breathtaking database of hundreds of millions of

phone records. Everybody you called, everybody you called you. Obama and his

National Security officials vigorously pushed back claiming that the phone

collection program had thwarted multiple terrorist attacks. But barely six

months later a White House panel set up to review the program reached a very

different conclusion. It could find no major terror plots at all that had been

prevented by the program. It was, uh, hello, what are we doing here said one

member of the panel, Jeffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor. The

one question the White House panel was seeking to answer was whether it had

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