Episode 36: NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell on Section 702

The National Security Law Podcast

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck

Courses, Politics, News, Education, Government

4.8 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2017

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We have a special treat in this off-cycle episode! NSA GC Glenn Gerstell is in Austin to speak to our students here at UT, and (no doubt against his better judgment) he agreed to sit for an interview with Professors Chesney and Vladeck. The conversation focuses in particular on the nature, operation, and criticisms of Section 702 collection authority. As you probably know, Section 702 is scheduled to expire at the end of December, and there is certain to be a fascinating, high-stakes Congressional fight over its renewal in the months ahead. Tune in for our discussion of targeting, minimization, "backdoor" searches, database queries, masking, unmasking, and many other key elements in the debate!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello from Austin and welcome to episode 36 of the National Security Law podcast, brought to you by the Strauss Center at the University of Texas.
0:18.4	I'm Bobby Chesney. I'm Steve Blottick. Bobby, weren't we just here?
0:21.6	We were just here. But you know, things are starting to heat up. It's a busy time in national
0:26.3	security law. And I think it's about to get busier. And happily for our listeners, today, they're
0:31.8	not going to have to hear just from us. I dare say they're going to hear very little from us today. What's up so? So we're lucky it's Thursday, September 14th. We're actually recording this in the
0:41.2	morning around 1040 central time, and we're really lucky to be joined by a very special, very honored
0:46.5	guest. NSA, General Counsel, Glenn Gerstel. Glenn, welcome to Austin. Welcome to campus.
0:52.8	Thank you. Great to be back.
1:00.4	And I heard your last podcast in which you were questioning my wisdom as to whether it was appropriate to show up.
1:03.4	And I'm going to reserve judgment on that till the end of the podcast. That will be our last question.
1:05.0	So when all of a sudden, are you glad you joined this today?
1:08.7	Say, Glenn, why are you reaching for the for the recording what are you
1:11.5	doing with that why is he running out of our office the doors over there um hey it's nsa right they have
1:16.5	special powers that's right that's right uh we're really excited to have you here thank you
1:20.8	we thought that we would primarily be talking about 702 today which we will but i think before
1:26.2	we get there we want to talk about you and how you came to be at your current position. And then we can talk a little
1:32.3	bit about the legal climate within NSA in general, and then we can get specific with 702. How's that
1:38.2	sound? Sounds good. Okay. We will not ask you for your NFL predictions. Right. Well, maybe at the end, right? No, that's classified, sorry.
1:44.8	That's...
1:45.2	You know what's going to happen with Ezekiel, Elliot.
1:47.9	That's what I want to do.
1:48.3	I've been telling me about overclassification.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladeck and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.