 Well, good afternoon everyone, welcome to CSIS and for those of you for this is your first time in our new building, we extend, yeah, Niels, it is your first time, we extend a very warm welcome. My name is Heather Conley, I'm Senior Fellow and Director of the Europe Program here at CSIS, and we are so delighted to be in partnership with the Frederick Ebert Stiftung, Pia Bumgartner, and others. We have had a series of conversations with CSIS and the Frederick Ebert Stiftung, and this has been just a phenomenal collaboration, so warm welcome and many, many thanks to FES. I have to tell you, I have a confession, I have been looking forward to this conversation for a very long time, I'm making meals very nervous, because we haven't had a real public discussion about the political impact of the NSA revelations, on the bilateral relationship, on our transatlantic partnership and the implications. So Niels, your arrival here is timely, and we are delighted that you are here. Let me just briefly introduce both Niels Annen and Jim Lewis, and then I'm going to step out of the way, and Niels is going to give us the perspective from Berlin, and Jim is going to give the perspective from Washington, and I'm going to be in between and then helping to moderate the discussion. Niels Annen, congratulations, has recently been elected to the German Parliament, but he has been a long-serving member of the Executive Board of the Social Democratic Party in Germany since 2003. This is not your first time in the Bundestag, you were elected in 2005 to 2009, and served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, a very important role on issues of arms control, non-proliferation, and a very important focus on Germany's participation in Afghanistan. So we thank you for that important tenure. Prior to being elected to the Bundestag, Niels Annen served as chairman of the SPD Youth Organization, but we know him very well in Washington because you have served as a senior research fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a graduate of Nextdoor SICE. So Niels, we welcome you. After Niels provides us with his comments, then I turn to my colleague, Dr. Jim Lewis, my partner in crime. We also, our offices are beside each other in this new building, so we're causing a lot of trouble together. Jim is the cyber guru here in Washington and directs our technology and public policy program, but Jim brings to the intersection of technology, national security, and public policy, international economics, and he is the one person in this town that can actually explain to us what these revelations mean, put them in some context. He's a recovering State Department and Commerce Department official and has been at the table at so many of these negotiations and partnerships that we're going to talk about. Jim has served as the rappator for the UN group of government experts on information security and has been a leading author on many of the publications that actually contributed to President Obama's cyber security strategy. So we are in good company this afternoon. So with that, I will, as my mother would say, shush, and I will turn this over to Niels Anand. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me, and it's a great opportunity to discuss an issue that is of great importance right now for the German debate. I want to say, first of all, that it's good to be back in Washington, and I'm delighted that so many people came here to listen to our discussion and hopefully also to contribute a little bit. We, as a beginning, maybe, to illustrate a little bit what is going on in my country concerning the state of the transatlantic relationship. We recently, a few days ago, had the second session of the newly elected Bundestag. We are right now in the midst of coalition negotiations. I know that it's sometimes a little bit difficult to explain to American friends that it takes time to build a government, especially when the two major competing parties, which is my party, the Social Democratic Party and Mrs. Marcos Christian Democratic Party, negotiate a treaty that will lead to a formation of a government so that would be like the Republican Party negotiating with the Democratic Party in a way. But we are... They're negotiating forever. We have a deadline, so... I don't want to change the subject. Sorry, sorry. So, because we're negotiating, Parliament has not set up all the commissions, it's not in regular work right now, so the focus on the first real session, plenary session of the new Bundestag was, of course, about the Vilnius Summit of the European Union, but the real point of attention was a discussion that was held on the initiative of the two small opposition parties discussing the NSA scandal. And I don't want to exaggerate anything, I believe that our relationship between the US and Germany is robust, it's stable, it's not because that is the password that you have to say when you go to Washington, it's because I really believe this. But the mood is right now defined by the bugging of Mrs. Marcos' telephone or mobile phone, and it's also pretty much a combination of different aspects. The NSA programs that have been revealed, talking about prism, about the metadata, collection and so on and so forth, contributed to, I think, a political mood where a lot of our citizens, also my constituents, are skeptical about their own privacy, and they direct that skepticism basically towards US government agencies, but also big United States companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on and so forth. So when the news broke about the bugging of Mrs. Marcos' cell phone, that was the tip of the iceberg, and that created a political environment that has been, I mean, the conditions have been created before. So we should not only talk about the cell phone incident, but about an attitude towards privacy that I think, maybe I could be proven wrong here as well, but that I think there are different approaches between what German citizens believe to be there, the core of their privacy rights. And also a general remark, our relationship is special, not just because our countries are special, of course, but because at least from the German side, the German-American relation has always been a relationship that is deeply emotional. If you look at polling data that is available, I think, now for many years, you mentioned I worked for the German Marshall Fund, they are conducting the transatlantic trends on a regular basis, they are still doing this. If you compare President George W. Bush approval ratings in Germany with that of President Obama, at least until recently, it shows you that it's either we love each other or, I don't know, it's too hard to say, we don't hate each other, but people are easily disappointed and that leads to an emotional reaction. You can really see that this is happening right now. And although I would say it's good that we have an emotional relationship, otherwise if we would not care for each other, that would also not be very good news, it's pretty much defining, at least in Germany, what is on the agenda. And the problem that I see, that was one reason why I came to Washington today and had a lot of very good discussions of the course of the day, is that what we have to deal with right now is not anymore in the hands of the foreign policy establishment in Berlin. I don't know if this is the case in Washington, but in Berlin it's certainly not a foreign policy issue anymore. It is a major domestic issue and not unlike the United States. This is driven by a political logic that can easily get out of control. So I believe we have a lot of things to talk. We have to talk about the transatlantic trade and investment partnership initiative. I believe we have to talk about what is going to happen in the Iran talks. We should talk about what can we both contribute to solve the dramatic situation in Syria? What about the entire North African, North African, Arab, whatever, awakening? What is our policy? What about our shared interest in the Pacific? Well, we are talking about bagging cell phones. So that is the challenge that we are facing. And on the other hand, I believe that there has been also a reach of trust, that is from my point of view, undoubtedly the case. Maybe we have been a little bit naive that we found out that we have been the only ones who were not spying on allies. It's not completely unrealistic that that has been the case. And there will be tough questions also to German security agencies. Why we needed revelations of a 20-something contractor to find out what was going on. And I think that it is important that we should not let only one issue define the transatlantic relations. But that would require investment, political investment from both sides. And I hope that that investment will lead to concrete results, and those by agreement or a political, or not all, but maybe a political gesture. But I also believe that it will be important to communicate that this is also a discussion with controversial, with different ideas, opinions, and attitudes that is happening here in the United States, because that is a little bit missing in the German public discussion. But we as members of the German parliament cannot substitute for this. So I also came here with the message that the parliament should be part of that conversation as well. And of course the think tank community, and that is why I stop here, thank Heather again, and I'm looking forward for the discussion. Thanks very much. It's interesting to listen, and I was just actually coming from another meeting on this, where we largely agreed, not entirely, that German opinion was in some ways one of the most important things we should be paying attention to. One of the reasons it wasn't unanimous agreement is there is a disconnect here, I think, between attitudes in the U.S. and attitudes in Europe, particularly in Germany. And one of the questions I was hoping we could talk about is, normally we say, and until Snowden I would always say that the values that the U.S. and Europe shared were perfectly aligned, clearly we have different values on privacy. One of the things to bear in mind is that probably more than 80% of the American public approves of these programs. And there's a noisy minority that's been useful exploited, these things. Congress is very worried, but most Americans understand the trade-offs here. We have not done a good job of explaining to the rest of the world what those trade-offs are. There is a misleading narrative, so one of the things to bear in mind is much of what you read in the press is spun in a way to cast the United States and to cast NSA in the worst possible light. One of the things that has come out is, of course, that a lot of these actions occurred in partnership with foreign intelligence agencies. A lot of them occurred in partnership with European intelligence agencies. And so when you read things that say that the U.S. got 70 million emails from a European country, what was left out of that story was that we got 70 million emails from a European country from a European partner. So one of the things we're seeing here is it's going to take us a while to adjust to the new data. It's not helpful that so much of the data is presented in a misleading way. One of the best examples is, of course, the role of U.S. companies. They don't cooperate. We don't need them to cooperate to do what we need to do. It's spun in a way, I think, that gives people commercial advantage, and that's a little troubling. I don't want to make light of these things, and I don't want to say that we should not take European sentiment, German sentiment very seriously. This is a political issue. The cardinal rule, as I think you all know in intelligence, is don't get caught. Now that we've been caught, we need to do things to rebuild trust. We need to put the partnership on a different track that re-emphasizes the shared values we have, right? I think this will be difficult, and some of the things we might want to think about are what's the role of transparency in this regard, as Neil's noted, the one benefit of, I met with a group of German journalists a couple months ago and realized that I knew more about BND than they did, right? So one of the benefits of this discussion is now perhaps you have some greater insight into what European agencies do as well as American, but where do we want to think about the lines in transparency? What are the norms for responsible behavior? This has been something that we have pursued, and Germany and the U.S. have pursued it very successfully in cybersecurity. What are the norms for responsible state behavior? Now we might want to think about what are the norms for privacy, at least in a transatlantic context. This will be a hard issue, but I don't think we can avoid it. It will come up in the trade discussions. It will come up in the discussions of Safe Harbor, which some of us worked on in what seems to be the Stone Age of the electronic era, but there are real benefits to us being able to work together. We need to rebuild that trust. We probably want to think about what is the path forward for making progress here, right? It will not be renouncing intelligence collection, right? Intelligence collection is a function that all states perform, right? There are assurances that the U.S. should give to its European partners, but one of those assurances should not be that we will never collect intelligence again, right? That's not going to happen. That would not be a wise decision, but that doesn't mean there are no assurances we can give. That doesn't mean there aren't ways for us to partner. We can tell you why you shouldn't use a handy phone, for example. If you're a global leader, how do we identify the path forward? How do we build agreement on norms? How do we work out this problem on privacy? And the last time Safe Harbor was in some ways a little bit of a, a little bit of a sleight of hand, a little bit of a, you know, the two sides are so far apart. We have to find a vehicle that will let them work together. We need to build a new vehicle when it comes to privacy. And I think that's going to be difficult. I don't think it's impossible because the values we share, the legacies we share, Heather and I both are, you know, of German stock, so it's kind of funny. German, Irish, I'm like, you're Irish too, right? A little bit. Yeah, okay. So, you know, we, we are natural partners. There would be strong benefit. To our DNA. Yeah. There's clear benefit from a stronger transatlantic alliance. The world is not innately tilted in favor of democracy or human rights. We're the only people who are going to be advancing that agenda. There's clear economic advantage to a deeper partnership that would come from a new trade agreement. All of these things are at risk because of the need, the inability to address the, the dilemmas raised by Mr. Snowden, I hope he likes vodka. We need to find a solution. We need to find a vehicle. And I think part of that will be discussion. I mean, what we, I can't tell you right now, what would the point of agreement be on a norm on privacy? I can't tell you now what the norm of agreement, the point of agreement would be on transparency. These are things that can only come through discussion. So with that, I don't know if we're going to take questions, but I look forward to today's, today's topic. Jim, thank you so much. And what I thought I'd do is we'll take, we'll sort of moderate a little discussion amongst three of us if, if that's okay. And then we definitely want your questions and, and your comments. I have to say, as I've watched this scandal evolve and it continues to evolve, there, there's likely more information that will continue to, to come. I, I think in some ways what exacerbated the tensions was, you're absolutely right in those, there was an extremely emotional reaction. And on, from Europe and on this side of the Atlantic, it was dismissed. You're hypocritical. We do this. Leaders are interested in what President Obama eats for breakfast. We do this. And, and I think in some ways as the revelations continue to come and they became deeply personal to the Chancellor, that it was no longer sufficient that Washington was dismissive of this. Because what was happening, the crisis was beginning to erode very important agreements. Transatlantically, we've always had a difference of opinion on privacy. Americans are willing, I think, for security to, to be more open to different techniques against privacy. Europe, because of its history, is unwilling to, to, to do that. But we've always bridged the gap. Whether it was safe harbor agreement, the passenger name recognition, swift agreement, the financial transaction, it was painstaking. It took years of discussion, but we bridged it. We found a way forward. And now it seems that bridging mechanism may be in question, because trust is now highly eroded. When I hear Chancellor Merkel say on Monday that quote, the relationship with the US and the negotiation of a transatlantic free trade agreement are currently, without doubt, being put to the test by accusations that have been aired. When she says these accusations are grave, that a new trust between Washington and Berlin is needed, the transparency and a recognition that the ties between the two countries guarantee mutual freedom and security. Absolutely, Jim, it begs for putting this partnership on a new track. But again, what I've been observing is German delegations, European delegations are coming to Washington. But Washington is not sending senior delegations to Europe to explain how we put this partnership on a new track. That we recognize that, yes, the secret is out, not of our choosing. But now we have to do something very, very, very fundamental. Jim and I have been having a fun email exchange. And the title of our email exchange is, can we preserve a relationship and or preserve a capability? And we're going back and forth because I want to preserve the relationship. Because exactly as Neils, as you said, we have a lot on that agenda that may stop cold if we don't fix this. And Jim wants to preserve an important capability where technology in some ways makes agreements, not the strongest, that makes whether you have a European server or an American server, it may make us feel better, but it may not matter technologically, that we do have, there is a threat to the West and that in some ways the Snowden revelations are being used to threaten, I think, how the United States and the West can conduct its foreign and security policy. So the stakes are very high, but I'm not sure, my critique is here in Washington that we're not taking a serious step forward and I think my critique of Europe is the emotionalism feels good, but it doesn't help us get to solve the problem. We need to start focusing on solving the problem. So Neils, let me turn to you and ask any comments you have on Jim's remarks and then tell me a little bit, you have been, maybe an advocate isn't the right word, but you've suggested that it's time for the Bundestag to have a parliamentary inquiry into the Snowden revelation. Some in some voices within Germany would like Mr. Stoden to come to Germany, maybe do that in person, again, part of this is the emotionalism, but tell me, and there's, I don't know if there's been agreement on that parliament inquiry yet until the government has formed, what would you hope that inquiry would do, what would you, the answer is you would seek from that inquiry? Well, first of all, I meant to say that I believe that we will see a parliamentary inquiry. We have minority rights in the Bundestag and because of the negotiations and possible formation of a government in the Grand Coalition that they have, there's a 25 percent threshold to ask for a parliamentary inquiry and we said repeatedly that because the two presumptive opposition parties don't get to that 25 percent that we will give them that right because it's a basic, crucial instrument for the opposition in Germany to work, so if the Green Party and the Left Party will ask for a parliamentary inquiry commission, I think it's almost for sure that they will come and the leader of my group in parliament, former Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, urged a cautious approach in the Bundestag. He said that while he is aware of the call for an inquiry commission and he's not necessarily against it, but we should think twice because whom are we going to ask to testify? I mean, I'm not against an inquiry commission to be clear, but if we have an inquiry commission, who are we going to invite? Mr. Alexander is he going to travel to Berlin to testify before the German Bundestag? I mean, I'm sure he will receive an invitation. So then it's up to him and to other U.S. officials. I mean, I believe it would be good to have an official American voice because this is a way to address the German public, but the truth is and that's something we need to understand that if there is that inquiry commission there's one logical person to invite and to interview and to ask to testify and that is Mr. Snowden, of course. So there is a very complicated also juridical controversy in Germany whether or not Mr. Snowden should in case that the inquiry commission will come and that he got invited, that he should be granted free passage or even asylum. Opposition politicians are asking for this already and then there is another theoretical, I mean it's all very theoretical what we are discussing right now because no decision has been taken so far, but there's also the possibility to interview Mr. Snowden in Moscow. As some of you may know, a member of the German Bundestag from the Green Party, a very famous member, Mr. Hans Christian Ströbele, was the help of a former, their Spiegel journalist visited Mr. Snowden in Moscow, that was a big media scoop. So I believe that both options will not necessarily increase or contribute to a warm relationship between the administration here in Washington and Berlin. So we need to, but we need to know what is what could happen according to the domestic logic. And I am not criticizing those in Germany who believe that Mr. Snowden gave us useful information that helped to reveal that, for example, these kind of programs have been underway. That is a natural reaction and I believe that our American friends should understand this. That does not mean that I'm not aware that he is in breach of laws in the United States and this is all very complicated, but that is right now driving the discussion. Mr. Ströbele asked the Chancellor in that session of the Bundestag in prime time. He said, I have a question to you. He said, the fact that your cell phone is probably not being bugged right now, isn't that according to the revelations of Mr. Snowden? And shouldn't you use that meeting of the Bundestag to simply say thank you? Of course, she did not say anything, but you need to understand what is being discussed right now. Then I think there's more general aspect that we should try to understand. I think part of that emotional relationship between our countries is rooted in the fact that you always have, I mean you not only liberated us from fascism, but you have been that power that stood up for individual rights. In Germans, maybe it's like we always like have a tendency to exaggerate, but the Germans value their privacy very highly. So individual rights are associated also with privacy rights. And all of the sudden, if that is justified or not, all of the sudden that mighty United States of America that stood up for individual rights and fought against communism is now seen as a power that is threatening individual rights. So this is a little bit tricky here and and I think we have to discuss about this and I want to make one or want to ask one question. I mean I think we are in the, I think we are not naive in the in the German government and German parliament, people who who work with international issues and international relations. I mean we know that spying is going on and has always been going on. And I have not been surprised, although I don't know if that is a good sign or not, but my question is more what what kind of of oversight of the security apparatus here, which has been growing immensely after 9-11, what is the current status? Is that working? And what about the, I think you say opportunity cost? Has there been a calculation in this administration about what do you gain in information that you could lose in case that the the backing of a cell phone of a leader of a European country is revealed, what you lose in soft power in public opinion? And that is something that I really have to say I have no answer to and I think that was rather stupid action to do this and so this is also not contributing to mutual trust. Sure, first the one thing that we cannot be is we cannot be dismissive of these concerns because that's not going to help us solve the problem. So nothing I say is dismissive. I think we need to engage with our European partners and find a way forward. I'm going to give you all some free advice. Some of you have given it to you before. Look, if you're going to do something like Snowden, go to Brazil. We don't have an expedition tree with Brazil. Much cheaper drinks, better beaches, it's warmer. And Snowden, you can tell he's getting a little upset. Like I saw the couple weeks ago, he said that maybe it was time to think about clemency and I thought, yeah dude, you're sitting there, there's a meter of snow and you're tired of drinking that cheap vodka and now you're talking about clemency. So Snowden would weep with joy if you invited him to Berlin. Put us in a bit of a pickle. What do we do? I can tell you one thing that we will not do is you will not hear the word rendition. Okay, so take that one off the table. It's not going to happen. But what if we presented a request for extradition? What if we asked you to detain him? What would you do? Very difficult. The other thing to think about is what's an inquiry going to produce? Right? Presumably by now, most of you believe that or know, and you probably have reason to believe and know, that the U.S. does engage in espionage. So in some ways we can kind of leap to conclusion. Still might want to have an inquiry. It'd be a lot of fun. You know, Dowda Alexander would come, but Snowden is not necessarily the best witness. Everything he says is not entirely accurate. I don't know if that's fair because it's not always Snowden who's saying things. It's his handlers. And his handlers tend to make stuff up. So one of his handlers told me that Snowden was a senior official at N Talk, one of the NSA entities that collects intelligence. I know the senior officials. Snowden ain't one of them. They don't make 26-year-old contractors, a senior official at NSA. So you'd have to think what are you going to get out of this? What will it box you in? If you want to do it, go right ahead. I think that's a great idea. And Snowden would be appreciative, right? It's going to only get colder in Russia. Time to go. Brazil, remember Brazil. Okay, so two, a little more serious points here. First, if Snowden's revelations have done anything, it should have stripped from us the illusion that the global telecommunications network we depend on, the internet, is either secure or private, right? This has been true from its start, right? And some of us have been saying this so long that we hear our voices in our head now saying it. If you send an email, it's like sending a postcard. You don't know where it goes. You don't know where it's stored. You don't know who's reading it, right? But you have this illusion of privacy. And you have this illusion that the technology was secure. The internet is inherently insecure. Insecure isn't the right word. It's probably insecure, but it's unsecurable as well. I'm insecure. Yeah, listening to this. You know, it's not. And so when people tell me the NSA has built backdoors into products, it doesn't need to build backdoors into products. Russia doesn't need backdoors. European countries that do this don't need backdoors. China doesn't need a backdoor. Middle Eastern countries that do this don't need backdoors. It's so easy. And that's part of the answer to one of your questions is, I'm sorry, we yielded to temptation. It was so easy to take everything. We're not the only ones. It was so easy to take everything that we took everything. There is a discussion now within the administration that we're going to try and have an event here in January at CSIS on the utility of collection. And I'm trying to think of an example, I can tell you, but sometimes you'll see the stuff that's collected from this massive apparatus, massive and expensive, and it will say things that are so blindingly obvious, particularly on the economic side. One of my lines used to be, if I had a subscription to the Far East Economic Review in the Asian Wall Street Journal in the Straits Times, I really didn't need much in the way of intelligence, right? So there is a discussion going on about, you know, did we overcollect? How do we better match priorities? I think it's useful to do that because it's been so easy to harvest information. There is this difference between collect and read that doesn't always come across. So you may collect millions of emails, but you're only going to read at most a few hundred, because you don't care about most emails. You care about the ones that have to do with terrorism or proliferation or Iranian intentions in the Gulf. You're not going to be reading people's emails. So that doesn't comfort people, but they should really think about it. Their privacy hasn't been violated. The phone company stores your stuff. Now NSA has access to it, perhaps sometimes yes, sometimes no. Is your privacy violated? No human has read your email. Unless you have an uncle in Pakistan, I won't even pursue that joke. But we need to rethink the opportunity cost of intelligence collection. And this might be a useful point for thinking about global norms, right, that all countries have yielded to temptation. Everyone who could collect intelligence has collected intelligence off the internet because it's so easy. And maybe we need to step back and say what can states agree responsibly to do? The ease of collection sometimes makes it appear that NSA is out of control. And some of my colleagues here in Washington sometimes say this. I urge them to get psychiatric treatment. NSA is not out of control. NSA is a highly disciplined organization. It follows very tight rules and it reports to higher authorities. It only does what it's told, right? It only does what is in the collection plan for US intelligence. And the priorities there are terrorism, nuclear proliferation, two or three countries we have bad relationships with, transnational crime, a few other issues, right? Corruption being one of them. But it's not out of control. It may have exploited the opportunities it was presented more than was wise, right? But it is not a rogue agency. It is highly disciplined. It follows rules. You can have some fun. I've done this myself. Well, you can't do it, but it's very hard to get information on a US person. It's very hard to get information on a foreign person who isn't connected in some way to foreign intelligence activity. It's very difficult. There's rules, there's courts. When I read in the paper that FISA is a rubber stamp, it's like, wow, you have to work with those people. They're scary. FISA is not a rubber stamp. The FISC court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, they're very tough. And people say, well, they always approve the cases. One of the things some of us have been encouraging them to do. We encourage some of us encourage them to release FISA opinions, FISC opinions on the theory that they're so boring that once you saw one, you'd never want to see one again. Now what some of us are encouraging them to do is tell them how many times you send a case back, right? It looks like there's a very high approval rate. That's because the cases have been rejected multiple times before they reach the court. You have lawyers standing on top of lawyers that you have to get through to reach the judges. The judges don't see your case until it is spotless. And so first you go through your own agency's lawyers, and then they go through the justice lawyers, and then they go through another set of lawyers. These are not easy things to do. There are rules. People follow them. You may not always be happy. We may have over exploited the opportunity. Better transparency in this regard would be useful. It's not that the U.S. is interested in things that are not of concern to all of us. Stopping terrorist attacks is something that's concerning to all of us, right? Stopping the Iranian nuclear program is of concern to all of us. Understanding the fate of the European economy is of concern to all of us. These are legitimate targets for intelligence collection and perhaps greater transparency with partners, perhaps greater understanding of the very tight set of rules that apply to them would help people be a little more comfortable with what's going on. I don't think you'll get anyone. It'd be interesting to see who you'd get from the American side if you invited them. I would advise them to go, but you can see how they might be a little nervous about that. Jim, I just follow on to your comment, and then I want to bring everyone, the audience, into the conversation. There certainly have been some comments and some discussions on Capitol Hill, Senator Feinstein. It seems to me, and this news gets back to your part, the role of parliamentarians, that it does seem that Congress is thinking and looking and doing a little more of that oversight, even though, as you explained it, it's rigorous. What is your sense of how Congress will proceed? The administration is also undertaking its own review. Any thoughts on that? I think, again, some of that transparency that we are going to reform, maybe that's not the right word, reform our processes may be of an important signal to our European partners that things are going to change. The reason I'm walking my watch is because the House Permanent Slog Committee on Intelligence was going to mark up its version of the FISA rewrite today, and I don't know if that's over. What you have are the two oversight committees, Senate Slog Committee on Intelligence, House Permanent Slog Committee, that are both looking at FISA. They are the ones responsible for overseeing the process from the legislative perspective. You can see why the administration is a little upset, because they feel like they did everything right. The Congress was briefed and signed off on this, the courts were briefed and signed off on this, the president approved it and established a rigorous oversight process, and they feel like, well, we did everything right. Why are people mad at us? You've got to get over that. They're mad. You've got to deal with it, right? The way it's being dealt with in Congress looks at three factors, and unfortunately, we're missing one. The oversight committees want to protect existing programs, and in particular, they want to protect Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which has contributed to stopping terrorist attacks against the U.S. There are other committees that don't like the Patriot Act. Everyone's got mixed feelings about it. Don't like the Patriot Act, and would like to strip away in particular 215. So you have an immense tension up there. When members get briefed, they're ambivalent, but members also check their mailboxes, particularly on the House side. They're getting mail from what I would call a minority, but a very vocal minority that says that these programs are objectionable, and members pay very close attention to this. So we've got some political dynamics up there. The one that's missing and the one that I think that would be useful to introduce into the U.S. discussion is we're not paying enough attention to the international side. We're not paying enough attention to international opinion, and when you talk to Americans, they don't always get it, right? They don't always understand how upset people are, particularly in Germany. And so, you know, and their initial reaction is defensible. They do it too. You do do it, by the way. They do it too, so it's hypocrisy. It's like, don't tell me that. That's not a that's not an answer, right? We need that recognition. There has to be a foreign element to this, and it's going to be very difficult to come up with a solution. Fantastic. I already see the arms flying up, so let's start questions. What I just ruled of the road here, if you could identify yourself and your affiliation, we like to keep our comments brief and our questions thought provoking, so we can get lots of questions, and so we'll start here, right down the middle, Linda. Oh, sorry, Nick. The first one right here, and then we'll go back there. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Sonia Short. I am with the Ariolas Americas. My question wants to begin with your last one of your remarks when you say you want to be part of that. What do you mean by that? The part of that. What do you mean by that? The parliament to be part or to know about more of this intelligence collection or the whole government or the whole Germany or with with all the citizens and connecting to what you say one of the perceptions, Mr. Lewis, one of the perceptions of misperceptions are that it's not clear how much the White House knew about this intelligence collection, so it seems like it is like a second administration underneath the table. Thank you. I'd like to propose we take a few questions and then you all can answer. We had Nick right there and the right there, sorry, the colleague right there, yes, one o'clock. My name is Loth Speer and I'm retired from the German Civil Service as well as from the United Nations. I just wanted to offer a little observation because what I miss is, what I'm missing in your statements is I think there is a broad understanding that the tapping into emails and also phone conversations has probably avoided a number of national security incidents here, yes, and I think that is also accepted by the American public, but apart from the development of this technology, which makes it so easy now to tap everywhere, I think there's a little bit, the impression that this is a more supply-driven process because there seemed so many organizations which are doing all of this, yes, and if I may just add something as an older generation in the seventies, we were also very much concerned about tapping phone conversations and we demonstrated against this and the reason was that we felt you have and the justification was that this is a way to prevent criminal acts in Germany and we wanted to make sure that this is only used in a very justified way, but now you have the impression with this more supply orientation, you look into everything in order to get some indications that there may be something which justifies to look deeper into it and I think that is the reason which is also concerned very much in Europe, so if it would be just to tap into those communications where you have already some kind of a justified suspicion, it would be much easier and I mentioned this too, I'm sorry, because when I worked for the United Nations in the eighties, the first thing what we were informed, not to use the phone to exchange anything because the US would tap into this and so we were always meeting in the cafeteria, not realizing that it was also tapped properly, but it is it's not something very new, this whole issue and again today I don't think people are not exchanging anything anymore, so that is also a result of a different civil right dimension I think which we should also have in mind. Yes, Antje Passenheim for Deutsche Welle Radio, there are some voices in the congress, in the House of Representatives, that suggest that Germany should become a member of the Five Eyes community and I would be interested in what you two say to this from your different perspectives. Thank you, thank you very much for your questions, I try to answer first the question of the role of the parliament, I had two things in mind, one thing is that I believe that the conversation that we are having should include parliamentarians from the Bundestag as well as from the United States Congress, if I read it and if I got the right information there will be a congressional delegation visiting Berlin I think next week, Senator Murphy is scheduled to come over and I think also a member of House of Representatives. I believe that is an important contribution because after what I had and exchanges and talks today it seems to me that there's also very different ideas and approaches and controversy about the issue of oversight of the question of opportunity costs of the political strategy behind certain decisions in the United States Congress, but nobody really is aware of that fact and I think it could contribute to a more I would say profound and differentiated view on the United States, so that is something that is important. The second thing I had in mind is that of course I mean the German parliament and for me the question is not that much if that will be done in an inquiry commission as I said I'm not against an inquiry commission but could also be dealt with in an ordinary commission of parliament we need to discuss and we have a lot of questions to ask not only to our American friends we will have to look for the adequate format to do this but also to our own security agencies so I repeat why is it that we had no clue about what was happening or is it true that we had no clue I don't know I want to know as a member of parliament and that goes also to your question about the Fifis I mean I don't think that there is much knowledge about the very nature of that cooperation in Germany and I also I'm interested in knowing about the the practice of intelligence sharing and I would say the the status that Germany has in that in that cooperation of of five countries that obviously does not include Germany I'm not so sure if the intention of those of my colleagues who have been very vocally criticizing the United States has been to join that club I'm not so sure so it's difficult to answer that question and it's maybe also because we have at least in one part of our country very still with memory about the Stasi which would have loved to have today's technical instruments at hand and we know what damage they have been doing without having high speed internet and storage facilities and and record the technical availability and the last remark I wanted to make is we have definitely a different threat perception between our countries we suffered from political violence we had terrorism in the 70s we have experience with terrorist attacks in certain and in the variety of European countries I had the privilege to study a year in Madrid while I was a student in Spain I think it is a vast terrorist organization killed 13 people so but we are certainly as a country not necessarily very afraid of organized Islamic terrorism and that makes a huge difference in the political discussion because I think we are in politics very aware about the threat that is also directed to our country we are of course very grateful for intelligence sharing that prevented a lot of those incidents to happen and it's always the dilemma that you cannot talk openly about secret sources so and we will not solve that dilemma but I think it's also important to stress this but the the general public is not very afraid and that makes a big difference in the way that we are discussing these issues that's a fair point I do think it would be nice to wind down the war on terror it's a little boring at this point but it hasn't gone so well but you know I and so I tend to go through this phase too it's like oh we don't have to worry about it so much but unfortunately there are still serious threats aimed at the United States and other places from jihadis and so we cannot dismiss that it's not how many mass casualty incidents is enough to that you would be willing to accept and unfortunately that's what we're talking about we're not talking about onesies and twosies we're not talking about another boston we're talking about mass casualty events say on the scale of bali right the bali bombing and those are not hypothetical these are not hypothetical threats so I agree it's easy to overreact and it's easy to bound the counter terrorism drum too much and I don't like doing it but you know there is compelling evidence obtained through these communications intercepts that there are people out there who still would like to perform mass casualty attacks against the United States did the white house know well the president's kind of a busy guy and they have this thing called the president's daily brief pdb and it's like little paragraphs that say here's what we think you should know it's you know it's kind of you can the funny thing is you can get a lot of in the newspaper but underneath each paragraph it will have some indication of the sourcing right so it would say for example example sensitive comment channels or something like that communications intelligence okay so he knows it's come from a reliable source he's being presented by people whose job it is to make sure he's only getting the best it's a whole huge circus to produce this thing and if he asks they'll tell him if he doesn't ask they won't tell him right what they will collect is established by a list of priorities that the u.s. sets every year that says here are our top 20 you know intelligence priorities and this is what you should collect against right they have different sometimes they change the names it's sometimes it's like national foreign intelligence priorities something no nip or fit or something like that but that's that's all they make these decisions it's a process it's a process that's been embraced place for decades it produces products that the president would find of interest and sometimes the president will have a question it's really you know it's sort of funny when the Clinton administration you would get handwritten notes like ripped from the page of the pdb briefing and you get a handwritten question from the president that you had then had to drop everything and run around and try and figure out but if you know he gets this every day it's not like did he did he know specific did he say I want you to listen to Angela Merkel I doubt it right did he say I want you to tell me what's going on with the euro I want you to tell me what's going on in Greece probably wouldn't you right so and the job for these the folks who support him is to go out and get what he wants right not to tell him how they got it right and if he doesn't ask they won't tell him so did the White House know the White House directs directs our intelligence collection program this is not some rogue agency you know I've never seen that um but did that mean they are micromanaging I hope not right so somewhere in that divide lies your answer supply driven is really an interesting way to think about it and one of the things that's changed in the last decade is it's um the different intelligence disciplines um the weighting of the results they produce was that too opaque the different intelligence disciplines in the quantity of information they produce has changed a little bit so human produces human intelligence produces a little less in part because they're off playing cowboys and Indians in Iraq and Afghanistan uh signals intelligence produces a little bit more you know and so there is this you know I can do it so why don't I and that that doesn't uh take into account some of the political things for whatever reason and I I think the reason it was simply effectiveness uh the US chose a data a data intensive approach to counterterrorism intelligence and one of the reasons we chose this is the success rate was higher um Stasi was a big deal for the Germans 9 11 was a big deal for the US and the lesson from 9 11 right or wrong was that we had um not integrated intelligence as well as we could and one of the things we found after 9 11 was that um integrating intelligence sources human intelligence signals intelligence other forms of intelligence um was the single most effective way to find and stop terrorists right so here I am again beating the terrorist drum but it led to this data intensive approach right where you collect a lot of data and then you look at specific things and it's been successful could there be a less data intensive approach um I think so the problem is it would take us two or three years to build that new tool set okay so what do you want do you want to hang out for those two or three years you know you want to just hope nothing bad happens I don't not entirely responsible approach so um we've got a successful approach that has proven success contrary to what you may hear from the critics and there's a reluctance to change that I think we need to take into account the political concerns but rethinking the supply driven approach will be difficult on the five eyes we already have a strong intelligence partnership with Germany and it may not make sense to use the approach developed for the five eyes given the different constitutional and legal arrangements our laws and the laws of the UK and others are very closely aligned not as closely aligned when it comes to Germany that doesn't mean we can't have a strong partnership that doesn't mean there aren't ways we could improve it um but you probably want to look outside of the five eyes community it sounds like it's a lot of fun it's really not and it's just like a bunch of old guys get together in a room whoop-de-doo right I'm making a little light of it but yeah there is already a strong partnership and the focus that might be most productive is to think how do we improve that partnership which might require some consideration in the Bundestag of what German intelligence agencies are allowed to do as a better approach than putting you in the five eyes yeah i i just had because it's still i mean this may be the obvious question but if it's true and i i take it forgiven that the the data collection is aimed at fighting terrorism fighting organized crime and and all the aims that you mentioned so what possible information would you get from collecting that data that you have been or that the u.s. have been collecting from Angela Merkel's cell phone and other european leaders i think that is still something that has not really been answered at least not to our public and i i believe as long as there's not a credible answer or a kind of i would not even using the term apology but a political gesture i think it will be very hard to have that detailed and discussion necessary discussion that that you have been proposing you sure and i think um we do need to make that political gesture and it has to be more than a gesture and so what i've said all along is we cannot dismiss the feelings in germany about these episodes we need to find a way to deal with them directly um that said uh it might be painful for my german colleagues to have a discussion of why uh the leader of a foreign nation was a legitimate intelligence target right um we know that president obama is a target of foreign intelligence when he came into office he loves his black berry um all the security agencies freaked out and ran around in circles until they could get them i think it's 14 000 bucks i'm not sure till they get him a 14 000 secure blackberry right why didn't you guys do that with yours right i mean we knew what was happening to him right you think you know in washington there's at least six countries listening on the open phone lines come on i mean you're a grown-up leader you can't just not you know use your handy phone give me a break um if you want to have a discussion i think there are you know legitimate reasons why uh this was a uh reasonable intelligence activity and it's it's just you know i i i want to build friendship here i don't want to say you know the one of the things we used to say in the cold war was intelligence espionage builds trust right because what they say to you in the meeting and what they say in private if they're the same you have greater trust so maybe that's a good place to stop the hands are really going up now so that's uh linda if you can come over why don't we take a collection of questions over on this side i'll try to we did the center this time we'll do that and then we'll do this side in the second right there robert retter with international investor if we could move to another perspective uh that of business and trade i wonder if uh mr anand if you could comment either by your own gathering of uh of information from discussions with colleagues or have you seen anything in the german press and a european press in general that indicates that we might suffer an economic loss here uh people less inclined to buy american technology to buy cloud technology trade agreements etc thank you uh detail that george john university first uh thank you very much for a very measured discussion of the issue that's helpful already uh i think we need to look at two issues one is what not to do uh in order to tame nsa and what to do so first what not to do is to mix up and that's a follow-up to your question and bring in tt the t-tip and and and try to regulate this issue via t-tip big mistake because it would be shooting us in the foot um the other is erecting um uh cyber walls what i hear from brazil is uh working in that direction we shouldn't do that that would you know destroy the whole world economy and and and that should not be done the other is um somehow inhibit or debilitate our ability to address surreal issues the security issues that you mentioned so these should be points that we should bring until you open to what not to do very important because things go out of hand right now but what to do and that's the nsa uh side and here um you know i respect all your arguments how legitimate it is and it is i mean you know there is a terrorist threat and and there needs to be taken care of so there is a role but why is it that for instance faissa has to be so secret shouldn't there be more transparency in the first place the second is the sheer amount of data that is collected and and i read the paper and read the new york times and you can see things like you know and coming out of the intelligence community itself what it amounts to is almost a turnkey totalitarianism and that's a dangerous way to go right and we should respect that and we should somehow begin to restrict the possibilities of what can be done legal issues are too weak in my view a lot has happened you mentioned the patriot act maybe it is time to look at that again and rephrase it we have to look at the authorization of the use of force it's still in place and maybe not necessary revoke it totally but rephrase it in ways that would restrict these enormous activities that are possible and on the german side niels as i understand it article five is still an operation believe it or not and and the bundes region even said it is still our platform to work and and there's a you know the the corporation that we need and that shouldn't be destroyed right but shouldn't we look at the legal basis for these activities in order to restrict the enormous amount of data collection that is going on and that in my view shouldn't happen in privacy is too important in order to you know just you know leave it in america and not respect what is necessary in other countries european countries and so on thank you thank you i'm jerry livingston from the germy historical uh institute i've got one question for mr lewis actually two and one for mr anand um i understood you correctly you said one intelligence of priority was the state of the u of economies uh why if you think you can understand far easter economies by reading the wall street journal of asia and the far eastern economic review why isn't it sufficient to understand european economies by reading the financial times and the wall street journal of europe um and um so my second question uh has to do with uh did president obama know uh i think both clapper and general alexander have testified that senior members of the national security council were in fact informed of this tapping uh is it conceivable to you that these senior members of national security council would not tell their president and my question to mr anand is uh and i think you've touched on this but i wonder if you'd say more uh i gather you do not think that oversight of the german intelligence agencies uh by the parliament is sufficient uh and particularly oversight of the transfer as mr lewis has testified uh the transfer of mens amounts of data by the german intelligence service to their american partners uh what can be done what needs to be done um on the part of the german parliament and the part of the german government uh to have a closer oversight of the german intelligence agencies well um first of all did i what you said concerning t-tip for example um i agree i i think um there was a kind of natural impulse to i'm using that word retaliate yeah and but there was nothing to retaliate so there was no instrument and it's also not a very political approach but it's rather a human instinct to express outrage and anger and i think that demand from several leading german politicians to stop or put on hold the t-tip negotiation um could be explained by by that political mood in germany um if we all agree that that initiative would be both beneficial for us and for the us so what is the threat here i i couldn't really understand that that approach i have a lot to say about t-tip regardless of the nsa aspect because i believe that we should of course um use this negotiation maybe to rebuild some of the trust that we have have lost in the last month and we i know it's complicated because the process of mandating the negotiation is very complicated at least uh in europe and i think it's also the case in the united states but it would be politically a good sign to include maybe the question of of privacy and data exchange and so on and so forth and about the social implication and and the lack of transparency in the t-tip negotiation we could have another session as a probably um because um i have a lot of concerns but this is not our topic today but in general i think that is that is right um what what you what you said um and also concerning cyber uh walls i mean uh what is likely to happen in germany right now i don't know i mean i'm not a prophet but um i think there will be voices urging the government to invest more in and anti espionage or counter espionage um and that goes with human resources goes with money and and i don't know if we could um and that will be directed against friends of course because of that experience that we just made um i don't know if that is a productive investment in the time where i think there is a very obvious need for for western countries to cooperate when it comes to global threat relation as i said to current conflicts like syria uh traditional conflicts like the middle east uh uh how to deal with china so i think it would have been more appropriate um to to work closer together instead of what i think will also maybe be a path to more a more realistic and less emotional german-american relationship this is going to happen in germany this is not going to end our friendship not even close but it will be a different approach it's also a new don't take it personal but it's also a new generation that is maybe not so emotionally linked to that exclusive relationship i think we have the president kennedy's day of assassination tomorrow so if you read the the editorials in germany this is this is all very sentimental and but so maybe this is part of of a new realism and doesn't mean that we will have bad relationships and there's enough common interest maybe germans will learn to use the word national interest a little more than we are used to it but i'm not enthusiastic about it i have to say this um article five yes i mean i would hope that the american administration uh would take a kind of official end to that war on terror but this is not up to me but i believe that would would not end counter terrorism activities of course that we have a joint interest in but it would contribute to lessened suspicion and put a close to a chapter that has been more painful to you but it's also very painful to us and we never and we never understood the invoking article five as a measure to bypass german laws and i don't think we did this on the contrary we understood invoking article five as an active step of solidarity and i mean we had the impression that it was not very well received on this side of the atlantic but this is also another story oversight needs to will be a topic for the new german parliament i'm absolutely sure i have never been a member of that small privileged um group of of um of mps that exercise on behalf of their colleagues that oversight in the select committee in the bonus talk um but it's basically organized by the i mean the control about what has been presented to the mps is almost completely enhanced of the security agencies um so there's an all discussion that will i think get the new dynamics that parliament and the select committee needs to have more access to information staff for example direct oversight rights um and i think that that would be appropriate there's no blueprint in that i can present here because it's obviously a difficult undertaking but i think that is necessary and i'm cautiously optimistic that we will see some progress you know one of the risks of this whole episode is that the um this desire to build your own technology to build your own uh internet and basically create political barriers to free trade um the result will be an economic loss to the whole world right because you'll be losing using stuff that is less efficient you'll be using a more fragmented internet um there will be loss to the entire world from this and the sad news is that there will be no effect on collection right build your own internet you know it's probably going to be easier to collect from you and not just for us remember anything we can do the russians can do and the chinese are getting close to that point there's two or three others that fall into that category so this idea who there are some companies that benefit from the pressure to fragment and to rely on homebrew but that will kill the economic growth that we've gotten from this thing and we want to find ways to have free trade we want to find ways to have the market rule we want to encourage cross-border data flows and defining the right set of rules to protect that this is the path for growth and europe needs growth as much as the u.s so i hope we don't make mistakes that kill economic growth and that's a fear um greater transparency is a great idea i am all for it a number of us have been saying all along you know look at the stuff that's been in the press couldn't you have let some of it out a little bit beforehand um you know my standard joke is that nsa classifies its lunch menu they they believe everything should be secret we probably need to rethink transparency and secrecy in the internet era so much is available online now that the old rules no longer work right um couldn't agree more on the economic stuff but you know if you ask uh uh for a long time some of our intelligence agencies weren't allowed to use uh google the search engine because um a whole set of things privacy concerns hard as that might be to believe uh security risks um so they couldn't read the uh they couldn't read the economist through the financial times you ask an intelligence agency to get information they're going to do spying right if you ask an analyst they're going to say hey can you go out and buy me a copy of the times right uh so i couldn't agree more we just we that's part of this rethinking it's part of this adjustment of what is transparent there's so much information available now it was very upsetting to me when i left government because there used to be this thing they don't do it anymore but there used to be like this daily publication of the um intelligence data it was like a very much lower level of what the president got and it was really upsetting to me to see that about 85 percent of what was in there i could get in the daily press right okay argues for a more focused approach um maybe we'll get there but it certainly argues for greater transparency and a little bit of rethinking maybe some restrictions maybe some changes in how we do business and part of that will be sitting down with partners and saying what is it we need to share with each other what is it we need to think about we have five more minutes so these questions have to be really really short so we'll take one two and then three nick and then we'll let you guys finish up uh christin anderson library of congress i'm one of the low-level people who saw all the different ways to slice and dice information come across my desk and ended up on zoloft as a result because i saw nothing nothing about protecting individual liberty or or redress of the abuse of personal information i'm gratified to hear that there are alternatives to the vacuum cleaner approach because there is an environmental cost to storing indefinite information forever i'm hoping that there might be grounds for cooperation for us very low-level people to look at how does information impact individuals when it's homegirl angela merkel who gets offended we need to deal with the best practices for personal personally identifiable information there we need new social norms we need norms that will work even when the public sphere turns into nothing but personal disparagement and harassment not all agencies are the nsa that listens politely thank you my name is jinning winwood voice of vietnamese americans i'd like to thank mr anion for being here and bought this up and you've been very restrained i would say i'd like to talk about three levels global regional and national interest as a vietnamese american i came here as a refugee against communism and i share chancellor merkel's concern about freedom especially her reactions when she's knew that found out that she's been taped over long and that is significant violation that's why we fled from vietnam to here and talk about november 22nd 1963 i can bring up another date it's november 1st and 2nd 1963 when our president moldings it was assassinated and recently we found out that president candy has something to do with it so there is a concern that we want to build trust we want to build trust at the global level at the regional level between friends so that's a concern that i think president obama our defense secretary hegel oh talk about that's a human human factor and mr dr louis talk about it's human factor so then 9 11 we fail not because we don't have intelligence we fail because of human factors so i would come back and ask mr anion would you speak for your own people chancellor merkel level would she what would president obama have to do at the leadership level to be equal what would he has to do to please her to make her feel to reduce the emotional reactions and at the congressional level what do you think to help the parliament the german what do you expect from the u.s congress and at the people level what do you think the u.s people should say to the germany german people because i for once would like to say something to dr louis you said 80 percent of americans approve of the patria act i did not and i can tell you this one of the vietnamese american lawyer was the author of the patria act and we hated him because of that we disagree with him we don't think that the personal confidence should be violated to that degree so i would like to clarify that not 80 percent americans approve of that thank you thank you i think jeff dyre from the financial times it's somewhat similar question you both use the phrase political gesture just one of you could expand what you think that political gesture needs to be to address this issue because it seems to be something like catch 22 the conversation happening between the two governments about these issues is secret and results are going to remain secret so how do you address the politics of this when the subject most of the subject matter will still remain as a secret yeah thanks thanks for the for the questions i i appreciate your comments i have to say that i don't know what is pleasing mrs mackerel and i'm not so interested in it but but but this goes also in the direction of your question i mean i i'm not coming here to to demand anything but it's obviously that there is a lack of understanding for for the for the backing of the telephone but also of that massive data collection and i think there is an expectation among not only the german parliament but also the public to get a kind of explanation um so that kind of discussion that we are having here i of course really enjoyed needs to take part also i i think for a larger german audience and there is i think a legitimate impression that trust has been misused and even violated and i still have no credible or reasonable explanation for what happened there among allies so i think that it would be wise to think about the political gesture but it's not up to me to to and i don't want to you know i mean it's even i'm not that important but it's not about if we if the german government would formulate an expectation that at the end of the day would not be met by whatever gesture may come that would even worsen the crisis so the americans need to think about this and and i hope that they will have a better calculation about opportunity cost than they had before that's all i want to say about this issue thank you jim i'll let you wrap up and if i can have a microphone please right here linda thank you i forgot what i was gonna say you said a lot today yeah i did more than enough no i you know i hope no one comes away with the impression that the u.s is taking this lightly i we are moving too slowly and there are things we could do i've been thinking about some of them like why not a nice tour of nsa you'll realize how boring it is you know why not some more communications but i think gestures of transparency agreements to you know be more open and activities to better explain what we're doing and to perhaps limit some activities reasonably would all be things the u.s could consider so i hope we can pull together a strategy but part of that has to be and this would be a little bit of a request for the german side is you know this is a two-way street and so you have to think about what are the reciprocal steps what are the things that you might need to understand to make a new arrangement work i learned a lot today thank you both neils on and thank you for helping us understand the perspective from germany jim thank you for explaining my own government to me i appreciate that and and for your candid comments i want to turn the floor over to pia she's going to wrap it up and say goodbye so pia please thank you hither um no no i can do it from here i uh think this is as we have all known before coming here and learned even more about this is a highly complex issue that deserves and needs a complex debate and i think you neils you jim louis have risen to this debate and you heather in your excellent moderating it needs to be multi-layered we need to listen to each other you have said that many times and we need to focus on the issues and you have put a lot of those issues on because we need to understand that these are issues that we share you know from the security question to the question of privacy this is not something that we can do for ourselves that americans can do for themselves we need to do it together it's a prime example for the need to cooperate and omnia too you have done what i think we need on a larger basis so thank you very much neils thank you for coming to the u.s for 24 hours please come back because we need exactly these kinds of debates the more it important the issue the more often we need to talk to each other and thank you heather for the fantastic cooperation with you