I think it is very difficult today to have a reasoned public discourse on any controversial subject. Certainly, election years present a complicating factor.

TIA was being used by real users, working on real data - foreign data. Data where privacy is not an issue.

I think if I had to do it over again, I'd do it the same way. I would just put more resources into getting the public diplomacy part much stronger than we were able to.

We wanted to be as expansive as possible to make sure we didn't preclude some good ideas.

I knew from the beginning that privacy was going to be a huge issue, especially with regard to applying Total Information Awareness in counterterrorism. Because if the technology development was successful, a logical place to apply it was inside the United States.

It would be ideal if we could have an uncontrolled flow of information. But we realized you can't do that.

Uncontrolled access to data, with no audit trail of activity and no oversight would be going too far. This applies to both commercial and government use of data about people.