Face the Nation transcripts December 29, 2013: Hayden, Drake, Radack, Gellman

(CBS News) Below is a transcript of "Face the Nation" on December 29, 2013, hosted by CBS News' Major Garrett. Guests include: Former NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, Thomas Drake, Jesselyn Radack, Barton Gellman, Jeffrey Kluger, James Fallows, Laura Sydell, and Seth Fletcher.

GARRETT: Good morning again, and welcome to "Face the Nation." We start today with what may be the biggest story of the year. It began back in June when National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden began leaking top-secret documents. Those documents disclosed government programs involving surveillance on everyone from ordinary Americans to our closest international allies. Joining us now is General Michael Hayden, who is the former head of the National Security Agency and the CIA is now a principal of the Chertoff Group here in Washington. General Hayden, good morning.

HAYDEN: Good morning.

GARRETT: Before we get to the NSA and surveillance -- and a lot of ground to cover there -- there is a lead story in the New York Times this morning that talks about a months-long investigation the paper conducted into the Benghazi attack.  It says "There is no clear linkage to Central Command Al Qaida," and that there was a much messier situation on the ground than originally disclosed by the administration or thought by most observers. Your reaction to that story?

HAYDEN: Yeah, I think that has the ring of truth to it. And in general, Major, these kinds of events are a lot more nuanced than we would like them to be, looking back at them in retrospect. When the attack happened, actually on this network, a few days afterwards, I was asked who did it. And I said, "Well, you know, the Al Qaida movement's divided into three layers, Al Qaida prime, formerly affiliated, and like-minded. And at the time, I said this was probably high-end like-minded or low-end affiliated. And I think the Time story, kind of, bears that out.

GARRETT: And when you say "like-minded," you mean locals who have anti-American sentiments, Al Qaida sort of passions in their veins?

HAYDEN: And a broad belief system that's consistent with the Al Qaida vision.

GARRETT: And these are the locals the United States thought it had a relationship with and that relationship turned sour, then deadly?

HAYDEN: Well, we had a relationship with some locals. Obviously, with other locals we did not. And frankly, I would also offer the view that we had plenty of warning, strategic warning, that Benghazi was simply not a safe place. If you were waiting for a tactical warning that an event would happen at this day, at this time, and were in Benghazi, you weren't waiting for intelligence. You were waiting to die.

GARRETT: Last question on this: If it doesn't have a strong centralized link to Al Qaida, what does that tell us about the nature of terrorism and terrorist threats? HAYDEN: Right, that the Al Qaida movement has changed. Naturally, that's probably the better word, not that the Al Qaida organization but the Al Qaida movement. So now you see Al Qaida, from Al Qaida prime in Pakistan and Afghanistan and that swath westward all the way to the West Coast of Africa. And the identity, the actual make-up of those Al Qaida groups, shifts a bit as you move westward, a little less Al Qaida prime, a little less about the global caliphate and a little more about local circumstances and local grievances.  Now, right now, those groups farthest west don't really consider us to be the prime enemy. But our problem is what do we do about that? Do we wait until they've gathered more strength and therefore are a threat to us, or do we move now and perhaps turn a movement that really wasn't mad at us into an enemy of the United States? Tough decisions.

GARRETT: That's an evolving story. And let's now get to where we are with the NSA, the disclosures, the surveillance and some court rulings.  I want to read to you one segment of a ruling handed down by Judge Richard Leon here in Washington, U.S. district judge, who said, "It's one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide information to law enforcement. It's quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation with the government." What do you respond to that?

HAYDEN: Well, first of all, I would respond that Judge Leon was looking at the acquisition of the data and not how the data was used. And so this is not a broad fishing expedition. Granted, millions -- billions of phone records a day are acquired by the National Security Agency, but what follows, Major, is really important. What happens to that data? How often is that data touched? And the truth is, it's touched two to three hundred times per year and only based upon a reasonable articulable suspicion that that number is affiliated with terrorism.

GARRETT: But Judge Leon also talks about, as you said, the acquisition of this data. And he said, "Underlying Supreme Court precedent," which dates back to a case from 1979, in no way imagined this world that we're currently living in. Let me read again. And this is the words. They're interesting. "The almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone used here in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived of in 1979. The notion that the government could collect similar data on hundreds of millions of people and retain that data for a five-year period, updating it with new data every day in perpetuity, was, at best, in 1979, the stuff of science fiction. Americans, General, are legitimately, it seems to me, alarmed by the scope and stature of this collection, retention and sifting.

HAYDEN: Sure. Look, our history as a people demand that we be alarmed, that we be concerned about this. But our concerns should be governed; our thinking should be focused on the facts of the case and not the emotion of the case. Again, what happens to the data? Judge Leon ignored precedent. He ignored Smith v. Maryland, the case that you cited. He ignored that 15 FISA judges on over 30 occasions have upheld the lawfulness of this. And then judge Pauley, in the Southern District of New York, within a week issued another warning saying -- or another decision -- saying that this was inherently constitutional. And judge Pauley relied on precedent. Judge Leon relied on exclamation points throughout his judgment, not precedent.

GARRETT: He also said this is likely unconstitutional and this collection violates the fourth amendment. You disagree?

HAYDEN: I do. I do. Well -- well, I'm not a lawyer; I'm not a judge. I do know there is one controlling Supreme Court case, Smith v. Maryland, in which the court has said in a 5-3 decision that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over this kind of data.

GARRETT: Once you hand your data over to a third party?

HAYDEN: Right.

GARRETT: Now it's also been disclosed through Edward Snowden's leaks that the NSA tapped fiber optic cables abroad to siphon data, circumvented or cracked encryption codes and covertly inserted weaknesses into coding mechanisms. Now, you're telling me all of that is done in accordance with the Constitution and raises no fourth amendment concerns?

HAYDEN: As long as it's done overseas against people not protected by the fourth amendment to the Constitution, Major, the Constitution doesn't enter into the conversation.

GARRETT: What are your thoughts currently on Edward Snowden? Have they evolved in any way?

HAYDEN: No, not at all.

GARRETT: What do you think he is?

HAYDEN: Well, I used to say he was a defector, you know, and there's a history of defection -- actually, there's a history of defection to Moscow, and that he seems to be part of that stream. I'm now, kind of, drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language.

GARRETT: Such as?

HAYDEN: Such as "traitor."

GARRETT: Based on what?

HAYDEN: Well, in the past two weeks, in open letters to the German and the Brazilian government, he has offered to reveal more American secrets to those governments in return for something -- and in return was for asylum. I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason.

GARRETT: Is the NSA stronger or weaker as a result of Edward Snowden's disclosure?

HAYDEN: It's infinitely weaker.

GARRETT: Infinitely?

HAYDEN: Infinitely. This is the most serious hemorrhaging of American secrets in the history of American espionage. Look, we've had other spies. We can talk about Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. But their damage, as bad as it was, was fairly limited, and even though in both of those cases, human beings actually lost their lives. But they were specific sources, all right? Now, there's a reason we call these leaks, all right? And if you extend the metaphor, Hanssen and Ames -- you could argue whether that was a cup of water that was leaked or a bucket of water that was leaked. What Snowden is revealing, Major, is the plumbing. He's revealing how we acquire this information. It will take years, if not decades, for us to return to the position that we had prior to his disclosure.

GARRETT: Are you afraid of more disclosures?

HAYDEN: Well, actually that's a great question. because I saw, in your lead-in, you had Mr. Snowden saying, "My work is done." Now, does that mean all the stories based upon the information he's given to the press will stop? You know, he said he's accomplished his objective. "I've already won." But yet will the stories stop? I don't think so.

GARRETT: And what are you most afraid of if the stories continue?

HAYDEN: What I'm most afraid of is that we'll reveal our sources and methods, our tactics, techniques and procedures, to people around the world who will the American nation and the American people harm.

GARRETT: Is it your contention, getting back to what we first talked about, that these techniques, these tactics, these surveillance mechanisms, are legitimate legally but also more important because of the atomized nature of the terrorist threat and affiliated groups with Al Qaida?

HAYDEN: Yeah, actually that's a great point, Major. Because the 215 program, the metadata program, the one we're talking about -- that is actually more ideally suited against that granular, one-off, individualized, self-radicalized attack. It's probably a little less useful to the traditional Al Qaida attack, which is that slow-moving, ponderous plot with multiple threads designed for mass casualties against an iconic target.

HAYDEN: I'm not saying 215 isn't valuable there. But I'm saying there are enough other threads we could pool and perhaps learn about those traditional plots. Now we get plots like a drive-by shooting in Little Rock. We get plots like what happened in Boston at the Marathon. We -- we get plots like the Army major shooting up fellow soldiers in Texas.

GARRETT: General Hayden, it's good to have you with us. Thank you very much. Happy new year to you.

HAYDEN: And to you, Major.

GARRETT: We'll be back in one minute with the other side of the NSA surveillance issue.

GARRETT: Now to talk more about Edward Snowden and what he revealed, I'm joined by Jesselyn Radack, who was with the Government Accountability Project and is a Snowden legal advisor, and Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee turned whistle-blower who beat charges of espionage over his work revealing problems with the previous NSA surveillance program. Jesselyn, Thomas, it's great to have you with us. Jesselyn, I want to give you a chance to react to what you just heard from General Hayden, NSA surveillance is legal and this country and its counterterrorism techniques and tactics are infinitely weaker because of Edward Snowden.

RADACK: Well, in terms of them being legal, there is obviously a conflict between two federal court judges on this issue. And what General Hayden neglected to bring up is that Judge Leon's opinion, finding the surveillance mechanisms to be likely unconstitutional and also ineffective, mirrors very much a White House review panel's internal recommendations that found much of the same thing. So I feel very much that that vindicates Snowden as a whistle- blower. It's very rare that a whistle-blower has the imprimatur of both a federal court decision and a hand-picked White House internal review panel corroborating, basically, all that he has disclosed.

GARRETT: Thomas Drake, you are aware of the criticism of Edward Snowden, saying he should have followed the procedures. He should have worked through an inspector general; he should have gone to Congress; he should have gone to supervisors. You did all of that and you were prosecuted by this federal government and you ultimately saw that case shrunk down to a misdemeanor. How do you react to General Hayden's characterization of Edward Snowden as a traitor?

DRAKE: I don't consider him a traitor at all. I consider him a whistle-blower. He exposed prima facie evidence regarding the extent of the surveillance program, its unconstitutionality and the fact that we're losing huge, huge amounts of trust overseas, in terms of NSA supposed to be protecting the rights of citizens, but also the United States is supposed to be the bastion of freedom and liberty and rights. It's clearly losing out in the court of world opinion.

GARRETT: For those who may in the future think of themselves as whistle-blowers, or act as whistle-blowers, you have the Snowden case and you have your case. What would you tell them, based on your experience?

DRAKE: Well, you have to lawyer up. That's the first thing. I mean, whistle-blowing now is extraordinarily dangerous. It ends up your first amendment rights are criminalized in this country if you expose especially national security-related matters, that somehow the imprimatur of national security trumps the Constitution; it trumps the rule of law; and it trumps what I believe most Americans would believe is reasonable expectation of privacy. Even -- even Justice Sotomayor, in 2012, in her opinion, said that we have to revisit this expectation of no privacy simply because we provide data to a third party.

GARRETT: Jesselyn, you've met with Edward Snowden, what is his frame of mind? What do you think his legal options are? And will we ever see him back in this country to face trial?

RADACK: I think he would love to be back in this country. He is a patriotic American. He loves his homeland and would love to come back if the conditions were right.

GARRETT: What do you mean by that?

RADACK: By that, I mean we -- people like General Hayden would not be making threats to put him on the kill list and two former CIA chiefs would not be saying that he should be hung from a tree.

GARRETT: But the -- but the president of the United States has made it clear that he would be afforded every protection under the criminal justice system in this country. And I think it's fair to say that he would have a raft of grade A attorneys waiting with open arms to take his case were he to come back to this country. Why not come back?

RADACK: Because the very fact that he's been charged under the Espionage Act shows that it would not be a fair process. Those trials take place largely in secret. There are all sorts of SIPA measures people have to go through. It's overcharging. And as evidenced by Tom Drake's case, you don't use a law meant to go after spies to go after whistle-blowers.

GARRETT: And when you said General Hayden put him on a kill list, what do you mean by that?

RADACK: General Hayden and Michael Rogers, who's the chair of the House Intel Committee...

GARRETT: Intelligence Committee.

RADACK: ... joked about...

GARRETT: Joked?

RADACK: ... joked about putting him on a list, and one of them being able to...

GARRETT: Are you suggesting that Edward Snowden took that to heart and believes it?

RADACK; Of course. I think he certainly has concerns for his safety, and even last week, with having Morell and another person...

GARRETT: Mike Morell, former deputy CIA director.

RADACK: Exactly, who is also, like Michael Hayden, a former NSA and CIA director, joked -- not only joked; they weren't joking -- they said he should be hung from a tree by his neck, which conjures images of lynching, not a fair trial. And I think guarantees that he would not be tortured is setting the bar really low. I don't think he could get a fair trial here. In fact, I don't think he should have any trial because he's been granted asylum because he has a reasonable fear of political persecution predicated on the very Espionage Act charges with which he is faced.

GARRETT: Thomas Drake, you were charged under the Espionage Act. It was then removed and it was all plead down to a misdemeanor. Do you believe Edward Snowden could get a fair trial in this country? And why not come here and put the justice system, his actions, to the test in a public court of law?

DRAKE: No, not at all.

GARRETT: Your advice to him would be to stay in Russia?

DRAKE: At this time, that's, ironically enough, and the history is a lesson were not lost on me as I walked across Red Square back in October when we went to visit Edward Snowden and presented him with the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award.  No, he had to escape the United States to have any hope of keeping his freedom, let alone disclosing what he needed to provide to reports and journalists. It's important to also point out, Major, that all this history was avoidable. The United States, (inaudible), unchained itself from the Constitution. The bedrock of this country is defending liberty. We have sacrificed any number of lives for the sake of liberty. We have the technology, the very best of America, to solve this problem, Go after the threat, provide superior intelligence, protect the rights of citizens. But that was all rejected by NSA.

GARRETT: And that's one of the reasons you became a whistle- blower.

DRAKE: Yeah, I believe it's also one of the prime reasons they came after me.

GARRETT: Now, let me read to you from the other opinion, from Judge William Pauley. "Every day people voluntarily surrender personal and seemingly private information to transnational corporations which exploit that data for profit. Do you think twice about it, even though it is far more intrusive than bulk telephony metadata collection like that done by the NSA." Why don't -- why isn't -- that says everyone does this; they hand it over willingly.

RADACK: I think it's very different if I choose to give personal data to Facebook to keep my family members up to date than giving personal information to the government, which is back-dooring Twitter and Facebook and all of these social media. I think Judge Pauley's opinion turns on the idea that, if we collect even more data, we're doing less targeting. But that actually inverts the constitutionality of the fourth amendment, which requires individualized suspicion and probable cause and targeting in order to surveil someone.

GARRETT: I've got to stop you right there, Jesselyn.

RADACK: Sure.

GARRETT: We have to head to break. Jesselyn Radack, very good to have you with you (sic). Thomas Drake, good to have you with us. And we'll be right back.

GARRETT: We're back now with Mark Gellman of "The Washington Post," who traveled to Moscow recently and spent some time with Edward Snowden. Some time if kind of, well, it's 15 hours. An extensive interview published Christmas Eve. Does Edward Snowden have more to tell the world? Should the NSA be afraid? GELLMAN: Well, six months ago, he handed over archives of information to three reporters. I was one of them. He's had no role in what's disclosed since. He's added nothing to what he's disclosed. So to the extent he wants to participate, he wants to speak as someone who interprets what we've learned and says what he thinks ought to be done about it. Whether the NSA is afraid or not is not for me to say. It's -- there -- he has launched a global debate and an American debate about what the limits, the boundaries, should be of surveillance in a democratic society. And that's ongoing.

GARRETT: So to think about it conceptually, this is a box. You might regard it, as a reporter, as a treasure chest. Michael Hayden and others might regard it as a Pandora's box full of all sorts of damaging disclosures about what America surveils, why and how it accomplishes that. So the box is in your hands and the hands of others. More things may come out of that box, but Edward Snowden will not be providing them. That's a finite amount he's given you and that's all there is?

GELLMAN: That's right.

GARRETT: As far as you understand?

GELLMAN: That's exactly right.

GARRETT: OK. What's his frame of mind? You spent a good deal of time with him. You described him as having a practical engineer's mind. Is he afraid? Does he have a sense of high emotion about being either chased or pursued by the federal government? What are his thoughts about coming back here and facing trial?

GELLMAN: He has -- he takes the kinds of reasonable precautions that a person would take when he knows he's of great interest to a number of intelligence services around the world. What he's keeping his eye on is the big picture, which is that over a period of six months, he has enabled a public conversation about a program that was -- or a set of programs that took place entirely in secret, without any public debate. Not only -- I mean you can't debate particular intelligence operations. But you can debate policies like should the NSA be allowed to collect every American's phone calls, should the NSA be allowed to intercept hundreds of millions of Internet address books as they flow across the pipes or billions of location points, so that it can track many of the world's cell phones in time and space? We never had those conversations because all of that took place behind closed doors.

GARRETT: When he says his job is done and he's won, what do you think he means by that?

GELLMAN: He means exactly what I just said. And he said what he means. People have, I think, misconstrued or sort of narrowed it down to just I won. What he means is, the thing he cared about most was putting things on the public record that would allow us, as a people, to decide for ourselves what the boundaries should be. And we had no role in it up until then, because we didn't know what was happening.

GARRETT: Does he want a plea deal? Does he want to find some way to come back to America?

GELLMAN: I can't speak for him on that. And I didn't -- I didn't get any particularly clear answer on that. I think that's for him and his lawyers to be working on.

GARRETT: Do you think or did you get any sense from him of what the next six months and then the time after that -- he has one year of asylum in Russia, then what comes next? Do you have any sense of that?

GELLMAN: Well, he has made clear that he would like asylum in some other country. He didn't choose Russia. He was literally changing planes in the Moscow airport when the United States revoked his passport. He was stuck there by that. He's said from the beginning that he wanted asylum in a Western country, for example, Iceland, that, from his point of view, respects rights of free speech and whistleblowers. He is not looking to live in a country like Russia or China. And, by the way, I just have to say, as a matter of fact, that there is no evidence on the public record that he has defected or betrayed his country. He has stated that his intention is to allow his country to make decisions for itself. And there's simply no evidence on the public record, or even in private intelligence, according to the officials I talk to, that he has transferred his loyalty or tried to assist a hostile power.

GARRETT: Michael Hayden, former NSA director, CIA director, said that our counterterrorism surveillance techniques are infinitely weaker as a result of these disclosures. Do you think Edward Snowden has any personal remorse about that or will, if, in fact, it is learned at some date in the future that something happened terrible in this country and it wasn't caught because the programs were changed as a result of these disclosures?

GELLMAN: Well, it's clear -- Snowden is well aware that the reporters in whom he has entrusted these decisions have held back lots of material in the archives that would disclose particular targets, particular techniques, particular places where certain technologies are used. We...

GARRETT: That's something that you've done (INAUDIBLE)?

GELLMAN: And that's something that I've done that he wanted us to do. He asked us not to dump out the documents. If he had wanted to do that, he would have done it himself. He was more than capable of doing it that way, posting the whole thing on the Internet. he wanted us to use our judgment about what was newsworthy, what raised big policy questions for the American people and what would do too much harm, what would be harmful. And so we consult on every story. The NSA, the director of national intelligence, knows every detail in every story before we publish it. They have an opportunity to tell us what they think would be especially harmful. Almost always, we acceded to those requests.

GARRETT: Martin Gellman of "The Washington Post," it's been great to have you with us.

GELLMAN: Thank you.

GARRETT: Happy New Year. And we'll be back in just a minute.

GARRETT: Some of our stations are leaving us now, but for most of you, we'll be right back with a lot more "Face The Nation," including a panel on surveillance and the future. Please stay with us.

GARRETT: Welcome back to "Face The Nation." We're now going to look at privacy, surveillance and the future of technology. This debate may feel brand new, but 30 years ago, New Year's Day, this very broadcast was devoted to privacy and surveillance, asking the question first raised by George Orwell's ground-breaking book, "1984." That question -- does the government know too much about all of us? Take a look.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And welcome to 1984. 1984 the year, not the book -- or is it?

(voice-over): Spy cameras scan our banks and even our streets. And computer data banks compile lists of information on everyone. We're all leaving an electronic trail behind every time we use a credit card or place a phone call. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think in the United States, Big Brother was born in twins.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Guest Robert Smith was the editor of the "Privacy Journal."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does anybody here think that we are fast approaching the 1984 that George Orwell described in his book?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the technology has gone far beyond that. We not only have camera surveillance that Orwell foresaw but we have computers which he did not foresee. We don't have the political climate clearly for a total surveillance society. However, there are other societies across the seas that do have that total surveillance mentality. So that if you combine our technical sophistication with their political attitudes, you do have 1984, and that's rather scary.

GARRETT: Well, 30 years later the Internet and cell phones have revolutionized global communications and given all of us, whether we want them or not, digital fingerprints that governments and private companies collect and scrutinize. Where should we draw the line? To talk about the privacy debate and to look at the future of technology, we are joined by Jeffrey Kluger, editor at large of "Time" magazine; James Fallows, who wrote "The Atlantic" magazine's recent cover story of the 50 greatest inventions since the wheel; Laura Sydell is the digital culture correspondent for National Public Radio and Seth Fletcher is the senior editor in charge of technology coverage for "Scientific American." It's great to have you with us. Happy new year to all of you. Let me start with you, Jeffrey, we'll just go around this way. Technology, human privacy, individual privacy, how are they aligned, how are they raising concerns, separate from what the government does but private companies can do, how they gather data and track us in almost every movement we make?

JEFFREY KLUGER, "TIME": Well, it's a question actually I used to ask when I was in law school. I am a lapsed lawyer; I never practiced. And back then I think I saw myself as a constitutional absolutist and idealist as all law students are. If you had told me about an Internet, if you had told me about post 9/11 surveillance, I would have said this is unacceptable. But we've lived through 9/11. We now know something about the Internet and we know a few things that we didn't know then. We know that if we're going to have a robust, monetizable economy on the Web we need to surrender some data. We know that if we're going to be kept safe post-9/11 we need to be willing to surrender some of our privacy, things that would have been unthinkable before. So the question becomes, where in that elastic system do you begin to allow these things?

GARRETT: How do you get happy with surrendering, James Fallows?

JAMES FALLOWS, "THE ATLANTIC": It was fascinating to see that clip from 30 years ago. As it always is to go back in a time capsule in two ways. One is they were complacent about technological advancements, which in retrospect were just the Stone Age, storage, processing speed, visual capabilities, mapping, all that is just many orders of magnitude ahead of what they imagined then. On the other hand, there was a kind of complacency about politics, too, Robert Smith, who I know as a friend, was saying, well, we don't have the political climate that (INAUDIBLE) was saying that, in the last year since 9/11, we've had this sense that anything in the name of security is worth doing. And that was so interesting about the NSA Commission Report which the president is saying it's time to draw a different line. We can do more things than we should be comfortable with.

GARRETT: How can we draw different lines, Laura, when people who are exercise enthusiasts wear a Fitbit?

LAURA SYDELL, NPR: That's right, I know. As a matter of fact I'm wearing one right now.

(CROSSTALK)

GARRETT: All their physical data, their health data can be in certain ways stored. We do that for convenience. We do it for commerce. We do it for health. Yet it's all getting into this vast array of data about all of us, are we surrendering happily things we didn't think we would ever surrender maybe 10 or 15 years ago?

SYDELL: Well, I think it's a good point. I mean, I am wearing a Fitbit which is keeping track of how many steps I take and a variety of things. And we'll see lot more of these wearable devices, some that may track your heart rate, blood pressure, all kinds of things. The question becomes, who can access that data? I think with all of this, the law is going to have to keep up. And so we need vigorous discussions, vigorous debates, I think, about who can access the data. I think there was a reason when all these tech companies met with President Obama recently and really what they wanted to talk about was NSA surveillance. They wanted to talk about privacy because, for them, their profits depend on us feeling that our information, whatever information we surrender to them, is safe.

GARRETT: Right. And Seth, we now have technology or soon will, where a fingerprint is the mechanism by which you enter into all sorts of things, perhaps it's your iPhone, perhaps it's your bank, perhaps it's some other thing, but if that's all hacked, where do I get a new fingerprint?

SETH FLETCHER, "SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN": You can't, I mean, that's the problem. The same goes for iris scans, facial recognition, palm prints; this is moving into consumer technology, things that were once used really solely for national security purposes.  And the big concern is once you get all this in a centralized database, it's no more secure than your Target PIN. And what do you do if this gets hacked? And that's getting into very dicey territory. And so I think we'd be wise to think before we go too far into that pool.

GARRETT: There's a thread in this conversation that laws need to keep up, politics needs to keep up, but I must tell you, having spent a lot of time in Washington, I don't have a lot of confidence in the law or the politics catching up with this.

(LAUGHTER)

GARRETT: And being innovative and balanced in its assessment. James?

FALLOWS: So I say that something to give a thin reed of comfort, is that every wave of technological disruption has created benefits and harms. Like the one we're talking about now, whether it's explosive technology for bombs or for mines, with aviation, again for bombing or for transport atomic power. This is this era's version of a struggle we've been through since the dawn of technological innovation, of finding ways to take advantage of what is good in this new technology for mapping, for Fitbits, for genomic understanding, while limiting the things that are problems. So it is discouraging to consider today's Washington but it's a challenge that our system has faced again and again and again. Now we'll wrestle with it.

SYDELL: You know, I have to say one of the things you see with all this technology is very often we're happy to give up our privacy for convenience. I think that's something we really have to think about. All of us have to think about. How much are you willing to give up in order to have Facebook? Is it OK with you that Facebook has all this information? Would you be willing to pay rather than see advertising because essentially advertising is going to get more and more targeted. The more information they have about you they're going to direct your eyes.

GARRETT: Which, Jeffrey, leads me to a question raised by some technology writers saying, isn't it kind of hypocritical for the big tech companies to be outraged about NSA data gathering, which it is their very core business model to gather this data, put it through algorithms and provide it to businesses so they can more readily, rapidly and intuitively almost find out what consumers want to purchase?

KLUGER: Yes, and I often find that the experience is quite surreal. When I go on to Amazon and there's a book I'm considering buying because it reminds me of a book I bought 11 years ago and what pops up on my screen is the book I was just thinking about buying. It faintly creeps me out. But the fact that this works the way it does is good for commerce, is good for the convenience of the shopper. But interestingly, Twitter recently has made clear that they are now -- they're partnering with 10 partners or 10 advertising groups and those groups are permitted to use your Twitter data to follow you around the Web to see what you do. Twitter allows you to opt out.  But you're required to go to each of those companies individually, 10 different partners, and do it one at a time. We provide a list of those on time.com, but the idea is they're making the bar as high as possible so that people --

GARRETT: To decouple from this commercial (INAUDIBLE) free Web. I wonder do you think that -- or do you have any sense of the future of handing over this data and what Americans are going to be comfortable with 10 years from now? Do you think it will be more comfortable or less comfortable in handing themselves over?

FLETCHER: Ten years from now is really --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe five years from now.

FLETCHER: Just go to next year, the year after, I think that the next phase of the debate we're now having in the wake of the Snowden NSA revelations, a lot of this free-floating anxiety, I think, is going to be turned toward the tech companies, who have become very huge and very monolithic. And I think people are -- there's an increasing awareness of the amount --

GARRETT: But they may not be viewed as benign as they were before.

FLETCHER: I already think they are not viewed as benign as they were before.

GARRETT: And then Laura, do you want to jump in (INAUDIBLE)?

SYDELL: Yes, I'm going to -- I mean, living in the Bay Area, recently there was a Google bus that was attacked. And this has to do with income equality, but I wonder if at some point people are going to realize, oh, these companies are getting very wealthy off my data.  And I do wonder if it's some point that's going to -- I've started (INAUDIBLE) discussion where people feel like, do I really trust these companies? Are they out for my interests? And so you could see a turn.

GARRETT: What is the transactional side philosophically, James, for handing over something you think has a value, but you'd like it to be more valuable to you than to somebody else?

FALLOWS: And I think this is the kind of adjustment we have seen before in corporate history and technological history, the rising corporations of any era, whether it's oil companies or car companies, they have their pluses and minuses, I would still say that companies, while they often seem like states are finally not states. They cannot order drone strikes, they cannot put people in prison or all the rest. So I think it's worth being skeptical about both of them in differential ways. What Google does is one thing, what the NSA and the U.S. military can do is something different and should be judged differently.

KLUGER: I think one of the things, though, that we have to consider -- this reminds me of when we were discussing this in the Green Room, the idea that it seems, according to the new federal ruling, it's all right for some of this NSA data gathering to take place because the gathering is really done by the private phone companies. But that feels a little bit disingenuous. It feels like the way super PACs can gather unlimited amounts of money because they're not technically coordinating with the campaigns.  But what's technically happening and what's happening sort of O.J. are two different things. And I think you're having some of that under the -- just under the table coordination between the government and the phone companies. And that causes me concern.

GARRETT: That's a fantastic discussion. We're going to turn to the future of technology, some interesting innovations. All of that coming up. We'll be back in one minute with more of this outstanding panel. Stay with us.

GARRETT: We're back with more of our panel. And I must say, I'm enjoying this conversation immensely. So I'm just going to put this around the table. Fascinating future of technological innovations, either that we just saw or we're about to see. We'll go around the table. Jeffrey?

KLUGER: Well, for me, all roads lead to space. So I'm excited about what I think we're going to be seeing in space in the following year. The Mars atmospheric probe is going to be arriving at Mars, orbiting Mars, sampling the ancient atmosphere and determining how much it is -- how much of the atmosphere is left and is dynamic and how much we can possibly see of that atmosphere being able to sustain life. We're also going to see increasing private sector launches to the International Space Station. Elon Musk has four launches scheduled for 2014. Orbital Sciences has a launch scheduled in January. The idea that we were going to privatize space, this massive enterprise that requires government, and suddenly doesn't anymore, is sort of kind of working. And I find that exciting.

GARRETT: Fantastic. James?

FALLOWS: What is fascinating to me about technological innovation as a process over the eons is that we tend to market by these big step leaps. You know, this year, it might be Higgs boson, for example, as one big leap. But usually what matters more is the incremental, day by day, month by month accumulation. There's a famous line, I think from Bill Gates, it may have been somebody else, that we tend to overestimate what will happen in six months and underestimate how much things can change in five years. And so the things that are moving quickly now are storage capacity and computers' processing capacity, visual technology and all the rest. We've just discussed, in the previous segment, the bad side of that. I think the good sides of it, especially in medical care, and finding ways to plumb the secrets of what have been mankind's, you know, worst illnesses. And so I think a public health revolution that's both public and personalized is the thing I'm next looking forward to.

GARRETT: Laura?

SYDELL: Well, I would say 3-D printing fascinates me. And I -- I do think, you know, things happen incrementally and then suddenly, it's everywhere. And I think...

GARRETT: Help our audience understand what 3-D printing is.

SYDELL: So 3-D printing, you literally have a printer which you put sort of a powder that might be -- now it's -- it could even be ceramics. I'm hearing they're going to 3-D print chocolate. And the printer takes software that you've put in that's three- dimensional and it prints out a three-dimensional object. Now, it's getting into the mainstream because it was on "Grey's Anatomy," OK? They...

(CROSSTALK)

SYDELL: They saved a child's life in "Grey's Anatomy" because they were able to print heart valves. And they did this daring thing. They said, should we do it? You know, it became a controversy in the show. And I think that in the next year, you're going to be hearing more about 3-D printing. They're going into classrooms. So, for example, if you are studying a work of art, The Smithsonian has released high quality scans on the Web. In your classroom, if you have a 3-D printer -- and they're getting cheaper and cheaper. You can even get one for $300 now -- you will be able to say 3-D print, I don't know, Michelangelo's David and look at it. And the experience of looking at a sculpture in a book is very different from actually looking at a model.

GARRETT: You mentioned chocolate. If they get to the point where they can 3-D print a T-bone steak, I'm right there.

SYDELL: They're not quite there, but they will be doing it with chocolate.

GARRETT: Seth, what's on your mind?

FLETCHER: You know, I think both augmented reality and then, to go a little bit further, virtual reality. And what I mean by that is augmented reality through wearable computing, Google Glass. And now there are competitors to Google Glass. I don't think Google Glass is there yet. But if we imagine this technology being embedded into the frame of your existing eyeglasses as a tiny dot so that it's overlaying your surroundings with information, you know, whether it flies or not, there are a lot of people working on it and there's a lot of money going into it.

GARRETT: And not just wearable technology, but technology in your wallet. This could be useful to me, certainly, in certain respects, when it tells you where you've lost it.

(CROSSTALK)

GARRETT: Where your keys are. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

GARRETT: Things that constantly record where they are in relationship to you. Now, this goes back to Edward Snowden's Christmas message. We're saying a child born in this world now will have no concept of what it's like to have an untracked, untrackable, unnoticed moment in their lives. This would be, I guess, the down dark side of it. But that wearable and then findable technology embedded in things...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

GARRETT: -- all sorts of things, right, Seth?

FLETCHER: Right. I mean, you know, this is the Internet of things that -- the idea is that every device you own will be embedded with some sort of sensor that can track it. And there -- there would be a lot of good benefits to this, pursuing energy savings. You know, you talk about a home, your house, you know, turns off the heat and dims the lights as soon as you leave and then dials them back up once you walk in the door. There are a lots of -- there are lots of...

(CROSSTALK)

GARRETT: -- but, James, you think we're on the verge of breakthroughs in convenience and efficiency, driven a lot by this technology?

FALLOWS: Yes. And so the technological real revolutions of the past generation have all been in the virtual space -- in computers, sophistication and speed, storage, costs, everything else. We may now see this applied to the physical world, whether it's energy, which is the world's greatest challenge, in my view, over the next generation; whether it's transportation, if you can print things locally -- this 3-D printer looks sort of like a big fish aquarium. And it produces things inside. That reduces some transport costs. So if we have ways to take the virtual achievements, again, who's -- who's downsize we're talking about with the NSA and apply those to the physical problems of transportation, of energy, of health, of a manufacturing location, that can be significant.

GARRETT: Let me put something on the table that speaks to the transformative qualities of these technologies. In some respects, they take the human being out of the labor process. And can the economic system accommodate for a 3-D printer or other technologies that completely eliminate the human component at all, or robotics, that even go farther than that? Can this economic system that has a foundation in humanity...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

GARRETT: -- co-exist with these technological advancements?

KLUGER: Now, I -- I think there are a couple of ways to look at this. First, this is a question that has ever been asked. As soon as factories became mechanized and even the crudest robots were used, we sounded the death knell for American labor. And there was reason to think that. This wasn't just a lot of hysterics, because jobs are displaced. There is a lot of disruption that happens with this. I do think that the more this happens, the fewer jobs you're creating, the more jobs you're eliminating. And this comes on the heels of a global recession, which is problematic. It is also, though, to be said that the ecosystem of these systems is such that as you eliminate jobs, you do create other jobs in innovating these new machines and find -- these machines, robots don't spring into life de novo. There are people who design them and engineer them and must manufacture them. So you shut down a plant here and then you open up another plant to build the robots.

Whether you'll have a one for one and keep the jobs, I don't know.

GARRETT: James, you've been thinking about this for a very long time.

FALLOWS: Yes. I think it's a problem that has always been solved and unsolved with each wave of technological innovation. Solved in the sense that there are new occupations that nobody would have even dreamed of 50 years ago, 100 years ago. People are working as search engine technologists now. Even 30 years ago, people would have said, what is that job? And it's a huge employment base now. So it's always been solved in one way, before it moved off the farm and (INAUDIBLE) these other lines of work, and unsolved in different ways. You have inequality problems. You have skill gaps. We're having, increasingly, as the world economy becomes globalized, you have a -- a -- what used to be a national division of labor, within one country you'd have all the different income brackets, now becoming worldwide, where you have a -- it's -- you have replicated in each country some of the people who are displaced by global competition and some of the people who are the new victors. So it's -- we'll have to -- to deal with this era's unsolved challenges.

GARRETT: Living in the Bay Area, Laura, how do you think the technology epicenter of this country is dealing with that, thinking about that or even is it at all? SYDELL: You know, I actually have to say that in the last six months, things have really stirred up in the Bay Area around income inequality. So you have seen more and more protests in San Francisco. Twitter moved in to San Francisco. Jack Dorsey, who is the -- one of the founders of Twitter, recently talked how he wanted to work with the community around it, to make sure there wasn't just income inequality. So people are feeling displaced. The city is filled with engineers, people with new skill bases. So I actually think there is the potential for a lot of resentment along the way. And if, as is often the case, Silicon Valley is the bellwether of where things are going, it may be that this kind of sentiment is going to move elsewhere.

GARRETT: Seth, let me give you the last word on this topic and then also let you be the first to talk about the thing you are most interested in, in 2014 or 2015 technology, innovation. And then we'll round it out with everybody else. So, Seth?

FLETCHER: I think James makes a very good point here. I mean, we'll adjust somehow. What the effect will be on net employment and unemployment, I'm not sure. I think the bright spot here is the possibility of people working with machines, where machines do the things that they're good at and we do the things we're -- we're good at, you know, both in the intellectual space, designing things, and then even in the physical space, working alongside robots in factories. And for 2014 I'll go to the consumer technology space right now. Something I'm very curious about is virtual reality, a relic of the '90s that I think may make a comeback...

(LAUGHTER)

... because of this device called the oculus rift. So we'll see. I'm going to the consumer electronics show next week and we'll see how -- how that...

GARRETT: Oculus...

FLETCHER: Oculus rift.

(CROSSTALK)

FLETCHER: ... prototype...

GARRETT: It sounds like a character in a Harry Potter book.

FLETCHER: It does.

GARRETT: We'll move on.

(LAUGHTER)

Laura?

SYDELL: Well, I mean, on that front, I was thinking, actually, about Google Glass, in terms of the scarier innovations, and the fact that, ultimately, we could also be able to track where people are gazing.

GARRETT: Where people are gazing? Names?

(CROSSTALK)

GARRETT: That -- that -- someone could make an entire career out of where you've gazed your entire life. We've got about a minute left for the two of you, so I need to speed you along, a little bit.

FALLOWS: OK, so consistent with the idea that energy is humanity's greatest challenge now, I look forward to breakthroughs in energy technology ranging from better battery life to something you've written about and I have, too, which is the use of algae for...

(LAUGHTER)

... as a fuel source. GARRETT: It's not plastics anymore, ladies and gentlemen -- algae.

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey, you get the last word.

KLUGER: OK, well, what scares me and intrigues me the most is the next step in biometrics, which is actually allowing us to be our own key fob so that our computers go on when we are there.

DARPA and Motorola are looking at this both with temporary tattoos that you wear that have microscopic antennas in them that allow your computer to start in your own presence and a daily password pill that you take. It's activated by the -- your stomach acids, which work as the electrolytes. That becomes what activates your computer. It passes from you and then you take another one the next day.

GARRETT: With that...

(LAUGHTER)

... we will be right back.

GARRETT: That's it for us today. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Bob Schieffer will be back next week. From all of us at "Face the Nation" and CBS News, have a very happy new year.