Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
Press Roundtable
U.S. Mission to the EU
Brussels, Belgium

May 14, 2007

Secretary Chertoff: Of course I’ve just come from Venice where I was invited to spend some time meeting with the G6 which is the Interior Ministers from six of the countries in the EU -- Italy, Britain, France, Spain, Germany and Poland. That affords a very good opportunity to exchange common concerns with my European colleagues who have similar portfolios.

What I’m here to do in Brussels is to meet with members of the European Parliament. Obviously the issue of exchange of information, particularly passenger information, is a topic of concern. It’s very much in the news. We are currently working under an interim arrangement or understanding that enables us to continue to exercise our authorities to obtain some basic passenger information about people entering the U.S. while preserving the privacy elements which are a concern not only to Europeans but to the United States as well.

We’re looking for a more long-term resolution of this issue because it’s critical to us that we can continue to exercise our legal authority to obtain this information, but we also respect the concern of travelers about the way in which it’s used and I think we’re confident that we have very similar views on the fundamentals and we simply need to take account of some differences in institutional arrangements and governing structures that we have in the United States as compared with those in the European Union.

I don’t know that anyone has previously really addressed the European parliamentarians on this issue. Obviously we negotiate with the Commission, but I certainly think that being transparent and having a conversation with your key parliamentarians is helpful as part of an effort in general to broaden the depth of our relationship and our cooperation dealing with the issue of (inaudible). So that’s what I’m here to do.

Question: I was wondering whether you actually need or want a full-fledged EU-U.S. PNR agreement or if you’d be content with agreeing on general new guidelines on data privacy and just apply your own PNR rules.

Secretary Chertoff: Of course we do have rules on privacy and they’re rules that are backed up with penalties if we violate the rules. So obviously whatever we do in the first instance will have to be done within the framework of our own law.

The arrangement we currently have is what I would describe as an understanding or a series of reciprocal undertakings. Each side states what it’s going to do and then based on the other side’s representations we’re able to go forward and really assure the airlines that they can comply with our law without running afoul of that of protection laws in Europe. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable way to proceed, having that kind of an understanding. I don’t think we need a treaty or anything with great formality, but we’re certainly happy to have some kind of mutual recognition of each other’s points of view and each other’s concerns and have a process and a set of practices that we mutually recognize we’re going to be following. That’s what I would call, to use a lawyer’s term, kind of reciprocal unilateral undertakings.

Question: So you continue that, having this deal saying how long you can keep the data and how much data you can use and which agency can access --

Secretary Chertoff: I think the idea would be we would tell the Europeans here’s how we’re going to share, here’s our data retention, and understand that we’re going to agree to these things which I think and hope will address European concerns. The Europeans would then undertake in return to assure the airlines they are not going to be sued or in some ways penalized for agreeing to share the information with us, or in fact living up to their obligation to share the information with us. So in that sense we would have an understanding or an agreement between the EU and the U.S. about what each is going to do, and that reciprocal set of understandings I think gives everybody what they need.

Question: That wouldn’t be legally binding.

Secretary Chertoff: It would be binding in the sense that any understandings are. If one side is trying to change the understanding, the other side would obviously be free to revisit its understanding. It’s not going to be something you go to court over, but it is what we sometimes call a gentleperson’s agreement or a handshake agreement. Something of that sort.

Question: Washington has set out quite clearly what it would like. How do you see the Europeans responding? What do you think they’re going to do about it?

Secretary Chertoff: I’m hopeful that we can reach a meeting of the minds on this because I don’t think what we’re requesting is substantially different from what Europeans do. It’s consistently what we’ve been doing over the least year which I don’t think has caused anybody any heartburn.

Our fundamental principle is the same, which is that we want to limit the use of this information for dealing with, keeping out, terrorists or keeping out serious transnational criminals. I don’t think there can be an objection to that. We want to be able to share, obviously, within our official government agencies who all agree to abide by the same conditions of protection. I don’t see any real objection to that.

Obviously there are going to be some different points of view on the details, but I’m optimistic that our fundamental principles are the same.

At the end of the day, from our standpoint, it begins with the proposition that just as Europeans have a right to know who comes into Europe, we have a right to know who comes into the United States. And to make a determination about who we want to let in and who we want to return based on a reasonable amount of information, nothing that’s terribly private, but information that enables us to determine who might be a threat.

So with that fundamental understanding that every country has a right to defend itself -- no one will ever give that up -- we need to find a way to reassure Europeans and the rest of the world that our fundamental privacy principles are compatible with everybody else’s, but also to make sure that we don’t become so bureaucratic in how we go about protecting privacy that we actually can’t do the fundamental job of providing for the security of our own country.

Question: You mentioned that your fundamental principles are the same. As I’m sure you’ll enjoy later when you meet with the European Parliament, there are many there, and others civil libertarians in Europe, who would argue there’s a complete fundamental disjunction between the American and the European approach. Can you talk a little bit about how you can bridge that gap? There does seem to be a complete cultural clash between how to reconcile security with civil liberty.

Secretary Chertoff: I certainly have spent a lot of time with my counterparts in the Ministries of the Interior, and I don’t see any of them in Europe who disagree with the fundamental importance of security. Anybody who lived through the London bomb plot of last August, which had it not been disrupted would have caused the death of thousands of people, and by the way, would have been the end pretty much of transatlantic air travel as we know it because it would have been a huge impact on the airlines. If several airliners had been blown up over the Atlantic Ocean, I think it would have had a major impact on international travel. Anybody who lived through that understands that if you don’t have security and you don’t have a way of checking who’s getting on planes and who’s coming into your country, you are putting people at risk. I’d be amazed if there were people who disagreed with that and who thought that there’s no threat and we just should treat the whole issue as if it’s not a matter of concern.

In terms of fundamental principles of privacy, again, we have under our laws rules about maintaining information privately, not misusing it. We have a whole Constitution that is devoted to preserving elements of privacy whether it’s the privacy of your home or restrictions with respect to other kinds of government activity.

Are there some cultural and historical differences? Sure. I’ll give you an example.

In the United States we don’t have national identity cards which you’re required to carry. My understanding is here in Belgium you have an identity card and if you don’t carry it, the police can ask you for it and if you don’t have it they can take you to the police station. In the United States that would be considered completely unacceptable as an affront to civil liberties. That doesn’t mean the United States is better; it just means that historically we have viewed that as something that is not acceptable. The history and tradition here is different.

The reverse is that there’s a concern about data protection here that probably goes beyond what we have in the United States. Here, I’m given to understand, some people believe the way to protect privacy is to stovepipe information. Every agency can only use the information it has and they can’t share that information on a regular basis. We’re different.

The whole lesson of the 9/11 Commission. The entirety of that investigation over several months and that several hundred page report really boils down to this. You must be able to connect the dots by sharing information about government agencies. Repeating what we had prior to 9/11 which is some of the information is in the FBI, some of the information is in the CIA, they don’t talk to each other, and as a consequence people come in and kill 3,000 Americans, that’s not acceptable in America. Again, our traditions and our experiences are different.

Does that mean that there’s a fundamental disjunction in our value of protecting privacy and liberty? No. Both Europe and the United States are very concerned about protecting people’s privacy and liberty. It does mean because of our historical experiences we tend to express the concern by putting a little bit different weight on different elements of privacy in the --

Question: Let me ask you just a follow-up. The Europeans, and [European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Franco] Frattini himself has expressed frustration at the lack of data sharing across EU member states. I just wonder from your point of view what the deepest frustrations are in terms of information sharing in Europe.

I remember you mentioned several months ago that if someone found an al-Qaeda computer in Afghanistan and wanted to find out if people were planning on entering the U.S., that that would be impossible under the passenger protection. Is that --

Secretary Chertoff: I think under our current passenger -- I’ll give you an example. If we -- under the current regime of passenger name record targeting -- if we had been using this prior to 9/11 we could have identified and stopped most, if not all, of the 19 attackers.

For example, two of the hijackers had appeared on the U.S. watch list, so under the system we have now we would have flagged them when they bought their tickets. Then, using this kind of information we would have seen that three of the other hijackers used the same addresses as the two that are on the watch list, including Mohammed Atta. Now we would have known the identity of five of the hijackers. Another hijacker used the same frequent flyer number as one of the ones that was on the watch list. That would have given us a sixth hijacker. Five other hijackers used the same phone number as Mohammed Atta, so taking the chain of steps further, that would have been 11 hijackers.

So just going three clicks of the mouse, so to speak, to use a phrase someone else used, we would have had 11 of the 19 hijackers.

I think under a system that prevented us from sharing this information or obtaining this information we wouldn’t be able to do that. So that’s an example of exactly what we would be giving up if we gave up the authorities that we have now.

Question: Also maybe to understand the [inaudible], to what extent do you consider the EU as an transit point for terrorism going towards the U.S.?

Secretary Chertoff: I’m sorry, I’m not sure I quite caught that.

Question: To what extent do you consider the EU, what’s happening into the EU, to EU countries, as a potential terrorism threat towards the U.S.?

Secretary Chertoff: Obviously we look at, there was a bombing in London in July 2005. There was a bombing in Madrid a couple of years ago. There was the London airline plot which was frustrated last August. There were bombings in North Africa recently, which is on the doorstep of Europe. Obviously we have to be concerned about whether there are terrorists who would either originate out of home-grown cells in Europe or might transit into Europe and come into the United States. Because we have a visa waiver program we don’t interview citizens of European countries who come in. Therefore that’s one level of protection we’ve given up. So we do obviously have a concern about whether people might exploit that visa waiver program in order to come into the United States. I think it’s a concern Europeans share as they look at the problem within their own countries and within the Schengen area about people who might become exploited and might exploit the freedom of movement in order to commit acts of terror.

Obviously the vast majority of the Europeans who are coming to the U.S. are perfectly innocent and we encourage them to come. But so as not to spoil it for the innocent people, we have to make sure that dangerous people don’t take advantage.

Question: Can you qualify this concern or this level of concern you see from people traveling from the EU to the U.S.?

Secretary Chertoff: I don’t think I can give you a scale of one to ten. I think that we, the observation of the terrorist attacks in Europe, if you listen to what Peter Clarke, the chief counter-terrorism police official in Britain has said, he’s talked about the concern of a significant number of plots that they’re following in Britain, and a significant number of individuals in Britain who they believe are involved in terrorist activity. I’m sure there are comparable types of threats inside other countries in Europe. You just have to open up your newspaper to see from time to time the arrests that are made by authorities.

To the extent these are people who are nationals of European countries and are under the visa waiver structure, we need to make sure they’re not taking advantage of the lack of a visa requirement to come into the United States.

Question: On that point, that visa [inaudible] scheme, there were some reports a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. might consider applying restrictions to certain citizens of EU member states over concerns that they would exploit the visa waiver program. One of the things that was mentioned was [inaudible] for example.

Secretary Chertoff: That was false.

Question: Do you have any other plans tailored to --

Secretary Chertoff: No, we don’t plan to tailor the visa waiver program. What we are -- We are interested in people’s behavior. That’s the way in which we want to deal with identifying threats. If people communicate with terrorists or if their behavior indicates they’re a threat, that’s what we’re focused on.

We’re going to treat the visa waiver countries, including any new countries who come in, in identical fashion. There’s legislation that we’ve proposed to Congress, the President talked about late last year, that would do two things. It would loosen up some of the restrictions on admission to the visa waiver program as it relates to visa denials; but at the same time it would require some more information from every traveler, from all countries under the visa waiver program, in Europe and overseas, Europe and in Asia, that would generally elevate the security level.

But the point I want to emphasize is, whatever elevation of standard will apply across the board, equally to everybody. We’re not going to pick and choose among some visa waiver countries and favor some and disfavor others. That’s out of the question and it hasn’t even crossed anybody’s mind. Still less are we going to pick and choose among having different requirements for different sub-groups within individual countries.

Question: You mentioned before the cultural and historical differences between Americans and Europeans addressing these issues. From your point of view, from the other side of the ocean, would you see the EU as a whole on this? Or would you identify some countries closer to your views and more willing to come forward on an agreement with you? And would you envisage ultimately the possibility of establishing bilateral deals with some European countries?

Secretary Chertoff: We’ve been talking to the EU. I’m always loathe to get into the discussion of what the competencies of the EU versus the individual nations is. First of all, because it’s a complicated area of law; and secondly, it’s not my place to intrude into the politics of the European Union vis-à-vis its individual nations.

We do with the visa waiver program obviously deal on an individual national level because A, our law requires us to; and B, one of the critical concerns on admission to the visa waiver program is the management of your passports. Currently, as I understand it, passports are controlled on a national level within the EU. The EU does not have a common standard and a common control over all the passports. So essentially the EU itself has limitations on its own authority in this area.

But on this Passenger Name Record information we’re dealing with the EU now and happy to do so.

Obviously as the European Court decision of -- I believe -- 2006 indicates, this is an area which I believe falls in what they call the third pillar, not the first pillar, so there are some limitations on the EU’s authority. We just have to respect the law here as we find it.

Question: On the visa waiver, is there any chance [inaudible] 12 EU countries who are still out of this program to enter at any time soon?

Secretary Chertoff: Sure, there’s a chance and we’re hopeful we can make progress on that. Right now it requires legislation by Congress and that is, a bill allowing some additional flexibility, that has passed both Houses of Congress. They have not yet passed, not yet joined up together to agree on a final bill. But once Congress acts we will be happy to move forward.

Question: Can you give us any timeframe and tell us maybe which countries would be more prepared than others?

Secretary Chertoff: I can’t predict that right now.

Question: Can I ask you, Mr. Secretary, to elaborate on this vast patchwork of regulations in the EU and what kind of problems this creates for the U.S. in terms of information-sharing? The Europeans themselves complain that they can’t share information and they have police in one country hold information jealously from...

Secretary Chertoff: I have sympathy for that. That’s a problem we wrestle with in our own country. I think the last five years we’ve made a huge step in the direction of sharing. Not only sharing among federal agencies, but sharing between federal, state and local agencies in the United States. So I understand the deep, ingrained culture that causes people to want to horde information because that gives them control over operational activity.

I can only tell you this. The day somebody loses their life because you have pieces of information scattered in different agencies and nobody put them together is the day that everybody’s conscience is going to be troubled. There’s got to be the ability to combat global terrorism by using networking because you can only beat a terror network by using a law enforcement network. If you can’t share information you can’t build a network. If you look all over the world in the 21st Century, the way progress is being made is by information-sharing across the board. And if we retard that in the area of law enforcement and security, we’re handicapping ourselves in dealing with an enemy that is fully exploiting global networking.

Question: Does that mean if Europe were to introduce a PNR system as projected by [inaudible] into the EU that you would not have objections that data on Americans being passed around the EU [inaudible]?

Secretary Chertoff: I think we should proceed on reciprocity. I think we’re prepared to have the same standards apply to us both in terms of security and privacy and we expect the Europeans to obviously put in the same privacy protections that they’re asking us to have in place. And frankly, a world in which it’s harder for terrorists to move around because at every stage people are identifying them is a safer world.

Question: In the EU-U.S. -- in what you’re negotiating now -- what would you want to see different? I understand you feel your hands are sometimes a bit tied by the current agreement.

Secretary Chertoff: Right now I think our current agreement is good. It’s an interim agreement. It’s not a permanent agreement and there are a couple of issues we have yet to resolve that were not addressed, including the question of how long we retain information. So those are things that will have to be finalized if we’re going to put this in place for a longer period of time.

Question: So you basically want more data --

Secretary Chertoff: I don’t --

Question: -- more agencies, or --

Secretary Chertoff: I don’t think we’re looking for more data, I think we’re looking to just have the ability to continue to share the way we’re sharing, make perhaps some small adjustments to eliminate some bureaucratic issues. Then there are a couple of issues which we did not really address in the interim agreement of which the principal one was the length of data retention. That’s an issue which -- it hasn’t come up yet because we haven’t been doing it for that long -- but at some point that will come up and we have to resolve. We need to be able to keep the data for a long enough period of time to enable us to make effective use of it. Our experience has shown that terrorist plots often unfold over many many years and they have a very long time horizon. Again, we can’t afford to blind ourselves to the kinds of connections that would reveal, as I’ve indicated with respect to the hijackers, that there are terrorists who are linked, who are coming to the United States. Those are a couple of issues were going to have to deal with going forward.

Question: About cooperation, a large number of people in European agencies say the Americans want a large number of information but they don’t give us such a large number. Do you agree with that?

Secretary Chertoff: My experience, and I was also at the Department of Justice. We also, sometimes you find pockets of resistance in the United States to sharing. We still haven’t overcome all of those barriers. I believe we ought to share and we ought to get the benefit of sharing. Certainly with my own agencies I make it very clear that I expect us to share information, intelligence, with European counterparts. I have to say my experience has been on both sides, that we have done quite a bit of good sharing. For example, our relationship with the French in terms of sharing has always been quite good, at least in my experience. But as I said, there’s always cultural resistance. That’s something which has to be overcome.

Question: On the SWIFT affair, which I realize is not directly under your remit, what is your personal view as to whether this kind of information taking is justified?

Secretary Chertoff: Because it’s not really my area, therefore I’m not that familiar with the details. I can’t say much about it. All I can tell you is in general, having been involved in the investigation after the 9/11 hijacking, the ability to track financial information was a critical element of how we developed a full picture of who was behind the 9/11 hijacking. In fact it was the movement of money that was the first tip-off about the connections that led from the 19 hijackers back to some of the people who were ultimately involved in the plot, including Moussaoui, who was convicted and pled guilty for being involved in the conspiracy.

So the general principle of being able to get financial information as a critical element in the war on terror is, I think, I don’t think you can argue with that. As to the legal elements, I’m not sufficiently well versed to give you an intelligent answer.

Question: Back to the PNR agreement. I understand that the deadline is July, right? Practically speaking, what happens if you don’t have an agreement by then?

Secretary Chertoff: We obviously have a legal right to require the data. I think the concern is the airlines might then be subject to inconsistent obligations. Everybody recognizes that would be a bad thing. My assumption is we’re going to reach whatever understandings we need to reach to hold the airlines harmless, make sure they don’t get caught between two conflicting rules, and we won’t have a problem.

Question: What would the effect be on the EU and the U.S. [inaudible]?

Secretary Chertoff: It strikes me as not a real likelihood that we’re going to wind up without some kind of arrangement. So I’m not going to assume, start to hypothesize what would happen if somehow there was a breakdown of what I am confident will happen, which is we will find a way to deal with this issue.

Question: You said you’d need to keep this information for a longer time in order to use it effectively. How long would that be?

Secretary Chertoff: That’s exactly the kind of thing I think we probably ought to have a discussion with in private negotiations as opposed to in newspapers.

Question: On what other fields would you be more willing to come forward to meet where European demands are concerned?

Secretary Chertoff: I think if you -- Again, I don’t usually like to negotiate through the newspapers. We were able to reach an accommodation on an interim basis with the agreement that we signed last year. I think in many respects the elements of that are reasonable elements. They may need some adjustment, but they’re within what, we use the expression within the ball park, or within the soccer stadium of where we want to get.

Again, there was a lot of hand wringing about whether we were going to be able to reach that agreement. We did. Because it’s interim and because there are some issues it doesn’t address, we have to obviously work out an arrangement going forward, but again, that lays out the kinds of things that we’re able to, I think, have a meeting of the minds on in order to satisfy both sides.

Question: People in Brussels including, I think, Commissioner Frattini when I interviewed him last month, was saying that the U.S. -- or some parts of the U.S. administration -- did not actually want a new EU-U.S. PNR deal, but maybe just wanted individual deals with countries or airlines, or just general guidelines. Because it would be easier for you. Is that correct?

Secretary Chertoff: I think we want to get this problem solved. I don’t see any reason we can’t work out an arrangement with the EU. We did it last year. Obviously there are some issues that have to be addressed. It would be convenient for everybody to do it that way. So that’s what we’re going to try to do.

Question: Can I ask about home-grown terrorism?

Secretary Chertoff: Yes.

Question: Having traveled around Europe the last few years writing about this, it seems that Islamic radicalism is increasing rather than diminishing here. With the rise of anti-immigrant parties, young Muslim men are being increasingly disenfranchised, joining groups like [inuadible] here and on and on and on.

On the other side of the Atlantic we haven’t seen this with the indigenous Muslim population and I just wonder what lessons you think the American experience can bring to bear in Europe as far as home-grown radicalism seems to be one of the biggest root causes.

Secretary Chertoff: Everybody’s spending an awful lot of time thinking and talking about this. One of the discussions that we had with the G6 in Venice was this issue of radicalization and recruitment. Although I think at this point the problem in the U.S. is less than we’ve seen here, I can’t tell you that there’s no problem. We had a case last week or in the last two weeks involving not native-born Americans but some individuals who came over at a young age as refugees from Eastern Europe, or Southeastern Europe, and they’re accused of having been involved in plots, terrorist acts. Obviously there’s a case pending so I can’t talk about it too much.

But I think we have to look at the following issues. Are there ways that we’ve been able to assimilate and bring immigrants into the mainstream that have helped us avoid radicalization and recruitment? Is there a relationship between the fact that in the United States Muslims are generally better educated and more prosperous than the average? Is that a positive factor? What is the psychology of the 21st Century that leads some people to decide they do want to become extremists? How does the internet either promote recruitment or enable people to train themselves or develop a community of extremism that we now have to figure out how to counteract? What is there in the ideology of extremism that is appealing? What does that have to say about some intergenerational conflict, the younger people rebelling against the older generation?

I think there are some common challenges we all face in the West. I think there are some unique challenges for every country because every country has a different experience with migrants. That history and those cultural experiences tend to create different sociological patterns.

We’re trying to understand what is the appeal of this ideology, how do people move from becoming ideologically extreme to becoming operational, wanting to kill themselves.

One of the things that struck me was if you looked at some of the people who were convicted in London in the most recent conviction or have been charged in some of the other terrorist acts, it’s not just teenagers. Some of them are people who have children. Usually individuals with children or people who are married are considered to be stable and to have outgrown the kind of rebelliousness that sometimes leads you into violent behavior. But apparently it’s not necessarily an antidote to this kind of extremism.

This is, I would say, probably strategically the biggest long-term challenge for the West in dealing with this ideological extremism and it also requires us to understand what is going on in other parts of the world where you are seeing that this extremism has at least some appeal to large numbers of people and how do we prevent that from becoming a spawning ground for more terrorist operatives?

Question: Can I ask you a follow-up on that? Do you think that European culture and civil liberties has exacerbated the problem insofar that these groups are allowed to exist. [inaudible] here, for example, is banned in some countries but not in others. In the UK and in some civic courts Sharia can be applied. Do you think the Europeans are being a little bit too liberal with what they’re allowing?

Secretary Chertoff: I don’t think that civil liberties results in radicalization. It’s kind of ironic, because we were talking about the United States being not as civil liberties oriented as Europe. In fact, in this regard, we’re probably much more civil liberties oriented. People in Europe talk, for example, about vetting Imams, deciding which Imams can come in based on what they’re preaching, or regulating the internet. Under our law, we are very restricted in our ability to have anything to say about what a person preaches or what kind of religious views they espouse, unless they step across the line of literally advocating for violence. But as long as they’re just preaching in the abstract, our First Amendment protects religious people from any kind of government intervention.

We couldn’t, for example, bar people from wearing religious headdresses in the United States. That would be unconstitutional except in very limited cases like prisons and the military. Whereas here, I gather, in some countries there’s debate about doing that.

So that’s an area where we actually are much more, probably, civil libertarian oriented. I’m not inclined to think that that’s what causes radicalization.

Question: A more general question. The U.S. sees the war on terror from a military perspective but also from an intelligence and police perspective. Would you say that the first is jeopardizing the second in the sense that it is deviating some financial resources to it? Some of the people [inaudible] that were addressed were on the basis of intelligence information, police action, conventional means. Would you say there is a disbalance in these, in the effectiveness of these two approaches?

Secretary Chertoff: No, I actually think they support each other. I think that military action has sometimes enabled us to gather intelligence or has directly disrupted plots and prevented them from being carried out. I think sometimes police activity has gathered valuable intelligence and disrupted plots. I think that in this kind of 21st Century warfare all of the tools are important. Soft power, police power, military power, intelligence power. I think all of these are useful tactics in the strategy. I think it would be a mistake to put any of them aside because I think they all have value.

Question: A few weeks ago the Dutch Minister of Finance, Mr. Bos, said he would ask an inquiry about the use of financial data on Dutch banks established in the U.S.. Is that right? Are those banks obliged to transmit every information they have about their clients?

Secretary Chertoff: I think you’re getting out of my area of competence here, so you better find somebody who knows exactly what the rules are for banking. That’s one of the few things my department doesn’t regulate.

Question: What else did you discuss at the G6 meeting?

Secretary Chertoff: There was a little press conference afterwards. I would say that the principal areas that I was involved in were radicalization, and John Reed, the Home Secretary, did talk about the need to evaluate whether in the 21st Century some of the legal rules that apply to armed warfare and to domestic law enforcement need to be reviewed in light of the rather unique and novel challenges of terrorism which tends to straddle between conventional notions of warfare and conventional notions of police activity. So he raised that as an issue which I think was in the papers. That was essentially what we discussed.

Thanks very much.