The Security Conundrum will look behind and beyond the headlines, examining the history and implementation of the NSA’s operations, the legal questions generated by them, the media’s role in revealing them, and the responsibility of Congress to oversee them. Each session in the series is designed to explore these issues from a different vantage point. The guest speakers, in conversation with Stanford scholars, will probe the problems, explain the political, legal, and technological contours of the NSA actions, and outline the ways to preserve the nation’s security without sacrificing our freedoms.

Mark Udall was the senior US Senator from the state of Colorado from 2009–2015. During his tenure in the US Senate, Senator Udall held various national security committee assignments, both with the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An active member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Udall gained notoriety for his vocal opposition to NSA surveillance programs in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures in June of 2013. However, as early as 2011, Senator Udall called on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify material related to US government surveillance. Following the Snowden revelations, Senator Udall advocated for adopting the recommendations from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, as well as substantively reforming the NSA. 

In a conversation with Amy Zegart, Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and co-director of Stanford’s International Security and Cooperation, Senator Udall will provide a lawmaker’s perspective on the oversight of controversial NSA programs. He will discuss the divide between security and civil liberties, as well as his thoughts on reform of US intelligence collection activities.