Chris Dodd for President

Thank you. My friends, not far from here stands a building located at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco.

I am sure that address is familiar to some of you. In fact, it is precisely 35.7 miles from the spot on which I am standing.

"Google Maps."

A few years ago, an Internet technician in that building named Mark Klein received an email that informed him someone from the National Security Agency would be visiting.

Indeed, it was Mark Klein who opened the door to let the gentleman in when that day came a short while later.

Not long after, he and a co-worker discovered something unprecedented - a switch that channeled Internet traffic culled from millions of living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and offices across the nation to secret room operated by the NSA. There, that information was collected and processed ostensibly for the purposes of defending the nation.

Was the handover of this information necessary for national security? We have no idea - with very few exceptions, Congress is as much in the dark as the public.

And I believe one would be hard-pressed to understand why our government would need a copy of all Internet traffic to keep us safe.

That we know this happened is not because the government told us - they say the matter is classified.

Not because AT&T told us - they say they are forbidden by law from doing so.

Indeed, we may not have known any of this at all were it not for Mr. Klein, a 22-year veteran of AT&T who was old enough to remember when a law was passed to prevent this very sort of thing from happening in the first place. A law that was expressly written to give the government the tools it needed to defend the country.

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That law—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—was first passed in 1978. It is now before Congress for renewal. Few would argue that it needs to be modernized.

But President Bush is asking Congress to do something else - to give telecom companies immunity for what they've done. To declare not only what happened at AT&T but other telecoms both constitutional and necessary to defend this country.

I come to Google today to tell you:

It is neither.

There was no warrant served - yet these companies simply hand over the personal information of people sitting in this very room.

That is why I have placed a hold on the upcoming renewal of the FISA bill.

If the retroactive immunity clause is not stricken from it, I will go to the floor of the United States Senate - and I will filibuster it.

We do not swear to support and defend the Constitution or protect the country - that is a false choice.

Rather, we defend the Constitution—and the values it expresses—precisely to protect the country.

That has kept us safe for more than two centuries - it is the oath I've taken.

I intend to uphold it - as a Senator and as your President.

Why am I telling you this? Because it's not just about me. It's also about each of you.

What appears to have happened at AT&T was shameful - a massive infringement on the rights of Americans that ultimately makes us less secure, not more so.

Beyond an unprecedented access to information, it is here that the similarities between Google and the telecoms largely end. When FISA was written, the telecoms had been around for about a hundred years.

In 1978, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were five years old and still lived half a world apart. To say that the laws and regulatory structure relating to the Internet are still in their infancy today would be a massive understatement.

And that is precisely why the decisions you make in the coming months and years are so critical.

In less than a decade, you already have the most widely-used search engine in the world, and the ability to track what users look for.

You have one of the most popular free e-mail services in the world.

You are digitally scanning every book in the world—32 million—to create the first universal digital library - with the ability to track who is reading what.

And your tools allow users to virtually store documents, pictures and spreadsheets.

Most recently, you have proposed the "G-Drive," which allows the user to transfer all of the information and documents from one's personal computer onto a virtual hard drive owned by Google.

One can only imagine how eager this Administration must be to get their hands on Google's data.

You hold in your hands a transformative power both vast and unprecedented - the capability to not only transform society but the very notion of society. Of community. Of democracy.

The current Administration thinks you spread democracy through the barrel of a gun - I think we spread it through the power of information and the Internet if we let it.

But if you believe that the Googles of the world can serve as a democratizing force and expand freedoms - after what we have seen in the wake of 9/11, with the sheer amount of information you have, we would be fools to not also believe the other side of that equation:

That such power can also take those freedoms away.

Indeed, that is precisely what Yahoo was criticized for when it was alleged to have assisted the Chinese government in prosecuting dissidents.

It is what you have been criticized for doing in your China venture, Google.cn, which was built to expressly censor subjects the Chinese government deemed controversial.

And it is what you are currently being accused of doing, in assisting the Israeli government with identifying a citizen who made allegations against three members of the Shaarei Tikva Council posted on your Blogger service.

I understand Google is much more than a company - it is also an idea. And working for Google is more than simply a job - it's being a part of that idea.

Having served in the Peace Corps as a young man, in the Dominican Republic, building schools and a health clinic, I know what it's like to be a part of something larger than ourselves.

To care deeply both about what we do as individual - but also as a generation. At home, at work and at the ballot box.

People ask me why I'm running for President. I often think of my two young daughters. Years from now, my children are going to ask me, what I did I do on my watch to keep us safe and secure?

Similarly, yours will ask you - when you worked at the center of the biggest technology company in the history of humankind, what did you do on your watch to ensure this technology was used not to limit the arc of our collective imaginations, but expand it?

What did you do to spread democracy - not stymie it?

No one doubts the principled work you do. I look at Google.org in which you are setting up global information monitoring systems for pandemics. Or your recent venture into alternative energy.

But while every American struggles to find the strength to keep faith with our values in the Internet age, I think you also understand that you have a special obligation as part of this remarkable idea called Google.

Sixty years ago, my father was a top prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War Two. He considered it the most important work of his life and wrote my mother everyday from Germany.

But I think what terrified him most wasn't merely the horrific testimony of Nazi leaders detailing their atrocities. Rather, it was the banality of it all - the complicity of the German people that made such atrocities possible.

Google's unofficial motto is "Don't Be Evil." But in the face of fear and uncertainty, it's not enough to not be "evil." You need to do good. In many ways, Google already is - but to face our challenges and to reject fear, you need to do better.

That is why I challenge you today to pledge that you will stand up for best practices - as a company, but also as individuals.

Practices that increase transparency and support technologies that expand free expression, reject business with repressive states, and protect users in those countries.

That is how the Internet can be part of something greater than ourselves and spread democratic principles around the world.

And you can start with this:

By telling the Chinese government that Google.cn will no longer censor information with Google's consent. And should the Chinese government not find that acceptable, Google.cn will be shut down.

I know you have already moved all of your search records out of China to prevent them from being turned over to the Chinese government.

But what better way to affirm Google's commitment to democracy and the free flow of information as a human right than to send this message to the country with the largest population in the world?

And because I know your commitment to standing up for democracy abroad also extends to our shores, I am asking today for another pledge:

Should this or any Administration seek the personal or private records you hold on anyone in our country, you will not simply ask to be presented with a warrant - you will insist on one. And if the Administration cannot produce a warrant, you will show them the door. I am asking you to uphold your most fundamental commitment to the public - that you not produce those records outside of the law.

When Google acts, others follow. Standing up in these instances will not only be good for business ethics - I think they will also be good for business.

Darwin said, "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

But one way we respond to change is to stand up for that which does not - our principles.

Despite what this Administration has done, our Constitution is transcendent - its underlying principles enduring, many of which have been around since the Magna Carta.

What they are not is temporary. And what we do not do is abandon our Constitution and the rule of law when our principles are at risk.

Indeed, as my father's work at Nuremberg showed and the sixty years of moral authority that followed, it is not simply the example of our force that keeps us safe - but also the force of our example.

So today, I ask you:

Where does the map you chart in the 21st century lead?

In the direction of strength and imagination, freedom, community and shared responsibility? In the direction of democracy?

Or does it end here at Mountain View?

It's your choice.

But it's our watch.

Thank you.