[Poppy Harlow, Cnn Anchor:] As investigators hunt for answers in the San Bernardino attack, new questions right now about what the fed's can do, what the federal government can do when it comes to digging into this couple, these mass murder's past, their digital past specifically. The NSA just last month, just four days ago before the attack, ended its controversial bulk data collection surveillance program. That program began after the 911 attacks and would allow the government to review and analyze five years worth of phone records for the couple involved in the San Bernardino attack. Now they cannot collect that much data. The operation came under fire two years ago after former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked key details of it. Investigators are working under a new set of rules and stipulations to try to examine these killers' communications. They say this couple tried to erase their digital footprint. We know from our Pamela Brown's reporting, they smashed cell phones and they removed computer hard drives. Joining me now is CNN military analyst and NSA former deputy director and Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighten; also is Rod Beckstrom, former director of National Cyber Security Center. When you look at this, you want to be very clear here, what we know is that this program changed four days before this attack and now what is legally allowed is two years, Cedric, of bulk data collection, not five. It's also critical because the wife, Tashfeen Malik, just came to the United States two years ago. Does that make a critical difference in what investigators can gather here, the two versus five years?
[Col. Cedric Leighton, Cnn Military Analyst:] Usually, most of the things that you see are going to be that immediate period before a terrorist attack. It you're conducting a law enforcement investigation, you are going to go back from the time of that incident and you will go into their past as much as you can. So if you only have two years of data that you can collect, that may limit the far past, and it won't eliminate the immediate past. It just depends on how much they moved around during that two-year period, whether or not there was travel, and also the types of communication modes they used during that period.
[Harlow:] I want you both to listen to GOP presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and Governor Chris Christie. They are both in favor of mass surveillance. Here's what they said over the weekend about it.
[Chris Christie, , New Jersey Governor & Presidential Candidate:] It's so wrong for Congress and the president to pull back on surveillance capability with the NSA. So wrong did demoralize communications at end of this last year. The fact is that we need to strengthen our intelligence, strengthen our law enforcement community, and just work as hard as we can to try to intercept this.
[Donald Trump, , Presidential Candidate & Ceo, Trump Organization:] You have people that have to be tracked. If they're Muslims, they're Muslims, but you have people that have to be tracked. And we better be I use the word vigilance. We have to show vigilance. We have to have it. If we don't, we're foolish people.
[Harlow:] Rod, does the curtailing of this program, the NSA bulk data collection program, does it hurt those efforts?
[Rod Beckstrom, Former Ceo, Icann:] You know, referring to the other commentator, I think that two years is an awful lot of data. It's still available here, most likely through the phone companies. Plus, if Mrs. Malik was living overseas until two years, suspected at all, there could be phone records from those previous activities. So I think it's extremely unlikely that this change is going to lead to any denigration in the quality of investigation that can be done.
[Harlow:] Cedric, Pamela Brown reported on the smashed cell phones, hard drives, but also was telling me earlier in the program about how good the fed's are at this. How good the cyber security experts are at retrieving data even from smashed phones. What can they get?
[Leighton:] They can get a lot of things. It also depends on how those phones were smashed. If the data that is resident on the phones themselves is destroyed, that becomes a bit of an issue. But most of the time when people smash phones, they are not zeroized the data. The data needs to be zeroized before it can be considered to be unreadable. And the fed's are good at getting into data that is destroyed in a physical sense. They can also get into data that is deleted in an electronic sense. There are lots of ways they have. And Pamela Brown's report is exactly right. They do some good work and can find most traces in a cyber forensic fashion that normal investigators would not with be able to find.
[Harlow:] Gentlemen, thank you very much. Much more to talk about here. We'll have you both back. Cedric Leighton, Rod Beckstrom, thank you. Next, a neighbor of the San Bernardino shooter reportedly says she did not report the couple's suspicious behavior. Why? Because she was apparently afraid of being labeled a racist. In the era of "See Something, Say Something," where should society draw the line? And where is the legal line? We'll debate that, next.