THE PRESIDENT: ..Over the next several weeks, I‘m going to assess based on conversations not just with the intelligence community but others in government and outside of government how we might apply and incorporate their recommendations. And I‘m going to make a pretty definitive statement about all of this in January where I‘ll be able to say, here are the recommendations that we think make sense; here are ones that we think are promising but still need to be refined further; here‘s how it relates to the work we‘re doing not just internally but also in partnership with other countries. And so I‘m taking this very seriously because I think, as I‘ve said before, this is a debate that needed to be had. (…)

There might need to be different checks on how those requests are made. There may be technological solutions that have to be found to do that. And the question that we’re asking ourselves now is, does that make sense not only because of the fact that there are concerns about potential abuse down the road with the metadata that’s being kept by a government rather than private companies, but also does it make sense to do it because people right now are concerned that maybe their phone calls are being listened to, even if they’re not? And we’ve got to factor that in.

So my point is, is that the environment has changed in ways that I think require us to take that into account. But the analysis that I’ve been doing throughout has always been periodically looking at what we’re doing and asking ourselves, are we doing this in the right way? Are we making sure that we’re keeping the American people safe, number one? Are we also being true to our civil liberties and our privacy and our values?

Question: I understand it’s a tough job, and, God forbid, there’s another terror attack, every one of us is going to be second-guessing you, and that is extremely difficult to be in the Oval Office.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s okay. I volunteered.