The Obama administration has framed its defense of the controversial bulk collection of all American phone records as necessary to prevent a future 9/11.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in Smith v. Maryland that a few days' worth of phone records for a single individual were not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The NSA today, though, collects hundreds of millions of phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans without an individualized warrant.
Opponents of civil liberties contend the NSA data collection has made our country more safe, but even the most vocal defenders of the program have failed to identify a single thwarted plot.
The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America.
Well that's true, and what is actually happening now is that there are accusations that those records contain conspiratorial information that has been concealed from the American people and that is a dangerous situation that just cannot be tolerated.
I'm not against the NSA. I'm not against spying; I'm not against looking at phone records.
What I believe is that a lot of the NSA's telephone metadata program is the result of misinformation spread by a traitor, Edward Snowden.
There is a real hunger for information about Obama and a sense that information is not being covered or, in some cases, even being withheld. There is a sense that there are elements of the media that are protective of Obama, that they would rather block a story that is embarassing about Obama than let the American public decide.
The NSA is not listening to anyone's phone calls. They're not reading any Americans' e-mails. They're collecting simply the data that your phone company already has, and which you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, so they can search that data quickly in the event of a terrorist plot.
I long ago lost track of the number of times the Obama administration has assured everyone that its vacuum-cleaner approach to electronic surveillance does not threaten the privacy or the rights of Americans.
The Obama administration is fighting to block access to names of visitors to the White House, taking up the Bush administration argument that a president doesn't have to reveal who comes calling to influence policy decisions.
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