The Patriot Post® · Arguing Over NSA Snooping Continues

The fight over the NSA’s vast surveillance programs is long from settled. In December, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the dragnet likely violates the Fourth Amendment, but that was soon followed by U.S. District Judge William Pauley’s ruling upholding the program and citing its importance in the fight against terrorists. “This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Pauley wrote. “The collection is broad, but the scope of counterterrorism investigations is unprecedented.” Still, Pauley acknowledged that the program, if not properly overseen, “imperils the civil liberties of every citizen.” That’s precisely the complaint of its opponents.

Meanwhile, Michael Morell, the former acting CIA chief and a member of Barack Obama’s surveillance task force charged with reviewing the NSA program, says that it should be expanded to include more email collection. “This program … has the ability to stop the next 9/11, and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened.” Perhaps, but there were far more fundamental failures to blame.

The program’s continuance, much less its expansion, isn’t going to happen without a fight. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) plans to file suit “to stop Barack Obama’s NSA from snooping on the American people.” Paul also weighed in on Edward Snowden, saying that his theft of classified material and subsequent leaks were illegal and he should have a “fair trial and a reasonable sentence,” but also that “what he revealed was something the government was doing was illegal.” He hammered National Intelligence chief James Clapper, too, for lying to Congress before Snowden’s leaks, and Paul suggested, “[M]aybe if [Clapper and Snowden] served in a prison cell together, we’d become further enlightened as a country over what we should and shouldn’t do.” Indeed, at least the debate is now out in the open.