What Fourth Amendment?
Senators Jeff Merkley, Mark Udall and Ron Wyden are speaking out about the
latest revelations about
domestic spying. Over two years ago
Merkley, Udall and Wyden warned about the administration's surveillance overrreach:
"I want to deliver a warning this afternoon,” Wyden said. “When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry."
They should be stunned and angry, and they should not be making excuses, no matter their partisan sympathies, and no matter the
rationalizations and
denials.
With his votes and his public comments, Merkley has tried to defend the right to privacy, and Thursday he released this statement:
This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans' privacy. I have had significant concerns about the intelligence community over-collecting information about Americans’ telephone calls, emails, and other records and that is why I voted against the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions in 2011 and the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act just six months ago.
This bulk data collection is being done under interpretations of the law that have been kept secret from the public. Significant FISA court opinions that determine the scope of our laws should be declassified. Can the FBI or the NSA really claim that they need data scooped up on tens of millions of Americans?
As for
Udall:
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) says he “did everything short of leaking classified information” to bring attention to the National Security Administration’s seizure of Americans’ phone records.
“I did everything in my power to bring attention” to the program, he told the Denver Post.
Udall alluded to the program’s existence earlier this year as Congress debated reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the Senate floor, tying up a vote on reauthorizing the law for several days. During the debate, Feinstein and Chambliss, among others, angrily defended the program, saying it would be necessary to continue effective counterterrorism operations.
And
Wyden:
Wyden, a high-ranking Democratic senator on the committee, said he had been concerned about such surveillance for a long time but continues to be barred by Senate rules from discussing many of the details that he learned in classified intelligence briefings.
"However, I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information," Wyden said. "Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans’ privacy."
We need to support the
leadership of Merkley,
Wyden and Udall. Because there are plenty of people, both in Washington and elsewhere, who don't.
