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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Mike Lee
U.S. Senator, R-Utah
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Lee: The data collection at issue was not limited to those who were actually suspected of terrorist activity, or even necessarily to those who were connected to those suspended of engaging in terrorist activity. Many were, understandably, very concerned about how much and what kind of data was being collected and whether or not this information could be or had been abused by government officials. To date, proponents of the metadata program claim that it cannot be used to identify ordinary American citizens. But earlier this year researchers at Stanford University proved that the very time of meta data collected under section 215 of the Patriot Act could be used to uncover a lot of information, including information about a persons's politics, about what kind of medication they might be taking, about where they go to church, and so on and so forth.
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Mike Lee
U.S. Senator, R-Utah
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Lee: This U.S.A. Freedom Act is a bipartisan piece of legislation that would end bulk data collection of the metadata currently gathered by N.S.A. And it would help address the problem of the American government spying on its own citizens without cause. It also would improve transparency for the data that N.S.A. does collect. It has the support of leaders in our intelligence community, the department of justice, civil liberties groups, the national rifle association, and a whole bunch of tech companies. Opponents say it will impair our national security. They say this bill will keep our intelligence community from protecting us. But what opponents of this bill fail fully to appreciate is that most Americans are deeply, deeply concerned about the collection of their own personal information.
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Mike Lee
U.S. Senator, R-Utah
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Lee: This bill is an opportunity to strike a reasonable commonsense balance between protecting Americans' privacy and, at the same time, protecting our national security. Well, I believe that there are honest, decent people working in our intelligence community, and well, I think this is the norm, the overwhelming norm. I think it's always important to heed a warning given to us centuries ago by James Madison. In Federalist 51 James Madison wrote
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Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator (D- Vermont), Judiciary Committee Chairman
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Leahy: I introduced the original U.S.A. Freedom Act last October with republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner. The judiciary committee held six hearings, public hearings, to address these issues. We learned that the bulk phone records had not, as previously advertised, thwarted 54 terrorist plots or even dozens or even a few. In fact, we learned through our public hearings, after all the talk about we needed this because it thwarted 54 terrorist acts, it may have possibly helped on one. Now, that is an important fact for those who now argue that the N.S.A.'s bulk phone records program is somehow essential to our fight against ISIL. It did nothing to stop ISIL from starting in the first place.
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Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator (D- Vermont), Judiciary Committee Chairman
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Leahy: Our bill protects Americans, enhances privacy protections, it ends indiscriminate data collection, but it keeps the tools our intelligence community needs to protect our nation. That's important to remember, and that's why our intelligence community strongly supports this bill. I worked in law enforcement. I’m a native of Vermont where the right of privacy is cherished. I know we can have both liberty and security.
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Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator (D- Vermont), Judiciary Committee Chairman
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Leahy: The U.S.A. Freedom Act provides for commonsense reforms to government surveillance. It promotes greater accountability and transparency in the government's surveillance programs and improves the FISA courts. It is a carefully crafted bill. It builds on what the House of Representatives did. It has the support of the Director of National Intelligence, the Attorney General, the Director of N.S.A., American technology companies, the privacy and civil liberty groups across the political spectrum ranging from the N.R.A. to the ACLU and TechFreedom. Lawmakers from all parts of the political spectrum from the right to the left support this bill. They know it's a reasonable and responsible compromise.
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Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator (D- Vermont), Judiciary Committee Chairman
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Leahy: As both the ACLU and the N.R.A. pointed out, every day the Senate fails to vote on these reforms is a day in which law-abiding citizens have reason to fear that the constitutional protections so dear to the founders and so crucial to the functioning of our free society no longer apply. Echoing actually the words we just heard from the Senator from Utah. Every day we fail to act is another day American businesses are harmed. One conservative think tank says the mistrust engendered by the N.S.A.'s programs could cost the U.S. technology industry between $35 billion and $180 billion over the next three years. That's a staggering amount. So let's listen to the intelligence community. Ask the Director of National Intelligence. He'll tell you it's far better for our national security and for our fight against terrorism if we pass this.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: God forbid we wake up tomorrow morning and wake up to the news that a member of ISIL is in the United States and federal agencies need to determine who this person is coordinating with to carry out a potential attack within the homeland. And one of the tools they will use is a tool that allows them to see the people they've been calling and interacting with so we can disrupt that cell before they carry out a horrifying attack that could kill millions of people. Today we are able to do that because of a program that -- that collects those records and keeps them not in the hands of anyone who's looking at them on a regular basis but keeps them readily available to the government so the government can access those records and disrupt that plot. What this bill would do is take that apart. It would, in essence, ask the companies to keep those records in the hopes that they would but under this plan if this were to pass, if suddenly we were to go target these members of ISIL and find out who they are coordinating with, those records may not be there and that plot may, indeed, go forward. And that would be a horrifying result.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: And here's why this doesn't make sense. First of all, we are rushing this to the floor of the senate in the lame-duck session on an issue that doesn't even expire until next year, on a bill that wasn't even listened to or heard in a committee and they cannot cite a single example of this program ever being abused. Not one simple example of this specific program being abused by anybody intentionally. Not one. So we are dealing with a theoretical threat. The second thing is, that even as we speak, law enforcement agencies investigating a common crime don't even need to go to a court to access these very same records. They could just issue an administrative subpoena and get ahold of them. So we are actually making it hard to her go after a terrorist than it will be to go after a common criminal.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: And this is happening at a time when homegrown violent extremism is the single fastest-growing threat to the United States. People here at home that have been radicalized even on the internet and people that have traveled to the middle east and been radicalized in the hopes of returning and carrying out attacks here.
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