Andrew Rosenthal Quotes

We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious FISA court

Since the first Patriot Act, as this has evolved, more and more of the privacy of Americans is disappearing. And that’s going to hurt us; it’s not going to make us safer.

We cannot go up on a wire. We cannot do a search without a judge on the FISA Court approving it and determining that we have met the standard that has been set forth by Congress in order to utilize these techniques.

In America, after 9/11, and after the death of bin Laden, and after two wars, one of them fought, a lot of people think, on false pretenses, and definitely post the Patriot Act, there are a lot of these questions about what can we do to our citizens in order to prevent the next attack.

Decisive action has been taken on the home front with passage of the USA Patriot Act, which has strengthened the hand of law enforcement agencies to stop terrorists before they can act.

We don’t have to choose between preserving privacy and preventing terrorism. We do have to decide how much oversight and accountability there should be when the government conducts surveillance on its citizens.

… there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome would have been different without the... telephony meta-data program.

I have fiercely criticized both the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies and the Obama administration's - and fiercely defended both as well.

The Patriot Act is essential to our continued success in the war on terror here at home.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.

To defend our country we need to gather intelligence on the enemy, but when the intelligence lies to Congress, how are we to trust them? The phone records of law abiding citizens are none of their damn business.

The Patriot Act addresses various subjects. Some sections are beneficial and enhance our national security.

Now the fact that terrorists throughout the world see this as an opportunity to defeat the United States, we have to be - and every Democratic candidate, even those who opposed us going in, now say we just simply can't cut and run.

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy.

In the last four years under the Patriot Act, we have seen a great increase in the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and track terrorists.

We can go to the American people on this issue of winning the war [against terrorism]. We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America.

There’s always this struggle in a war between liberty and security … during war time we have these excesses and afterwards we apologize.

It's inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

Abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

There isn’t any doubt that in fighting the War on Terrorism you increase the power and scope of government, and it becomes more intrusive.

September 11 was just an excuse to expand the Patriot Act. Legislation which had been proposed for years just got stuck in.

I want to make it clear … that America is not interested in spying on ordinary citizens.