Tom Fitton Quotes

The Obama administration says we only destroy the privacy of non-Americans. That is not true. The government is spying on Americans.

First, I have the privilege of being Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is not an oxymoron I assure you.

You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.

Americans don’t spy on Americans.

This country, for reasons of history, culture and therefore law, has had an allergy to domestic intelligence.

Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied.

Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

The message to the NSA is coming from every branch of our government, from every corner of our nation. NSA, you’ve gone too far!

The intelligence agencies sometimes abuse people. The FBI abused Martin Luther King.

The NSA surveillance programs have crossed the line of proportionality. Even if one could conceivably justify the initial inadvertent interception of baby pictures and love letters of innocent bystanders, their continued storage in Government databases is both troubling and dangerous. Who knows how the information will be used in the future?

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.

Ever since 9/11, our intelligence agencies, as part of the 'war on terror,' have expanded their operations to include American citizens. I was 'terrorized' when I learned that the National Security Agency was intercepting information on Americans.

I believe there is significant overreach by the NSA in how it monitors American citizens.

We've got the NSA getting logs of every call you make. The IRS is weaponized like Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of.

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA's compliance record.

We need to protect the privacy rights of all Americans, and that means stopping the federal government from spying on the cellphones and emails of law-abiding citizens.

For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.

The government can still conduct clandestine searches of innocent people's private information such as library, medical, and financial records. This is wrong and should have been addressed in a true compromise.

The PATRIOT Act brought down the wall separating intelligence agencies from law enforcement and other entities charged with protecting the Nation from terrorism.

Say what you will about Americans, but one thing they are not is passive. The Bush administration may have pushed through the Patriot Act weeks after 11 September, but, as the American public got to grips with how the law was affecting their individual rights, their protests grew loud and angry.

There is not much of a bureaucratic leap, if history is any guide, between a seemingly benign call for 'continuous situational awareness' and the onset of a covert and illegal campaign of domestic surveillance.

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.

There's a long history of private-company cooperation with the NSA that dates back to at least the 1970s.

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

How will we defend ourselves if the Patriot Act expires? Well, perhaps we could just rely on the Constitution and demonstrate exactly how traditional judicial warrants can gather all the info we need - and how bulk collection really hasn't worked.