Rand Paul Quotes

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in Smith v. Maryland that a few days' worth of phone records for a single individual were not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The NSA today, though, collects hundreds of millions of phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans without an individualized warrant.

The NSA is forbidden to 'target' American citizens, green-card holders or companies for surveillance without an individual warrant from a judge.

I want to stand up and cheer until I realize what he told me was all the great things about my privacy except that he really told me between the lines is that he is going to continue to collect all my private records without a warrant.

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 fourth amendment specifically was designed to prohibit general warrants. How could collecting every piece of phone data be perceived as anything but a general warrant?

Ironically, one of the clearer threats to consumer privacy is the government's largely unchecked ability to collect your sensitive information without due process.

NSA surveillance is a complex subject - legally, technically and operationally.

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment.

The Patriot Act unleashed the FBI to search your email, travel and credit records without even a suspicion of wrongdoing.

If we had known that one of those terrorist attacks was coming, could our government have electronically eavesdropped on the attackers without a warrant?

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.

Secrecy at the level of the individual suspect is different from keeping the very existence of massive surveillance programs secret.

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

I can’t allow the U. S. Government to destroy privacy and basic liberties.

… 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.

To say the U.S. government is targeting U.S. persons, to listen to their phone calls and read their emails, is just false.

Just because technological advances have made it easier for the federal government to collect information doesn't mean that our privacy rights can or should be violated on the ground or in the air.

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

I think it's a mistake to downgrade and say surveillance is no big deal. It is a huge deal that we are collecting millions of Americans phone calls and that someone can go to a keyboard and put your name in and search it without a warrant.

The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order.

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.

When the 'New York Times' revealed the warrantless surveillance of voice calls, in December 2005, the telephone companies got nervous.

The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.

That's not how national security works... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens!

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.