While reps. Matt Salmon and Raul Grijalva praised the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the NSA’s domestic metadata spying program is not authorized by section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Senator John McCain blasted the decision.
“Members of Congress have long maintained that the domestic spying operations currently employed by the Executive Branch against American citizens are unconstitutional. Rather than respect the will of the people, the Executive Branch has pretended that it is interpreting the USA PATRIOT Act correctly and continued behavior that is in direct violation to our constitution,” said Salmon in a statement released on Thursday. “While it’s true that government has a duty to protect the nation, we must take care to do it in a way that protects the civil liberties of all Americans.
“When even the law’s principal author has ardently maintained that these actions are against the intent of the legislation, the outcome of this case at the trial court should’ve been easy to read. Fortunately, today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has corrected the district court’s error and remanded the case to them for consideration of the Constitutional violations so clearly present. I look forward to seeing the outcome of that case,” concluded Salmon, who serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairs Grijalva and Rep. Keith Ellison celebrated the decision in a joint statement.
“The Second Circuit’s ruling today is welcome news to Americans who want their civil liberties protected. Mass collection of phone records violates our right to privacy and makes for bad law enforcement. The Congressional Progressive Caucus called for the end of the NSA’s bulk telephone data collection program in 2013 when its existence became public,” stated the Progressive Caucus leaders.
“Our resources are too important to waste on programs that don’t make American families any safer and come at the expense of the freedoms we swear to protect. We applaud the court’s ruling that the NSA’s systematic collection of data on the private lives of Americans is unjustified and illegal,” concluded Grijalva and Ellison.
Rep. Paul Gosar, released a statement calling the decision a “huge victory for individual liberty and protecting YOUR privacy rights.” Gosar continued, “I have always defended the Fourth Amendment and voted to limit the NSA’s ability to use taxpayer money to spy on its own citizens. It is possible to strike an effective balance between protecting our country while still upholding the Constitutional rights of all Americans.”
“I was disappointed by today’s federal appellate court decision, which is contrary to forty other court decisions affirming the legality of this important program that our intelligence agencies use to protect our nation,” said McCain in a statement released Thursday.
“We were reminded again in Texas this week that the dark forces of radical Islamic extremism remain determined to carry out attacks against our nation. These serious threats increasingly include homegrown violent extremism right here in the United States. We must do everything in our power to stop these attacks before they happen. To do so, we must make sure that our intelligence agencies have the necessary tools in their toolbox to get the job done. That’s why it is so important that Congress reauthorize the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which provide our intelligence agencies the authorities they need to protect the American people,” continued McCain.
“While programs provided for under FISA must carefully balance legitimate privacy concerns with our national security requirements, this program was authorized and overseen by Congress, approved by the FISA court, and includes significant privacy protections. We cannot permit the authorities that have allowed the last two Administrations to gather vital intelligence to lapse. The threat we face today is every bit as real – and in many ways far more complex – as it was on September 11, 2001. It would be the height of folly to reverse the intelligence advances we have made in those capabilities today,” concluded McCain.
On Friday at a rally at Arizona State University, Senator Rand Paul addressed the NSA issue and McCain. “You’ll hear some voices, some of them emanating from Arizona, that say, ‘Well, how will you catch terrorists?'” Paul said according to the Arizona Republic. “One of them came up to me and said, ‘If the (anti-terror) Patriot (Act) expires, what will we do?’ Maybe we could rely on the Constitution for a few hours.”