Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul said that the news that members of Congress were swept up in spying on Israel on by the NSA is “not unusual” and “when we listen in on foreigners’ conversations…we’re scooping up tens of thousands of conversations of Americans” on Wednesday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.
Rand stated, “Well, I’m appalled by it, and this is exactly why we need more NSA reform. In the debate in Washington right now, it’s unfortunately been going the other way, since the San Bernardino shooting everybody’s saying, oh, we need more surveillance of Americans. In reality, what we need is more targeted surveillance. I’m not against surveillance. But I am against indiscriminate surveillance. And also this is not unusual, tens of thousands — Senator [Ron] Wyden (D-OR) has been warning about this for years now, that when we listen in on foreigners’ conversations when they’re talking to Americans, that we’re scooping up tens of thousands of conversations of Americans, and that this is a real problem, because it’s a real invasion of our privacy. You can see it would stifle speech if you’re going to eavesdrop on congressmen, and that it might stifle what they say or who they communicate with, and this is a big, big problem. And it’s not a new one, but we absolutely need more controls on the NSA and more controls on our intelligence agencies.”
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