Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Democrats Love Government Surveillance --
As Long As It's Obama, Not Bush...

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic - Pew ◼ Via Drudge

A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. And while the public is more evenly divided over the government’s monitoring of email and other online activities to prevent possible terrorism, these views are largely unchanged since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, conducted June 6-9 among 1,004 adults, finds no indications that last week’s revelations of the government’s collection of phone records and internet data have altered fundamental public views about the tradeoff between investigating possible terrorism and protecting personal privacy.

Obama administration under pressure as US senators demand end to secrecy - Spencer Ackerman in Washington and Paul Lewis/The Guardian

This abuse of the Patriot Act must end - /Jim Sensenbrenner/The Guardian

President Obama falsely claims Congress authorised all NSA surveillance. In fact, our law was designed to protect liberties...

This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows.

President Obama's claim that "this is the most transparent administration in history" has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans. The president should immediately direct his administration to stop abusing the US constitution.

We all know the saying "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." We are seeing that truth demonstrated once again.

Our liberties are secure only so long as we are prepared to defend them. I and many other members of Congress intend to take immediate action to ensure that such abuses are not repeated.