NBC News reports on Rand's comments during his appearance on Meet the Press:
Paul did announce that he would not eliminate the National Security Agency if elected President, arguing the agency's time could be better spent tracking potential foreign threats.
"I would have the NSA target their activities, more and more, towards our enemies," Paul said. "I think if you're not spending so much time and money collecting the information of innocent Americans, maybe we could've spent more time knowing that one of the Tsarnaev boys, one of the Boston bombers, had gone back to Chechnya.Like I said, Rand is never against ending government interventions, he is always about shifting the method of intervention.
-RW
Here's what Senator Paul had to say about the Patriot Act on the Kelly File:
ReplyDeleteI think you can catch terrorists using the Constitution, that you don't give up on the Bill of Rights to catch terrorists. I think sometimes our blanket collection of all the records of all Americans has taken our eye off the prize.
The Boston bombers,...the older brother....
I would spend much more effort after him. The guy in Phoenix, Simpson, we knew about him. We had arrested him previously. We had probable cause. If I were the judge in both of those cases, I would have said, yes. Here's the warrant, search all the records and that if you come back to me and say they called five people that are suspicious, I would have given you five more warrants....
So, I would go as deep as it takes with the warrant to get information instead of just scooping everything up, I would go as deep as it takes into the haystack but I would call a judge first who protect our civil liberties and protect the Bill of Rights.
The Senator suggests that he is against the "blanket collection" of records, but he also says that if he were a judge and "you come back to me and say they called five people that are suspicious, I would have given you five more warrants." So it seems like he is really FOR the blanket collection of records - with a warrant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnjzHIFKMV4