Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky discusses the Obama administration’s sweeping dragnet of phone data of U.S. citizens.
We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked. Our lives are now so digitized that the government going from computer to computer or phone to phone is the modern equivalent of the same type of tyranny that our Founders rebelled against.
I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security. The government sifts through mountains of data yet still didn’t notice, or did not notice enough, that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was traveling to Chechnya. Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis.
I expect our nation’s leaders to investigate suspected threats to the nation. A sweeping dragnet that ensnares everyone with a phone isn’t the way to go about it.
