It was disclosed this week, that over the last few years, the Administration secretly obtained phone records of millions of people from Verizon by using an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The Administration says the procedure is “a vital tool” in the war against terrorism.
Leahy is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee and has voted against extending the Patriot Act because of concerns about a lack of oversight protections in the law. Leahy says the new disclosure is a confirmation of his concerns.
“I really worry on looking into almost like a vacuum cleaner into what people calls they make,” said Leahy. “The privacy rights of Americans can be very fragile if you have powerful technologies that are applied in secrecy.”
Several senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee are defending the surveillance plan and argue that the practice has thwarted a number of terrorist attacks.
As chairman of the Judiciary committee, Leahy says he has also been briefed on these incidents. He says he can’t be specific about the terrorist attacks that have been blocked.
“What I will say is this we have caught terrorists but I worry that there’s too often a willingness to say we’ve got the technology let’s use it against everybody and that worries me,” said Leahy. “I think greater safeguards can be built in and still protect our security.”
Leahy says he hopes the phone record disclosure will encourage a majority of senators to support his new legislation that protects email privacy and places new limits on broad government surveillance.
