Senator Patrick Leahy wants to restrict federal government surveillance programs.
As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, Leahy will play a key role in the Congressional debate over the Patriot Act.
Under this law, the National Security Agency has been monitoring the phone calls and emails of millions of Americans searching for links to possible terrorist groups.
Leahy is sponsoring legislation that ends what he calls the NSA’s “vacuum cleaner” approach to gathering intelligence data.
I think the American people ought to be part of that debate and find out - Sen. Patrick Leahy
His bill would require the NSA to demonstrate “probable cause” to a special federal intelligence judge before the surveillance can take place. Leahy says it’s critical to engage the American people in this debate.
“If all our phone calls, and the possibility of all our emails, as well as the possibility of everything we ever searched for on the Internet anything we do on Facebook, and so on and so forth, can be monitored,” said Leahy. “I think the American people ought to be part of that debate and find out.”
Leahy says the judicial oversight system works reasonably well but he wants to make an important change. “One of the federal judges who has been on that appointed by then Chief Justice Rehnquist, said yesterday on a number of these significant cases, there should be an outside advocate, a devil’s advocate, so to speak, and I think that’s a good idea,” said Leahy.
Federal officials stated this week that the Patriot Act has helped prevent a dozen terrorist attacks in this county over the past few years.
But Leahy says his research shows that the real number could be as low as one, and he says he doesn’t think the surveillance programs have made the country any safer.
It was also disclosed on Thursday that Edward Snowden, the Defense contractor who leaked the information about the NSA surveillance programs, has been granted asylum in Russia for a one year period.
Leahy says a decision by Russian officials to let Snowden into their country will hurt U.S. – Soviet relations.
“Here you have Russia where most of the world is trying to get them to improve their human rights posture but also the beatings and killings of journalists and those who dare speak out,” said Leahy. “It certainly does not improve relations with the United States.”
Leahy says he also wants to learn how Snowden was able to receive security clearance from the NSA to access all the documents that he’s released.
