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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: God forbid we wake up tomorrow morning and wake up to the news that a member of ISIL is in the United States and federal agencies need to determine who this person is coordinating with to carry out a potential attack within the homeland. And one of the tools they will use is a tool that allows them to see the people they've been calling and interacting with so we can disrupt that cell before they carry out a horrifying attack that could kill millions of people. Today we are able to do that because of a program that -- that collects those records and keeps them not in the hands of anyone who's looking at them on a regular basis but keeps them readily available to the government so the government can access those records and disrupt that plot. What this bill would do is take that apart. It would, in essence, ask the companies to keep those records in the hopes that they would but under this plan if this were to pass, if suddenly we were to go target these members of ISIL and find out who they are coordinating with, those records may not be there and that plot may, indeed, go forward. And that would be a horrifying result.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: And here's why this doesn't make sense. First of all, we are rushing this to the floor of the senate in the lame-duck session on an issue that doesn't even expire until next year, on a bill that wasn't even listened to or heard in a committee and they cannot cite a single example of this program ever being abused. Not one simple example of this specific program being abused by anybody intentionally. Not one. So we are dealing with a theoretical threat. The second thing is, that even as we speak, law enforcement agencies investigating a common crime don't even need to go to a court to access these very same records. They could just issue an administrative subpoena and get ahold of them. So we are actually making it hard to her go after a terrorist than it will be to go after a common criminal.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: And this is happening at a time when homegrown violent extremism is the single fastest-growing threat to the United States. People here at home that have been radicalized even on the internet and people that have traveled to the middle east and been radicalized in the hopes of returning and carrying out attacks here.
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Marco Rubio
U.S. Senator, R-Florida
CSPAN2 11/18/2014
Rubio: This program (The U.S.A. Patriot Act) was specifically designed to address what the intelligence gaps that existed after the 9/11 attacks. Because I promise you, if God, forbid, any horrifying event like that were to happen, the first question we will be asked is, why didn't we know about it and why didn't we prevent it. And if this program is gutted, we will not be able potentially to know about it and we will not be able to prevent it. Residing president of the Senate: The Senator from Vermont. Mr. Leahy: Leahy: Mr. President, of course this program does not gut it. It actually enhances it. Secondly, if this was important to stop ISIL, ISIL never would have started. The fact is, we had this program way beyond anything anybody's talking about today. It didn't -- it didn't slow up or eliminate one iota, ISIL. That is -- that's a straw man that we shouldn't even have here. It has no affect on that. Everybody who's read the intelligence knows that.
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Mitch McConnell
U.S. Senator (R-Kentucky), Senate Majority Leader
MSNBCW 05/07/2015
Wagner: Following today’s ruling Senator majority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans defended the program and pushed for its reauthorization. McConnell: According to the CIA had these authorities been in place more than a decade ago, they would have likely likely have prevented 9/11. Burr: Why in the world would we think about rolling back the tools that are the only tools that put us post- 9/11 versus pre- 9/11? Rubio: One day, I hope that I'm wrong but one day there will be an attack that's successful and the first question out of everyone's mouth is gonna be why didn't we know about it? And the answer better not be because this Congress failed to authorize a program that might have helped us know about it.
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Marco Rubio
Senator (R-FL)
LINKTV 05/08/2015
Rubio: The perception has been created, including by political figures that serve in this chamber, that the United States government is listening to your phone calls or going through your bills as a matter of course. That is absolutely categorically false. The next time that any politician, Senator, Congressman, talking head, whatever it may be, stands up and says that the U.S. government is listening to phone calls or going through your phone records, they are lying. It just is not true.
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