Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders agree: They like the federal appeals court decision that the government’s bulk collection of phone data is illegal.
Paul, the libertarian-minded GOP senator, hailed the ruling as a “monumental decision for all lovers of liberty.” Perhaps more than any other Republican seeking the presidential nomination, the Kentucky senator has made the NSA and the government’s surveillance a centerpiece of his anti-Washington campaign.
“While this is a step in the right direction, it is now up to the Supreme Court to strike down the NSA’s illegal spying program,” Paul said.
Sanders, an independent senator seeking the Democratic nomination, said it’s time for the government to develop a surveillance program that helps prevent a terrorist attack but is also constitutional.
“We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go,” Sanders said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals ruling comes as Congress considers legislation to renew the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz urged passage of the USA Freedom Act, which would end the NSA program.
“The court’s ruling today confirms what the American public already knew: The National Security Agency’s data collection program went too far in collecting the phone records of Americans,” said Cruz, a Texas senator.
He said he supports the USA Freedom Act because it “ends the NSA’s unfettered data collection program once and for all, while at the same time preserving the government’s ability to obtain information to track down terrorists when it has sufficient justification and support for doing so.”
