Sunday, June 16, 2013

Collins Hearts Surveillance

Sen. Collins comes out in favor of the NSA's recently-revealed domestic phone data collection program, a program she concedes was completely unknown to her just days ago, despite the fact that she was ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee until January--and has been a member of the Intelligence Committee since then:

She said the information was tightly held within the NSA, and only a few security analysts had access to the data.

Collins said she doesn't see such programs as inconsistent with people's rights.

"We should not assume a trade-off between liberty and security," she said. "Security ensures our freedom."

1 comment:

DEH said...

What I fail to understand is why no one discusses the abuse of power. Why did our constitution give individuals certain rights? Not because they have traveled into the future and read Orwell's 1984; I believe it was the realization that given the power, eventually, it would be abused.

I have a theory: if Nixon had the information gathering power available to the current administration, he would still be president. His "enemy list" could be dealt with. It will happen again unless we can dismantle the NSA; which I doubt we can.