Rand Paul: “The PATRIOT Act was begotten of the most unpatriotic of ideas--that liberty can be exchanged for security. The history…”

“The PATRIOT Act was begotten of the most unpatriotic of ideas--that liberty can be exchanged for security. The history of the PATRIOT Act shows that the exchange is a poor one. As our liberty wanes and wastes away, we find that the promises of security were an illusion. The history of the PATRIOT Act is really a history of how power corrupts and how bias and malfeasance grow when power is unchecked. The PATRIOT Act allowed a secret court, FISA, to grant generalized warrants to collect personal data from millions of Americans. The spies who run these surveillance programs then lied--for years and years--to us. One of the most notorious of these liars was James Clapper. When cross-examined under oath by Senator Wyden, James Clapper denied that the government was collecting data on millions of Americans. A month later, the whistleblower, Edward Snowden, revealed that Clapper had lied. Snowden revealed that Clapper and others were using the PATRIOT Act to spy on virtually every American. Snowden revealed that the secret FISA Court was allowing a single court order to command the collection of millions of Americans' personal phone data. Most Members of Congress had no idea that this was going on. In fact, one of the authors of the PATRIOT Act publicly expressed his shock that such a massive surveillance of Americans was occurring with no notification of Congress. Clapper and others, though, said that is not true.…”