Political Quotes

“I am going to speak on another issue. I see my distinguished colleague from Utah Senator Lee is on the floor. It is an issue he has worked with me on. We have tried to join together. It was more than a year ago that not only here in the United States but the whole world learned some very startling details about the massive scope of the National Security Agency's surveillance programs. Since then the American people, and actually, all three branches of government have been debating the same fundamental questions about the extent of government power that the Framers considered when they crafted the Constitution. Many of us had been arguing those same issues, whether in the Judiciary Committee, the Intelligence Committee, or others. But it was hard to get anybody's attention. Suddenly the whole world was listening. The obvious question is, when and how should the government be permitted to gather information about its citizens? How do we protect our country while we preserve our fundamental principles and our constitutional liberties? These questions are even more relevant and more complex as technology develops rapidly, and as more data is created every second. Nobody questions that the government cannot just walk into our houses, rifle through our drawers, our filing cabinets, and our cupboards, to see what we might have there. But that is not where we keep our data anymore. It is on computers.…”