Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says the best thing about President Barack Obama is his support for the National Security Agency’s massive communications data dragnets.
In a radio interview on Tuesday, Bush hailed the administration for its “continuance of the protection of the homeland using the big meta data programs.”
Bush, who was asked by radio host Michael Medved to name the “best” part about the administration, said Obama has “enhanced” NSA surveillance, though he said Obama “never defends it” and “never openly admits it.”
Bush said called the data collection part of a “very important service” aimed at protecting the nation. He noted that there are “technologies that now can be applied to make that so, while protecting civil liberties.”
Bush’s stance puts him at sharp odds with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of his potential rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, who last year filed a ‘class-action' lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the surveillance program.
"We fought the American Revolution because we were unhappy about British soldiers writing generalized warrants," Paul said at a courthouse news conference announcing the lawsuit.
The revelations that the federal government was engaged in bulk collection of American’s telephone and Internet information enraged privacy advocates and some in Congress. And the revelations that the NSA had spied on foreign leaders strained ties with foreign governments, including Germany and Brazil.
Obama initially had been skeptical about surveillance as a presidential candidate. But he said he’d changed his mind after his staff evaluated the programs and expanded some of the safeguards.
As president, he signed off on them, continuing many of the programs that his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, began after the 2001 attacks, and he engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on national security leaks. He proposed some changes to the programs last year, following criticism from Congress and civil libertarians.
The bulk data collection was authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, a law enacted during Bush’s presidency after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, by requiring the government to narrowly limit the scope of its search.
The extent of the government’s programs became public after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began releasing classified documents in June 2013 that showed the agency had been collecting the telephone and email records of millions of Americans and foreigners, eavesdropping on allies such as Germany and Brazil and spying on a host of global institutions, including the World Bank.
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