Saxby Chambliss, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has defended NSA collection of cell phone and Internet data as within the parameters of post-9/11 legislation passed by Congress to combat terrorism.
“The whole scenario sounds bad when you read it in the papers,” Chambliss admitted to the Atlanta Rotary Club this week. But it’s necessary to catch the “bad guys,” he said.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson likewise spoke up for security practices that have apparently spanned the Bush and Obama administrations, comparing them to the “threading of the needle.”
“There may be, time to time, a mistake made, but you’re better off to try and find that sweet spot to protect the American people, than to have us vulnerable every single day to attacks like what happened on 9/11,” he said.
Neither senator has offered a characterization of Snowden, but others have. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called him a “traitor” who has put Americans at risk. Erick Erickson, the Atlanta-based editor of Redstate.com, pilloried Snowden for fleeing “to the communists.”
Yet [Ron] Paul, the former Texas congressman and recipient of Snowden’s campaign cash, called the former analyst – he was officially fired this week – “heroic.”
via NSA leak splits a GOP torn between national security and… | www.ajc.com.
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