Sen Leahy: NSA surveillance ‘not making us safer’

Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) warned about the government’s collection of massive quantities about data about American citizens.

During a panel discussion titled “The Big Brother Problem" at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sen Leahy said government officials “don’t make ourselves safer by wiretapping or investigating every single person.” “In the United States, which should be one of the freest countries to express yourself, we are collecting far too much information,” the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said. “It is not making us safer.” Sen Leahy also compared the dangers posed by the National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection of information to abuses conducted by former longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover or the Nixon administration during the Watergate scandal. “Just because we can do it in the United States doesn’t mean we should,” he told the panel. “I don’t think it makes us safer any more than the horrible excesses of Watergate and J. Edgar Hoover and all made us safer. It made us less safe.”