HOUSTON, Texas – Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is proud to stand with conservatives like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and the NRA on the USA Freedom Act. The NRA states that, "the availability of sophisticated means of analyzing the metadata to create detailed profiles of individuals could effectively create an end-run around federal prohibitions on firearm registries." The USA Freedom Act will stop President Obama from engaging in the mass collection of personal data from law-abiding citizens, while keeping America safe and intercepting intelligence from real terrorists. Below is a sampling of some of the press coverage of what others are saying about the important components of the USA Freedom Act.
Fox News: Judge Nap Fires Back at Warnings About End of NSA's Bulk Data Collection
Will the imminent end of the NSA's controversial bulk collection of phone data put the American people at risk?
On Fox News Sunday, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, argued that ending the program is a big mistake.
Burr argued that a cell phone recovered after the Paris terror attacks helped investigators in France and Belgium "expand their search net" to stop further attacks and make arrests of terror suspects.
Judge Andrew Napolitano pushed back this morning, accusing Burr of "mixing apples and oranges" with his warning about the end of the NSA surveillance program.
Napolitano explained that a cell phone recovered at the scene of a terror attack could be searched quickly and easily with a warrant from a judge.
He said that represents hard evidence and "old-fashioned police work," not the indiscriminate surveillance of millions of citizens.
The judge emphasized that authorities could not stop the Nov. 13 attacks despite France having the ability to surveil cell phones and emails without warrants.
The Daily Caller: Rubio Is Wrong To Attack Ted Cruz On National Security
This deserves some explanation: First, USA Freedom was about domestic wiretaps, so using the Paris attacks as a catalyst requires an understanding that it wouldn't have prevented what happened in Paris. Second, USA freedom did not stop the practice of obtaining information; the government must now obtain a warrant—and the records are kept by the phone companies as part of their normal business practices.
Third, it's important to note that USA Freedom was compromise legislation—and that, in fact, one could reasonably argue that Cruz's efforts helped keep us safe by preventing the complete repeal of the Patriot Act's provisions.
As US News & World Report noted last year, "There [were] not enough votes in the House to reauthorize the Patriot Act without amendments limiting its authority, according to statements from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who is the Freedom Act's co-author."
Hot Air: Ted Cruz to Marco Rubio: Stop impugning my patriotism by claiming I'm soft on national security
Rubio was prepared to let the Patriot Act lapse entirely in hopes that that would scare Congress into reauthorizing it lock, stock, and barrel. Cruz took half a loaf (or really, nine-tenths of a loaf) by reauthorizing everything except a few parts that forced the NSA to jump through extra procedural hurdles in accessing domestic phone records data for a terrorism investigation. Rubio's taking a maximalist position on surveillance above and beyond what even most members of his own party insisted upon and yet Cruz is the unreasonable one?
Ted Cruz, Cruz Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Rubio Wrong To Attack Cruz On National Security Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/314905