"It's idiotic, what he just said. It's extraordinarily disrespectful of the Constitution and extraordinarily disrespectful of the privacy rights of the American citizens," Welch said in a radio interview with Democracy Now that aired Wednesday.
"It's idiotic, what he just said. It's extraordinarily disrespectful of the Constitution and extraordinarily disrespectful of the privacy rights of the American citizens. Here's why: Jim Sensenbrenner was a conservative Republican who helped write the law. In what he — and he's appalled by the overreach of the intelligence-gathering agencies and the NSA. And here's why. There was, in the law, the right to go to the FISA court on the basis of reasonable suspicion to examine, let's say, my phone records; there was some articulable suspicion that passed the judgment test of the judge in FISA, and you could get my records. What NSA has done is said that they can get everybody's, all Americans' emails, texts and telephone messages — all of them — just on the basis of the law in this authorization. That is like so over-broad and so disrespectful that there's no end to what they can do."