Sen. Tom Cotton on Wednesday said reauthorization of the Patriot Act is essential to U.S. national security, dismissing criticism from fellow Republicans that the counterterrorism law is unnecessary and unconstitutional.
The Arkansan said in an interview with the Washington Examiner that much of the debate over extending or reforming the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk data collection program has been driven by “misinformation and people misrepresenting the facts.”
RELATED: Paul launches Senate filibuster of NSA bill
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican presidential candidate, is among the most ardent critics of the program. He seized the Senate floor on Wednesday in filibuster style to argue for letting the Patriot Act expire.
Just prior to that, Cotton, an Iraq war veteran who holds a law degree, addressed some of Paul’s specific criticisms of the NSA program that collects Americans’ telephone data en masse, and explained why he remains a strong supporter.
RELATED: Sen. John Cornyn: U.S. security at ‘greater risk’ without Patriot Act provisions
“I disagree with Rand on both points, the constitutionality and the effectiveness,” Cotton said. “First the constitutionality: The Supreme Court passed on this a long time ago. There’s no reasonable expectation of privacy in call data. Again, not the content of calls, not even the personally identifiable information about calls, but the call data — the two numbers called, the date and time of the call and the duration of the call, because we willfully turn it over to our telecom provider.”
Cotton also noted that the government can’t view the data without receiving a special warrant.
“This is not a question of looking at the actual content of calls,” Cotton continued. “And, the Constitution, as ruled by the Supreme Court, doesn’t give anyone a reasonable expectation of privacy in data that the telephone companies have always had — that they can sell for marketing purposes.”
RELATED: McConnell under increasing pressure to back NSA reform bill
Senate Republicans who support a clean extension of the Patriot Act, including NSA’s bulk data collection program, are at odds with Senate Republicans like Paul as well as the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. The House recently passed the USA Freedom Act, which would stop the NSA’s call-data dragnet, originally brought to light by Edward Snowden’s illegal publicizing of the program.
A federal appellate court ruled this month that the program is unconstitutional, bolstering the critics. But Cotton said much of the misunderstanding about the program’s constitutionality comes from conflating how the Fourth Amendment applies to the investigation of crimes already committed, and terrorist plots that have yet to occur but may yet be foiled by the federal government.
RELATED: Republican presidential race sees return of 9/11 politics
“There is a significant difference between a backward looking criminal investigation in which you have a relatively constrained set of facts and you go looking for specific information to support those facts. That’s why you have to get a warrant to search someone’s home,” Cotton said. “By contrast, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is about forward looking, prospective efforts to stop terrorists attacks. That is a critical difference.”
Cotton also disputed charges that the program hasn’t made Americans safer from the threat of terrorist attacks, and is useless as a tool to uncover and disrupt plots. Cotton serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and has access to some of this information.
RELATED: White House calls on Senate to pass spying reforms
“It is a simple fact that this program has helped either detect plots or conduct investigations after the fact. I can’t share all the details with you,” he said. “Can I say — can someone at the FBI or NSA say — this program is a silver bullet that has stopped a terrorist attack against America? I cannot say that. I also can’t say that about traditional human intelligence, or other signals intelligence.”
“That question,” Cotton said, “misunderstands the nature of intelligence. To put it in non-intelligence terms: A symphony doesn’t just have horns or percussion, it takes all of them together to create a harmony. All the tools that our intelligence professional have work together in concert and to deprive them of this critical tool would lead to attacks on the United States.”
RELATED: Why did so many libertarians vote against a bill that’s supposed to rein in the NSA?
