Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul said Sunday that the intelligence community is exploiting the recent terrorist attacks in Paris to crack down on privacy and push for increased surveillance.
"I think when you have a fearful time or an angry time that people are coaxed into giving up their liberty," the senator from Kentucky told CBS' "Face the Nation."
Paul, one of the most libertarian-minded senators, has long been a leading opponent of government surveillance, a topic that has been in the spotlight following recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Mali.
Some officials and lawmakers have argued that the attacks prove that sweeping surveillance programs are necessary, like the ones exposed by former National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden. One of those surveillance programs was seemingly scaled back with the passage of the USA Freedom Act in June, however, Paul noted that data collection continues in the U.S., and to an even greater extent in Paris, but still didn't prevent the terrorist attacks.
"What they're not telling you and what they're being dishonest about is that we still have the phone collection program. In the United States, all phone records are still being collected all the time and we still had the attack. And realize that in France they have bulk collection or surveillance of their citizens a thousand-fold greater than what we have, with very little privacy protections. They still didn't know anything" about the Paris attacks, said Paul, according to the Hill.
"You can keep giving up liberties," said Paul, "but in the end I don't think we'll be safer. But we may have lost who we are as a people in the process. And I'm going to fight to make sure that doesn't happen."
Following the recent string of terrorist attacks, Democrats and Republicans have also renewed calls for technology companies to add backdoors into encryption technology, despite evidence suggesting that the attackers behind the Paris attacks were not using encryption to communicate, reported the Intercept. Adding backdoors into devices would allow the intelligence community to spy on secret communications, but could violate basic human rights, according to the United Nations.
The nation's largest tech giants, most of whom oppose weakening encryption, are expected to meet with officials again after the Thanksgiving break to publicly discuss encryption issues that have until now been hashed out behind closed doors, according to CNBC.
