English transcript

All right, Senator Paul, am I too harsh on the Congress?

No, and I think what's important

for people to understand here is they think,

oh, we're just gonna spy on bad people

and I'm not a bad person, so I don't have to worry.

But here's how these degrees of connection work.

So I'm in public office and I talk to news people like you,

but I talk to reporters who may be

talking to other reporters.

So let's say you were an international correspondent

for the New York Times, but you also talked

to your reporter who's stationed in Gaza.

The reporter in Gaza has a source in Hamas.

And so now they wanna know about Hamas,

so you're two degrees away, they wanna know about you,

but you're talking to me and all I am

is a public official with opinions.

I'm not connected to any kind of terrorist group,

but all of a sudden I'm in the database.

So they gather it with what I always call

a less than constitutional way.

It's a lower standard and in some ways it's no standard.

And so all of this information is gathered together

and then they say, what if John Smith,

we think he might be using drugs

or he might be a drug dealer,

let's search him in the FISA database.

Well, all the information was gathered

with a less than constitutional standard,

so it shouldn't be legal.

And so I really haven't been for letting them

search any Americans in the 702 database.

One of the reforms that has been proposed

is a step in the right direction.

It doesn't fix it,

because it was still I think be illegal,

but a warrant where you said,

if you're gonna search an American,

you would at least have to have a warrant.

My problem with the warrant being the end all

is that the information was still gathered

with a less than constitutional standard.

So it really shouldn't be used on Americans at all.