It's hard to imagine a Senator making a blunter statement than Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) made in the heat of the Patriot Act reauthorization fight last month: "When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act," he said, "they will be stunned and they will be angry." Wyden is in a position to know. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he receives classified briefings from the executive branch. And in recent years, three other current and former members of the Senate—Mark Udall (D-CO), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI)—have made similar comments.
These statements are puzzling because the explicit powers Congress has given to the government are already quite broad. For example, we've extensively covered the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and the rapid increase in the use of National Security Letters since the enactment of the Patriot Act. Apparently, the government has such an appetite for information about Americans that it has felt the need to push even these quite generous boundaries.
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