Democratic Divide Over NSA Could Pose Problem For Obama
By Aaron Blake and Scott Wilson, Thursday, August 1, 8:08 PM
Lost in all the rancor among Republicans over the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs has been this: A similar ideological divide has been exposed in the Democratic Party that could pose even more political difficulties for President Obama.
Several Democrats from the party’s civil liberties wing — the mirror image of the Republicans’ rising libertarian strain — met with Obama and Republican lawmakers Thursday at the White House to discuss concerns about the NSA’s phone data collection program and elements of the administration’s broader surveillance effort.
Among them were Democratic Sens. Mark Udall (Colo.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), the lawmaker who earlier Thursday proposed legislation that would, in addition to other measures, add a privacy and civil liberties advocate to the secret court proceedings when the government requests national security warrants.
Now government lawyers make the case for warrants before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has turned down only 11 of the government’s nearly 34,000 warrant requests over the past three decades.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democratic-divide-over-nsa-could-pose-problem-for-obama/2013/08/01/5d551e6c-fabb-11e2-a369-d1954abcb7e3_story.html
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