Rand Paul blasts Chris Christie for supporting NSA spying

US Senator Rand Paul has blasted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for urging the government to increase the powers of American intelligence agencies during the first Republican debate of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Fox News and Facebook hosted the debate on Thursday evening at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, among the top ten candidates seeking the Republican Party's presidential nomination for the next year election.

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Marco Rubio, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Ohio Governor John Kasich participated in the debate.

Christie and Paul verbally clashed over the National Security Agency (NSA) spying.

“I want to collect more records from terrorists but less records from innocent Americans,” Paul said, referring to the NSA’s mass surveillance of American citizens.

That’s a “completely ridiculously answer,” roared Christie, a former US attorney who pursued cases using powers under the 2001 USA Patriot Act. “How are you supposed to know?”

“You support the Fourth Amendment!” Paul yelled in response. “Get a warrant! Get a judge to sign a warrant!”

“You fundamentally misunderstand the Bill of Rights,” Paul added. “Every time you filed a case, you got a warrant from a judge.”

“I don’t trust [President Barack] Obama with our records,” he continued. “I know you gave him a big hug, and if you want to give him a big hug again, you go right ahead.”

Christie accused Paul of adopting an academic tone on the surveillance issue.

“When you’re sitting in a subcommittee just blowing hot air about this, you can say things like this,” Christie declared. 

More than twice as many people in the United States agree with Senator Paul in ending the bulk collection of data on Americans’ phone communications by the NSA.

A poll from Morning Consult, released in June, found that 27 percent of Americans took the same view as the Republican senator from Kentucky, compared to 12 percent who want the NSA spying program to remain in place without modification.

The survey also found that 42 percent of respondents believe the provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the NSA to collect so-called metadata should be extended with some modifications.

The Patriot Act expired on June 1 as lawmakers failed to reauthorize it in its original form. Paul single-handedly blocked the Senate from extending the NSA’s bulk records surveillance authority.

Surveillance hawks wanted a temporary reauthorization of NSA surveillance powers under the Patriot Act.

The USA Freedom Act, a bill originally introduced in both houses of the US Congress in 2013, was re-introduced in April, based upon a modified version of the one which failed in the Senate in 2013.

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