In an interview with Mobile CBS affiliate WKRG that aired Sunday night, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, reacted to the controversy surrounding the National Security Agency (NSA) with the allegations even low-level bureaucrats within the organization have the ability to search the private emails and phone calls of Americans.
Sessions told WKRG that it was only a “small group of people” with access to that data. However, he said if it wasn’t on the up-and-up, the program should be discontinued.
“My observation of the time I’ve been out and met there was that a small group of people have access to the information and they are focused totally on terrorists and their ability to identify people who are a threat to the United States,” Sessions said. “It’s a classified program and so I’m interested in seeing what the complaints are, going through once again the constitutional and legal challenges that people making to it to make sure it it’s done right or stopped. If it can’t be done constitutionally then we don’t need to be doing it.”
Last week, the House rejected a measure that would have repealed the NSA’s authority to monitor phone calls, with the Alabama delegation voting by a 6-1 margin against the measure. The lone dissenter among that delegation was Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills.
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