Conservative

Jackson: Republican Party should reform NSA

With the Republican Party now in control of the Senate, it has the power to completely reform the National Security Agency using the bipartisan USA Freedom Act. And the party should do so as quickly as possible.

The GOP has never been truly united on the NSA and how to handle the agency’s intolerant actions such as wire-tapping American citizens and spying on foreign nations that are our allies. Many Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Sen. Tex Cruz (R-Texas) see the NSA as a threat to American civil liberties. However, other Republicans, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), have come out in favor of the NSA saying that is helps fight terrorism.

Despite this divide, the Republican Party should push forward on reforming the NSA. The organization is pretty ineffective at combating terrorism — according to a report from the New America Foundation — despite claiming to have stopped numerous terrorist attacks. It is currently one of the most unpopular government organizations with Americans, with 80 percent stating they were concerned with the U.S. government’s level of spying in a Nov. 12 Pew poll.

The GOP should be united on this issue: we have an illegal, expensive and incredibly incompetent organization running around spying on our own citizens and our allies in order to fight terrorism. This issue is an easy way for the Republican Party to score brownie points with the American people and McConnell would do well to remember the words of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin: “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

Right now, there is a bipartisan bill called the USA Freedom Act. This act would limit U.S. government spying on civilians by banning the use of phone records while allowing the U.S. government to keep spying on suspect terrorists. Despite the vague language, this bill is widely supported, from staunch Republicans to President Barack Obama.



While the USA Freedom Act is a good start, with more Republican support, the bill can go much further than where it is now, it can become something that helps Americans get some of our liberties back and help return the U.S. to a pre-9/11 state, in terms of our freedoms.

The NSA is a great example of government overreach of power and reforming it or at least controlling it, would play well into the Republican Party’s goals of individual freedom and liberty. It would also hold Obama accountable to his word, something that he hasn’t been the best at.

Obama said in January 2014 that he would reform the NSA, saying, “Those of us who hold office in America have a responsibility to our Constitution… I am therefore ordering a transition that will end the Section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists and establish a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata.”

The Republican Party reforming the NSA would be a wise move. It would allow the party to use its new political power to change something unpopular among Americans of all political backgrounds and could be used to draw more people toward the party while promoting a sense of bipartisanship in government that hasn’t really existed for the last six years.

Rami Jackson is a junior entrepreneurship and policy studies major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @IsRamicJ.

 





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