Chris Christie is definitely more a defense conservative than a civil liberty conservative, and he proved it today when he fell on the Marco Rubio side of the NSA debate with Ted Cruz, and said that the San Bernardino terror attack proved we needed more NSA surveillance.
Watch below:
.@ChrisChristie responds to the shooting in San Bernardino, CA, calling for increased surveillance capability. https://t.co/2i1F7z7q8P
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 6, 2015
Marco Rubio has used the vote that Ted Cruz made to limit surveillance against him, and Cruz has punched back on the issue.
Isn’t the issue whether the terrorist act can be used to justify a program that no one can prove would have stopped the slaughter? How is this any better than calling for a no-fly list gun ban that wouldn’t have done anything to stop this event either?
Ironically, however, while Christie thinks it’s OK for government to intrude on ALL Americans’ privacy, he thinks it’s impractical for us to profile Muslims. Watch below:
.@ChrisChristie responds to Trump on political correctness: “We don’t need to be profiling.” https://t.co/Mr3LFbLQmY
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 6, 2015
John Kasich also jumped on the NSA train, making the unsubstantiated insinuation that the San Bernardino Muslims had used encryption to hide their activities:
.@JohnKasich: “I think the issue of encryption is for real. It is serious” https://t.co/6OZtrg079U #CNNSOTU https://t.co/5n7H8ktKKs
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 6, 2015
As far as I know there’s absolutely no evidence of that. They just hid their activities by not making it obvious what they were doing. If I’m wrong about this, please let me know because it really seems like people are pushing for anti-encryption surveillance with very little evidence.