McCain: Town Hall 05/29/08

John McCain
Town Hall
Greendale, WI

TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: "If you become president you will take an oath, saying you will defend the constitution. Given that, will you try to prevent warrantless wiretaps and searches, which are forbidden under the fourth amendment?"

MCCAIN: "I thank you for the question. In fact it came up in a conversation I had today. There is a careful balance between protection of individual rights and our obligation to defend the security of this country. My friends, we all know—I don't think anyone here disagrees that there are people who are out there, around the world, as well as perhaps or possibly some even within the United States of America or attempting to be established within the United States of America that want to destroy us.

"And they are using the most modern form of telecommunications in order to do so; and look at the way telecommunications has changed within the last 20 or 30 years. So we're not—again, it's a product of this gridlock. I am convinced that we need to monitor communications between terrorists and I think all of us would agree with that. At the same time, we have to [...] as you mentioned, there are certain inalienable rights and among those is the right to privacy.

"So what we really need to do to address this issue is have hearings, have discussions on it. I think that we should have the ability to go and instantaneously and monitor the phone calls of people that we are—that we suspect of being capable or intent on doing bad things to America. So I support the FISA law. I support it. I support it and interestingly enough, in the Senate, there was an agreement between republicans and democrats to move forward and that solution I supported and still support and it got all hung up in the house of representatives and now and now, we are, to a large degree, according to the director of national intelligence without the ability to do some of the monitoring that he feels is vital to the security of this nation.

"See how far we have come, my friends? Where we can't sit down and agree that—on a way that protects people's privacy and, at the same time, gives us the ability to prevent attacks on the United States of America. So I want to assure you that I think FISA was the right thing to do and I would be more than happy to sit down and see if there are modifications that need to be made, but the worst of all words, in my view, is the gridlock we're in, which basically, according to the people we entrust with the intelligence of this country that we're not able to do that."

LABEL: JM WI 5-29 (JR#58) CEeY-ClipD

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Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• TRACKING
• John
• McCain
• FISA
• wiretapping
• 4th
• amendment

[sgwbyyy]

Ron paul 2012,,,,,our only hope