“He’s flatly wrong, and I don’t think he’d recognize the framers of the Constitution if he ran into them in the hallway.

“The issue here is not any kind of NSA surveillance of individuals — not listening to your conversations, not reading your emails, not shadowing you on the street, or not even taking your records. The records at issue here are the record of the phone companies. They are no different than the records of your bank, your department store, or any other variety of other things you purchase services from. 

“Whenever the NSA wants to focus specifically on an individual, they must get a 4th Amendment compliant judicial warrant, which they do.” 

“That’s part of the trouble with this debate. It’s filled with so much hype and hoorah, and in some cases outright McCarthyism, that’s it’s been hard for the defenders of the Patriot Act to make their case. That’s why I think we’re in the situation we’re in today.”

Ambassador Bolton discusses the Patriot Act reauthorization.