Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript - Internet Privacy Rights

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

HANNITY: All right. Pretty chilling.

Now, before I bring in my first guest, let's talk about why this story, why is this important to you?

Number one, this is America. And as law abiding American citizens you have a right to privacy.

Number two, these actions by the Obama administration are clear, very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

Number three, the Constitution. It is our rule of law. If we do not respect and honor the Constitution, then anarchy and tyranny will follow.

Joining me now with reaction, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Senator, good to see you. Welcome back, sir.

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY.: Good to be with you, Sean. And if you see the president, can you give him a message?

HANNITY: What is it? I'll see him some time later. Yes.

PAUL: Here's the message for the president. I'm in Philadelphia. He doesn't need to look at my phone records. I'll just go and let him know where I am tonight in case he's looking for me. OK?

HANNITY: The only place they won't be able to find you is on MSNBC.

(LAUGHTER)

Oh, I'm sorry.

All right. Let me ask you in a series of question -- let me see if I've got this right. The government is snooping on every American watching this program. Every American. And they've been resistant to say like Fort Hood is a war on terror. They won't use the T word for terrorism. But apparently, they're looking up T for Tea Party. I think these are connected inasmuch as they say a lot. What are your thoughts?

PAUL: Well, you know, the first objection obviously is the bill of rights, as you said. Really you had a right to privacy. And they shouldn't be allowed to look at your records unless they think you have committed a crime. But this second aspect of this is, it's not a very good way to look for terrorists. For example, the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston marathon bomber, we knew he was a potential problem. But then somebody forgot to look and found out he had flown back to Chechnya.

So, we're not doing a good enough police work. We can't seem to keep up with the people we've been told about. Remember, the underwear bomber, his dad turned him in and we couldn't keep up with him. He still got on a plane. And yet, they think somehow they're going to go to billions of bits of information every day. I think really we have to step back and say is it good police work. But also isn't our right to privacy more important than this?

HANNITY: Well, would you then say it's broad sweeping, the least effective method possible and the most intrusive on our rights?

PAUL: Yes. And I think the thing is that really this is what our Founding Fathers fought the revolution over. At least one of the point is, they objected to general warrants. These were warrants that didn't specify who was going to be searched so the British soldiers could go house to house. Now we're going from computer to computer, not of people who are suspected to being terrorists, of every American.

They're going through a billion phone calls a day. And from your phone records they can track your movements. That's why I was joking about telling the president I am in Philadelphia because I called my wife earlier, so they can ping that and they will know that I'm actually in Philadelphia tonight. Do we really want them tracking our whereabouts?

HANNITY: That's funny. But honestly, it's not that funny.

Let's take a look and the president as a candidate had a lot of things to say about this, that he wouldn't do this.

Let's remind the people of the things that he promised.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

THEN-SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, DEC. 15, 2005: If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or a private document through the library books that you read, the phone calls that you've made, the e-mails that you've sent, this legislation gives people no right to appeal for such a search in a court of law.

OBAMA, OCT. 29, 2007: When I'm president, one of the first thing I'm going to do is call in my attorney general and say to him or her, I want you to review every executive order that was issued by George Bush whether it relates to wireless wiretaps or detaining people or reading e-mails or whatever it is. I want you to go through every single one of them. And if they are unconstitutional, if they're encroaching on civil liberties unnecessarily, we are going to overturn them.

OBAMA, 2007: I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorist without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.

OBAMA, 2006: We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting privacy and liberty of innocent Americans.

OBAMA, JAN. 20, 2009: As for our common defense, we reject as fault the choice between our safety and our ideals.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

HANNITY: Senator, did he fulfill those promises?

PAUL: Well, see, this is why the American public has such a low regard for politicians. It's utter, frank, hypocrisy. This is also the same president who made all those grand promises, who signed legislation that says that an American citizen can be arrested without charge, indefinitely detained and sent to Guantanamo Bay. But he says, oh, I won't ever do it. I don't intent to do it. But he signed law giving himself that power.

So he says a lot of good things and he sounds good. But he doesn't really seem to mean anything that he says. And that kind of hypocrisy is why Americans are so fed up with Washington.

HANNITY: Senator, the director of National Intelligence back in March, James Clapper, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the NSA did not collect data of millions of Americans. I want to air this and see if you think this is true.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, C-SPAN, MARCH 12)

SEN. RON WYDEN, D-ORE.: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all, a million or hundreds of millions of Americans.

JAMES CLAPPER, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY: No, sir.

WYDEN: It does not?

CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Senator, did he tell the truth there?

PAUL: You know what, he may be parsing the truth. Because maybe they say, oh, we're not collecting it or keeping it. But they're certainly looking at it. Because the court order that we've seen, what is been leak, says that all of the records for a three-month period from phone, people who have phones with Verizon, was looked at. So, maybe he says that we're not collecting it, but we're sure the heck looking at it. That sounds to me like we're parsing the truth.

But I think ultimately American people have to decide. And I've started a lawsuit. We're asking tens of millions of Americans to join our lawsuit. You can go to randpac.com, join this lawsuit. We want you on our lawsuit, Sean, because they're probably looking at your phone records for certain. We want tens of millions of Americans to sign up and say to the president, we want to say to the president, we don't want you looking at our phone records unless we're accused of a crime.

HANNITY: You know, Senator, I have a thought today, and I want to run it by you. I was thinking, if this was -- they keep saying this was done in the name of national security. And this is so general and broad sweeping and inefficient, as we stated. If they really cared about security, wouldn't they secure the border first before they would spy on all these Americans?

PAUL: There are all kinds of things. Even look back to 9/11. The 20th hijacker, we had him, the FBI had them for a month, then they wrote 70 letters asking for a warrant and they never came. We're not going to do police work but we're overly broadly looking at everyone's records. The wrong way to go.

HANNITY: All right. Senator, keep up the good work. Thanks for being with us.

PAUL: Thank you.

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