Republicans clash over NSA surveillance powers

PHILADELPHIA -- Republicans clashed over the future of government surveillance programs Monday, highlighting a deep divide among the GOP's 2016 presidential class over whether the National Security Agency should be collecting American citizens' phone records in the name of preventing terrorism.

Republican White House hopeful Rand Paul decried the phone data program and other post-9-11 domestic surveillance as unconstitutional at a Monday event outside Philadelphia's Independence Hall.

"We will do everything possible -- including filibustering the Patriot Act -- to stop them," the Kentucky senator said in front of the building where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Three hundred miles to the north, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered an unapologetic defense of NSA phone records collection as he faced voters in the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire.

Christie, who said he used the Patriot Act as a federal prosecutor, argued government surveillance powers should be strengthened, not weakened.

The revelation the NSA secretly had been collecting all records of U.S. landline phone calls was among the most controversial disclosures by Snowden, a former NSA systems administrator who in 2013 leaked thousands of secret documents to journalists.

The program collects the number called, along with the date, time and duration of the call, but not the content or people's names.

It stores the information in an NSA database a small number of analysts query for matches against the phone numbers of known terrorists abroad, hunting for domestic connections to plots.

Intelligence officials call the program useful but can point to no terrorist plot uncovered because of it.

Monday's clash comes just as Congress debates the future of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the phone-records program. The law will expire June 1 unless Congress acts.

The House has passed a bill that would end the NSA's collection and storage of the phone records but would allow the agency to gather them from phone companies on a case-by-case basis. Some in the Senate, including Republican leader Mitch McConnell, want to continue the program as is, with the NSA keeping all the records.

Christie and another presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., are in McConnell's camp, arguing it's critical to extend the provision to fight terrorism. So is former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whose aides addressed the issue head-on for the first time Monday.

During an interview with The Associated Press, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker three times declined to say whether he supported reauthorizing the program. He said it was "important to be able to collect information like that," as long as there were unspecified privacy safeguards.

A spokesman later emailed to say Walker supported continuing the program as it exists.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, strikes a middle ground, supporting a Senate version of the House bill that preserves the program while ending NSA bulk collection and storage.

Obama supports the House legislation, known as the USA Freedom Act, which is in line with a proposal he made last March. So, too, does Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who on Twitter recently endorsed the House plan.