Cato Institute: on Homeland Security

Cato Institute: Bar the government from indiscriminate bulk surveillance

Some legislators argued that to pass new legislation would only provide the government convenient new legal justification for its spying--which it would interpret broadly. One Cato scholar wrote that it "would effectively represent a repeat of the Protect America Act fiasco of the previous decade--an act of Congress that made legal a previously illegal surveillance program that did exactly nothing to protect the country, while costing billions and subjecting Americans to continued mass surveillance. Real Patriot Act 'reform' should substantively bar the government from indiscriminate bulk surveillance. Anything less risks laying the groundwork for another decade of abuse."

On the opposite side of the argument stood some pro-privacy groups who held that modest reforms were better than no reforms at all