Shenna Bellows on Homeland Security

NSA should target only based on individualized suspicion

"What I think we need is targeting based on individualized suspicion, reasonable suspicion that people are engaged in criminal or terrorist activity," she says in response to a question about what she thinks the NSA should be able to monitor.

Collins, seeking her fourth term, supports reforms to improve transparency and accountability but would not curtail the program to the extent Bellows wants to. "As we increase transparency and erect further barriers to intelligence collection, we must be careful that we do not put our country at greater risk of attack," she said in a statement last month.

We cannot afford to be the world's policemen

No spying on foreign leaders NOR on ordinary Americans

Q: Sen. Collins put out a statement saying that she's not aware of a justification for collecting intelligence on Chancellor Merkel, and that she would be telling the German ambassador that "it was wrong" for the administration to do that.

BELLOWS: We absolutely need to stop listening in on phone calls of allies like Merkel. But we also need to stop spying on millions of Americans.

Q: What about the comparative attention that those two kinds of surveillance get?

BELLOWS: It's certainly concerning to international relations to learn that we were spying on the phone conversations of some of our closest allies. But it's equally important to address the issue of spying on millions of ordinary Americans.

Snowden was a whistle-blower, not a criminal

A: We need more protection for whistle-blowers so that we can have an open conversation about what's appropriate. His revelations have been a catalyst for a national conversation that we really need to have.

Q: Should he be punished?

A: Daniel Ellsberg wrote an Op-Ed about how his revelations in the Pentagon Papers would not have been possible under current law that prohibits whistle-blowers from coming forward. And the ACLU and other civil liberties groups have been involved in Snowden's defense. We have too much secrecy surrounding these programs.

Q: Do you believe that Snowden should be either charged with a crime or detained by the US government?

A: I do not think that speaking out about matters of national import should be criminalized. Snowden is absolutely a whistle-blower and should be treated as such. He revealed government illegality and abuse of authority and we as a country depend upon truthful information about what the government is doing

Stop NSA surveillance on ordinary Americans

Collins voted for the Patriot Act, as did most other lawmakers, and defends NSA phone surveillance activities as necessary anti-terrorism tools. She voted for the defense bill but co-sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to eliminate indefinite detention of Americans linked to terrorist groups

Stop spending billions on surveillance-industrial complex

• We need to repeal the Patriot Act and REAL ID.
• We need to stop the NSA and the FBI from wasting their time and taxpayer dollars spying on ordinary Americans through our cell phones and email.
• We need to place limits on drones.
• A reporter asked me last week why should we care if we have nothing to hide. The question suggests that we need to sacrifice our freedoms for security. But it's a false choice. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
• We do not have to sacrifice our fundamental freedoms to be safe.
• When the government spies on its own people, we, the people, lose trust in our government.
• We can restore trust and a sense of community by restoring our constitutional freedoms.
• We need to stop spending billions of dollars on a surveillance industrial complex we can't afford and start investing in entrepreneurs.