Rep. Jared Polis Calls For 24 Hour Surveillance On Senator Marco Rubio

from the because-polis-is-awesome dept

“If Senator Rubio believes that millions of innocent Americans should be subject to intrusive and unconstitutional government surveillance, surely he would have no objections to the government monitoring his own actions and conversations,” said Rep. Polis. “Senator Rubio is asking for American technology companies to ‘cooperate with authorities,’ so I believe he will have no objection to authorities being given access to his electronic correspondence and metadata. Maybe after his 2016 strategy documents are accidentally caught up in a government data grab, he’ll rethink the use of mass surveillance.” Rubio’s op-ed called for “a permanent extension of the counterterrorism tools our intelligence community relies on” and said that the tactics were “legally and painstakingly established.” This is in stark contrast with the conclusions of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which found the data collection practices to be illegal, saying the Patriot Act “does not provide an adequate basis to support this program.” This new focus on Senator Rubio shouldn’t require any additional legislation, as Senators have already been included in intelligence agency monitoring.

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Rep. Jared Polis has a bit of a history of making hilarious, but incredibly on point, sarcastic and satirical suggestions in response to government officials saying something stupid. Last year, he asked the Treasury Department to ban dollar bills after Senator Joe Manchin asked the Treasury Department to ban Bitcoin . Polis, of course, took the same arguments Manchin used against Bitcoin and highlighted how dollar bills had the same characteristics.His latest move is in response to Senator Marco Rubio's ridiculous and clueless call for greater levels of mass surveillance of Americans . Rubio calls for new laws to force tech companies to help the government spy on everyone and also aof the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the part of the law that was twisted by the DOJ and the NSA to pretend it means they can demandon every American because they might be able to sniff through it all and find something interesting.In response, Polis has asked the US Intelligence Community to begin "24 hour monitoring" of Senator Rubio Nicely done. While he's at it, Polis might want to ask Rubio to release all of his own metadata publicly anyway. After all, if there's no big deal in snooping through metadata, Rubio shouldn't have any shame in revealing everyone he calls (or who calls him), everyone he emails and every website he visits. Right?

Filed Under: fisa, jared polis, marco rubio, metadata, patriot act, section 215, surveillance