Jeb Bush, one of the leading Republican presidential candidates, told a national security forum that Washington, DC needs a stronger link to Silicon Valley.

"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."

The former Florida governor's statement puts him not only at odds with rival Republican candidates like Rand Paul, but also against a number of government committees and federal judges

“If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job—while protecting civil liberties—to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst,” Bush said in South Carolina at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, according to The Intercept.

Bush claimed that there was “no evidence” that the bulk collection by the National Security Agency violated civil liberties, despite the fact that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and others have done just that.

https://twitter.com/appsusa/status/633678893191294976

He concluded by saying that there needs to be a “a new arrangement with Silicon Valley in this regard” without providing any salient details.

So far, Bush has not proved himself to be particularly technologically adept during the presidential campaign. Earlier this year in an attempt to be more transparent, the brother of President George W. Bush published six Outlook files full of all of his unredacted correspondence. In the process, Jeb Bush created a trove of full names connected with personal e-mail addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and even social security numbers.