The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, voiced his support for the surveillance capabilities of American law enforcers and intelligence agencies on Monday during a speech that also ranked him among the more hawkish likely presidential contenders.

Christie denounced the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “a criminal who hurt our country and now enjoys the hospitality of Vladimir Putin” in his speech and said that fears of overreach and invasive surveillance by the NSA are “exaggerated and ridiculous”.

“When Edward Snowden revealed our intelligence secrets to the world in 2013, civil liberties extremists seized that moment to advance their own narrow agenda,” Christie said. “They want you to think that there’s a government spook listening in every time you pick up the phone or Skype with your grandkids.”

Without naming the agency, Christie defended the NSA, whose legal basis to collect Americans’ phone records en masse, a provision of the Patriot Act known as Section 215, could expire on 1 June unless renewed by Congress.

“When it comes to fighting terrorism, our government is not the enemy,” Christie said. “I used this tool extensively, aggressively and legally as US attorney and I can tell you this: it works.”

Christie did not mention that a federal court in Manhattan ruled the mass collection of phone metadata illegal earlier this month; he instead only said that “different courts have expressed their views on the program too”.

The three judges involved in that ruling decided to allow Congress the leeway to debate and act on the Patriot Act provision, in light of its imminent deadline.

But Christie pressed in the opposite direction to the court and prominent NSA critics, who include the Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican senator Rand Paul, who is a candidate for the party’s 2016 nomination. Invoking 9/11, Christie said intelligence agencies deserved greater resources and legal foundations to exercise surveillance powers.

“We need to toughen our anti-terror and surveillance laws to give our intelligence services the legal mechanisms to do their jobs,” he said.

The governor insisted that civil liberties concerns were unfounded, and that “intellectual purists [are] worried about theoretical abuses that haven’t occurred”. Civil liberties activists have raised concerns about the phone records program and others revealed by Snowden documents, including the collection of the online metadata of millions of people, taps into the user data of private companies, and abuses of NSA employees such as those who spied on partners or former partners.

Christie’s speech addressed a range of foreign policy issues and framed him as a hawkish Republican who would significantly augment US military presence around the world. Primarily, he said the US should rescind sequestration cuts to the Pentagon’s budget, and bolster the size and resources of the all-volunteer, professional military – more ships, aircraft and ground vehicles and minimum quotas for the army and marine corps.



He also said the US should take a more active hand abroad in what Christie hoped would be “the next American century”. In the past “we didn’t have to be global policemen who solved every problem,” Christie said, “but it was enough for our allies to know we had their back, to give them the peace in which to choose a future for themselves.”

Russia, Iran and Isis were the primary antagonists of Christie’s speech, with China portrayed as a more mercenary player. Christie suggested the US should place sanctions on “on every member of the Russian parliament and Putin’s entire circle, including Putin himself,” in response to the Kremlin-backed war in eastern Ukraine, and that Washington should supply weapons to the beleaguered Ukrainian military as soon as possible.

On Iran, he repeated the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s description of a compromise on a nuclear program and sanctions as “a bad deal”. Christie did not propose an alternate deal, and instead expressed “grave concerns” about enforcing Iran’s compliance. He also said the US should be more active in countering Iranian influence in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, namely with new, linked sanctions on Tehran.

Christie did not outline a strategy to remove dictator Bashar al-Assad from Syria or Isis in Iraq, nor did he mention the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan or Iraq – a sticking point and controversial question for other Republicans with presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Instead, Christie criticized what he called the president’s “piecemeal strategy” and expressed concerns that Middle East countries will turn to funding proxy forces as they battle for influence.

Christie has not yet announced he will run for president, but is expected to join the crowded field seeking the Republican nomination. Declared candidates include senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, as well as the former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.



Likely candidates include the former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and senator Lindsey Graham. Rubio and Graham have sold their experience on the Senate foreign relations committee as proof of their bona fides, while others have sought to differentiate themselves in other ways, such as Christie’s unmitigated support for the NSA or Paul’s criticism of the US drone program.