It's pretty lonely to be the NSA right now. The revelation of a massive data collection program has left many progressive senators criticising the agency, from Sen. Tom Udall to Sen. Richard Blumenthal. But one of the other most liberal senators in Congress is so far speaking out in support of the NSA: Al Franken.

Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, knew about the data-mining. Or at least that's what he told Minnesota's WCCO on Tuesday. "I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people," Franken said. The senator also believes the data collection has saved American lives:

I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism. ... There are certain things that are appropriate for me to know that is not appropriate for the bad guys to know.

Last Thursday, Franken issued a press release that expressed concern about the privacy-security balance in the NSA program.

Franken hasn't always been so forgiving of similar practices. At a September 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of expiring components of the USA PATRIOT Act, Franken read the Fourth Amendment to the assistant attorney general for national security as a means of questioning the act's "roving wiretap" provision. Franken would also eventually vote against a 2012 reauthorization of the FISA amendments that give the government wide surveillance authority.

In an early 2006 AlterNet interview before he was officially running for senate, Franken disparaged the Bush NSA warrantless surveillance program, laughing off a similar rationale to the one he's used in part to justify the current program: