Al Gore: NSA Phone Records Collecting ‘Obscenely Outrageous’

Huffington Post – by  Braden Goyette

Al Gore had some harsh words for the Obama administration in response to the news, first reported by The Guardian on Wednesday, that the National Security Agency had been secretly collecting millions of Verizon customers’ phone records for the past few months.

The former vice president slammed the overreach of the NSA’s surveillance powers on Twitter.

@algore 
Al Gore

In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?http://t.co/KONSBtTWjc

June 6, 2013 1:39 am

While Gore is best known for his work on climate change, he has also expressed his concern about threats to privacy rights in the past.

Earlier this year at South By Southwest, Gore decried a creeping government culture of surveillance.

“The government is about to complete this $2 billion facility in Utah that can sweep up everything” from phone calls to emails,: Gore said, according to tech news website Slashdot. “And the Supreme Court just ruled you can’t sue.”

Gore was also outspoken when the media revealed that the Bush administration had been engaging in warrantless wiretapping. The practice “virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently,” Gore said in a speech in 2006, The New York Times reported.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/al-gore-nsa-phone-records_n_3394043.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share