Mass surveillance

Paul: ‘Dishonest’ officials using Paris to promote surveillance

Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul on Sunday warned that the intelligence community is deceitfully using the terror attacks in Paris to promote its surveillance agenda.

“When you have a fearful time or an angry time, the people are coached into giving up their liberty,” said the Kentucky senator on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Paul has long railed against government surveillance, a topic that has been thrust into the spotlight in the wake of the Paris attacks that killed about 130 people.

Many officials and some lawmakers have argued that the incident has shown the need to keep the much-maligned surveillance programs exposed by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.