The National Security Agency should have an unlimited ability to collect digital information if it would help protect the nation against terrorism and other threats, a federal judge says.
"I think privacy is actually overvalued," Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit told a conference on privacy and cybercrime in Washington, D.C.,
PC World reports.
"If the NSA wants to vacuum all the trillions of bits of information that are crawling through the electronic worldwide networks, I think that’s fine."
Congress should limit the spy agency's use of the data it collects, Posner said, but not limit its ability to collect it during sweeps and searches.
"Privacy interests should really have very little weight when you’re talking about national security," he said. “The world is in an extremely turbulent state — very dangerous."
Posner questioned why smartphone users need legal protections at all.
"If someone drained my cell phone, they would find a picture of my cat, some phone numbers, some email addresses, some email text," he said. "What’s the big deal?
"Other people must have really exciting stuff. Do they narrate their adulteries, or something like that?"
Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole warned however the United States and other governments have a history of targeting people "who they are concerned about because they have political views and political positions that the government doesn’t approve of," PC World reports.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.