Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said on NBC’s "Meet the Press" that he "may well be voting for" legislation that will overhaul the National Security Agency’s collection and storage of Americans’ phone records.
Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, said that while he is against allowing private companies to hold data collected by the National Security Agency, "we have to look at the best of bad situations."
"It doesn't go as far as I would like it to go," Sanders said of the reform bill, called the USA Freedom Act.
The proposal to allow private companies to store the phone data is one of many in the bill, which would reform the part of the Patriot Act that handles bulk collection of phone data. The USA Freedom Act is under consideration today in a rare Sunday session in the Senate. After passing the House last month, the bill has faced several roadblocks, including a recent failure to advance the bill in a procedural vote.
Sanders noted that he voted against the original Patriot Act and its reauthorization.
"We have got to be vigorous in fighting terrorism and protecting the American people," he said. "But we have to do it in a way that protects the constitutional rights of the American people."
Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said the Patriot Act has worked. Santorum voted in favor of the law when he was Republican senator representing Pennsylvania in 2001.
"I'm not aware of any abuses of the Patriot Act that cause any undue fear about invasion of privacy," he told Chuck Todd in an interview following Sanders’ comments.
Santorum, who announced his candidacy this week, said he would vote for the USA Freedom Act if he was still in the Senate and, as president, he would sign it into law.
"I'm encouraging everyone to let that bill become law,” he said. "We can move forward from there and judge to whether that provides us sufficient security going forward."