Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) expressed skepticism Thursday that the National Security Agency truly needed access to phone records from millions of Verizon customers, which was first reported on by The Guardian.
“Wow, that’s a revelation,” Flake said during an appearance on MSNBC. “Why they would need that much data puzzles me. It just seems strange that they would collect all of that only to, I’m sure, drill down on certain aspects later on. But that was a surprise and raises some questions that I think we ought to answer.”
Flake added that he supports providing law enforcement with “the tools that they need and require to track terrorists” and said he is willing to accept the NSA’s actions if they were done for those reasons.
