Cruz: Focus our efforts squarely on those who are most likely to attack us and less on law-abiding Americans

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, issued the following statement in response to today's speech by President Obama on NSA surveillance:

"We need to see the details, but it's an excellent development that the President says he intends to end the government's bulk collection of phone metadata for millions of law-abiding Americans. The federal government must respect the constitutional rights of every American. Our intelligence community is to be praised when it protects our security within the bounds of our Constitution, but I remain deeply concerned that even with our massive surveillance apparatus, we too often fail to connect the dots—and so fail to prevent—terrorist attacks from Fort Hood to Benghazi to Boston. We would do better to focus our efforts squarely on those who are most likely to attack us and less on the activities of law-abiding Americans. We must always be vigilant to protect our nation’s security, and we should not limit those efforts simply because we have greater intelligence capabilities than other countries."

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