MICHIGAN — The campaign of Mike Rogers is under fire for statements made by the candidate regarding privacy. In a Congressional hearing when Rogers was a member of the House of Representatives, Rogers retorted, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.”
This statement has been shared numerous times since Rogers won the Republican nomination for the second straight election. The statement is being circulated in a time when voters are concerned about surveillance from Flock cameras and government overreach.
Mike Rogers, a career politician, was a member of Congress from 2001-2105. For much of his congressional career, Rogers was one of Washington’s strongest advocates for expanding the powers of the U.S. intelligence community. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rogers repeatedly defended the NSA’s surveillance programs, including warrantless collection conducted under FISA authorities, arguing that they were essential to national security.
He sponsored legislation such as the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act in 2014, which proposed changes to bulk collection of Americans’ call records, while also sponsoring the Intelligence Authorization Act that funded and authorized intelligence activities involving agencies including the NSA. Rogers was particularly outspoken in defending the government’s ability to conduct surveillance, even making the privacy statement while defending the government’s ability to spy on citizens.
For Rogers, his record illustrates a consistent philosophy: when national security and individual privacy came into conflict, Rogers generally favored preserving broad surveillance authorities. This comes as Oakland county voters are actively seeking to recall a longtime progressive county commissioner who supported a Flock contract. The question for the Rogers campaign is whether or not voters give him a pass for his statement or if they hold him even partly responsible for the current state of spying overreach.
