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Caught Our Eye

Sen. Sanders' investigates the NSA at upcoming town hall

Posted by Katie Barrows on Jan. 31, 2014

Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) upcoming town hall focuses on a secret agency but he's making no secret of his views on the matter, titling the event, "NSA: Out of Control."

Saturday's town hall is the first member hosted event that solely focuses on government surveillance since LegiStorm started tracking town halls Aug. 1, 2013. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) held two town halls in August that listed NSA as one of the many topics of discussion.

The town hall comes after Sanders has battled the National Security Agency over whether the agency is spying on members of Congress. In response to a letter he wrote, the agency stated, "Nothing NSA does can fairly be characterized as 'spying on members of Congress or other American elected officials.'" But the agency also acknowledged it cannot legally query its database to see if its data collection process has swept up records of phone calls by members.

Members of Congress have already scheduled 52 upcoming town halls. So far, Congress has held nearly 2000 such events since then.