This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 11th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Congress is supposed to provide serious oversight of NSA surveillance.

According to U.S. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, of but also on the intelligence committees that have made meaningful oversight more difficult.

He spoke at Cato's NSA conference held Wednesday.

Thanks so much Jim and thanks to Cato. They thought it was appropriate after having a few

high-brow segments to have at least one low-brow segment here in the middle of the day.

So I want to thank you all for having me here today.

This is an amazing conference.

I mean, we've had Ron Wyden here.

We're going to have Jim Sensenbrenner later in the day. Ron Wyden is a

person who I've really grown to admire because he serves in some sense as a

congressional whistleblower. He's a person who is in some sense letting us know what's going on through some

questions through some of the clues and he really got us to the point where we could do

something like the Amash Amendment and get a lot of support. Jim Sensenbrenner is one of the key authors of the Patriot Act.

And he's someone I came to know during this process,

I came to develop a better relationship with.

And he was genuinely astonished by what was going on by the NSA.

And I remember going to his office

and asking him for support on my amendment.

And I thought I was going to have to really pitch it hard.

But I walked into his office and he said,

...