'Mike Rogers Is Watching You': Abdul El-Sayed Hits GOP Opponent Over Support for Mass Surveillance

As Flock cameras and the data firm Palantir dominate headlines, Michigan’s Democratic US Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is spending the final weeks of the race hammering his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, for his role in expanding the surveillance state.

On Tuesday, El-Sayed's campaign unveiled a new campaign ad with the tagline "Mike Rogers is watching you."

The ad, first reported by WIRED, features clips of Rogers, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee from 2011-15, boasting of his role in passing the infamous PATRIOT Act, which dramatically expanded government spying powers in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including the mass gathering of Americans' telephone records.

The video repeatedly shows a clip of Rogers from a 2013 intelligence committee hearing, where he downplayed explosive revelations about the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless spying powers.

"You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated, right?" Rogers said.

Another clip shows Rogers, during a 2016 Heritage Foundation speech, saying, "We would love to get one-tenth of what Google has on you." The comment was made as Rogers lamented that aggressive intelligence gathering on US citizens had been curtailed somewhat in the wake of what he said was a "completely undeserv[ed]" backlash against intelligence agencies.

The new ad campaign comes amid broad public unease about government surveillance. A YouGov poll earlier this year found that 76% of Americans were concerned about technology's impact on state spying capabilities, while a separate survey from the Center for Democracy and Technology found 74% were concerned about the security of personal information held by government agencies.

The rapid adoption of Flock's artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers by police departments around the country has sparked bipartisan concern: 62% of voters say they are concerned by the use of Flock cameras, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, according to a Navigator survey in September—many expressed fears that the technology was being used to collect information on innocent people without their consent.

A spokesperson for Rogers has said he “vehemently opposes unchecked use of Flock cameras to track law-abiding citizens” and emphasized that he departed from Congress before the company was founded in 2017.

Since he won the Democratic primary in August, El-Sayed has sought to lay voters' spying fears at the feet of Rogers, joking in August that the Republican had spent his career courting the "peeping Tom vote."

In addition to digital ads and billboards, El-Sayed's campaign also published a website titled "MikeIsWatching.com," which examines Rogers' record during his 14 years in Congress.

It notes Rogers' self-described role in helping to "author" the PATRIOT Act and its renewals, as well as his support for other legislation that expanded the government's reach into Americans' private lives:

• In 2008, Rogers voted for the law that created Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allowed warrantless surveillance of non-Americans outside the US. As critics warned about the ability of American citizens to be caught up in the dragnet, Rogers accused them of "fearmongering." Subsequent reporting in 2014 showed that nearly half the files collected as part of the program detailed communications by US citizens.
• Rogers also publicly defended a provision of that same law that gave telecommunications companies retroactive immunity from lawsuits related to assistance they provided with post-9/11 spying.
• On three occasions, Rogers voted against measures designed to require the government to conduct domestic electronic surveillance through FISA's court-authorized process rather than doing so without warrants.
• Following Edward Snowden's leaks about mass telephone metadata collection, Rogers helped lead the charge to kill amendments that would have prevented the government from indiscriminately collecting Americans' phone records. He warned that the measures would take the country "back to September 10."
• Rogers twice introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which civil liberties groups warned would have allowed companies to hand Americans' emails, private messages, and browsing history to the NSA. The bill, which passed the House but died in the Senate, came after Rogers and his leadership PAC received at least $103,000 from companies and groups that lobbied on CISPA.

In Ohio, former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has attacked Republican Sen. John Husted for promoting AI data centers, while Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D-50) has done the same to his opponent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

But others have leaned harder on the issue of mass surveillance. Also in Texas, Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-49) is trying to take down Republican Gov. Greg Abbott by hammering on a $28.5 million state contract with Flock, which now has over 13,000 cameras in the state, according to the group DeFlock.