Rand Paul: Government Has Historically Abused Civil Liberties

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul shook off criticism of his 10 1/2-hour speech on the Senate floor, saying he is fighting to preserve Americans' civil liberties.

Paul, a GOP presidential candidate, spoke against reauthorization of the Patriot Act and the mass collection of phone metadata by the National Security Agency (NSA).

"I think the violation of our civil liberties is in the collection of the data," Paul told Fox News Channel's "Hannity" on Thursday.

"We're not alleging that the people who work in the NSA are bad people, that they have bad motives, that they're unpatriotic," Paul said. "We're just alleging that the government on occasion has historically abused the rights of citizens."

"We did it during the civil rights era to civil rights leaders. We did it during the Vietnam era. We did it to the Japanese-Americans during World War II," Paul said.

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