From Monday night’s Fox News All-Stars.

On the Obama administration’s push to require online communications software to be wiretap-capable:

I am uneasy with the administration’s idea and not quite for those reasons of the ACLU. Look, if it were only a grant of authority I would be OK with it, because I think our system has checks and balances, independent judiciary, oversight. There was a lot of screaming by Democrats about how the Bush administration tore up the Constitution and destroyed our privacy. It did not — [even] when it tapped the phones.
But what the proposal here is about is not a grant of authority. It’s changing the nature of the Internet. It would impose a mandate on the software companies to put in trap-doors through which a government — any government, not only our government, which I trust, but China and India and other places — [can tap into the Internet]. It will change the nature of the Internet which is now far more anonymous than stuff like phones.
And I think on balance it will make it extremely easy for dictatorial regimes to invade privacy and squash democratic movements. I think overall it is a net minus, and I think the administration is treading into water it really shouldn’t. This would change the nature of the software and the actual technology.

On why should the U.S. government be trusted in the first place:

[Because] we have a track record. In the Bush years people spoke of the scandals, the assault on the Constitution. There were no scandals. It [telephone wiretapping] was used in a very specific and controlled way, and I think it was a success for that reason.