Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign on August 23rd, 2024, prior to the publication of our candidate analysis. We only include active candidates in that analysis. If you’re curious about how RFK Jr. compares to current presidential candidates on surveillance and privacy, here is our separate analysis.
Grade: B+
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (“RFK Jr.”)’s career as an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist offers little in the way of understanding his views on surveillance reform. Nonetheless, since RFK Jr. launched his presidential campaign in April 2023, he has taken a strong stance on key surveillance reform issues as part of his policy platform. He regularly criticizes the intelligence community and their repeat violations of U.S. persons’ civil liberties. However, his grade suffers because he also weakens his own advocacy by endorsing sometimes racist conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims connected to surveillance.
RFK Jr.’s platform explicitly calls for strengthening the Fourth Amendment: “We will respect the right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, by ending mass surveillance of American citizens and the abuse of civil asset forfeiture.” If elected, he promises to end the post-9/11 War on Terror. He has not proposed a concrete policy proposal to do so, but he is likely referring to reviving individualized, fact-based collection of American’s communications with a proper warrant or court order in counter-terrorism operations. The USA Patriot Act, and the passage of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, have ushered in an era of programmatic government surveillance that lacks the particularity Fourth Amendment compliant surveillance should have.
RFK Jr. is a proponent of strong FISA Section 702 reform. He is highly critical of the FBI’s abuse of their access to the Section 702 database via “backdoor searches” of American’s communications. In multiple interviews and public platforms, RFK Jr. has espoused his support for whistleblowers: “The United States Government should build a monument to Julian Assange.” If elected, RFK Jr. would pardon Edward Snowden as a testament to government transparency, one of the key pillars of his political campaign. The Kennedy-Shanahan Campaign launched an official petition to pardon Snowden. RFK Jr. is the only candidate to take a firm stance on financial surveillance. Less favorably, on the border, RFK Jr. has called for installing more long range cameras and sensor equipment along the U.S.-Mexico border to “seal” it permanently.
RFK Jr.’s concern with intelligence agency power is wrapped up in populist conspiracies about climate change and vaccines. He regularly discusses “Operation Mockingbird,” which he believes, without evidence, to be a currently operating mass psychological operation conducted by the CIA to enlist journalists to manipulate the American public’s beliefs. He believes that intelligence agencies, the U.S. military, and the wealthy are harnessing the climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic to enact a form of totalitarian control on the American populace, and has falsely asserted that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
We rely on reform-minded legislators to propose and support policy that addresses the serious issues that civil liberties organizations identify. When government surveillance, a real issue, is wrapped up in generalized and unsubstantiated anti-government conspiracy, it distracts from the practical business of passing federal and local reforms.