Reported May 12, 2006 in the New Bedford Standard-Times

"It's very disturbing and very troubling," said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.

The government has no right to compile information about all the "inconvenient, embarrassing and uncomfortable" yet legal things that Americans make calls about on their telephones, he said.

Even if the government promises that none of the data would be misused, they cannot control whether something leaks out by accident, Rep. Frank said...

Rep. Frank said he hopes the latest accusations against the NSA [National Security Agency] will convince his Republican colleagues to ramp up their oversight of the Bush administration.

"Because Congress has been so delinquent in asserting itself, the administration has felt bolder and bolder to do stuff," he said.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, March 16, 2006 (Internet Betting Rules Back, by Tony Batt)

The only member of the House Financial Services Committee to oppose [the bill banning Internet gambling} was Rep. Barney Frank.

"I do not myself gamble, but I do not see it as my job, as a member of the Congress of the United States, to interfere with the freedom to gamble of other adults," Frank said.

"The fact that people gamble more than they should does not seem to me a fit subject for a legislative prohibition any more than the fact that people eat more than they should, read what they shouldn,t read, go to movies they shouldn,t go to or do other things that many of us think are unwise and inappropriate."

Frank said opponents to Internet gambling include an odd coalition of conservatives and liberals.

"It seems to me that the approach of many of my liberal friends to gambling is akin gt that of some conservatives to sex-related material," Frank said. :Mainly because they disapprove of it personally, they think we can prohibit other people from doing it."