New Hampshire's Congressional candidates agree that maintaining a strong national defense and protecting civil liberties are not mutually exclusive responsibilities, though they disagree on how to strike a balance between the two.
Congress and President Barack Obama have been fighting to regain public trust after disclosures about secret surveillance programs that swept up phone records of hundreds of millions of Americans. Rep. Annie Kuster voted in May to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American phone records, while U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter voted against the bill because she thought it didn't go far enough to protect privacy.
Kuster's Republican opponent, Marilinda Garcia, stopped just short of saying she would've backed the bill, while Frank Guinta, who is challenging Shea-Porter, declined to take a position.
