Here’s where the presidential candidates stand on the NSA scooping up Americans’ phone records

Where the 2016 Presidential hopefuls stand on the phone records program -- which scoops up information including who Americans call and the length of those conversations, but not their content -- has a new urgency because the part of the Patriot Act that authorizes that phone records program, Section 215, is set to expire on June 1.

• Sen Rand Paul (R-KY): Sen Paul is probably the most outspoken critic of NSA domestic spying among the official candidates -- a title Sen Paul claimed before he was even an official candidate. Despite saying the founding fathers would be "mortified" by the current debate over the phone program, he declined to comment specifically on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) bill -- and the Sen Paul campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry about his position on a 215 extension.
• Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX): Sen Cruz has also been a critic of NSA spying. He was one of four Republican senators who crossed party lines to vote to move the USA Freedom Act forward in November. Sen Cruz's campaign did not immediately respond to an inquiry about his position on an extension of Section 215.
• Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL): Sen Rubio seems to have more in common with his state's former governor than Sens Paul or Cruz when it comes to his position on NSA spying. In response to an inquiry about his position on a Section 215 extension, a spokesman for the Senator referred to a January Fox News op-ed: "This year, a new Republican majority in both houses of Congress will have to extend current authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and I urge my colleagues to consider a permanent extension of the counterterrorism tools our intelligence community relies on to keep the American people safe," he wrote.
• Hillary Clinton (D-NY): The lone declared Democratic candidate is also the most elusive on NSA spying. The former secretary of state stayed quiet about the government's spying activities when they were first revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, although she criticized him -- and her remarks since then have stopped short of taking actionable policy positions. It's all not exactly clear for Clinton, who voted for the Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and for a reauthorization compromise in 2006, but against the 2008 FISA Amendment Acts which expanded other NSA spying powers. A spokesman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment on her position on extension 215 in light of the current looming deadline.