Frank Church

A book I'm reading (Battlefield America: The War on the American People, by John W. Whitehead, 2015 - here's a copy one can borrow on the internet archive library) has a short section with some alarming quotes by Senator Frank Church, which led me down a rabbit hole to discover who Frank Church was. I'm a bit too young (just barely) to know.

From the book:

Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the National Security Agency in the 1970s, understood only too well the dangers inherent in allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers "at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left."

Noting that the NSA could enable a dictator "to impose total tyranny" upon an utterly defenseless American public, Church declared that he did not "want to see this country ever go across the bridge" of constitutional protection, congressional oversight and the necessity for privacy". He avowed that "we", implicating both Congress and its constituency in this duty, "must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return."

Unfortunately, we have long since crossed over into that abyss, first under George W. Bush... and then under President Obama...

President Jimmy Carter and Senator Frank Church from the Encyclopedia Britannica