By Liz Thatcher
Rep. Rand Paul, R-Ky., may be onto something when he said the Republican Party should try to reach out to young voters.
As WND reported, the likely presidential contender recently said the GOP can win the White House by capturing the youth vote with the privacy issue.
At a Young Americans for Liberty protest against the spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, held on the George Mason University campus in Fairfax, Va., several students told WND how important that issue is to them.
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"Egregious overstepping of police (and NSA) bounds is one of the reasons why this wave of libertarianism is sweeping the nation," declared GMU student Anna Stowe.
She was one of a number of students who expressed a keen interest in privacy rights, while participating in one of almost 180 YAL rallies and events to mark Constitution Day on Sept. 17.
Event organizers erected “free speech walls” and encouraged students to sign a petition against the NSA.
Messages written on the GMU wall included comments about Syria, drone policy, Second Amendment rights as well as privacy issues.
"We feel the First and Fourth Amendments are violated regularly by the government," explained Madeline Dutro, the GMU recruitment chair for YAL.
Andy, an economics major, told WND he his concerned Obama is "trying to be more like Europe. Trying to make the government be responsible for us, and that’s just cr-p.”
Andy wrote, “Stop trying to be like Europe” on the "free speech wall."
A student named Shane said, "I signed the free speech wall because I don't like how the NSA is just watching you all the time."
The administration has been under heavy criticism ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who was recently granted temporary asylum in Russia, revealed the U.S. government is collecting an enormous amount of data on Americans.
Olivia Valentine, the social media coordinator for GMU's chapter of the YAL, said they were holding the rally to “get people more aware of what is actually happening to our rights and the Constitution.”
On its website, YAL calls itself, "the largest and fastest-growing libertarian and conservative youth organization in the country," with more than 420 chapters nationwide.