Former Sen. Rick Santorum hit back against critics of the National Security Agency’s programs Thursday, saying the surveillance was not “a security risk to the country, to individuals or an invasion of their privacy.”

“If you look at, particularly the NSA program … some of that information should have been made public,” Santorum told The Daily Caller at an annual Young America’s Foundation conference. “The actual assessing of data, metadata, that was done, is not in my opinion a security risk to the country, to individuals or an invasion of their privacy.”

Grae Stafford/Daily Caller

“This is data that is collected by commercial enterprises,” Santorum continued. “It’s available, the commercial enterprises have this data so it’s not like it’s secret, it’s not like it’s protected, it’s not like its an expectation of privacy when you go on the airwaves. This is I think is a very fine line to protection of real privacy, which is people’s conversations and the content’s of those conversations, and the fact that these conversations occurred over an open airway is not a privacy issue in my opinion.”

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Speaking about the Edward Snowden revelations and how some American’s consider both Snowden and Bradley Manning heroes for leaking classified information,

Santorum said, “People have their reasons to lift up people as heroes. There is, I know, a general mistrust of the government by a lot of folks, and there is a legitimate reason for that, but there is also a legitimate role that the federal government plays in the national security of our country.”