Wayne State Professors Mel Small and Robert Sedler commented about the news that the federal government has quietly been amassing a database which includes tens of millions of phone records from private citizens. Small said this news is not without precedent and that it occurred during the presidency of Richard Nixon. "The government routinely tapped the phones of groups involved in radical politics during that time, but congressional hearings and court hearings later ruled most of them illegal." Sedler, a constitutional law professor, said the program\'s legality will likely be determined once the government uses the program to prosecute people. \"I believe that any surveillance for any reason requires a warrant, that there can be no excuse in the name of national security or anything else.\"