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[Page H2288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SURVEILLANCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, October 2001, under the shadow of 9/11,
with the House office buildings evacuated because of the threat of
anthrax, a bill authored by Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner and the Bush
White House was brought before the House. It was called the USA PATRIOT
Act.
Now, who could, in the shadow of 9/11, vote against anything called
the USA PATRIOT Act? Well, I did, as did 66 other Members; 3
Republicans, 62 Democrats, and 1 Independent, because of the
unbelievably, unconstitutionally broad powers that would be granted for
surveillance of all the American people in myriad ways.
Now, there wasn't even a copy of the bill available. I came to the
floor, and I said: Can I have a copy of the bill? They said: Sorry,
there is only one. It is on the Republican side. I said: Well, it is
not the Senate. I can't filibuster, but I will make it a long day with
the adjournment votes. Get me a copy. They printed out a copy, it was
hot off the Xerox. I got rushed on this side by Members of the
Judiciary Committee who ostensibly authored the bill to try and find
out what the heck was in it, but people still voted for it. The abuses
that have come under this are myriad and well-documented.
Now, I credit Zoe Lofgren for trying to amend the most egregious
section, 215, and my colleague, Ron Wyden from Oregon. Senator Wyden
almost succeeded in the Senate, short one vote. And Zoe tried on the
last reauthorization and this one to amend that. Unfortunately, she was
pressured by and forced to, since otherwise they would block her
amendment, to water down her revisions to section 215.
Now, Senator Wyden is opposed, as are others. What is section 215?
Unbelievably broad, warrantless, intrusive, internet searches of
everything you look at, browse online. For what purpose? Who knows?
What are they going to do with that information? Well, maybe they are
going to apply an algorithm and find something. They gather so much
data, they don't know what to do with it.
{time} 1030
What is the legal standard? A presumption of relevance to an
investigation. Isn't that a laughable standard? You could presume
relevance to virtually anything in the world at any time.
So this bill, even if that amendment should pass, even if the bill
comes up today--it is questionable whether it will. We now have
government by tweet on that side of the aisle.
Trump says jump; they jump. And last night, Trump said he is against
this, even though it has a special provision in the bill for President
Trump because of the Carter Page abuses.
It says the ``Attorney General,'' in quotes--by the way, that means
any senior official in the Justice Department--would have to sign off
on targeting Federal officials or candidates for office.
First off, why should those people be exempt if they are engaged in
terrorist activities or presumptive relevance of terrorist activities?
But, again, ``Attorney General,'' with this laughable clown in the
Attorney General's Office who jumps even higher than they do when the
President tweets, I don't think so. Just think of how they could use
that politically, not for intelligence purposes.
It does nothing to reform section 702, which is incidental backdoor
accumulation of data. There are many, many documented abuses of section
202.
It does finally do away with what was revealed by Mr. Snowden, the
massive gathering of all phone records.
Again, what are they going to do with it? Hundreds of millions of
records, no effective algorithms, no way to figure out what it was
about. It was useless, operationally, as analyzed by numerous
commissions and others, but there was still massive compliance and
errors.
Even the NSA said: No, we don't want that anymore; we can't do
anything with it. But the administration asked that it be continued.
This bill doesn't continue it, one of the few merits of this so-called
reform bill.
This bill does not deserve passage. It does not undo the damage that
was created in the shadow of 9/11, to the ignorance of most Members of
Congress who voted for it.
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