FISA Amendments Act of 2008

FISA AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 20, 2008)

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Mr. HOLT. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding me time to speak about this.

Unfortunately, the negotiators who brought this bill to the floor bought into the flawed assumptions of the Bush administration that because we live in a dangerous world, we must now redefine the fourth amendment and thus the fundamental relationship between the government and its people.

If this bill becomes law, it will perhaps be the only lasting legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration's overhaul of national security policy, a congressionally blessed distortion of congressional checks and balances. It permits massive warrantless surveillance in the absence of any standard for defining how communications of innocent Americans will be protected; a fishing expedition approach to intelligence collection that we know will not make Americans more safe.

Its court review provisions are weak and narrowly defined. I know some of those who negotiated this bill say that some court review is better than no court review. That is only true if the judge's hands aren't tied in the review process. They are in this bill.

There is a fundamental American principle that those who search, seize, intercept and detain should not be the ones who decide who are the bad guys.

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