Greater Reforms Needed to Protect Americans' Fourth Amendment Rights
Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Representative Steve Daines today called President Barack Obama's proposed reforms to the National Security Agency (NSA) mass data collection program "wholly insufficient" and reaffirmed his call for a complete end to the forced blanket collection of Americans' telephone records for dragnet intelligence purposes:
"The only way to fully protect the American people's constitutional rights from government overreach is stopping the forced collection of personal phone records. President Obama's proposed changes are wholly insufficient in providing needed reforms and real privacy protections for the American people," Daines stated."Rather than addressing the core problem and fully ending the NSA's mass data collection program, President Obama is offering the American people peripheral changes that fall woefully short in protecting Montanans' privacy and civil liberties from NSA overreach and abuse. I will continue fighting for real reforms that end the federal government's compulsory collection of Americans' personal information and provide Americans with the privacy protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment."
Daines has been a vocal advocate for ending the NSA's bulk meta-data program and working toward reforms that increase NSA transparency and accountability.
In November, Daines helped introduce H.R. 3361, the USA Freedom Act, which increases transparency, protects Americans from bulk collection of their communications records and requires the government to more aggressively filter and discard information about Americans accidentally collected through PRISM and related programs.
Earlier this year, Congressman Daines supported an amendment to the 2014 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, introduced by Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), which called for the end of NSA's blanket collection of Americans' telephone records by authorizing the FISA court to order the production of business records and other "tangible items" that pertain only to a person under an authorized counterterrorism investigation.
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