Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding in support of the Massie-Lofgren amendment.

As mentioned, the declassified FISA court decision has indicated that substantially more warrantless communications are collected through 702 than 215.

We had a bill up to recently, the USA FREEDOM Act, that alleged that we were stopping bulk collection, but we didn't. During the markup of that bill in the Judiciary Committee, we offered this amendment; and everyone on the committee, including the chairman of the committee, said they were for this provision, but it wasn't the right time. Well, this is the right time.

That is why we have this broad support. It is the Massie-Lofgren-Sensenbrenner-Conyers-Poe-Gabbard-Jordan-O'Rourke. It is broad; it is bipartisan. It is supported by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the Campaign for Liberty, Demand Progress, as well as FreedomWorks. This has broad bipartisan support.

The American people deserve this. When we have an interest in querying the 702 database for American citizens, get a warrant. That is what the Fourth Amendment requires.

Finally, this closes the opportunity to require backdoors on technology. As has been mentioned earlier by technologists and scientists, to do that just opens a door wide open for the bad guys and the hackers to break in.

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Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The unclassified FISA court reported that the 702 search had, in fact, scooped up vast amounts of wholly domestic information. How does this work?

The upstream communications are tapped into by the NSA. In the digital world, your digital information, your domestic information is stored throughout the world. It is scooped up, and it is used.

The FBI has indicated it is used and the DNI has indicated it is used for wholly domestic purposes without a warrant routinely thousands, tens of thousands of times. It is in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and it must stop.

I would just say, on the Judiciary Committee, every member of the committee who declined to support this amendment said they were for the amendment and said we should offer it to the DOD appropriations bill.

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