[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 120 (Tuesday, August 2, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5239-S5240]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would like to briefly address S. 1458, 
the intelligence authorization bill for fiscal year 2012, which has now 
been reported by the Select Committee on Intelligence. I know that the 
chair and vice chair of the committee, Senator Feinstein and Senator 
Chambliss, along with their respective staff, have worked hard on this 
bill, and I support nearly every provision in it. However, I strongly 
disagree with the decision to include a 3-year extension of the FISA 
Amendments Act of 2008 in this bill, and it is my intention to object 
to any request to pass this bill by unanimous consent. Consistent with 
my own policy and Senate rules, I am announcing my intention to object 
by placing a notice in the Congressional Record.
  As most of my colleagues remember, Congress passed the FISA 
Amendments Act in 2008 in an effort to give the government new 
authorities to conduct surveillance of foreigners outside the United 
States. The bill contained an expiration date of December 2012, and the 
purpose of this expiration date was to force Members of Congress to 
come back in a few years and examine whether these new authorities had 
been interpreted and implemented as intended.
  I believe that Congress has not yet adequately examined this issue 
and that there are important questions that need to be answered before 
the FISA Amendments Act is given a long-term extension.
  The central section of the FISA Amendments Act, the part that is now 
section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act itself, 
specifically stated that it was intended to address foreigners outside 
the United States, and it even required the Attorney General to develop 
procedures designed to make sure that any individuals targeted with 
this new authority are believed to be outside the United States. So one 
of the central questions that Congress needs to ask is, Are these 
procedures working as intended? Are they keeping the communications of 
law-abiding Americans from being swept up under this authority that was 
designed to apply to foreigners?
  I wanted to know the answer to this question, so Senator Udall of 
Colorado and I wrote to the Director of National Intelligence if it was 
possible to count or estimate the number of people inside

[[Page S5240]]

the United States whose communications had been reviewed under section 
702 of the FISA Amendments Act. The response we got was prompt and 
candid. The response said ``it is not reasonably possible to identify 
the number of people located in the United States whose communications 
may have been reviewed under the authority'' of the FISA Amendments 
Act.
  I should be clear that I do not plan to accept this response as a 
final answer. I understand that it may be difficult to come up with an 
exact count of the number of people in the United States whose 
communications have been reviewed, but I believe Congress at least 
needs to obtain an estimate of this number so that people can 
understand the actual impact of the FISA Amendments Act on the privacy 
of law-abiding Americans.
  During the markup of the intelligence authorization bill, Senator 
Udall of Colorado and I proposed an amendment that would have directed 
the inspector general of the Department of Justice to review the 
implementation of the FISA Amendments Act and attempt to estimate how 
many people inside the United States have had their communications 
reviewed under this law since it was passed 3 years ago. Our amendment 
also would have directed the inspector general to examine other 
important aspects of the FISA Amendments Act, including the problem of 
recurring compliance violations, and report back to Congress within 1 
year.
  I regret that the amendment that Senator Udall of Colorado and I 
offered was not adopted, but I obviously plan to keep trying to get 
more information about the effects of this law. I hope that I will find 
out that no law-abiding Americans, or at least very few, have had their 
communications reviewed by government agencies as a result of this law, 
but I believe that I have a responsibility to get concrete facts rather 
than just hope that this is not the case. And I believe that it would 
be not be responsible for the Senate to pass a multiyear extension of 
the FISA Amendments Act until I and others who have concerns have had 
our questions answered.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to amend this bill, and 
I am hopeful that they will be willing to modify it to address the 
concerns I have raised. In the meantime, I should be clear that it is 
my intention to object to any request to pass the current version of S. 
1458 by unanimous consent.

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