[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 193 (Thursday, December 15, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H8974-H8975]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             BILL OF RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Washington (Mr. McDermott) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, today we celebrate an action that took 
place 220 years ago when we passed the Bill of Rights. But I rise today 
to express my dismay at the passage of the National Defense 
Authorization Act yesterday. Not only did this bill curb our ability to 
keep America safe, it made a mockery of our constitutionally protected 
rights.
  But there is a larger point about the state of this country which is 
worth noting. Over the past several months, this body has wasted 
precious time writing a defense authorization bill with so many 
unsavory provisions the President threatened to veto it.
  National security officials from all political spectrums condemned it 
as dangerous and unnecessary. In the end, the bill was watered down in 
response to many of the serious concerns about the bill, though it did 
not go nearly as far as it should. The final bill still contains 
restrictions on transfer of Guantanamo detainees and grants the 
President the power to indefinitely detain without trial American 
citizens in military custody. It shows just how far along the slippery 
slope our country has moved since 9/11 in authorizing sweeping powers 
to the President at the expense of our civil liberties.
  Let's be clear. The over-militarization of our counterterrorism 
efforts goes against American values and civil liberties, though some 
people continue to justify it through fearmongering. We saw this after 
the horrific events of 9/11 when President Bush signed into law the 
Patriot Act that dramatically expanded law enforcement agencies' 
ability to search telephone, email, and financial records without a 
court order in the name of intelligence gathering.
  One section of the Patriot Act even allows the FBI to review library

[[Page H8975]]

records, to look at which books you're reading.
  In short, what we've done over the past decade is embrace national 
secrecy over national security. And the NDA bill took the Patriot Act 
to a whole new radical level. What the advocates of this bill don't 
seem to realize is that the American public is already paying a price 
in the name of keeping our Nation safe.
  In September the Center for Investigative Reporting and NPR conducted 
a joint investigation into private security at the Mall of America in 
Minneapolis. They found that the mall security personnel stopped an 
average of 1,200 people a year. Nearly two-thirds of those people 
belong to racial and ethnic minorities. Personal information from the 
suspicious activity reports from the mall were sent to the FBI. So 
they've got an FBI file. Some of these people were reported for looking 
at the security guard in a ``suspicious'' way.
  An Army veteran was questioned for nearly 2 hours about a video he 
made inside the mall. One man left his cell phone on a table in the 
food court, and an FBI agent showed up at his family's home asking if 
they knew anyone who might want to hurt the United States.
  These intrusions create a chilling effect that causes law-abiding 
Americans to think twice about exercising their basic constitutional 
rights to speech and assembly.
  James Madison, as you heard, wrote the Constitution and the Bill of 
Rights, and he once said, ``The means of defense against foreign danger 
historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.''
  That could not ring truer than yesterday. This is a sad day for our 
liberty and freedom when we give to the President--we may like the 
President, we may think he's a great man--but to give that office the 
power to hold Americans without trial in military custody indefinitely 
is eroding our right to a free trial and an ability to confront our 
accuser. Those things that are in that Bill of Rights are being taken 
away from all of us.
  Now, we think it won't happen to me. Be careful. That's what people 
thought in a lot of other places in the world. And suddenly, as Martin 
Niemoller said in the German prison camps, ``And then they came for me, 
and there was no one to stand up.''

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