[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 87 (Tuesday, June 18, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3692-H3693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       OUR NATION'S WAKE-UP CALL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, in the early 1760s, the Royal Governor 
of Massachusetts began issuing writs of assistance as general warrants 
to search for contraband. They empowered officials to search 
indiscriminately for evidence of smuggling.
  These warrants were challenged in February 1761 by James Otis, who 
argued forcefully that they violated the natural rights of Englishmen 
and were, in fact, ``instruments of slavery.''
  A 25-year-old attorney who attended the trial later wrote:

       Every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away 
     as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. 
     Then and there the child independence was born.

  That young lawyer was John Adams. To him, that's the moment the 
American Revolution began. The general warrants were the first warning 
that his king had become a tyrant.
  The Founders specifically wrote the Fourth Amendment to assure that 
indiscriminate government searches never happened again in America. In 
America, in order for the government to invade your privacy or to go 
through your personal records or effects, it must first present some 
evidence that justifies its suspicion against you and then specify what 
records or things it's searching for.
  Last week, we learned the Federal Government is today returning to 
those general warrants on a scale unimaginable in colonial times by 
seizing the phone and Internet records of virtually every American.
  We're told that this is perfectly permissible under past Supreme 
Court rulings because the government is not monitoring content, but 
only the records held by a third party. But if phone records are 
outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment because they're held by 
a third party, then so too are all of our records or effects held by 
third parties. That means the property you keep in storage or with a 
family member, the private medical records held by your physician, the 
backup files on your computer maintained on another server, all are 
subject to indiscriminate search. In fact, many of the general warrants 
served long ago in Boston were on warehouses owned by third parties.
  Even if we were to accept this rationale, then that third party, for 
example, the phone company, ought itself to be safe from general 
warrants like those that have apparently scooped up the phone and 
Internet records of every American. It's argued with Orwellian logic 
that it's permissible to seize these records indiscriminately since 
they aren't actually searched until a legal warrant is issued by a 
secret FISA court. But if general warrants can produce the evidence for 
specific warrants, isn't the Fourth Amendment prohibition against 
general warrants then rendered meaningless? And all we know of the 
secret FISA court and its deliberations is that out of 34,000 warrants 
requested by the government, it has rejected only 11--hardly a 
testament to judicial prudence or independence.
  We're told that the information will be used only to search for 
terrorists.

[[Page H3693]]

Does anyone actually believe that? Just a few months ago, the Director 
of National Intelligence brazenly lied to Congress when he denied the 
program existed at all. Just a few weeks ago, we learned that this 
administration has taken confidential tax information belonging to its 
political opponents and leaked it to its political supporters. Is there 
anyone so naive as to believe the same thing won't be done with phone 
and Internet records if it suits the designs of powerful officials?
  A free society does not depend on a police state that tracks the 
behavior of every citizen for its security. A free society depends 
instead on principles of law that protect liberty while meting out 
stern punishment to those who abuse it. It doesn't mean we catch every 
criminal or terrorist. It means that those we do catch are brought to 
justice as a warning to others. This is true whether we are enforcing 
the laws of our Nation or the Law of Nations.
  Indeed, if we had responded to the attack on September 11 with the 
same seriousness as we responded to Pearl Harbor, terrorism would not 
be the threat that it is today.
  Ours is not the first civilization to be seduced by the siren song of 
a benevolent all-powerful government. But without a single exception, 
every civilization that has succumbed to this lie has awakened one 
morning to find that the benevolence is gone and the all-powerful 
government is still there.
  Mr. Speaker, this is our generation's wake-up call, and we ignore it 
at extreme peril to our liberty.

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