[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 176 (Tuesday, October 31, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H8277-H8278]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 WE MUST NOT ABUSE THE FOURTH AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, governments, militaries, and 
civilizations sometimes ignore history to justify their actions against 
individuals.
  A bit of history is important here. When the British controlled the 
Colonies, they heavily taxed the Colonies. Citizens had to pay a tax on 
goods they brought in to the Colonies. The Colonies had no say on the 
imposition of those taxes. That is another issue.
  The King issued writs of assistance. What that was was a piece of 
paper allowing the British military to go into businesses and homes, 
unreasonably, to search to see if the Colonies were paying the tax on 
imported goods. For example, John Hancock was a merchant. They would 
search his business to see if he had a tax stamp on the rum he brought 
the Colonies.
  The right of privacy and the right to say something about your taxes 
were two reasons for the American Revolution that came about. The right 
of privacy is a natural right, as Thomas Jefferson said, one of the 
rights given to us by our Creator.
  So, our ancestors wrote the Fourth Amendment, unique to the United 
States, and here is what it says:
  ``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, 
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall 
not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, 
supported by oath or affirmation''--that means the officer has to swear 
to it--``and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the 
persons or things to be seized''--Fourth Amendment.
  So what does that have to do with us today? I will explain.
  Congress has passed the FISA legislation, the Foreign Intelligence 
Surveillance Act, which allows government to go after terrorists and 
people who are working as an agent of a foreign government and search 
their information. They go to a secret court and get a secret warrant--
it is called a FISA warrant--from a FISA judge to allow that search of 
all that information. Separate the bad guys from Americans who they may 
be communicating with unrelated to terrorism. They may be cousins 
talking about whatever. But government, our government, NSA, seizes 
that information on Americans--emails, conversations, text messages--
seizes all that information and keeps it forever.
  And here is what happens in the violation of Americans' right of 
privacy: Government then can go back into that information, unrelated 
to terrorism, to search to see if those people are paying their taxes. 
Maybe somebody didn't pay their taxes on importation of Irish whiskey. 
So the government, IRS, files a criminal case against that American 
citizen.

[[Page H8278]]

  Remember, all of that information was based upon no probable cause 
warrant issued by a real judge.
  We are getting ready to reauthorize, maybe, FISA, the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act. Before we do that, we need to protect 
Americans' right of privacy. It is in a section called 702. It really 
gets down in the weeds. 702 has been abused by government to seize 
American information and then keep it forever. Government then peruses 
that, based upon their high-tech guys in the NSA, to see if crimes were 
committed or not. They have no warrant, no probable cause, nobody sworn 
to the warrant.
  I used to be a judge. I signed lots of probable cause warrants. But 
here it is just seized because government says: Well, we have got it 
because we were looking for a terrorist and it is an incidental search, 
and we want to keep it.
  That is a violation of the Constitution. We should make sure 
Americans' right of privacy is protected before we reauthorize FISA.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record this article, ``Secret Court 
Rebukes NSA for 5-Year Illegal Surveillance of U.S. Citizens,'' to 
illustrate.

   Secret Court Rebukes NSA for 5-Year Illegal Surveillance of U.S. 
                                Citizens

                            (By Tim Johnson)

       Washington.--U.S. intelligence agencies conducted illegal 
     surveillance on American citizens over a five-year period, a 
     practice that earned them a sharp rebuke from a secret court 
     that called the matter a ``very serious'' constitutional 
     issue.
       The criticism is in a lengthy secret ruling that lays bare 
     some of the frictions between the Foreign Intelligence 
     Surveillance Court and U.S. intelligence agencies obligated 
     to obtain the court's approval for surveillance activities.
       The ruling, dated April 26 and bearing the label ``top 
     secret,'' was obtained and published Thursday by the news 
     site Circa.
       It is rare that such rulings see the light of day, and the 
     lengthy unraveling of issues in the 99-page document opens a 
     window on how the secret federal court oversees surveillance 
     activities and seeks to curtail those that it deems overstep 
     legal authority.
       The document, signed by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the 
     court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that 
     National Security Agency analysts had been conducting 
     prohibited queries of databases ``with much greater frequency 
     than had previously been disclosed to the court.''
       It said a judge chastised the NSA's inspector general and 
     Office of Compliance for Operations for an ``institutional 
     `lack of candor' '' for failing to inform the court. It 
     described the matter as ``a very serious Fourth Amendment 
     issue.''
       The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable 
     searches and seizures by the government, and is a 
     constitutional bedrock protection against intrusion.
       Parts of the ruling were redacted, including sections that 
     give an indication of the extent of the illegal surveillance, 
     which the NSA told the court in a Jan. 3 notice was partly 
     the fault of ``human error'' and ``system design issues'' 
     rather than intentional illegal searches.
       The NSA inspector general's office tallied up the number of 
     prohibited searches conducted in a three-month period in 
     2015, but the number of analysts who made the searches and 
     the number of queries were blacked out in the ruling.
       The NSA gathers communications in ways known as 
     ``upstream'' and ``downstream'' collection. Upstream 
     collection occurs when data are captured as they move through 
     massive data highways--the internet backbone--within the 
     United States. Downstream collection occurs as data move 
     outside the country along fiber optic cables and satellite 
     links.
       Data captured from both upstream and downstream sources are 
     stored in massive databases, available to be searched when 
     analysts need to, often months or as much as two years after 
     the captures took place.
       The prohibited searches the court mentioned involved NSA 
     queries into the upstream databanks, which constitute a 
     fraction of all the data NSA captures around the globe but 
     are more likely to contain the emails and phone calls of 
     people in the United States.
       Federal law empowers the NSA and CIA to battle foreign 
     terrorist actions against the United States by collecting the 
     electronic communications of targets believed to be outside 
     the country. While communications of U.S. citizens or 
     residents may get hoovered up in such sweeps, they are 
     considered ``incidental'' and must be ``minimized''--removing 
     the identities of Americans--before broader distribution.
       The court filing noted an NSA decision March 30 to narrow 
     collection of ``upstream'' data within the United States. 
     Under that decision, the NSA acknowledged that it had erred 
     in sweeping up the communications of U.S. citizens or 
     residents but said those errors ``were not willful.'' Even 
     so, the NSA said it would no longer collect certain kinds of 
     data known as ``about'' communications, in which a U.S. 
     citizen was merely mentioned.
       The NSA announced that change publicly on April 28, two 
     days after the court ruling, saying the agency would limit 
     its sweeps to communications either directly to or from a 
     foreign intelligence target. That change would reduce ``the 
     likelihood that NSA will acquire communications of U.S. 
     persons or others who are not in direct contact with one of 
     the agency's foreign intelligence targets.''
       The court document also criticized the FBI's distribution 
     of intelligence data, saying it had disclosed raw 
     surveillance data to sectors of its bureaucracy ``largely 
     staffed by private contractors.''
       The ``contractors had access to raw FISA information that 
     went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's 
     requests,'' it said, adding that the bureau discontinued the 
     practice on April 18, 2016.

  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we must remember history. We must not 
abuse the Fourth Amendment. It is Congress' responsibility to protect 
the natural right of citizens' right of privacy. Get a warrant or don't 
make the search.
  And that is just the way it is.

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