[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 116 (Wednesday, July 11, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H6045]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STOP THE GOVERNMENT FROM SPYING ON AMERICAN CITIZENS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, millions of data sheets spit out of 
the printer inside a thick-walled, secure facility. Across the top are 
Americans' names, a list of phone numbers dialed, the time and date 
called, and the frequency in which they called or texted a person.
  ``Who is doing this?'' you might ask. A criminal organization? A 
private investigator? Who is intentionally stalking and gathering data 
on innocent American citizens without their knowledge?
  Well, it is not a nefarious organization operating behind closed 
doors. It is not the Russians. It is the spying eyes of the United 
States Federal Government.
  In the aftermath of 9/11, the government authorized once-secret 
programs by the NSA to collect information on bad actors, primarily 
terrorists, who wish to create mayhem. They were terrorists overseas.
  As the subcommittee chairman of Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and 
Trade, I agree that we should go after terrorists. Our government 
should use techniques they have on those people who wish to destroy 
America and find out what those terrorists are doing.
  But despite the overall intention of the law, the program has been 
corrupted. Not only does the NSA collect information on terrorists, 
which they should do, but it collects data on ordinary American 
citizens, including communications, emails, and text messages.
  The government does not have a specific Fourth Amendment warrant to 
collect and search this data on Americans, but it does it anyway. The 
Fourth Amendment says the warrantless search and seizure is 
unconstitutional without a probable cause warrant. But the government 
ignores the Constitution.
  This sensitive information is placed into a searchable database by 
the government, a secret database. Sometimes the government decides to 
go into that database that was seized without a Fourth Amendment 
warrant and checks to see how many times a name comes up. They take 
that information and do a reverse search, checking to see if the 
citizen's identifying information is in the database.
  Remember, Mr. Speaker, this is done by our government on Americans, 
in secret, without a Fourth Amendment warrant.
  For years, the NSA has refused to provide data on the number of 
Americans swept up in their secret searches. I have advocated for years 
that the NSA level with Americans, our government, and the Congress as 
to how much information they are seizing.
  Several months ago, the House voted for a flawed FISA bill, the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which, unfortunately, 
reauthorized the warrantless surveillance of American citizens. The 
only good thing to come out of this spying bill is a hard-fought 
provision releasing the numbers of Americans wrapped up in government 
spying. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, they paint a grim picture for the 
privacy of Fourth Amendment protections.
  In 2017 alone, the NSA unconstitutionally gathered data on 7,512 U.S. 
persons, a search without a probable cause warrant. This is up from 
5,288 in 2016.
  According to a previous report by The Washington Post, 90 percent of 
the account holders whose communications were collected were not 
targets. That means the government was just fishing around in the data 
they had collected and searching information on Americans without a 
warrant.
  Privacy must not be forsaken on the false altar of national security. 
As a former judge, I am very concerned about the loss of our Fourth 
Amendment right of privacy in the United States based on this 
unconstitutional action by the NSA.

  The Fourth Amendment is sacred to this country and to the Founders 
who drafted it. It is up to Congress to uphold Americans' Fourth 
Amendment rights. We must reform an article called 702 to require that 
if the government wants to look at the data that was seized on 
Americans, they do it with a search warrant, based on the Fourth 
Amendment. If they don't have a search warrant based on the Fourth 
Amendment, then they cannot seize and go through that information.
  It is a very simple concept, Mr. Speaker, and I would hope that 
Congress would act to stop our government from spying on American 
citizens in the name of national security. It is unconstitutional.
  And that is just the way it is.

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