[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 99 (Wednesday, May 27, 2020)]
[House]
[Page H2288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  SURVEILLANCE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, October 2001, under the shadow of 9/11, 
with the House office buildings evacuated because of the threat of 
anthrax, a bill authored by Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner and the Bush 
White House was brought before the House. It was called the USA PATRIOT 
Act.
  Now, who could, in the shadow of 9/11, vote against anything called 
the USA PATRIOT Act? Well, I did, as did 66 other Members; 3 
Republicans, 62 Democrats, and 1 Independent, because of the 
unbelievably, unconstitutionally broad powers that would be granted for 
surveillance of all the American people in myriad ways.
  Now, there wasn't even a copy of the bill available. I came to the 
floor, and I said: Can I have a copy of the bill? They said: Sorry, 
there is only one. It is on the Republican side. I said: Well, it is 
not the Senate. I can't filibuster, but I will make it a long day with 
the adjournment votes. Get me a copy. They printed out a copy, it was 
hot off the Xerox. I got rushed on this side by Members of the 
Judiciary Committee who ostensibly authored the bill to try and find 
out what the heck was in it, but people still voted for it. The abuses 
that have come under this are myriad and well-documented.
  Now, I credit Zoe Lofgren for trying to amend the most egregious 
section, 215, and my colleague, Ron Wyden from Oregon. Senator Wyden 
almost succeeded in the Senate, short one vote. And Zoe tried on the 
last reauthorization and this one to amend that. Unfortunately, she was 
pressured by and forced to, since otherwise they would block her 
amendment, to water down her revisions to section 215.
  Now, Senator Wyden is opposed, as are others. What is section 215? 
Unbelievably broad, warrantless, intrusive, internet searches of 
everything you look at, browse online. For what purpose? Who knows? 
What are they going to do with that information? Well, maybe they are 
going to apply an algorithm and find something. They gather so much 
data, they don't know what to do with it.

                              {time}  1030

  What is the legal standard? A presumption of relevance to an 
investigation. Isn't that a laughable standard? You could presume 
relevance to virtually anything in the world at any time.
  So this bill, even if that amendment should pass, even if the bill 
comes up today--it is questionable whether it will. We now have 
government by tweet on that side of the aisle.
  Trump says jump; they jump. And last night, Trump said he is against 
this, even though it has a special provision in the bill for President 
Trump because of the Carter Page abuses.
  It says the ``Attorney General,'' in quotes--by the way, that means 
any senior official in the Justice Department--would have to sign off 
on targeting Federal officials or candidates for office.
  First off, why should those people be exempt if they are engaged in 
terrorist activities or presumptive relevance of terrorist activities?
  But, again, ``Attorney General,'' with this laughable clown in the 
Attorney General's Office who jumps even higher than they do when the 
President tweets, I don't think so. Just think of how they could use 
that politically, not for intelligence purposes.
  It does nothing to reform section 702, which is incidental backdoor 
accumulation of data. There are many, many documented abuses of section 
202.
  It does finally do away with what was revealed by Mr. Snowden, the 
massive gathering of all phone records.
  Again, what are they going to do with it? Hundreds of millions of 
records, no effective algorithms, no way to figure out what it was 
about. It was useless, operationally, as analyzed by numerous 
commissions and others, but there was still massive compliance and 
errors.
  Even the NSA said: No, we don't want that anymore; we can't do 
anything with it. But the administration asked that it be continued. 
This bill doesn't continue it, one of the few merits of this so-called 
reform bill.
  This bill does not deserve passage. It does not undo the damage that 
was created in the shadow of 9/11, to the ignorance of most Members of 
Congress who voted for it.

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