[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 94 (Wednesday, June 3, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H3823-H3827]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REAFFIRM THE PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY BY DISMANTLING THE SURVEILLANCE
STATE
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Self of
Texas was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader.)
General Leave
Mr. SELF. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and
include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. SELF. Mr. Speaker, America's founding generation did not take up
arms merely over taxes. They rebelled against a tyrannical government
that planted spies in their taverns, searched their homes, and read
their private letters.
Benjamin Franklin understood this threat deeply. He popularized the
rattlesnake as the symbol of America, first with his ``Join, or Die''
cartoon, and later by praising the defiant motto: ``Don't Tread On
Me.''
He also delivered a timeless warning: Those who would give up
essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither
liberty nor safety.
This year, 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of
Independence. There could be no more fitting time to reaffirm the
principles of liberty than by dismantling the surveillance state that
has quietly eroded them. That starts with the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, FISA, which has become the modern incarnation of the
general warrants that ignited the revolution.
Created originally to track foreign enemies on foreign soil, section
702 has morphed into a sprawling domestic surveillance machine that
sweeps up American's communications and treats the Fourth Amendment
like a suggestion.
On June 12, Congress faces another deadline to renew section 702. The
intelligence community wants a clean reauthorization, but we are not
going to accept that, Congress should not accept that, and no American,
if they were actually told the truth for once about what their own
government is doing to them, would accept that.
This is not opposition to national security. It is a refusal to
sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety. If Congress is going
to renew FISA, then we must enact meaningful changes.
First, repeal the dangerously broad expansion of the term
``electronic communication service provider.'' It now allows the
government to compel churches, small businesses, and community
organizations to hand over Americans' communications.
Second, strengthen the FISA Courts Amicus Curiae program so
independent voices can actually defend Americans' rights in secret
proceedings.
Third, close the data broker loophole that allows the FBI, IRS, and
every other Federal agency to bypass the Constitution by simply buying
Americans' geolocation, metadata, and browsing history off the market.
Most urgently, require a warrant for backdoor searches of Americans'
communications.
At peak, the government conducted nearly 3 million warrantless
searches of U.S. citizens' data, many of them illegal. Foreign threats
must be watched, but Americans deserve probable cause and a real
warrant on American soil.
In addition, we must ban the Central Bank Digital Currency
permanently. The CBDC is the ultimate surveillance tool that allows the
government to track, control, and potentially freeze every purchase you
make.
The CBDC cannot ever be allowed to operate in the United States. It
is the biggest threat to our privacy.
While we are at it, let's secure our elections by ensuring that only
American citizens vote in American elections.
Mr. Speaker, our Founders never intended for us to trade liberty for
supposed safety. Our Founders never imagined today where illegal aliens
would be voting in our elections.
In this 250th anniversary year of American independence, Congress
must draw a line in the sand. Let us stand with our forefathers, the
Constitution, and the American people who want secure elections and for
the government to stop spying on them.
Reject the rubber-stamped FISA renewal, pass these reforms, secure
our elections, ban CBDC forever, restore the Fourth Amendment, and
protect our Republic. The rattlesnake is, once again, rattling. It is
time for Congress to listen.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), my
distinguished colleague.
Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding, and I am grateful, indeed, for the opportunity to address one
of the most consequential issues facing our great Republic: the
Federal Government's warrantless surveillance of the American people.
For years, Americans have watched headline after headline exposing
the intelligence community's abuse of its authority, and I thought I
would share just a few of those.
Most recently, John Brennan admitted that there is a legion of deep
state operatives in DOJ and CIA who are resisting Trump's orders. Why
is that important?
It is because they are the ones who violate the warrant requirement,
as well.
House approves reauthorization of FISA 702, warrantless spy powers,
and yet when you go and read it, we have problems still. We still have
problems. Why do we know that? Because the FISC, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, has issued a report. It is classified.
Former DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard wanted to declassify that secret but
critical court document but was denied. Actually, in my opinion, that
needs to be released before we ever take a vote on FISA again.
I will just leave it there on those headlines and get back to this.
President Trump has an agenda. He won the popular vote in a
landslide. In my home State, he got 160,000 votes more than the
Democrat. How did he do it? Because the people wanted him to get his
agenda through, but it is being sidestepped and avoided.
Who are the people that are causing the problem, according to John
Brennan? It is the same people that spied on
[[Page H3824]]
President Trump's campaign previously. They abused FISA. The abuses are
not hypothetical. They are not ancient. They didn't just happen in
2016. They are ongoing. That is what Tulsi Gabbard and the FISC court
have discovered, and we need to discover that, as well.
{time} 2000
Section 702 has been used to search the communications of protesters
across the political spectrum, 19,000 donors to a congressional
campaign, Members of Congress, congressional staff, journalists, and
ordinary Americans who did nothing wrong.
Now, it has come to my attention that the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court has this opinion that is sitting there. It details
significant government compliance failures under section 702. We need
that to be declassified. The American people, this great Republic, need
to know what their government is doing.
The opinion must be declassified in order for us to know what we are
doing in Congress to take a vote on this. Without transparency, the
American people and their elected Representatives cannot have a
meaningful, fact-driven debate about the future of this powerful
authority.
Reports indicate the opinion will show persistent, systemic
violations of the law, including U.S. person queries that directly
violate the oversight requirements Congress established in the
Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, just from a couple of
years ago.
One filtering tool tied to these violations has been shut down, but
similar tools remain in use. This is exactly why I have consistently
pushed for a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries.
The Fourth Amendment is not ambiguous. It says, ``no warrants shall
issue but upon probable cause''--not sometimes, not when it is
convenient, not unless the intelligence community thinks it takes too
long.
We keep hearing the same tired argument: Getting a warrant is too
hard. Getting a warrant takes too long. That is simply false. The work
we have done in my bill, H.R. 7816, the Protect Liberty and End
Warrantless Surveillance Act, ensures that is the case.
H.R. 7816 includes targeted, practical exceptions for imminent
threats, cybersecurity emergencies, and consent situations. It protects
Americans and preserves the government's ability to act quickly when
lives are on the line. Anyone claiming otherwise either hasn't taken
the time to read the bill, has read some propaganda, has accepted the
intelligence community's narrative, or simply does not want reform.
As we in Congress keep negotiating what FISA and section 702 reform
should look like, we seem to be forgetting that my bill is already the
negotiated bill. We worked with a wide range of Members and
stakeholders. We built a bipartisan coalition, and last Congress, we
reached a 212-212 vote on my warrant requirement, one vote away from
passing. It was sitting at 212-211 for a long time, and then someone
came in and cast a ``no'' vote.
This is fundamentally the same bill. The work has been done. The
consensus exists. The excuses have run out. Meanwhile, the intelligence
community continues to assure us that: This time, we will follow the
rules; this time, we will respect the Constitution; and this time, we
will stop violating Americans' privacy.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard that promise for a decade and more. The
latest FISA court opinion, the one they are trying to keep classified,
proves those promises are empty.
President Trump's administration took historic steps to increase
transparency across government, and I appreciate former Director
Gabbard's stated commitment to declassify this FISC opinion.
The commitment must be honored. Declassification is essential to
restoring trust, strengthening accountability, and ensuring every
branch of government operates within constitutional limits.
At the end of the day, this debate comes down to a simple principle:
If you want to spy on Americans, you have to get a warrant. That is not
radical. That is not partisan. That is the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin warned that those who trade essential liberty for
temporary safety deserve neither. For too long, Washington has done
exactly that: traded away constitutional privacy for the illusion of
security.
We are told that, without warrantless surveillance, America will be
less safe. That is wrong. We can have both liberty and safety. It is
the government's job to protect both, not force Americans to choose
between them.
We cannot allow a legacy going to our grandchildren where they will
end up growing up in a country where mass surveillance is normal and
constitutional protections are optional. Congress has a responsibility
right now to stop that future from becoming a reality.
Let me just add this: When we talk about CBDC, it is the last leg of
the stool of surveillance. If CBDC were to become a reality, with the
mass surveillance that is in FISA right now, guess what. It wouldn't be
too long before we started looking like our main foe internationally,
the Chinese. They surveil everything.
Do you know what? The U.K. surveils everything, as well. They watch
everything.
What CBDC would do would allow them to shut down the entire banking
system or your microbanking system and control you. It could be abused
so quickly, so thoroughly, and so completely.
I will tell you that I am grateful for the bipartisan Members who
have joined me in this fight. We have a lot of them. We may not agree
on much, but we do agree on this: The Constitution still matters. It is
real. In just 13 years, we will be celebrating its 250th.
If the government wants to search Americans' communications--which is
what they want to do, and it is what they are doing--it must get a
warrant. That is the requirement of the Constitution that I took an
oath to protect and defend.
Mr. Speaker, and my friend from Texas, Mr. Self, I thank you for
this. I would say this: Be careful. There are some illusions out there.
There are some false prophets coming forward to tell you that they are
going to fix this problem, but they are offering a false doctrine.
There should be no hope in that. We should put no faith in that.
Mr. SELF. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Perry) for the purpose of a colloquy.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for bringing
this to light, and I am happy to engage in a colloquy with the
gentleman. I am going to talk about a few things. I am going to talk
about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
We use a lot of acronyms around here, so I am going to try to stick
to these words so people understand: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. We will talk about facial recognition software, the kill switch in
your car, automatic license plate reader cameras, central bank digital
currency, and data centers. All are part of what we are here to discuss
tonight, which is your privacy enshrined, guaranteed, in this document
that everybody here swears an oath to uphold and defend.
I am sure that my friend from Texas, Mr. Self, can see that this
thing is made of paper. Try as it may, it can't defend itself. It
depends on men and women of good character and integrity to do that job
for it. That is how this system was designed. That is how our Founders
saw it. It can't defend itself. It depends on us.
In this document, the Fourth Amendment says: You will not be spied
on; you will not be searched; your property will not be seized; and
your privacy will not be violated without probable cause and due
process. Yet, we know it has been violated, Mr. Speaker, Representative
Self.
We all took this oath, and the people who violated it took an oath.
The people who violated it, whether they were on the court, whether
they were in law enforcement, somehow, someway, the piece of paper
couldn't stop the violations to the American people and their personal
effect.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--let me be clear, Mr.
Speaker. What Americans do, what American law enforcement does, what
the American intelligence services do to keep us safe regarding
foreigners, God bless them, go do it. Do whatever is necessary within
the bounds of legality and morality to keep us safe.
[[Page H3825]]
It is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for a reason,
because we are supposed to be surveilling foreigners, foreign
countries, foreign entities, foreign individuals, not millions of
Americans who were spied on without their knowledge and then found out
after the fact. Of course, as the gentleman from Texas knows--well,
maybe he doesn't know; I think he does. Well, let me ask you in this
colloquy: Who has been held accountable?
Mr. SELF. As far as I know, no one.
Mr. PERRY. Right? No one of note, for sure.
Mr. SELF. Exactly.
Mr. PERRY. No one of note. We spy on millions of Americans and
violate their constitutional rights. That seems like a civil rights
violation to me, and no one is held accountable.
You couple FISA with facial recognition software, think about the
limits of power there. It is ubiquitous now. You can buy this stuff on
the open market for yourself, let alone government doing it. It is one
thing if a store wants to do it. Maybe you want to do it personally.
Maybe your neighbor gives you trouble, and you want to make sure that
you see him or her coming before they get there. God bless you. That is
your business to protect your property.
{time} 2010
But when law enforcement, when the awesome, irresistible power of the
government has these things, what are you going to do about it?
Well, I tell you what you are going to do about it--not much, not
much. You are going to be bankrupted. Your reputation is going to be
destroyed. Maybe you will be falsely accused. When it is all over, when
the whole thing is done, you haven't done anything and the government
finds nothing, well, they just quietly slink off into the darkness. And
you will be left with your shattered reputation, your bankrupt, empty
bank account, your destroyed marriage, your destroyed family, your
destroyed reputation. That is what you will be left with.
Now, recently, under the guise of safety, this government mandated
that every new car in 2027 and beyond will have a kill switch put in
it, not because you ordered it, not because you have a family member
that you worry is going to drive impaired and you want to make sure you
protect them and your fellow citizens. So you say to the dealership: I
want to have a switch in this car that I can shut it off in case I feel
my loved one is driving impaired.
No. If you are going to buy a car, the government is going to mandate
that that be in the car. You're going to get the kill switch whether
you want it or not. The car is going to decide, the vehicle--judge,
jury, and, as they say, executioner--whether you are going to keep
driving or not.
It doesn't matter if it is 2:30 in the morning and Mr. Self--Mr.
Self's family member, because Mr. Self is a little bit older than this
now--but Mr. Self's family, his beloved family member is taking his
wife to the hospital to deliver Mr. Self's grandbaby. Maybe he is
driving a little erratically or a little differently than he normally
does because the pressure is on. His wife doesn't want to have the baby
in the car. She would prefer to have it at the hospital. Well, the car
says: Hey, look. Something is off here. I don't like the way you are
driving, so I think I will just shut it off and keep everybody safe.
How about this: What about some young lady who is leaving an
establishment. She notices somebody watching her, stalking her,
following her. She thinks, boy, I either better get home to my father
or my husband, or maybe I want to get to the police station. I am a
little nervous. I don't know what this person behind me is going to do.
Maybe I run the stop sign or whatever.
The car is going to keep you safe. It is going to shut off for you.
That is exactly what you need at that moment.
Again, hook this up with facial recognition software before an
intelligence surveillance act, and you can see the whole world caving
in on you and your privacy. That is the kill switch. Now ubiquitous,
automatic--and it is important that you include automatic in this--
automatic license plate reading cameras installed ubiquitously now.
Two years ago, there were probably 500 of them installed. Now, there
is 100,000. Businesses are talking about installing them on their
location, and businesses are allowed to do that. Maybe they want to
determine what time you show up, what you are wearing, what you are
buying. It is one thing for a business to do it, but now law
enforcement is also accessing it.
Again, when you have to fight the power of the State, it is very,
very difficult. And we found out that automatic license plate readers
are being installed near gun stores, being installed near gun shows.
Why would that be? To the gentleman from Texas, what if they are
installed at your next rally? The law prohibits the Federal Government
from compiling a database of those who own guns. But if we have a
database of their car, their license plate, model, year of car, what
time they came, what time they left, what they were carrying when they
came out of the rally, the gun store, the whatever, well, maybe the
government didn't get a warrant; but easy enough, Mr. Self, they just
buy the data.
Now, I will say this: Myself; Representative Biggs, who is going to
be the next Governor of Arizona; Representative Self, trying to save
Texas, you won't find any Members more supportive of law enforcement
than those three individuals and the people that come up and talk about
these issues.
We want a robust law enforcement to go after criminals, to be armed
with every single tool necessary for their success and their safety,
but--people say: ``Well, you can't say but''--myself, Representative
Self, Representative Biggs, and all of those law enforcement officers
raised our hands to take an oath to defend this piece of paper that
says you will not have your rights violated for expedience because it
is easy, because it makes the job easier.
We want their job to be easy, but we have got to set rules here, and
we have to follow those rules.
Finally, the Central Bank Digital Currency, I hear people in my
office say to me: Nobody knows what you are talking about. CBDC,
Central Bank Digital Currency, no one knows what you are talking about,
so quit ranting about it. Well, they will know when it is too late,
when they no longer have their dollar bills, when they pay with their
phone or with their card, and we don't exchange--we are already not
exchanging pennies. Oh, it would never happen. We are already not
exchanging pennies.
The Central Bank Digital Currency means you will no longer be
exchanging dollars, 20s, 50s, 100s. You will no longer exchange them.
That will be done with a card. That will be done with a phone, and it
will be monitored by the Federal Government at a central bank, digital,
card, phone, currency, how you pay for things.
Now, maybe people say to me: Well, why should I care about the
cameras? Why should I care about the kill switch? Why should I care
about Central Bank Digital Currency? I am not doing anything wrong.
Apparently, they haven't read Solzhenitsyn, right, because people
didn't do anything wrong in the Soviet Union either.
But as often has been said--and I don't know who the quote really
goes to because that is in dispute too, but governments have been known
to say things like: ``Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime.''
With all of these things, that is what we are going to have in
America. It is slow. It is creeping. It is insidious. It is like
boiling the frog.
Representative Self from Texas and me are here to turn down the
temperature. We don't want to boil the frog. We are trying to wake the
frog up. Don't let this happen in the United States of America. Let's
not be like the Communist Party of China with a system of social
credits, because after all of this is in place, that will be next.
We say: Well, I am not doing anything wrong. I don't even go to gun
shows.
Well, I don't know, there are a lot of people in this country that
subscribe and ascribe to climate change theory and theology. It is
almost like a religion.
Well, Mr. Self, I don't know, maybe you want to drive a 1978 F-250
with lots of carbon emissions. Mr. Self, I have got facial recognition
software. I can see you in that old truck, and now I have got a license
plate reader. It doesn't have a kill switch in it, but I
[[Page H3826]]
think you are exceeding your carbon credits for the day, Representative
Self. And maybe I can't shut it off, but now I will send the police out
to pull you over. But, Heaven forbid, if I can shut it off--maybe it is
a newer one, and you are just driving too much. Maybe Mr. Self doesn't
like flying to Washington, D.C., from Texas, so he says: Well, I will
drive.
Well, my goodness, you are exceeding your carbon credits for the day,
Representative Self. We have to shut that thing off. It is not because
your daughter is pregnant. It is just because we disagree with you.
These are the powers that the government should not have. If this is
a power that is available, it should be your choice whether you have it
in your vehicle, whether you are surveilled on a camera, and whether
you let the Federal Government determine whether you can buy something,
how much of it you can buy, when you can buy it, how often you can buy
it.
Then, finally, I want to talk to you about something that we see
happening all across the country now: Data centers.
Now, we understand we are in an existential race against China, who
calls us the enemy. They call us the enemy, by the way. China considers
the United States of America an enemy, and they would like to defeat
us. It is really important that we win this race on artificial
intelligence, which requires the use of data centers. But the question
is: Where all of these data centers are popping up, is this about the
race against China for these data centers, or are we putting a data
center up so that we can conglomerate data from automatic license plate
reading cameras that are at this store or at that store so that that
data can be bought so the other store can say: Well, how can I get this
customer from going to that store to this store?
{time} 2020
Hold on a second. I am all about commerce and competition, but my
license plate and where it is and what it is doing there on what car is
my business, not somebody else's business to just use. If they are
going to use it, then they ought to pay me for it and ask permission or
get a warrant--or get a warrant.
So I applaud my friend from the great State of Texas. I am happy to
stick around and have a discussion with him, but we are trying to raise
the alarm because the violations have happened. We are pretty sure the
violations continue to happen if whistleblowers aren't lying to us.
We also know that some of the intelligence agencies aren't
forthcoming with the information, right? So we have questions. We are
here because we took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of
the United States and all of the amendments--not just some of them, not
just when it is convenient, and not just to make things easy for some.
We want to protect America. We want to protect our liberties. We can
do both. We have to do both. Just because we have these new
capabilities doesn't mean that, suddenly, we walk away from what has
made this country great.
With that, I will stay.
Mr. SELF. Please hang around.
I want to, first of all, say that this is about privacy. What we are
advocating is privacy.
Mr. Speaker, 250 years ago, the Declaration of Independence had that
most famous phrase: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Now, they debated happiness back in those days, and they started out
with property. What is pursuit of property?
That is you own what is yours, and that included privacy, the ability
of you to control what you own. What we are talking about is losing the
ability to control what you own, what you buy, and where you go. That
is what we are talking about, is privacy here.
Look, as the gentleman said, we support surveillance on foreign
actors on foreign soil, and with a warrant, we support law enforcement
to do what they need to do with a warrant.
I want to tell you a story about facial recognition. One of my staff
members has a young boy. He is at camp right now, so when they dropped
him off at camp, they said: Give us a photograph of your son.
They did so. What they are going to use that for is they have cameras
everywhere at this camp to protect the young. What they are going to do
is use AI to take one of the pictures that they take randomly, identify
his son, chop out a picture with him in the middle of his campmates,
and send it to the parents.
Now, that is an okay use. They agree to that, but that same
capability will pick you out of a crowd with AI facial recognition. In
the wrong hands--any technology in the wrong hands can be used for evil
purposes.
Let's get back to cameras. The Ring doorbells, a lot of people have
them. In fact, some communities have a lot of them. Law enforcement is
now going and demanding--when they think there has been a crime that
this camera might have seen, demanding that they be allowed to see what
that Ring doorbell recorded. Again, technology can be used for good or
for evil.
I want to point out that the United States--even without some of the
things we are talking about here--today is one of the most surveilled
nations in the world, right up there with China, Russia, some of the
Middle Eastern countries. It is one of the most surveilled nations in
the world, and that is before we get to CBDC.
I want to go back to Benjamin Franklin, because we are celebrating
250 years this year. Frankly, we don't need to be celebrating just the
actual 250 years because we have made it 250 years. We need to be
celebrating the wisdom of the Founders. Part of the wisdom is what we
have talked about several times here, this statement that is so apropos
to what we are discussing tonight: Those who would give up essential
liberty and privacy written into the Declaration of Independence,
codified in the Constitution--those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty, nor
safety.
Why would the safety be temporary? It is because when people come
along who will use it for evil purposes, it would not provide safety at
all.
Mr. PERRY. Would the gentleman from Texas agree that all of us men
and women fall short of the grace of God?
Mr. SELF. Absolutely.
Mr. PERRY. Unfortunately, there is darkness within the hearts of men
and women. On occasion, we all fall short, and this Constitution exists
so that we have a remedy for the times when somebody misuses the
awesome power that is provided at the government level, with the use of
law enforcement as the enforcer.
I think back to a time not so long ago. There was a pandemic in this
country. I was in some state of shock and disbelief that our government
told people that they could not work, and that they could not earn a
living. They were told that they had to inject an experimental
substance into their body or lose their employment. People will say
that it can't happen or it can't happen again, but it did happen. It
happened just a little while ago.
I am talking to people who say--I see things with my own eyes right
now, and I say: ``How did they do that?''
And they said: ``It is AI.''
Mr. Speaker, 6 months ago, we didn't have the capability. We have
that capability now.
FISA still exists. Facial recognition software is available. The kill
switch is still being mandated for your car. Automatic license plate
readers are being installed by the thousands and tens of thousands. We
are on the edge--as a matter of fact, we just passed a bill about 1\1/
2\ weeks ago with a go-live date for a central bank digital currency.
The datacenters that are going to collate all of this information are
being put in every single town, in every single State and county, it
seems like, across the country, and people don't even know what the
datacenter is for. I think people would support them if it was to fight
China, but if it is just to collect all this data about all of us, I
don't think people are going to go for that.
Yet, I think that is what Mr. Self is getting at this evening.
Somebody has to be the stewards of this constitutional right that we
have to our own effects, our own privacy, unless there is probable
cause that we did something wrong. Not we are going to sweep it all up
just in case you did something wrong or just in case we don't like you,
and we don't agree with what you are
[[Page H3827]]
doing, and then we are going to declare it wrong and make it wrong and
punish you for it.
Mr. SELF. To the gentleman's point, I want to end with China because
a lot of people will say that this is all theory, you are overreacting,
and that this is hyperbole. It will never happen here.
But China has something that they call the social credit score. They
take your social credit score, and they measure you based on
everything--what you buy, what you post on the internet, what you say
to your fellow worker, what they see you do, how you drive, everything.
Everything, the government takes into account for a social credit
score, and then they will tell you how you can live your life based on
your social credit score.
It is all on collected data. It is based on collected data.
Mr. Speaker, I would say to my fellow Americans that is what we are
facing. We are facing a social credit score if all of this happens: the
kill switch, CBDC, and warrantless surveillance on your electronic
communications. That is what we are looking at if all of this happens
and these cameras proliferate across America.
{time} 2030
Mr. PERRY. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SELF. Absolutely.
Mr. PERRY. It has already happened. It is happening. It has already
happened.
We already talked about the millions of Americans who were spied on
under the guise of foreign intelligence surveillance. We have already
talked about that. We have already talked about the government lying to
us about the effects of the pandemic and forcing us to inject things
into our bodies that were experimental.
These things aren't theory. These things aren't something that might
happen in the future. These are things that did happen, are happening,
and are happening at a more and more alarming rate, and are ubiquitous
and becoming more ubiquitous in our society.
Mr. SELF. Let me make this point: It can get worse. What you are
saying is true, but it can get worse. That is what we are trying to
stop. That is why we are sounding the alarm that the surveillance state
must be stopped.
The red line in the sand right now is FISA reform. Any FISA reform
that does not include a permanent ban on CBDC and securing our
elections, I believe, does not cut the mustard.
Does the gentleman have any closing comments?
Mr. PERRY. Well, it is interesting. Every single Republican Member
here already voted in favor of limiting the government's ability to
install a central bank digital currency. We have had assurances from
leadership, from the top to the bottom. We are told that people in the
other Chamber are all for it, as well.
It is fascinating and interesting to me that, as much as that may be
true, and it is proclaimed, we simply can't seem to get an up-or-down
vote on it, which leads me to believe they have every intention of
instituting it.
The fact that they put a go-live date in the last bill that we passed
should sound the alarm bell to every single American who doesn't want
their bank accounts to be monitored and controlled by the Federal
Government. Do not allow this to happen.
Mr. SELF. I will say that I consider the CBDC, the central bank
digital currency, the final leg in the surveillance state stool.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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