[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8730-8731]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              PATRIOT ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Idaho (Mr. Labrador) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LABRADOR. Mr. Speaker, during the past week, we have heard about 
a series of major violations of our civil liberties, including the fact 
that NSA is collecting the phone records of tens of millions of 
Americans. This wholesale snooping on innocent Americans is an 
unacceptable violation of one of our most basic freedoms--the right to 
privacy and to be free from government surveillance--and one of many 
unintended but predictable consequences of the USA PATRIOT Act.

[[Page 8731]]

  I proudly voted against reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act three 
times because of its potential for abuse, and more people are starting 
to see that abuse. Even former Vice President Al Gore, not someone I 
normally agree with, had the right response to the NSA report. He 
tweeted:

       In a digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just 
     me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?

  And I tweeted back:

       Crazy, but I agree!

  Of course, what's happening with the NSA is just the latest example 
of the government abusing its power.
  We've all heard about the IRS scandals, in which one of the most 
powerful agencies in the government deliberately targeted conservative 
organizations for audits and other forms of harassment.
  We've all heard about what happened with FOX News reporter James 
Rosen, whose phone was tapped by the Justice Department even though 
Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary 
Committee ``that potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure 
of material, that is not something that I have ever been involved with, 
heard of, or would think would be wise policy.''
  Needless to say, what Mr. Holder said under oath is sharply at odds 
with what happened to Mr. Rosen, and I joined with my Judiciary 
Committee colleagues in sending a letter to Mr. Holder requesting that 
he appear before the committee again to explain these discrepancies.
  Then, just last Friday, it was reported that the NSA and the FBI are 
tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet 
companies, including Google, Facebook, and YouTube. Who knows what 
we'll find out next.
  When thinking about all these scandals, I'm reminded of what James 
Madison wrote in Federalist 51 in the early days of our country:

       If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If 
     angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal 
     controls on government would be necessary. In framing a 
     government which is to be administered by men over men, the 
     great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the 
     government to control the government and, in the next place, 
     oblige it to control itself.

  In recent years, many Members of both parties have forgotten Mr. 
Madison's lesson, a lesson that infuses our founding document, the U.S. 
Constitution, that government powers must be limited because 
governments, by their very nature, have a hard time ``controlling'' 
themselves.
  During the Bush years, many Republicans ignored that truth; and in 
the Obama era, many Democrats have ignored it, too.
  What's happening with the NSA, the IRS, the DOJ, and other agencies 
should correct the misguided idea that it's okay to give the government 
more powers so long as the ``right'' party is in power. Because parties 
change. And to quote Madison again:

       Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

  For all of these reasons and more, I voted against the USA PATRIOT 
Act, which, despite its nice name, was written in such a sweeping way 
that it opened the door for the NSA to invade the privacy of millions 
of Americans. That is because the USA PATRIOT Act's section 215 allows 
the FBI to seek the production of ``tangible things'' to obtain foreign 
intelligence and to protect against clandestine intelligence 
activities.
  But since it does not require that either the caller or the recipient 
of the call be a foreign agent or located abroad, you can see how the 
FBI could be tempted to collect broad swaths of data concerning 
Americans' phone calls to detect patterns of activity, as many analysts 
suggest may have happened in this case. That is why, last Thursday, I 
joined several of my House colleagues in sending a letter to FBI 
Director Mueller and NSA Director Alexander requesting more information 
concerning their data collection activities.
  Given public outrage about the NSA's abuse of power, it is time for 
Congress to reexamine all sections of the USA PATRIOT Act, and I am 
hopeful my colleagues will join me in starting that reexamination.
  Now is the time to work together to reduce the scope of government 
power before it becomes so large and so impenetrable that regaining our 
freedoms becomes almost impossible. Now is our moment, and we must 
seize it.

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