[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16536]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2015
   WHY DOES THE IRS NEED SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT? TO SPY ON AMERICANS

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the Department of Justice has closed 
its investigation into Lois Lerner and her band of bungling bureaucrats 
at the IRS. Choosing political expediency, it won't prosecute the 
actors.
  But according to news reports today, not only did officials at the 
IRS abuse their power by targeting the administration's political 
enemies, now they possess spy equipment to do it.
  Now the IRS will have ``sophisticated cellphone dragnet equipment 
known as Stingray.'' These devices ``work by pretending to be cellphone 
towers in order to strip metadata and in some cases even content from 
phones which connect to them.''
  Mr. Speaker, why does the IRS want to spy on Americans? It sounds 
like the old Soviet Union to me. The Fourth Amendment protects 
Americans from this type of widespread, abusive government spying.
  It is time for Congress to make sure that the constitutional right of 
privacy applies to the IRS and to this new technology. Technology may 
change, but the Constitution does not.
  And that is just the way it is.

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