[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7668]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      CONGRESS MUST ADDRESS SECTION 702 OF THE FISA AMENDMENTS ACT

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the PATRIOT Act was designed to 
protect us from terrorists abroad. Now we have learned that section 215 
of the PATRIOT Act has been abused by the NSA, and it is spying on 
Americans, taking metadata.
  But there is more. There is another law. The FISA Amendments Act of 
2008, section 702, allows the seizure, without a warrant, of the 
content of emails, text messages, and phone calls by our government. 
Congress must address this, as it has addressed section 215 of the 
PATRIOT Act. It also allows, under 702, the backdoor search; in other 
words, NSA can go into Google and seize information about Americans 
without a warrant.
  NSA cannot be trusted to protect and follow America's laws that 
protect our privacy. This Soviet-style surveillance on Americans has 
got to stop. The right of privacy is sacred.
  I have introduced, along with Zoe Lofgren, a bipartisan bill to 
eliminate section 702 so that Americans are protected. We cannot allow 
the bruising of the Fourth Amendment by the snooping NSA under the 
false claim of national security. If you have probable cause to seize 
that information, get a warrant under the Constitution of the United 
States.
  And that is just the way it is.

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