Judicial Redress Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation before us today is good for national security, good for privacy, and good for business. It is unquestionably the right thing to do for our Nation's closest allies.

Under current law, United States citizens are entitled to access and request a correction to personal records held by a Federal agency. If the agency denies access or fails to make a requested change or otherwise violates their privacy rights, then we may seek redress in Federal court.

Under current law, these rights are conveyed only to United States citizens and not to the citizens of our closest allies, even though many European countries offer our citizens similar rights overseas, probably somewhat like the Europeans give our folks moneys when they record a song and play it over there, but we don't. We should have that same reciprocity and fairness.

H.R. 1428, the Judicial Redress Act, will extend these core privacy protections to the citizens of certain foreign countries, those designated by the Attorney General as trusted allies. This small change to our laws will afford immediate benefits both at home and abroad.

This act will facilitate information-sharing partnerships with law enforcement agencies across the globe. We know from experience that open lines of communication with our allies yield intelligence and save lives.

The act will enable the U.S. and the European Union to complete an umbrella agreement to govern information sharing across the Atlantic for law enforcement and counterterrorism purposes. This agreement, which would include significant protections for individual privacy, would not go into effect until we have made these changes.

Earlier this year a coalition of companies, trade associations, and civil rights organizations wrote to the leadership of both parties to outline the economic cost of ``a significant erosion of global public trust in both the U.S. Government and the U.S. technology sector.'' Their fears appear to have been well founded.

Earlier this month, citing concerns about insufficient privacy safeguards in the United States, the European Court of Justice effectively suspended the safe harbor agreement that allows companies to move digital information across the Atlantic.

Although there is far more work to be done to restore the agreement, I hope that our allies will take this legislation as a sign of good faith and recognize that a basic right to privacy extends beyond our borders and we will work to restore the public trust necessary for the continued success of U.S. industry overseas.

The Judicial Redress Act is supported by the White House, the Department of Justice, and other Federal law enforcement agencies. It has been endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, Information Technology Industry Council, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and IBM, among others.

At base, this bill is a measure of basic fairness. Our friends abroad should have some course of redress with respect to information that they provided to the U.S. Government in the first place.

We all benefit when the information we share is accurate. Our partners in trade and security should have the ability to seek recourse when it is not.

I thank Representative Sensenbrenner for his leadership on this issue, for his leadership on many issues, including sentencing reform, for his extreme knowledge of the world, and for sharing it with me on occasion. I thank Mr. Goodlatte for those same talents and achievements.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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