Issues of the Day
Floor Speech
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Mrs. SPARTZ. Mr. Speaker, I think we have had a lot of important discussions this Congress, but there is one important discussion that I truly believe we need to take very seriously. It is section 702 of the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
I want to remind us that our main job as Representatives of the people is to protect people's rights to life, liberty, and property. We will never have equal opportunities and will always want to have equal outcomes, but the equality of rights is the job of Congress and the legislature.
We know very well that the constitutional rights of Americans have been violated.
I am going to cite some excerpts from the report that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just issued recently. That board was created to oversee due processes, and the issue in line was the reauthorization. It is actually run by Democrats, and the chair is appointed by President Biden.
This is from the report: ``The board finds that section 702 poses significant privacy and civil liberties risks, most notably from U.S. person queries and batch queries. Significant privacy and civil liberties risks also include the scope of permissible targeting.''
It also talks about new types of procedures that have been recently authorized, in 2022, and we had challenges about collection that some thought Congress would put a stop to. However, it says that the new procedures that we just authorized were used in a widespread fashion. It could be extraordinarily intrusive.
It also says the board finding a risk of overboard government collection of communications is very real and can cause harm with no individualized judicial review of targeting decisions. We had an almost 300 percent increase in surveillance since 2013, double in the last 5 years.
This search is very concerning since there is no specific review of that.
Also, it says that a lot of things that are collected could be political, religious, and social advocacy. There are significant concerns about this program overall.
The changes that the FBI has done, they say, have not been sufficient to protect privacy and civil liberties. It is also actually confirmed by the internal audit of a recent report--the most recent was in May 2023 when the internal audits of the FBI was talking pretty much about over 90 percent of queries not having any evidence of justification for these queries.
It is like the FBI is very good. They don't record and don't recall, so they want all the liability. It is a serious issue.
We had some discussions, and I think the Judiciary Committee bill is somewhat bad. At least it requires a warrant for queries of a U.S. person. Still, both the bills that the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee are proposing lack some very serious consideration.
There is no outside review of what data is collected, and this is something the board pretty much recognizes. As an agency, they collect information on Americans, but they cannot assess how much. At the least, there needs to be some sampling by a FISA court when they do certification to start figuring it out because, ultimately, there is a potential that our agencies have access to be able to collect without warrant and surveil many Americans. We don't know how many Americans they are surveilling and what the NSA is doing when they do filtering procedures.
There is no ability for us to even know what is going in the review of that. The board brings these concerns, but also there are concerns with documentation.
I think Congress should have for us--we do it in other areas, and in accounting, we do it, too--where, through evidence and documentation, we can have preventative controls in systems. When queries are run, there is evidence of review and evidence of approval and justification by the FBI as to why they are using this loophole in the law that potentially violates the rights of U.S. citizens and many Americans.
I think the magnitude of this problem is significant, and the magnitude of violations could be very material. I think Congress needs to be much more serious in its consideration before we reauthorize the section.
The other thing the board talks about is national security. It is an important section, but actually, the agency didn't prove that queries that they are doing actually give justification to what they are doing to provide them more expansion on that.
I think we need to put up more guardrails, and I hope we will have more discussions on this issue and this bill if they are going to move forward in the way they are because I want to remind us that if we are not willing to stand up for the rights of Americans here, then I don't know why we are even in Congress.
This Fourth Amendment right is a significant right, and it is a bipartisan issue. I hope we will take a more serious look at how we can improve this FISA reauthorization before it is reauthorized and have better legislation.
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