Providing for Consideration of H.R. Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Extending Limits of U.S. Customs Waters Act; Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Denouncing the Biden Administration's Immigration Policies; and Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Opposing Efforts to Place One-Sided Pressure on Israel with Respect to Gaza

Floor Speech

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Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, freedom surrendered is rarely reclaimed. Today, we have an opportunity to make progress. After 9/11, the PATRIOT Act passed. One Senator voted ``no.'' Sixty-three Members of the House of Representatives voted ``no.'' Both parties failed with that vote.

FISA has been reauthorized, and it never gets a full, clean vote. It is little tranches. In 2020, we ended the business records surveillance program, section 215. The government didn't stop collecting business records; they just stopped doing it in conformance with section 215 of FISA.

Section 702 is an important program. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to stop foreign threats to our country, but there is a reason there is not a domestic surveillance act. It is because there is a Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and that amendment does not say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. It says, as an American citizen, you have a right to privacy, that your records cannot be searched without probable cause and a warrant or subpoena. Due process should not be infringed.

The Fourth Amendment is probably the most disregarded protection given to us by the Bill of Rights. Our right to privacy is supposed to be defended, and we have this chance today but not a complete chance.

We have a bill that people will claim has 56 reforms, and it does. Of those, 45 are from the Intelligence Committee. Now, some of these were comparable to the Judiciary bill, but they are weaker and more watered down than the Judiciary bill. Three of them actually protect Members of Congress, so only two are clean from the Judiciary Committee's bill.

One of the amendments we cannot cover today, one of the reasons that the rule failed, was to say that even if the warrant passes, the government can't buy your data to circumvent the need to get a warrant in the first place. That is what they are doing. They are buying data. They are structuring markets to collect the data, and they are circumventing the Fourth Amendment. We need to turn that off.

There is a lot of ground to make up on the right to privacy, but I hope we take this chance today. I remind my colleagues that we don't work at a think tank; we work in a legislature. The opportunity before us today is to make progress on reclaiming this freedom that we have surrendered.

I will support this bill in the final passage if we have a warrant requirement and if the Intel threats to the Fourth Amendment fail. If those expansions of warrantless spying pass, even if the warrant is there, I will vote ``no'' on final passage. I encourage all of my colleagues to do the same.

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