Fallen Servicemembers Religious Heritage Restoration Act

Floor Speech

I rise in support of S. 1318, the Foreign Intelligence Accountability Act.

I do so with some reluctance because the process that brought us here has been indefensible. Two weeks ago, when we walked off the floor after legislation to reauthorize 702 failed, Democrats made clear there was an open door to negotiate a bipartisan package of real reforms, perhaps one that would even pass on suspension in this Chamber. I have been discussing this issue for months now with the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Raskin, and it is clear to me that there is a path to a bill that could do more than squeak through and only by attaching unrelated legislation that may not pass the Senate.

However, we are where we are, and I am going to support this legislation because in my decade on the House Intelligence Committee, I have seen countless, countless instances where the intelligence obtained through section 702 quite literally saved lives. Section 702 is the single most important foreign intelligence collection authority we have, and every day it is used by apolitical professionals throughout the IC and apolitical professionals at the FBI to keep Americans safe here and abroad. There is no way to replace the value that section 702 provides, and the loss of this authority would be devastating.

Given the binary choice between reauthorization and expiration, the responsible choice is reauthorization. As President Biden's Intelligence Advisory Board put it: ``If Congress fails to reauthorize section 702, history may judge the lapse of section 702 authorities as one of the worst intelligence failures of our time.''

As I said at the outset, we should be considering a much broader array of reforms than those in this package. For example, 2 weeks ago, I proposed an amendment to the base bill in the Rules Committee that would have created a judicial process for U.S. person queries conducted by the FBI in the 702 database. I want to be clear that we have seen no evidence--let me say that again, we have seen no evidence that this administration is misusing section 702, but nonetheless, we must remain hypervigilant, given the other abuses that we have seen from this administration.

My amendment to Rules would have required a Federal court approval before the FBI could access the results of a query it conducted involving a U.S. person. I regret that my amendment as well as a range of other ideas from Members on both sides of the aisle were not considered as part of this process.

However, as I said, we now have a binary choice, and the reality is that 2 years ago, Congress, on a bipartisan basis, with the support of more than 70 percent of the Democratic Caucus, passed the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. That bill 2 years ago contained over 50 major reforms, the bulk of which were intended to address the longstanding and unacceptable issues of compliance at the FBI. Since enactment, the evidence shows that those reforms have been highly successful, with far fewer U.S. person queries conducted and with a compliance rate at the FBI of 99 percent.

It is easy to dismiss those numbers, given the political leadership of the FBI and the DOJ. I don't trust Director Patel any more than my Democratic colleagues do.

On January 6, 5 years ago, I was in this Chamber when it was attacked by the shock troops sent here to stop the peaceful transfer of power. I sat there for half an hour as police officers with guns drawn tried to defend our democracy, so I take a back seat to no one in my concern about the abuses of this administration.

However, the data we have on FISA is based on oversight of the professional and apolitical staff, not Kash Patel, the professional and apolitical staff, who are there at the Department of Justice Office of Intelligence, largely the same group of public servants who performed this work under President Biden, and their findings are validated not just by the Attorney General or Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel, but by independent oversight, the DOJ's inspector general, the staff of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on an annual basis, and the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of both Chambers.

We are not trusting this administration. We are verifying in all three branches of government. If we saw the slightest hint that these authorities were being abused, I wouldn't be standing here today to support this bill.

The legislation now before the House contains several reform proposals. These proposals are modest and well short of what I would like, but they are meaningful. Most importantly, the legislation requires that all U.S. person queries of the 702 database by FBI be reviewed by ODNI's Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer, and that any improper queries be referred from there to the IG of the intelligence community. This adds yet another layer of oversight of FBI on top of internal oversight, DOJ oversight, which I may not trust, court oversight, which I do trust, and congressional oversight which, yes, I do trust, since I am involved in that. The legislation also adds new criminal penalties for FBI employees who intentionally improperly use section 702.

Finally, the legislation requires that only an FBI attorney can approve a U.S. person query, building on a reform we made in 2024, which required preapproval from either an FBI lawyer or an FBI supervisor. Now, a lawyer is likely to be compliance focused rather than operations focused the way a supervisor would be, and will be especially careful and cautious before approving a proposed U.S. person query.

These are modest reforms, but they are not nothing. When viewed in combination with the 50-plus reforms of 2024, Congress will have built a substantial oversight structure around 702 to prevent abuse.

Section 702 is not a dragnet. It is not an authority that can be used to surveil Americans. It does not contain any commercially acquired information. It does not use artificial intelligence to analyze collected data. Despite the fact that we have heard this word a lot today, it is not unconstitutional. A Federal court certifies this program every single year.

If this were deemed by the judiciary, the branch of government which determines constitutionality, to be unconstitutional, we might have heard that from the courts at some point in the last 18 years in which they have been certifying this authority.

What it does have is an extremely robust set of oversight guardrails in all three branches of government, and this bill makes those guardrails marginally and modestly stronger. It is without question the most important foreign intelligence tool we have.

Mr. Speaker, for those reasons, despite my frustration with the process that has led us here, I will vote ``yes,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take just a minute here to address the question of the Fourth Amendment. Every Member in this Chamber swears an oath to support the Constitution, and it is important in this debate to remember that all of us care profoundly about the Fourth Amendment. I think it is wrong to suggest that the opposite is the case.

I want to draw an analogy for people who may be watching. In the law enforcement context, which is more familiar to most Americans than 702 is, a probable cause Fourth Amendment warrant is required. You have to get from the judge a Fourth Amendment warrant to take, for example, a wiretap on somebody that you suspect of selling fentanyl.

Let's just imagine under my example that Bill Smith is suspected of selling fentanyl, and law enforcement goes in front of a judge and gets a warrant to wiretap Bill Smith.

Now, Bill Smith, as the police listen, is talking to his brother, Joe Smith, and Joe Smith says, I will help you sell that fentanyl.

The police don't need another warrant on Joe Smith. That has been incidentally collected, and no court has ever held that Joe Smith's admission and incidental collection requires the Fourth Amendment for that to be used as evidence in court, which is the argument that the opponents of U.S. person queries are making.

I am not here to say that this is uncontroversial. We have to be obsessed with the protection of Americans' data, but let's not suggest that this is unconstitutional because it has had annual reviews by a Federal court. You might have thought that in 18 years, if a Federal court had thought that this was unconstitutional, they might not have certified. Let us not say that this authority should be subject to a radically different standard than a typical law enforcement warrant would be.

Lastly, I want to make this point. One of the reasons that we are hesitant to rush into a warrant is because many U.S. person queries are not done because we believe that an individual is complicit in a crime. If we hear ISIS talking about Jim Himes, it is unlikely that I am complicit in terrorism. It is quite likely that I may be a victim, and the FBI and Jim Himes would like to know that if that is the case.

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Intelligence Committee for his friendship and partnership, which I value.

This program is controversial for all the right reasons, and what we are doing here is what we have been doing for almost 20 years, which is finding the balance between an authority that keeps not just us but the world safe and protecting the civil liberties of Americans whose information is incidentally collected just as it is collected when there is a traditional police wiretap.

I wish we had had a more fulsome process. I wish I had been able to work with Ranking Member Raskin to have a more robust package of safeguards, particularly in the context of an administration that has demonstrated day in and day out their lawlessness, but we are where we are, and it is a binary choice. Allowing this authority to expire, which I think we are close to, is not an option.

Let's acknowledge to each other that this is not an unconstitutional authority but that we have work to do to continue to protect the civil liberties of Americans and move forward passing this bill with an eye toward what we can do in the coming years to make sure this is a better balanced authority.

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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