Fallen Servicemembers Religious Heritage Restoration Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. FITZPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, of all of the debates that we have had on this House floor, I have yet to be so perplexed as I am with this one. There is so much conflation going on between title I, traditional FISA, and title VII, section 702. There is so much conflation over the collection of evidence versus the querying of already lawfully collected data. Everybody in this Chamber has been talking past each other for years on this issue.

The Fourth Amendment applies to the collection of evidence. That has been the case from the very founding of our country. This so-called warrant requirement, Mr. Speaker, what they are asking for is a double warrant requirement. A warrant requirement is on the collection of evidence.

They are seeking to attach a warrant requirement to the querying of already lawfully collected data. That is a secondary warrant requirement, the first time in American history that we would ever be doing such a thing. That would shut down the law enforcement system. You would have to expand the Federal judiciary by a factor of 100 to keep up with that work, and it would put us on pre-9/11 footing. We cannot do that.

By the way, after we passed RISAA--56 reforms, by the way--the 2-year report card is in. There are zero abuses. Even though that is the case, we still went further in this bill before the House today and reaffirmed that the Fourth Amendment protections will always apply to 702 queries, in addition to all of the other reforms.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand what is left to object to on this tool because I can promise you that if we were having this debate a week after 9/11, there wouldn't be a single soul on this floor voting against this bill.

Let us not drop our guard just because we are several decades past 9/ 11 because we never ever want to see that happen again.

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