Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act
ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE MODERNIZATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - September 28, 2006)
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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the legislation.
First, we are legislating in the dark. We do not even know what the President is doing now because he will not tell us, but we do know that he says he will not continue doing what he is doing unless we retroactively authorize it and immunize everyone who participated in the illegal activity from any criminal and civil liability.
But for the New York Times disclosure that the administration had authorized secret surveillance of domestic conversations, we would not even know about it now. When exposed, the President claimed he was operating under inherent powers, but court decisions have found that the President cannot simply declare administration actions constitutional and lawful, whether or not they are.
Yet rather than finding out what is going on, we are moving forward with this legislation not only to authorize something in the future but to retroactively legalize whatever has been going on in the past.
Yesterday, under the military tribunal bill, we authorized what had previously been considered torture and retroactively immunized everybody involved in it. Today, we do the same type of retroactive approval and immunization to what may be illegal domestic surveillance.
The President already has broad latitude to conduct domestic surveillance, including surveillance of American citizens under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, totally in secret, so long as it is overseen by the FISA court.
So this is not a question of whether or not dangerous terrorists should be wiretapped. Of course they should, and they can be under present law, but in a democratic society with checks and balances, we should insist that some checks and balances occur, either before the wiretap or after the wiretap in the case of an emergency.
This bill does not enhance security, but it does allow surveillance without the traditional checks and balances that have served our Nation well. This bill, therefore, should be defeated.
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