FISA Amendments Act of 2008
Floor Speech
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Ms. PELOSI. I thank Mr. Conyers, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, for yielding and thank Mr. Reyes, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, for bringing this legislation to the floor. They know, as does each and every one of us, that our primary responsibility is to protect the American people.
Mr. Speaker, we take an oath of office, as has been referenced, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.
In the preamble it states that one of our primary responsibilities is to provide for the common defense. We take those responsibilities seriously, and I don't take seriously any statements by some in this body that any person here is abdicating that responsibility.
All of us understand also the role that intelligence plays. In protecting our troops, force protection, that used to be our primary responsibility and now, of course, Homeland Security is part of that.
None of us would send our troops into harm's way without the intelligence to perform their mission and keep them safe, although some have been willing to send our men and women in uniform into harm's way without the equipment they need to keep them safe, but we don't make any accusations against them that they are not patriotic Americans who don't want to protect the American people.
Chairman Conyers and Chairman Reyes have already pointed out in some detail this legislation will meet our responsibility to protect America while also protecting our precious civil liberties. The President has said that our legislation will not make America safe. The President is wrong, and I think he knows it. He knows that our legislation contains within it the principles that were suggested by the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. McConnell, early on, as to what is needed to protect our people in terms of intelligence.
The administration demands that Congress grant immunity to companies for activities about which the President wants only a small number of Members of Congress, and no member of the judicial branch, deciding on any currently filed lawsuits to know anything about.
The bill before us acknowledges that immunity for the companies may already exist under current law and allows that determination to be decided by a judge with due protection for classified information, not by hundreds of people who really do not have the facts.
Why should the administration oppose a judicial determination of whether the companies already have immunity. Well, there are at least three explanations. First, the President knows that it's the administration's incompetence in failing to follow the procedures in statute is what has prevented immunity from being conveyed. That is one possibility. They simply didn't do it right.
Second, the administration's legal argument that the surveillance requests were lawfully authorized was wrong, or public reports that the surveillance activities undertaken by the companies went far beyond anything about which any Member of Congress was notified, as is required by the law.
None of these alternatives is attractive, but they clearly demonstrate why the administration's insistence that Congress provide retroactive immunity has never been about national security or about concerns for the companies. It has always been about protecting the administration.
As important as the issue of immunity might be, it is chiefly important to the administration and the telecommunications companies as they look back to events that occurred as many as 6 years ago. What is truly important to the security of our country and the protections of our Constitution going forward are the amendments made to the FISA bill in title I in this bill that is on the floor today, the so-called surveillance title of the bill.
The bill contains three of the essential provisions of the bill passed by the House in November and, in doing so, explicitly rejects the heart of the President's warrantless surveillance program. Those provisions are:
One, the reinstatement that FISA remains the exclusive means to authorize electronic surveillance. The President likes to think he has inherent authority to surveil, to collect on anybody, and this bill restates that FISA is the exclusive authority. This was a point conceded to in 1978 when the Congress of the United States established the FISA law, passed the FISA law, which was signed by the President of the United States, thereby his recognition of Congress's ability to make the courts, the third branch of government, the exclusive authority for the collection of intelligence in the United States. That is exclusivity.
Second, except in emergencies, FISA Court approval must take place before surveillance begins, but there are exceptions in case of emergency.
Third, a refusal to follow the Senate in excluding, and this is very important because people are talking about the Senate bill as though it is some great thing. This is very important: A refusal to follow the Senate in excluding from the definition of electronic surveillance activities historically considered within the definition. In other words, if they don't want the law to apply to a particular activity, they will just say it doesn't fall into this bill.
If the administration's change in the definition was accepted, FISA-derived information, including U.S. person information, could be data-mined with fewer protections than are currently in place under FISA. This is very important to each and every person in America.
The President insists that we pass the Senate bill as is. Yet even that legislation's chief author, Chairman Rockefeller, agrees that many of the House provisions improve the Senate bill.
This legislation before us today will ensure that our intelligence professionals have the tools they need to protect the American people. And the President knows it.
This legislation will ensure that we protect what it means to be an American, our precious civil rights and civil liberties. Both goals are essential and both are achieved in this bill. I urge its passage.
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