FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. I want to thank the majority leader for agreeing to allow a debate on this important legislation. We will have time to amend it in the next 3 months, discuss it fully.

When the PATRIOT Act was passed in the first place, it was passed in a hurry, without committee hearings, and in a climate of fear and anger after 9/11. Congress was sensitive to the fact that the fourth amendment was being abridged. That is why these legislative proposals were sunset. It was not just so we could pass them by unanimous consent without voting. It was done so we could review how well we are doing with these, and whether we are abridging the freedoms guaranteed under the fourth amendment.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the PATRIOT Act. No. 1, the national security letters. These have been mentioned previously, and I think the points are well taken. Some try to argue, oh, these are simply subpoenas so you can do anything you want. I think they are searches of private records and should be reviewed by a judge. But even if you argue that they were subpoenas, if you have a subpoena, your lawyer is allowed to make a motion to quash your subpoena, your lawyer is allowed to represent you.

In the craziness after 9/11, when the PATRIOT Act was passed, it was actually illegal to consult an attorney.

If you were given a national security letter saying you were being investigated, you could go to jail for 5 years by telling your attorney. It is still in the law that you can go to jail for 5 years if you tell others. This is being done against U.S. citizens.

Many people argue for this saying: Oh, it is just foreign terrorists. National security letters have been written on 200,000 individuals and over 50 percent of them from the United States in the last 10 years.

In addition to the national security letters, this act expanded the use of what are called suspicious activity reports, where they snoop in your bank records. Not only does the government snoop in your bank records, they force the banks to do snooping for you. Two million records have been gone through, and we say: Well, are we getting terrorists? Yes; we are probably getting terrorists. But were we capturing terrorists under FISA when we had a judge's review? Yes. It was very rare that FISA ever turned down a warrant. But we just gave up. We blankly gave up the idea of judicial review.

This was a big deal. John Adams said this was the spark that got the Revolution going. When James Otis was talking about writs of assistance in the 1760s, the King was granting writs of assistance through his soldiers. Now we have essentially government agents, akin to soldiers, writing warrants.

It is ripe for abuse. Even the FBI, when they did their own internal investigation of the national security letters--they reviewed 1,000 of these national security letters, and they found that 10 percent of them were in error.

The other thing, for those who say: Oh, this is just a subpoena. It is just your bank records. No big deal, they should be weary of this: People have gone through the FISA Court and been turned down under section 215 and not gotten a warrant and they have done an end-around and gotten national security letters.

I think it is something so basic to our constitutional Republic. I tell people on and on, I am a big defender of the second amendment. But you cannot have the second amendment unless you defend the first amendment. You cannot have the second amendment unless you defend the fourth amendment.

We need to defend the right to be free of search and seizure. People need to look back and say: Did the FISA Court work? The FISA Court rarely turned anything down as far as getting warrants. But at the very least, there was independent judicial review, which is a very important part of our historical jurisprudence and I think should be guarded and protected.

I think, in the fear after 9/11, we did not debate these things fully. We should have a debate. There is a wide range of people on both the left and the right who do believe in civil liberties. I think it is time we do review these. I will stand in the next several months and try to promote this discussion. I think it is a good time to review and revisit the PATRIOT Act.

I will vote against the extension of the PATRIOT Act because I do not think it is doing full justice to the fourth amendment, and I think it is very important we have judicial review before we allow government to investigate and search our private lives.

Mr. President, I yield back.

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