Providing for Consideration of H.R. 514, Extending Counter-Terrorism Authorities

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, the Patriot Act is a bill that has been plagued with abuse since it was first passed, and today's rule is yet another example of short-circuiting the system that our Founding Fathers set up. If there were ever the need for the close supervision and congressional oversight of a law, it is a law that discusses how and under what conditions a government can spy on its own citizens. After 10 years of public record, we all agree there are some clear sections of the law that can be improved; but instead of debating these sections of the law to better find that balance between protecting what makes it special to be Americans and protecting our national security, the Republican leadership has decided to ram through this bill with as little debate as possible.

Mr. Speaker, we spent an hour earlier discussing how we will spend 9 1/2 hours discussing the organizational aspects of the House committee structure. Yet, for something that cuts to our core identity as Americans, we only have an hour under the rule and an hour under the bill to discuss it in its entirety.

This bill would reauthorize three of the most troubling provisions in the Patriot Act. Again, instead of actually debating the merits of these provisions and coming up with solutions that both sides can agree on to protect what it means to be an American, the Republican leadership has attempted first to force it through under the suspension calendar and now under a closed rule, the most restrictive kind of rule.

In spite of their plethora of promises to change the culture of Congress, this bill looks like it's being done under old business. On such an important issue, one that affects our national security and the civil liberties of every American, one that goes right to the heart of what it means to be an American and to our identity as citizens of this great Republic, the Republican majority has reverted to short-circuiting the system and closing down discussion.

Just yesterday, they held the vote open for more than half an hour, pressuring Members to switch votes. Thankfully, the effort failed to muster the majority, and that's why we are here before you today with an additional hour to discuss the Patriot Act, which is woefully insufficient; but I think the American people can be grateful that Members on both sides of the aisle stood up and said at least let's have more discussion about this. Only after failing to jam through the bill as a suspension bill did the Republican leadership bring it up under a rule.

The Judiciary Committee, which the Republicans argue has not had time to look at this or to consider this under the normal process, has actually already had several hearings in the past few weeks on other topics. Apparently, the topic of abortion was important enough on which to have a discussion by the Judiciary Committee but not the topic of the security of the American people and our civil rights as Americans.

So why can't the Judiciary Committee find the time to even hold a hearing to discuss an issue this important that cuts the very definition of what it means to be American? Even if a little more time is needed, a month, 2 months, why isn't there a 30-day extension, a 60-day extension before us instead of a 10-month extension? It should not be used as an excuse to prevent all proceedings from moving forward.

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Mr. POLIS. Reclaiming my time, I think there would be broader agreement perhaps if there was a 60-day extension and then perhaps a need for another 60-day extension if there was no legislative business completed, but putting it off 10 months or a year can actually give an excuse not to bring to the forefront these very important issues that need to be dealt with.

This body can produce results. The single most significant bill was H.R. 2, the repeal of an entire body of health care law, and somehow there was the ability to bring that to the floor within days of the opening of the new Congress.

You know, both parties want to ensure that the government has the tools we need to fight terrorism. We can all agree that the Patriot Act has issues that need to be resolved. If we can move this bill through the regular order, I'm confident that the Judiciary Committee can make improvements that they've already discussed in prior session. In fact, just last year, the Judiciary Committee reported out by voice vote reform measures that would improve the Patriot Act and add real oversight.

It's clear that there is bipartisan support to improve this bill. Even as we speak, the Senate is debating three different versions of the reauthorization bill, and yet here in the House, we have only this one, originally scheduled with hardly any debate and now with a very closed structure and no ability for Members of either party to offer amendments.

Apart from its procedural flaws, the reauthorization fails to provide the administration the tools and support it truly needs. The administration, which does support reauthorizing the Patriot Act, has repeatedly asked for a real reauthorization rather than the short-term extensions that increase the uncertainty surrounding long-term planning, intelligence, and law enforcement as they carry out this mission. Instead of a patch that will get us through another few months at the expense of the civil liberties of the American people, we need the opportunity to truly work together to fix this bill.

Specifically, this bill would reauthorize three provisions: section 215, 206, and 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

Section 215 allows the government to capture any tangible thing that might be relevant to terrorist investigations. This includes your medical records, your diary, even what books you've checked out of the library and what Web sites you visited. In the past, these orders were limited to narrow classes of business and records, but the specific facts pertain to any agent of a foreign power, and the Patriot Act has swept away these basic requirements. In fact, it was reported by a bookstore that the information regarding everybody who purchased biographical books about Osama bin Laden had been requested.

The justification used for this provision is that the government needs to have the ability to protect our national security, and yet this goes against the basic constitutional notions of search and seizure. We ought to seriously consider making changes to this section instead of blindly giving the government the ability to spy on its citizens.

Let me just give a few examples--and I think this will come as some surprise to many people--of the transgressions that have already occurred, the affronts to our civil liberties and freedoms as Americans that have already occurred under the Patriot Act.

Perhaps some of us have taken Christmas vacations to Las Vegas. Well, there is a list of 300,000 people that visited Las Vegas in Christmas of 2003 that according to an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal said the casino operators said they turned over the names and other guest information on an estimated 270,000 visitors. Now, I think a lot of people don't expect that to happen when they visit Las Vegas.

There needs to be an oversight process in place to ensure that, when extreme measures are necessary that interfere with our privacy, it goes through the right channels. This particular incident, even the FBI conceded that the personal records had not borne out a particular threat.

The Patriot Act has been used more than 150 times to secretly search individuals' homes, and 90 percent of those cases have had nothing to do with terrorism.

The Patriot Act was used against Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim American, innocent of any crime, to tap his phones, seize his property, copy his computer files, spy on his children, take his DNA, all without his knowledge, Mr. Speaker.

It's been used to coerce an Internet service provider to divulge information about Web surfing and Internet activity and then gagged that provider, preventing them from even saying that their information had been compromised.

It's been used to charge, obtain, and prosecute a Muslim student in Idaho for posting Internet Web site links to materials that were found objectionable by some, even though those same links were available on a U.S. Government Web site.

Mr. Speaker, part of what makes America special is the balance between our civil liberties and our rights as Americans and our national security. When so many Members of Congress, so many Americans on both sides of the aisle, of all ideologies, feel that we can do better, I think we owe it to the people of this country to do better and have a better process as a Congress, to improve the Patriot Act to help protect our liberties and keep us safe over the long term.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. I yield myself 30 seconds.

The gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned that he is not aware of abuses under section 215. I would remind my colleagues that most of the uses are classified under 215, and there has not yet been a briefing for Members this Congress for us to make our assessment of whether there have been abuses of section 215. I have not had a briefing nor has there been one offered here to the Members of the 112th Congress. And I think before we make a decision about section 215, we need to know how it has been used. That's a very simple request.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

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Mr. POLIS. I yield myself 1 minute to respond.

At this point in the 112th Congress, the Judiciary Committee has found time to hold several hearings. I have been informed that they have held hearings on topics that are certainly important--immigration, relating to health care and malpractice--and yet this topic that is being discussed today, something that is so fundamental to our identity as Americans, has not benefited from a single hearing in the 112th Congress.

And one cannot say, oh, it's because they haven't had hearings or they're just reconstituting themselves. I have been informed that they have actually had several hearings to date; they have just simply been on other topics. Apparently, this hearing isn't important enough to warrant a hearing in the early part of the 112th Congress.

One of the difficulties in exercising oversight with regard to section 215 is that the orders are prohibited from being disclosed that they got an order to anyone but their attorneys. So we have very little ability, absent a classified briefing, which we have not been offered, to even find out if section 215 has been abused or not.

With that, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I want to again bring your attention to section 215 and the difficulty which we in this body and the American people as a whole have with regard to exercising oversight over abuse of government authority.

An example that I gave earlier, the American Library Association confirmed that the Federal Government went into a library and asked for the list of everybody who checked out a book on Osama bin Laden. Now, recipients of 215 orders can't even disclose that they received such an order to anybody but their attorneys. So what ability do we have as the People's House to exercise oversight about whether there are abuses?

It has been brought out by several people on the other side, my colleague from Wisconsin, oh, there aren't abuses. Well, if there is a secretive process that prevents us from knowing about abuses, how are we to know in fact whether there are abuses?

I also want to discuss section 206 that we are discussing the renewal of here today, the provision of the bill that allows the government to conduct the roving wiretaps. This allows the government to obtain surveillance warrants that don't even specify the person or the object that is being tapped. It could involve tapping an entire neighborhood of telephones that a suspect might use--an unnamed suspect--might use or might not use. There is nothing even to specifically prohibit it from being an entire city of telephone calls being tapped. And we don't know how it has been used. The Fourth Amendment clearly states that warrants need to specify the person and places to be seized and searched with particularity.

Mr. Speaker, we began this session of Congress by reading the United States Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, here in the House of Representatives. We did that to help make sure that the executive branch or the legislative branch don't have unfettered power to decide singlehandedly who and how to search private citizens and seize their properties.

The Founding Fathers were rightfully worried about the possibility of the central government issuing general warrants that would give it far-reaching power to spy on its citizens and intervene in their private lives. We should honor the Founding Fathers' clear wishes expressed in our Constitution instead of authorizing our Federal Government this kind of power.

Now, the justification used for this provision is that the government needs to have the ability to spy on a suspect as they move from phone to phone. No, no one objects to that authority when the security of the American people is at stake. But that doesn't mean that the government shouldn't have to specify who they are going to spy on and under what conditions. In fact, under Federal criminal law, the government is already required to state either the person or the place that is subject to the wiretap.

It is these sorts of commonsense revisions that I think we could achieve bipartisan consensus on to provide a longer-term stability with regard to the necessary provisions of the Patriot Act.

The final section that will be reauthorized in the bill, section 6001, deals with the ``lone wolf'' provisions which were alluded to by the last two speakers which allows secret surveillance of noncitizens in the U.S. even if they are not connected to any terrorist group or foreign power.

Now, this authority is only granted in secret courts and again threatens our understanding of the limits of our Federal Government's investigatory powers within the borders of our own country. It blurs the line between domestic national security and foreign intelligence. It is clear that we allow a process to improve this.

My friends on the other side of the aisle say they are worried about the growth of government, yet in spite of all the rhetoric about how the government is trying to take over your lives, this, their fifth bill under a rule, actually gives the government the ability to spy on innocent Americans. No wonder so many Republicans joined so many Democrats in voting against this bill earlier this week.

I urge all of my colleagues who are worried about the unchecked growth of the state, anyone who seriously believes in protecting the rights and liberties of Americans, or anyone who simply thinks that we need to take some time to seriously look at these issues to debate them, to vote ``no'' on this bill, to force a discussion of these issues, rather than vague promises of future hearings or markups to improve this bill. Let's accelerate that timeline, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that the concerns of the American people to help protect what it means to be an American, what is so close to our identity as Americans, protecting our individual liberties according to the Founding Fathers as articulated in our Constitution, we can reconcile that with the need to protect the American people's safety, and let us begin that work.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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