Patriot Sunsets Extension Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion of the PATRIOT Act, and we are told basically that we wouldn't be able to capture these terrorists if we didn't give up some of our liberties, if we didn't give up some of the fourth amendment and allow it to be easier for the police to come into our homes. We were so frightened after 9/11 that we readily gave up these freedoms.
We said: Well, the fourth amendment is not that important. We will just let the government look at all of our records, and we will make it easier for the government to look at our records.
The question we have to ask, though, is whether we would still be able to catch terrorists by using the fourth amendment as it was intended and having the protections of the fourth amendment. What we have to ask ourselves is, think about the worst person in our communities. Think about someone accused of murder or rape or a pedophile. We think of these people, and do we know what happens if someone is accused of that? Even if it is 3 o'clock in the morning and they want to get their records or they want to go into their houses, they call a judge. This is something very important. They get the warrants almost all the time. But it is one step of protection. What we have is the protection where we don't have police officers writing warrants to come into our houses. They have to have it reviewed by a judge.
What we have done through the PATRIOT Act is taken away some of the protections of the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment says we need to name the person and the place to be searched. We have taken away those protections. The fourth amendment says we need to have probable cause. We have taken that away and made it to, if it is relevant, or we think they might be related to it.
Originally, the FISA Court lowered the standards somewhat on the fourth amendment, but it recognized that it was lowering the standard and was careful. We had secret courts set up, and the FISA Court was the court that dealt with things that had to do with national security or terrorism or intelligence. The information was kept secret so we didn't let everybody in the world know the name, but the name had to be divulged to the judges. Well, those who argue that we have to have the PATRIOT Act, or we have to do this or we will not be able to stop terrorism, they need to explain why the FISA Court did tens of thousands of search warrants and never turned any down. In fact, the history before the PATRIOT Act was no search warrant had ever been turned down.
So do we want to give up our liberties in exchange for more security? Franklin said those who give up their liberty in exchange for security may end up with neither.
Right now, if someone has a Visa bill that is over $5,000 and chooses to pay for it over the phone, which is a wire transfer, the government is probably looking at their Visa bill. They don't have to show probable cause, and they don't have to have a judge's warrant. This does apply to U.S. citizens. Often they will tell us: Oh, it is only foreign terrorists we are looking at. They want us to feel good about allowing them to spy. But this spying is going on by the tens of thousands and even by the millions.
With regard to these suspicious activity reports, we have done over 4 million of them in the last 10 years. We are now doing over 1 million a year. These suspicious activity reports, all the trigger is--it doesn't have to have anything to do with terrorism. The trigger is just that someone has over $5,000 that they have transferred by bank account.
We say, well, the courts have decided our bank records aren't private. Well, the hell they aren't. They should be private. If someone looks at my Visa records, they can tell whether I go to the doctor and what kind of doctor I go to. They can conceivably tell what kind of medication I am on. They can tell what kind of magazines I read. They can tell what kind of books I order from Amazon. Do we want a government that looks at our Visa bill? Do we want a government that looks at all of our records and is finding out what our reading habits are?
One of the provisions applies to library records. Do we really want the government to go and find out what we are reading at the library?
We now have a President who is wanting to know where a person has contributed before they do work for the government. Do we really want that kind of all-encompassing government that is looking at every record from top to bottom and invading our privacy?
There is another aspect of these so-called national security letters. These are basically warrants that are written by FBI agents. No judge reviews them. This is specifically what James Otis was worried about when he talked about general warrants that weren't specifying the person or the place and that were written by police officers. This is a problem because this is--we depend on the checks and balances in our society. We never want to give all of the authority to either one group of Congress or to the President or to police or judges. We have checks and balances to try to prevent abuse.
Some have said, well, if one has nothing to hide, why do you care? The thing is, it will not always be angels who are in charge of government. We have rules because we want to prevent the day that may occur when we get somebody who takes over our government through elected office or otherwise who is intent on using the tools of government to pry into our affairs, to snoop on what we are doing, to punish us for our political or religious beliefs. That is what we don't ever want: to let the law become so expansive.
We have to realize we can still get terrorists. We get rapists and murderers every day by calling a judge.
That is what I am asking for. I am asking that we go through and obey the fourth amendment. Many conservatives have argued that, well, they love the second amendment. Some liberals say, well, they love and will protect the first amendment. Do you know what. If we do not protect the entire bill of rights, we are not going to have any of it. If we want to protect our right to own a gun, we need to protect our gun records from the government looking at our gun records and finding out whether we have been buying a gun at a gun show.
We need to protect our privacy. If we want to protect the first amendment, we have to have the fourth amendment. In fact, we specifically had to go back there. The original PATRIOT Act said we could not even consult with our attorneys. We could not even tell our attorneys. We were gagged from telling our attorneys.
Even now, though, one may say: I do not know if they have investigated me. Do you know why? Because they tell our phone company, if they are looking at our phone records right now or our Visa records, it is against the law for Visa or the phone company to tell us that. It is hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines and jail time. It is 5 years in jail if our phone company tells us they have been spying on us.
Some of this does not even require a letter from government. Some of it is done by the banks. The suspicious activity reports, we have simply told the bank: Here, anybody who deals in cash, anybody who has over a $5,000 wire transfer or who deals in large amounts of money--it is incumbent upon the bank to spy on their customers now.
This is a real problem, and I think we need to have some argument and debate in our country over these things. Some want to have these things permanently. They want to permanently give up their fourth amendment protections, and I disagree strongly. Not only would I let these expire, but I think we should sunset the entire PATRIOT Act and protect our liberties as intended by our Founding Fathers.
James Otis was an attorney in Boston, and he wrote about these things they called, in those days, writs of assistance. These were general warrants. The king would write them--or actually they were written by soldiers here. They did not name the person to be searched or the place, and they were used as a way to have the king have his way with the people and to bully the people.
The idea of general warrants is what sorely offended our Founding Fathers. That is why we got the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment was a product of a decade or more of James Otis arguing cases against the British Government.
But the question we have to ask ourselves when thinking about these issues is, is it so simple that we can just say: Well, I am either against terrorism or I am going to let terrorists run wild and take over the country. One can be opposed to terrorists. We can go after terrorists. We can go after murderers and rapists and people who commit crimes. But we can do it with a process that protects the innocent.
I think so far they say we have looked at 28 million electronic records. We have looked at 1,600,000 text messages. We have 800,000 hours of audio. We have so much audio they do not even listen to it all. Twenty-five percent of what they have recorded of our phone conversations is not listened to because they do not even have time to listen to it.
My point would be that we are eavesdropping on so many people it could be we are missing out and not targeting. Just like at airports--every one of us is being searched in the airport. We are not terrorists, and we are no threat to our country. Why are we not looking for people who would attack us and spending time on those people? Why do we not go to a judge and say: This person we suspect of dealing with this terrorist group. Will you give us a warrant?
Why don't we have those steps? Instead, we are mining and going through millions of records. I think we are overwhelmed with the records that we may well be doing less of a good job with terrorism because we are looking at everyone's records.
The bottom line is, I do not want to live in a country where we give up our freedoms, our privacy. I do not want to live in a country that loses its constitutional protections of us as individuals. We do have a right to privacy. We have a right not to have the government reading our Visa bills every month. We do have rights, and we should protect them. We should not be so fearful that we say: Well, I am a good person. I don't care, just look at my records. If we do, we are setting ourselves up for a day when there will be a tyranny, when there will be a despot who comes into power in the United States and who uses those rules for which we said: Oh, well, I don't have anything to hide.
What happens when someone takes over who believes one's religion is to be combatted, who believes one's political beliefs and literature should be combated? What happens when that day comes?
We cannot give up our liberty. If we do, if we give up our liberty and we trade it for security, we will have neither.
So I rise in opposition to the cloture motion. I will be offering amendments to the PATRIOT Act this week, and we will be having a real debate about how we can stop terrorism but also preserve freedom at the same time.
I thank the Chair.
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