FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I am going to be very brief in terms of responding to Senator Feinstein, the distinguished chair.

First of all, there is no question the chair of the committee is correct that this is a dangerous time. That is specifically why, at page 6 of my amendment on the report, I include a redaction provision.

If the President believes that public disclosure of information in the report required by the subsection could cause significant harm to national security, the President may redact such information from the report made available to the public.

The bottom line: If the President believes any information that is made public would jeopardize our country at a dangerous time, the President is given full discretion with respect to redaction.

Point No. 2. The chair of the committee is absolutely right; this is an important time for national security. It is also an important time for American liberties. We know the people of this country want to strike a balance between protecting our security and protecting our liberties. So under the reporting amendment all we require is, first, an estimate, just the question of an estimate and whether it has been done by any entity with respect to collecting this information--no new work, just a response to the question of whether an estimate has been done.

Second, we request information on whether any wholly domestic communications have been collected under section 702, and then we ask whether there have been any backdoor searches under the legislation. Finally, we want a response with respect to what the Director of National Security meant when he said: ``The story that we have millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is absolutely false.''

That is what we are talking about. I think, without that information, oversight in the intelligence field will essentially be toothless. This interrupts no operations in the intelligence field. It does not jeopardize sources and methods. It is, in my view, the fundamentals of doing real oversight.

I thank my colleague from Kentucky for giving me this time, and I close by saying: No disagreement with the distinguished chair in the fact that there are real threats to this country's well-being and security, and that is why the President is given complete discretion in order to redact any information that would be made public.

I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Kentucky for the time.

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