Political Quotes

“I wanted to address three aspects of it. First, for the intelligence community, we must act, and we must act now, to assure that the community has the ability and the tools they need to fight terrorists. Over the last 30 years, the world has experienced a technological revolution, and our laws governing terrorist surveillance have not kept pace. The old 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that I will refer to as FISA was drafted to deal specifically with the technology in use at the time. This spring, a court ruled that because of the change in technology, the old FISA law severely limited our ability to collect intelligence. Essentially, it made us deaf to collection of vitally needed information. Following that ruling, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, told Congress the United States was unable to conduct the critical surveillance of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside our country because of the outdated law. It not only affected our ability to protect the United States, but it also threatened the safety and lives of our troops abroad.”