Andy Biggs: “I thank the gentleman, my good friend from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who is very eloquent as he conveyed our passion and…”

“I thank the gentleman, my good friend from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who is very eloquent as he conveyed our passion and our sincere desire to curb and restrain an out-of-control, weaponized Federal Government. So, Mr. Speaker, as I was talking before, how do you get there? One of the solutions is you have a warrant before you are able to go and conduct that investigation, that basic query into my personal data. We have got some here who don't want to do that. They say: Oh, no, no, we need to expand our spying. They actually want more authority when they have abused it, literally 278,000 times in the last few years, with what the Inspector General said were unlawful queries. So we asked the head of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, whose job it is to watch the FISA Court, to say: Look, tell us. We want to know if there is a warrant there, is it going to hinder collection of information that is necessary for the national security of the country? Do you know what she said, Mr. Speaker? She said: I strongly disagree that a requirement for FISC approval of U.S. person queries would amount to a de facto ban. What is that requirement? It is a warrant. As noted in my separate statement: Requiring FISC review of U.S. person query terms is necessary to protect Americans' privacy rights and, in my view, would neither cause an end to U.S. person queries nor undermine the overall efficacy of section 702 and protect the U.S. national security.…”