On the recordNovember 18, 2014
I thank the Presiding Officer. I wish to speak to this bill, and I have to say that this is one of the few times that the vice chairman, the distinguished Senator from Georgia, and I have a disagreement. I very much support this 215 metadata program. I think the Intelligence Committee had approximately 12 hearings on the subject last year. Many people believe that the NSA is using this program all the time. In fact, in the year 2012 there were 288 approved queries, and 12 of them eventually led the FBI to obtain a probable cause warrant for the content of the communications. In fact, you cannot obtain content in a query; a query just searches the phone metadata. Then the next criticism we have heard has been, well, the government should not hold the metadata. And that is essentially the big change this bill makes. In October 2013, we voted out of our committee--by a vote of 11 to 4--a FISA reform act; however, in my judgment, that bill is not going to pass in this Congress. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time is up.
