Zoe Lofgren: “I do have concerns about the measure before us; but before touching on those concerns, I would like to state here…”

“I do have concerns about the measure before us; but before touching on those concerns, I would like to state here publicly the esteem I have for the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), the chairman of the committee, as well as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the ranking member. They have really conducted themselves in the very finest manner possible, and I am proud to be serving in this House with the two of them. We worked together on the Committee on the Judiciary understanding that we need to do everything we can to make sure that law enforcement has all the tools necessary to keep our country safe, and we came out with a good measure. It may not be a perfect measure. But there are risks inherent in some of the changes we made, and most particularly the changes made in the area of FISA that my colleague the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) basically mentioned. We are changing the way we deal with the fourth amendment, and we were prepared to do that in the Committee on the Judiciary, provided that we had a review. We had a 2-year sunset clause on that FISA section. Because we are on new ground here, we may be on thin ice; and we wanted to make sure that we force ourselves to review that provision so that the freedoms of Americans are not destroyed as we fight to destroy the terrorists.”