Zoe Lofgren: “I believe this bill makes meaningful reform to a few of the surveillance programs, but it in no way stops all of the…”

“I believe this bill makes meaningful reform to a few of the surveillance programs, but it in no way stops all of the bulk collection of U.S. person communications currently occurring. This bill won't stop the most egregious and widely reported privacy violations that occur under section 702 and Executive Order No. 12333. In a declassified decision, the FISA court said that the NSA had been collecting substantially more U.S. person communications through its upstream collection program than it had originally told the court. With upstream collection, the NSA directly taps into international Internet cables to search through all of the communications that flow through it, looking for communications that map certain criteria. Four years ago, the court found that the government was collecting tens of thousands of wholly domestic communications a year. Why? Because all of your data is everywhere. No accurate estimate can be given for the even larger number of communications collected in which a U.S. person was a party to the communication. The Director of National Intelligence confirmed the government searches this vast amount of data, including the content of email and of telephone calls, without individualized suspicion, probable cause, and without a warrant. The Director of the FBI says they use information to build criminal cases against U.S. persons. This is an end run around the Fourth Amendment, and it has to stop. This bill did not create those problems.…”