Political Quotes

“Madam President, in this dangerous world, we have an obligation to give our intelligence community the tools and the resources they need to keep us safe. But we also have a fundamental obligation--just as great, I believe--to protect the civil liberties of law-abiding American citizens. A right to private communications free from the prying eyes and ears of the government should be the rule, not the exception, for American citizens on American soil whom law enforcement has no reason to suspect of wrongdoing. Yet the legislation that we debate on this Senate floor today, the FISA Amendments Act, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act, would reauthorize surveillance authority that most Americans, most of the Delawareans whom I represent, would be shocked to learn the government has in the first place. Under section 702, FISA permits the government to wiretap communications in the United States without a warrant if it reasonably believes the target of the wiretap to be outside of the country and has a significant purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence information. Of course, communications are by definition between two or more people, so even if one participant is outside our country, the person they are talking to may be here in the United States and they may well be an American citizen. Under this legislation, the government is permitted to collect and store their communications but without clear legal limits on what can be done with this information.…”