Victoria Spartz: “I think we have had a lot of important discussions this Congress, but there is one important discussion that I truly…”

“I think we have had a lot of important discussions this Congress, but there is one important discussion that I truly believe we need to take very seriously. It is section 702 of the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I want to remind us that our main job as Representatives of the people is to protect people's rights to life, liberty, and property. We will never have equal opportunities and will always want to have equal outcomes, but the equality of rights is the job of Congress and the legislature. We know very well that the constitutional rights of Americans have been violated. I am going to cite some excerpts from the report that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board just issued recently. That board was created to oversee due processes, and the issue in line was the reauthorization. It is actually run by Democrats, and the chair is appointed by President Biden. This is from the report: ``The board finds that section 702 poses significant privacy and civil liberties risks, most notably from U.S. person queries and batch queries. Significant privacy and civil liberties risks also include the scope of permissible targeting.'' It also talks about new types of procedures that have been recently authorized, in 2022, and we had challenges about collection that some thought Congress would put a stop to. However, it says that the new procedures that we just authorized were used in a widespread fashion.…”