Political Quotes

“Mr. President, our intelligence community relies on a range of tools to protect Americans from threats originating from abroad. One of them is section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--FISA--which is used to gather information related to foreign individuals located outside of the United States and has produced valuable information to help uncover terrorist plots and thwart attacks. I strongly support maintaining that important capability. At the same time, I have long been concerned that, without adequate safeguards, section 702 can be abused in a way that violates Americans' Fourth Amendment rights and unnecessarily intrudes on their privacy, including for ``backdoor'' searches. That is why I have long pushed for guardrails to prevent governmental overreach and abuse. Despite the fact that surveillance under this section is supposed to be limited to certain foreign nationals abroad, a FISA Court opinion released in July 2023 stated that the FBI conducted approximately 40,000-50,000 warrantless ``backdoor'' search queries of section 702 communications data targeting U.S. persons per quarter in 2022. Moreover, over the course of 2022, government data shows that the FBI's rate of compliance with the FISA Court-approved querying standard has risen to approximately 98 percent, which means the rate of violations is 2 percent. While that may sound like an impressive compliance rate, it still amounts to 4,000 violations each year.…”