On the recordJune 10, 2015
This amendment restricts the use of section 702 of FISA, which is not currently up for reauthorization. The law does not sunset until December of 2017. Any reform to this authority should be fully vetted by the authorizing committees and not inappropriately attached to our spending bill. This amendment would impose greater restrictions on the intelligence community's ability to protect national security and create an impediment to our government's ability to locate threat information already in our government's possession. Such an impediment would potentially put American lives at risk of another terrorist attack. Colleagues, the House recently passed H.R. 3361, the USA FREEDOM Act, with overwhelmingly bipartisan support. It was signed into law last week. This amendment seeks to relitigate an issue fully litigated in the drafting of that legislation. A similar amendment was offered and rejected by the House Judiciary Committee during its markup of that bill. The USA FREEDOM Act does include two reforms related to section 702 collection. These were reforms properly considered during the authorization process, not slapped on an appropriations bill without consideration and deliberation. The first limits the government's use of information about U.S. persons that is obtained under section 702 that the FISA court later determines to be unlawful. The second provision requires the Director of National Intelligence to report annually the number of U.S.…
