Representative Heather Wilson

I rise to speak in favor of passage of H.R. 5710, the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water System Authorization Act, which will establish the Ute water pipeline. This bill authorizes construction of a pipeline from the Ute Reservoir that will…

Under the law that we are trying to get passed, that passed the Senate by a bipartisan vote with 68 votes, it would not be required to get a warrant to listen to a foreigner in a foreign country. Unfortunately, the leadership here in the…

Is it true that we depend on telephone companies not only for their cooperation for foreign intelligence, but also in the case of crimes like kidnappings here in the United States? Do we depend on their cooperation there? What is at grave…

I became absolutely determined to get this fixed, and it was a result of a series of cases in what I saw as a growing problem in intelligence collection. But so that people understand, in 1978 the Congress passed a law that governed…

I think my colleague from Pennsylvania raises a good point. What are the protections for America's civil liberties, and there has been a lot of misinformation out there about the protections in the Protect America Act for American civil…

I think intelligence is underestimated; and the reason is that we see the old newspaper headlines of the victory of the Navy at Midway, but you don't learn until years after that it was the breaking of the Japanese code that allowed our…

my colleague from Kentucky has just raised an important point, which is that we need to revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But I think he's a little misinformed. He says that there are bipartisan negotiations going on. The…

I think there are two points that haven't been made tonight that I do think are worth making concerning the Protect America Act, which we hope to make permanent in the bill that's come over here from the Senate to fix the Foreign…

It's not even the majority. The majority of this House, a bipartisan majority of this House, would pass this bill tonight if the liberal Democratic leadership would allow a vote. That's the thing that's so frustrating to me. This is a bill…

I thank my colleague. In fact, one of the reasons that attorney generals and the Fraternal Order of Police are so strongly in support of this legislation is that they worry that what's happening to our telecommunication companies because…

And one of the things that baffles me is to be able to hear the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, say those things, to have very clear testimony both publicly and privately that the problems they predicted are actually…

I think we are denying democracy its voice by not allowing the Members who represent the American people the opportunity to vote on the Protect America Act and to make that act permanent. This statute was never intended to apply to…

If my colleague would think about that for a second, you've got a tip. Most people know that a lot of big cities have gang units. Put this in this context. You got a tip that somebody may be a terrorist overseas, but really all you have is…

In fact, the Senate bill for privacy protections for Americans are stronger than the Protect America Act and stronger than current law under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act really…

And it's even worse than that. You've got your two cell phones there. If the soldiers were able to intercept between that insurgent's cell phone and the tower that it's going to, that's all fine; you don't need a warrant for that. It's…

He said it was suspicious and disrespectful to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant. And I couldn't believe he said it. I just couldn't believe it. As if this is about America being polite to terrorists.

It was actually a situation like that which caused me to say enough is enough, we have to get this fixed. It was last May, and at the time we couldn't talk about it, but it's been talked about publicly since then. We had soldiers who were…

The key change in the Protect America Act, and also in the Senate bill that is now being blocked here on the floor of the House, is to allow American intelligence to listen to foreigners in foreign countries without a warrant, even if the…

The sad thing in this city is that we have people taking tremendous risks on our behalf under complete orders to do so, that we're certified, we're lawful and everything else, and they are so afraid of the kind of after-the-fact inquiries…

one of the most important laws that is preventing another terrorist attack in this country will expire on Friday. It expires on Friday. My colleague from New York says, well, we just need to take enough time and be deliberative and so on…

This act and the amendments made by this act shall not be construed to prohibit surveillance of, or grant any rights to, an alien not permitted to be in or remain in the United States. Now, I think there are probably a lot of people on…

One of the things my colleague from New York said was, well, there are these minimization procedures, and that's true. There are minimization procedures under current law, which means that if you gather information that involves innocent…

I know we are coming to the end of this hour, but I think there is something important for Americans to understand. We all remember where we were the morning of 9/11. We remember what we were wearing, what we had for breakfast, whom we…

Absolute prohibition. And I think we need to get back to some basics here, which is, number one, the current law requires that you need a warrant to wiretap a U.S. person for the purposes of collection of foreign intelligence. That's what…