Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman. Mr. Speaker, the USA FREEDOM Act represents a return to the basic principle of the Fourth Amendment, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Before the government may search our homes, seize our persons, or intercept our communications, it must first make a showing of individualized suspicion. The intrusion it requests must be as targeted and as brief as circumstances allow. The Fourth Amendment demands no less. That is why we are here today. We have learned that the government has engaged in unreasonable searches against all of us. It has gathered an enormous amount of information about every phone call in the United States. It has deemed all of our phone calls relevant to a terrorism investigation. It is intolerable to our sense of freedom. Today, we are acting to stop it. The bill before us prohibits the intelligence community from engaging in bulk data collection within the United States. This practice, the dragnet collection without a warrant of telephone records and Internet metadata, is the contemporary equivalent of the British writs of assistance that early American revolutionaries opposed and that the Fourth Amendment was drafted to outlaw. It has never complied with the Constitution and must be brought to an end without delay.…”