Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the extension of these provisions when the House has done nothing to consider them or to consider possible reforms or even to hold a hearing or a markup. The three sections scheduled to sunset are all troubling, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to review them carefully before they come before the House again. Section 215 authorizes the government to obtain ``any tangible thing,'' such as library or business or medical records, if ``there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are relevant'' to a foreign intelligence or international terrorism investigation. Before the enactment of section 215, the government had to show ``specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the person to whom the records pertain'' is a foreign agent or a terrorist. Section 215 allows the government to delve into the personal records of someone even if there is no reason to believe that that person has anything to do with terrorism. This poses a threat to individual rights in the most sensitive areas of our lives, with little restraint on the government. Section 206 provides for roving wiretap orders, supposedly to catch up with technology, but these orders identify neither the person to be tapped nor the facility to be tapped. This is, for all practical purposes, a general grant of authority to wiretap anyone anywhere that the government wants.…”