Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of the Amash- Labrador-Nadler-Paul-Polis Amendment. While I believe most Members agree both that a cyber attack could be devastating and that sharing information will help to fight that threat, the underlying bill is overly broad and intrusive. Our amendment will add at least a modicum of protection for Americans' privacy. While the idea of privacy may seem quaint to some in this day of social networking and the Internet, most Americans still believe that they have a zone of privacy vis-a-vis the government. As such, it is important we protect private actions from the prying eyes of government. Moreover, the government has a history of misusing such information and so we need to be very circumspect in what we allow it access to. Our amendment prohibits records or information regarding what books you bought or checked out of the library, your medical records, tax returns, and so on from being used by the government for any purpose if it obtained that information pursuant to this bill. There is no need for the government to have this most personal of information--I don't see how any of it could be possibly relevant to cyber security. And, if the information can't be legally used, hopefully that will discourage companies from sharing it in the first place. The categories of information in our amendment are already given a protected status in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).…”