On the recordMay 13, 2020
Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Montana for our work on this effort, and I hope we can count on strong support from his caucus, the Senate majority, when we vote in a little bit. I rise to offer this bipartisan amendment because I think a basic question needs to be asked at this unique time: Is it right, when millions of law-abiding Americans are at home, for their government to be able to spy on their internet searches and their web browsing without its having a warrant? Should law-abiding Americans have to worry about their government's looking over their shoulders from the moment they wake up in the morning and turn on their computers to when they go to bed at night? I believe the answer is no, but that is exactly what the government has the power to do without this bipartisan amendment. I start by reflecting for a moment on how Americans are using the internet these days. They are helping kids with homework, checking out prescription drug prices for a sick parent, and visiting scores of different websites. In a pandemic, the internet may be their only connection to the outside world. So the questions we are presenting are, Don't those Americans deserve some measure of privacy? Don't they deserve better than their government's snooping into the websites they visit? How can this be that the government can spy on them when they are not suspected of doing anything wrong? Most importantly, how is this OK in America?…
Source
govinfo.gov




