On the recordApril 22, 2015
I appreciate the chairman yielding time to me, even though I am in support of this amendment. Madam Chair, we need this legislation because our companies, our industries, our government, and even our individual citizens are under attack by foreign cyber hackers, under attack from criminals. We need the cooperation between the government and the private sector, but unfortunately we have seen that well-meaning folks in the government sometimes get a little overzealous in their data collection we don't always see. For instance, section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, we saw in the Snowden revelations that every bit of metadata on phones was being collected. We didn't know that when we passed the PATRIOT Act. Now we have an opportunity to put a backstop in place where we can take a look a few years down the road and make sure this isn't being misinterpreted, not in line with congressional intent, and not in line with the Constitution. This backstop, this sunset, is a critical piece of the bill. The bill is not perfect, but this makes it a whole lot better and gives us a second bite at the apple should things be going wrong. I appreciate your yielding.
