Political Quotes

“Madam President, the Senate will hold a series of votes this afternoon on the underlying bill, and I think it is important for all of us to understand exactly what those amendments will do. The underlying House bill makes some changes in the way the National Security Agency operates and uses what the Supreme Court of the United States has held is not private information--in other words, the time, duration, and number involved in a telephone call that is contained in a typical telephone bill. The Supreme Court of the United States has said there is no right of privacy in that information. As the Senate knows, what the House bill does is it leaves these phone records in the possession of the telephone company. Then, over a period of 6 months, the National Security Agency is supposed to come up with a means of querying those records in the possession of the various phone companies. Some, like me, have wondered why it is that we are trying to fix a system that is not broken, because there is absolutely no documented record of any abuse of this information as it is currently retained by the NSA. The way it is used is to help the intelligence community discover people who have communicated with known or suspected terrorists abroad in a way that will help to provide an additional piece of data that will hopefully help them prevent terrorist attacks from occurring on our home soil.…”