Bobby Scott: “I rise in favor of the legislation. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your leadership on efforts to address warrantless…”

“I rise in favor of the legislation. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your leadership on efforts to address warrantless surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or ``FISA'' and for introducing a bill that corrects many of the shortcomings of the bill that passed the House last August. The RESTORE Act establishes a strong framework, much stronger than the Administration's PROTECT Act, to fight terrorism effectively, while providing reasonable safeguards to protect personal privacy. One important change in the Restore Act is that it draws the appropriate distinctions based on the physical location and types of targets. There has never been any controversy over the fact that surveillance directed at people all of whom are overseas does not need any warrant at all. This bill rightly makes it clear that no court orders are required for the government to conduct surveillance on foreign targets outside the United States, even if the technical surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil. But if any surveillance is intentionally conducted on a U.S. person, this bill makes it clear that the government needs to apply for an individual warrant to conduct that surveillance. And if information on U.S. persons is incidentally collected, the Manager's Amendment to the bill rightly limits dissemination of that information among government agencies.”