Russ Feingold: “this amendment is a provision that was part of the Judiciary Committee bill. It was included in a larger substitute…”

“this amendment is a provision that was part of the Judiciary Committee bill. It was included in a larger substitute amendment adopted in that committee that was sponsored by Senator Leahy and cosponsored by Senator Feinstein, Senator Schumer, and others. This amendment puts no additional limits on the Government's ability to target people overseas under this legislation or to collect information about those people. All it does is help ensure that the Government's procedures follow the requirements that are laid out in the bill. It fixes an enormous problem in the Intelligence Committee bill: the complete lack of any incentive for the Government to do what the bill tells it to do, namely, target people overseas rather than people in America. There are many aspects of this bill that have generated strong disagreement, but one thing on which everyone in this Chamber should agree is that the Government should not be using these authorities to target the conversations of innocent Americans in their homes and offices in the United States. For that, the Government should have to get an individualized court order, as it always has. The bill requires the Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, to adopt targeting procedures that are reasonably designed to ensure that only people outside the United States are targeted.”