Russ Feingold: “Let me agree with the Chair that it is important to clarify what these amendments do and do not do, not only for…”

“Let me agree with the Chair that it is important to clarify what these amendments do and do not do, not only for purposes of voting on the amendment, but for any court consideration of this issue. The arguments of the chairman and ranking member do not relate, in many cases, to the amendment that has been put forward. The Senator from Missouri just made the argument that my amendment differs from the use limit provisions for emergency surveillance because my amendment would limit the use of information about foreign targets. But that is not true. That is not the amendment I offered. My amendment only puts limits on information about U.S. persons. The Government can always use information about foreign persons. With regard to the comments of the Chair of the committee, the supposed burden of identifying which communications involved U.S. persons only comes up if the Government starts its targeting procedures before it gets court approval, and then fails to keep track of what it is collecting during that time. And it only comes up if the Government procedures are targeting Americans in the United States, in which case I think there are overwhelming policy and constitutional reasons why this information needs to be retrieved and its use limited. Moreover, if the intelligence community is concerned about this potential burden, it can do what it says it already does with information gathered using the PAA, and that is to label it.…”