Jay Rockefeller: “the distinguished vice chairman, Senator Bond, and I have joined in a bipartisan amendment to S. 2248, the FISA…”

“the distinguished vice chairman, Senator Bond, and I have joined in a bipartisan amendment to S. 2248, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The Rockefeller-Bond amendment perfects various details of the underlying bill but its main purpose is to provide explicit statutory protection, for the first time in the 30 years of FISA, for Americans who are outside the United States. The amendment stands for the simple proposition that Americans, whether they are working, studying, traveling or serving in our Armed Forces outside the United States, do not lose their rights as Americans when it comes to the actions of their own Government. In 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, including, of course, the fourth amendment, which protects our people from unreasonable search and seizure, there were 4 million Americans. That was it. Now that very number of Americans, 4 million, lives outside the United States and, of course, many millions more travel each year outside the United States. Because this amendment is so important and because it has gone through so much development to reach the point at which we have now arrived, I would like to take, frankly, a few minutes to describe its origin and evolution, with the forbearance of my colleagues. The protection of Americans outside the United States may have been the single most important piece of business left undone by the original FISA statute created in 1978.”