Unanimous Consent Requests

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, the Senator from Oregon is prepared to let this essential foreign intelligence surveillance tool go dark unless we accede to his demands. And frankly, the demand for a warrant to search lawfully collected foreign intelligence makes no sense whatsoever.

Section 702 is probably the most important law most people have never heard about. It protects American citizens by saying that only foreigners can be the object of surveillance, but necessarily sometimes, when the communication is between a foreign target and an American citizen or a U.S. person, that call is documented in metadata, so-called--time, place, and persons who have made the call. That is lawfully collected intelligence.

What this requirement would mean is that the FBI, mainly, would have to go out and try to prove the elements of a crime, a probable cause that a crime has been committed, in order to get a judge to issue a warrant to look at lawfully collected intelligence, which is basically the metadata. If content is required or asked for by the FBI, they have to go before a judge and establish why that is.

But one of the basic points of confusion is that some people think that gathering intelligence is the same thing as investigating a crime. It can be sometimes, but basically seeking intelligence is forward- looking in order to prevent future acts, for example, of terrorism. Criminal investigations look backward to see if a crime has been committed and are subject to criminal penalties, which do include, particularly with U.S. persons involved, all the constitutional protections that U.S. citizens and U.S. persons enjoy. Foreigners do not enjoy Fourth Amendment protection against this sort of surveillance.

So first of all, I believe that this is misguided. We have heard from the intelligence community that this requirement will slow down collection of intelligence, including and during occasions where time is of the essence. So courts have found that none of these queries require or implicate Fourth Amendment protection. So the very foundation for this argument has been rejected by the courts that have reviewed it.

Senator Wyden's bill would be akin to asking police officers to get a warrant every time they happen to look at legally collected evidence in their evidence locker. It makes no sense whatsoever. Requiring a warrant for every query of already lawfully collected information in the 702 database would significantly hinder the ability to respond to emerging threats.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, if the Senator will allow me to respond--

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Mr. CORNYN.--what we are talking about is the contact between the foreign target and the U.S. person or American citizen. We are not talking about content. That would require another step to find that content approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. So I think there is some confusion about what is already collected and what would seek to be collected but which would require another step.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, once again, the Senator from Washington is objecting to a clean extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, section 702, which would prevent us from going dark on foreign intelligence risks and threats to our country. As for the sorts of things that he has talked about here, since 2024, Congress has passed dozens of transparency and accountability reforms that have actually worked. Congressional oversight, of course, is critical.

The Senator and I and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee are here. We all serve on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that performs important oversight functions to make sure that the balance between privacy and security is the right balance. Indeed, the bipartisan Cotton, Grassley, and Warner bill, which is available to us to vote on, has almost two dozen additional protections included. We should be taking up that bill, not threatening to go dark and create dangers to our Nation.

Also, it is not just the program that expires on Friday. There is a lot of oversight protection built into the current bill and past FISA reauthorizations. If that goes dark, all of those previous protections that were negotiated, that I know the Senator from Washington believes in--those would go away. So, in addition to being in danger--the American people and our national security--it would eliminate the very sorts of privacy protections and transparency that the Senator from Washington is arguing for here on an expanded basis.

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Mr. CORNYN. I am sorry. I had a mental warp there.

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Mr. CORNYN. I apologize to my friend the Senator from Oregon. I do know the difference between Oregon and Washington, and I am not confused about that.

Mr. President, there is a risk of this necessary and critical intelligence tool not being extended. The President has called for an extension for, I think, up to 3 weeks, July 2, in order for further negotiations to take place so that, hopefully, there can be bipartisan buy-in to the ultimate product that comes out of this.

I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, all we are asking for is an extension--a clean extension--of the current law, which includes a lot of the reforms that the Senator from Oregon has advocated for and gotten included in the current state of the legislation. As I said, those will go away if this program goes dark after this Friday.

Further, as for the authority to work with the various institutions that are essential to collecting this foreign intelligence for the safety and security of the American people, that will go away, endangering the American people and our national security. In fact, 60 percent--60 percent--of the President's daily intelligence brief contains 702 intelligence product. The Senator from Oregon knows that well.

This is simply too big a risk for us to take to allow this to go dark. All we are asking for is a little bit of additional time to continue these negotiations in order to find consensus so that we can continue to protect the American people while finding the appropriate balance between our national security and individual privacy rights.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, as one last response, there is absolutely no justification for risking this program going dark on Friday. These negotiations can and should continue. That is how we solve problems around here on a bipartisan basis, but we don't risk catastrophe with our national security in exchange for demands that could well be addressed during an extension until July 2.

So I regret we find ourselves in this situation. The clock is ticking on our national security because this program will go dark come Friday.

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