USA Freedom Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, in 2013, the country learned that the government, specifically the NSA, had been collecting and storing enormous amounts of information about American citizens, and that the data collection at issue was not limited to those who were actually suspected of terrorist activity or even necessarily to those who were connected to those suspected of engaging in terrorist activity. Many were understandably very concerned about how much and what kind of data was being collected and whether this information could be or had been abused by government officials.

Today proponents of the metadata program claim it cannot be used to identify ordinary American citizens. But earlier this year researchers at Stanford University proved that the very type of metadata collected under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act could be used to uncover a lot of information, including information about a person's politics, what kind of medications they might be taking, about where they go to church, and so on and so forth.

The USA FREEDOM Act is a bipartisan piece of legislation that would end bulk collection of metadata currently gathered by the NSA, and it would help address the problem of the American government spying on its own citizens without cause. It also would improve transparency for the data that NSA does collect. It has the support of leaders in our intelligence community, the Department of Justice, civil liberties groups, the National Rifle Association, and several tech companies.

Opponents of this bill say it will impair our national security. They say the bill will keep our intelligence community from protecting us. But what opponents of this bill fail fully to appreciate is that most Americans are deeply concerned about the collection of their own personal information. This bill is an opportunity to strike a reasonable commonsense balance between protecting Americans' privacy and at the same time protecting our national security.

While I believe there are honest, decent people working in our intelligence community, and while I think this has been overwhelmingly the norm, it is important to heed a warning given to us centuries ago by James Madison. In Federalist 51, Madison wrote:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Congress should address this issue now. The provision of the PATRIOT Act authorizing this kind of data collection expires just after Memorial Day this coming year, and it is important to adopt a compromise well ahead of this deadline that all interested parties can accept.

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