Suppose Anything Will Come of It?

The House Judiciary Committee's hearing on the government's unconstitutional spying provided the Obama Administration with a marvelous opportunity to answer Congress’s questions about abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

[...]

]Rep. John Conyers said:] "We never—at any point during this debate—approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens." […He]concluded saying, in his view, the witnesses "already violated the law" by using Section 215 to obtain such an enormous amount of call records.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, agreed. In the hearing he said the law has "got to be changed,” threatening: "You’ve got to change how you operate 215…or you’re not going to have it anymore." Rep. Zoe Lofgren also voiced her concerns demanding reform of Section. Currently, the bills introduced in Congress fail to fix the spying and we encourage members to draft tougher legislation. Throughout the hearing, witnesses were adamant the records were needed to pursue terrorists organizations, and to serve as a type of grand jury subpoena for investigations.

[...]

Rep. Nadler pointedly asked James Cole of the Justice Department for any example of a grand jury subpoena, issued at any time in U.S. history, that is remotely similar to collecting every American's calling information. Cole conceded that he could not provide an example. When Rep. Nadler asked him to answer the question in writing after the hearing, Cole hid behind secrecy: he stated he would try to respond, but cited that grand jury proceedings can't be released and are secret.

[...]

Time and time again, Representatives pressed the witnesses to reconcile the dragnet, suspicionless collection of call records by the NSA with the Fourth Amendment.

  EFF