Ronald Lee Wyden

“ I have found the men and women who work at our nation’s intelligence agencies to be hard­working, dedicated professionals. They are genuine patriots who make real sacrifices to serve their country. They should be able to do their jobs secure in the knowledge that there is public support for everything that they are doing. Unfortunately, that can’t happen when senior officials from across the government mislead the public about the government’s surveillance authorities. ”

“ Despite the efforts of the intelligence community leadership to downplay the privacy impact of the Patriot Act collection, the bulk collection of phone records significantly impacts the privacy of million of law­abiding Americans. If you know who someone called, when they called, where they called from, and how long they talked, you lay bare the personal lives of law­abiding Americans to the scrutiny of government bureaucrats and outside contractors. ”

“ As more information about sweeping government surveillance of law­abiding Americans is made public and the American people can discuss its impacts, I believe more Americans will speak out. They’re going to say, in America, you don’t have to settle for one priority or the other: laws can be written to protect both privacy and security, and laws should never be secret. ”

“ The piece of technology we consider vital to the conduct of our everyday personal and professional life happens to be a combination phone bug, listening device, location tracker, and hidden camera. There isn’t an American alive who would consent to being required to carry any one of those items and so we must reject the idea that the government may use its powers to arbitrarily bypass that consent. ”

“ For those who believe executive branch officials will voluntarily interpret their surveillance authorities with restraint, I believe it is more likely that I will achieve my life­long dream of playing in the NBA.
But seriously, when James Madison was attempting to persuade Americans that the Constitution contained sufficient protections against any politician or bureaucrat seizing more power than that granted to them by the people, he did not just ask his fellow Americans to trust him. ”

“ As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government. ”

“ Most Americans don’t expect to know the details about ongoing sensitive military and intelligence activities, but as voters they absolutely have a need and a right to know what their government thinks it is permitted to do, so that they can ratify or reject decisions that elected officials make on their behalf. To put it another way, Americans recognize that intelligence agencies will sometimes need to conduct secret operations, but they don’t think those agencies should be relying on secret law. ”

“ The public was actively misled. I’ve pointed out several instances in the past where senior officials have made misleading statements to the public and to Congress about the types of surveillance they are conducting on the American people, and I’ll recap some of the most significant examples.
For years, senior Justice Department officials have told Congress and the public that the Patriot Act’s business record authority ­ which is the authority that is used to collect the phone records of millions of ordinary Americans ­ is “analogous to a grand jury subpoena.” ”

“ We find ourselves at a truly unique time in our Constitutional history. The growth of digital technology, dramatic changes in the nature of warfare and the definition of a battlefield, and novel courts that run counter to everything the Founding Fathers imagined, make for a combustible mix. At this point in the speech I would usually conclude with the quote from Ben Franklin about giving up liberty for security and not deserving either, but I thought a different founding father might be more fitting today. ”

“ Today, government officials are openly telling the press that they have the authority to effectively turn Americans’ smart phones and cell phones into location­enabled homing beacons. Compounding the problem is the fact that the case law is unsettled on cell phone tracking and the leaders of the intelligence community have consistently been unwilling to state what the rights of law­abiding people are on this issue. ”

“ The Bush administration spent most of 2006 attempting to defend the warrantless wiretapping program. Once again, when the truth came out, it produced a surge of public pressure and the Bush administration announced that they would submit to oversight from Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also known as the FISA Court. Unfortunately, because the FISA Court’s rulings are secret, most Americans had no idea that the Court was prepared to issue incredibly broad rulings, permitting the massive surveillance that finally made headlines last month. ”

“ When the American people find out how their government has interpreted the Patriot Act, they are going to be stunned and they are going to be angry.” From my position on the Senate Intelligence Committee, I had seen government activities conducted under the umbrella of the Patriot Act that I knew would astonish most Americans. ”

“ The government lawyers walk in and lay out an argument for why the government should be allowed to do something, and the Court decides based solely on the judge’s assessment of the government’s arguments. ”