Date: 2008-01-29
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Madam Speaker. first of all. let me say I rise in support of this bill. Unfortunately. we are at this occasion where we have to have this shortterm extension. But let me just say a couple of things in response to what the majority leader said. In the first instance he said that if we dont have the Protect America Act. but we have the underlying bill. it will work well enough to deal with the problems in an emergency situation. Unfortunately. thats contradicted by the head of our intelligence services. The reason we are here is because it doesnt work. Secondly. the majority leader said the RESTORE Act. the socalled RESTORE Act that we passed in November is a bill that we passed that should take care of these problems. It is a bill .that does not work. and I will give you just one example of its difficulty. In section 2(a)(2). treatment of inadvertent interceptions. it grants greater protections to Osama bin Laden than it would to an American citizen heard inadvertently in the United States. That happens to be a fact. Weve debated it on this floor. Not a single person on that side of the aisle has been able to contradict that. And even the chairman of the Constitutional Law Subcommittee has come to me and said we are right. a huge mistake was made. And yet that was the bill that was passed here and that we are told and the American people are being told needs to go forward. Frankly. the bill we passed in August. the Protect America Act. is nothing short of a legislative LASIK surgery. We had the head of the intelligence services of the United States come to us and say we were blinded so that we could not see over 60 percent of the legitimate terrorist targets in the world because of an interpretation of the law impacted by the new technology. that is. the way communications are transmitted. It was at his request that we looked at this. We did that in August. Weve opened our eyes. Weve been able to look at those targets. those legitimate targets around the world. And if we do not act today we will close our eyes once again. The fact of the matter is. the strangeness of this institution. of only allowing the Protect America Act for 6 months. then coming and saying. Well. the new bill ought to be limited to 30 days. or 15 days. is really something we ought to examine. Does anyone suggest that the threat out there is a 6month threat. a 15day threat. a 30day threat? It is an almost permanent threat that we see out there. We need legislation that will give us certainty. that will allow us to keep our eyes open. to gather the intelligence necessary to protect our homeland. You can argue about the Iraq war all you want. This goes to the essence of protecting us against the terrorists who would bring the war to our shores. who have already brought the. war to our shores. This goes to the effectiveness of the techniques that are used in todays new technology. We were asked by Admiral McConnell to db the job. We did the job in August. with the exception of not giving the protection to those communications companies who actually responded to a patriotic request to help in this fight. For some reason. my friends on the other side believe in the reverse Good Samaritan act: Dont help us. be worried. But bring your attorneys when asked.