Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, called for serious reforms of our nation’s intelligence-gathering programs during the Full Judiciary Committee markup of the USA FREEDOM Act, which passed by a vote of 25-2.

“We rely on law enforcement and on the intelligence community to keep us safe from threats that pose a real and present danger to the United States.  But before the government may search our homes, seize our persons, or intercept our communications, it must first make a showing of individualized suspicion,” said Congressman Nadler.  “The USA FREEDOM Act represents a return to these basic principles.”

The bipartisan bill was introduced by Congressman Nadler, Ranking Member of the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee, along with Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich).


Below is the full statement from Congressman Nadler regarding the USA FREEDOM Act:

“In 1761, a patriot named James Otis resigned as Advocate General in the vice admiralty court of colonial Massachusetts rather than defend the crown in a lawsuit challenging the legality of writs of assistance and general warrants.  

“These generalized search warrants were used by British soldiers to enter American homes and search American property at will.  At the time, the intrusion was justified by national security—the need to find smugglers and rebels.

“In a speech he gave that winter, Otis called this violation of privacy “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.”

“In the audience that day was a young man named John Adams.  He was deeply impressed by Otis’s argument, and would later recall the speech as “the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain.”  

“When the Founders drafted the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, this was the problem they were trying to solve. There were to be no general warrants or writs of assistance in the United States.

"The government may have good reasons to want to intrude on our privacy.  We rely on law enforcement and on the intelligence community to keep us safe from threats that pose a real and present danger to the United States.  

“But before the government may search our homes, seize our persons, or intercept our communications, it must first make a showing of individualized suspicion.  

“In most instances, it must make this showing to a court.  The intrusion it requests must be as targeted and as brief as circumstances allow.  The Fourth Amendment and liberty demands no less.

“The USA FREEDOM Act represents a return to these basic principles.

“Most importantly, the bill prohibits the intelligence community from engaging in bulk data collection within the United States.  This practice—the dragnet collection, without a warrant, of telephone records and internet metadata—is the contemporary equivalent of the writs of assistance that James Otis opposed, and that the Fourth Amendment was drafted to outlaw.

“These bulk data collections have never complied with the Constitution, and must be brought to an end without delay.

“The legal theories that justified these programs in the first place were developed and approved in secret—and that practice must also come to an end.  

“The government’s interpretation that the adjective “relevant” in Section 215 means “everything” is obviously wrong, could only have been advanced in secret, and cannot withstand the public scrutiny to which it is now subjected.

“This bill requires the government to promptly declassify and release each novel or significant opinion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. There must be no body of secret law in the United States. 

“In the future, if the government advances a similarly dubious legal claim there will be an advocate at the FISA court to oppose the claim, and if the FISA court nonetheless approves the claim, the public will know about it almost immediately—and the responsibility will lie with us to correct it just as quickly.

“This legislation also makes critical changes with respect to national security letter nondisclosure orders.  National security letters are almost always accompanied by a gag order, preventing the recipient from even mentioning the existence of the NSL.  

"Since 2008, when the Second Circuit found this practice to be unconstitutional, the government has taken incremental steps to address the problem.  The USA FREEDOM Act finishes that job.  

“The Act limits the circumstances in which gag orders are appropriate in the first place.  It gives NSL recipients an immediate opportunity to challenge these orders in court, and requires the government to give notice that this judicial redress is available.

“Before I close, I want to be clear: not every reform I would have hoped to enact is included in this bill.  

“We must do more to protect U.S. person information collected under Section 702 of FISA.  We must act to reform other authorities—many of them law enforcement, rather than intelligence community authorities—to prevent indiscriminate searches in other circumstances. I will continue to fight for these reforms, among others, and I know that I will not be alone on this Committee in taking up that challenge in the days to come.

“But I am grateful for the opportunity to take this first large step to restore the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.

“I thank Chairman Goodlatte, Chairman Sensenbrenner, and Ranking Member Conyers for their continued leadership on this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

“I yield back.”