(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) made the following remarks on the House floor in support of H.R. 5349, a bill to extend the Protect America Act for an additional 21 days:
The temporary FISA law we enacted in haste as a stop-gap last August expires Saturday. We want to replace that law with a well-considered one, which appropriately addresses both our security needs and our constitutional values.
The House passed a version of that well-considered law in November – the RESTORE Act. We have been waiting for the Senate to pass its version, so that we could compare it with our version and decide together on the best course of action.
We have also been waiting on access to classified documents regarding what telecom companies may have done in recent years to assist the government with surveillance on U.S. citizens outside the bounds of the law at the time.
The 15-day extension we passed two weeks ago was intended to give us time to consider the Senate bill, thought to be on the verge of passing, and to review the classified documents. Unfortunately, it has turned out not to be enough time.
Judiciary Committee members – only some, not all – just began getting effective access to the classified documents on January 29, after we had been asking for over one year. And the review process is unavoidably somewhat cumbersome and inefficient. Even today, as I stated in my letter to the White House, we still do not have access to numerous critical legal documents.
Moreover, the Senate has just passed its version of a long-term surveillance law. It differs from the House version, in ways that may have major ramifications for the freedoms we cherish.
So we need a bit more time. This bill will give us three weeks – not much time, in the view of some. But enough, I hope, to permit us to reach an appropriate resolution on this matter of utmost importance.
