Davis Statement on USA FREEDOM Act Vote

Mark this on your calendars. For one bright shining moment on March 11, 2020 the United States House of Representatives had a unique opportunity to repair a gaping hole in our democracy and restore some of our critical civil liberties. We came so close: progressive Democrats and libertarian Republicans joined together demanding an end to some of the most egregious violations of government intrusion into our telephone records and emails and information including medical records, the books we buy or check out of the library and our tax returns.

Instead we passed a bill for “modest” reform instead of real reform. A critical fix left undone involves how, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the secretive FISA Court oversees the U.S. intelligence agencies surveillance of Americans.

The FISA Court has been appling weak legal standards allowing the bulk collections of American’s phone records from entire companies, organizations and IP addresses. The Court then allows the agencies to go back and collect the phone records of anyone who has ever been in contact with the first tranche of Americans. Two independent executive branch commissions found that the data collected by these intrusions had little or no counterterrorism value.

How big were these data collections? Well, we know that in 2018 there were 56 such FISA targets which ended up collecting information from 214,860 people. A previous Congressional “fix” to this program created an even greater disaster. Between 2015 and 2018 the National Security Agency (NSA) vacuumed up more than a billion, yes billion with a “b”, phone records. The program has little security value and cost $100 million.

So, if you examine the vote totals for HR 6172 – the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act you will see that 75 Democrats were joined by 60 Republicans and 1 independent in a valiant, extraordinary effort to block the watered down reform bill in favor real reform. So close, so honorable, at a time when Democrats and Republicans are not supposed to be able to work together. I, for one, am not giving up. We will have an opportunity to revisit this and our adhoc little coalition will continue to grow.