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Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, the law in place today, the law that we brought up to
today's technical standards in August, is essentially the law that the
Congress passed in 1978, a Congress that had a majority of Democrats in
it. Jimmy Carter, President Carter, signed that bill, and it has worked
for 30 years now. The way this bill is drafted, the administration
would be forced to seek warrants, as Mr. Smith just said, for
foreign targets in case they might call the United States. If Osama bin
Laden calls the United States, we should know it. If Osama bin Laden
calls and it turns out to be a call that didn't matter, there are ways
to minimize that. In all likelihood, if Osama bin Laden called, it
shouldn't be a matter that we shouldn't know about. If he calls to order
a pizza and says ``deliver the pizza to cave 56 in Bora Bora,'' that
is something we ought to know at that minute. We should not have to go to
court to monitor these calls, just in case they call somebody in
the United States. Granting what in essence is de facto fourth
amendment constitutional rights to noncitizens who are not in this
country makes no sense at all. It is not the right direction. We need
a permanent fix. This bill does not contain, as my good friend
Mr. Conyers said, retroactive liability. We need to have liability
for those companies that stepped up after 9/11 and immediately
helped the country begin to monitor the things we needed to monitor. We
still don't clarify in this bill what our intelligence agencies do.
This does not solve any problems. It creates problems. When you have
a system that has worked in one way, and effectively, for 30 years,
there is no reason to change that system. This bill makes needless,
dangerous changes. I hope we vote ``no'' on this bill today,
and get down, as we did in late July, to the reality of what we have
to do to defend the country.