Live coverage and debate here on cspan2. A senator mr. Chairman . The presiding officer the senator from california. A senator i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. The presiding officer the senate is not in a quorum call. Mrs. Feinstein thank you, mr. President. Mr. President , you and i have been on the Intelligence Committee for a considerable period of time. I much longer than you. However, i think were both well experienced with the subject. I would like to make a few comments on section 702. For six years i was chairman of the committee, ranking for two. And what i came to see is that in my view there was no more significant content Collection Program than section 702. And i want to give a couple of examples and why i think its so important that 702 be reauthorized. A little more than a year ago on december 31 of last year, approximately 500 people gathered at a popular turkish nightclub on the banks to celebrate new years eve. Tragically, shortly after midnight, a gunman entered that club and opened fire killing 39 innocent civilians and wounding 69 others. At least 16 of those killed were foreign nationals, including an american who was shot in the hip. Many people inside reportedly jumped into the water in an attempt to protect themselves from the gunfire. After committing this act, the gunman changed clothes and fled the scene. Almost immediately, turkish Law Enforcement and american intelligence officials began cooperation to identify and locate the shooter. Part of that effort included intelligence collection under section 702 of the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. Information derived from 702 selection ultimately led police to an apartment in the district neighborhood of istanbul. There Law Enforcement arrested a national at a friends apartment along with firearms, ammunition, drones, and over 200,000 in cash. Thanks to the work of turkish and american Law Enforcement and intelligence agencies, just 16 days after the horrific attack, police had the prime suspect in custody. Mr. Musharraf is currently awaiting trial in turkey. Section 702 of fisa is the most important foreign content Collection Program that we have. It allows the government to quickly and efficiently collect phone call and mail content from nonu. S. Persons located outside of the United States. Information collected under section 702 informs every component of our Nations National security and foreign policy. Section 702 was used by the c. I. A. To alert a partner nation to the presence of an al qaeda operative who was turning into a cooperating source. Section 702 was used to intercept al qaeda communications about a United States person seeking instructions on how to make explosives in the United States. And it was used to understand Proliferation Networks used by adversary nations to evade sanctions, including military communications equipment. In 2014, the privacy and Civil LibertiesOversight Board, what we call pclob, reported and i quote, over a quarter of n. S. A. Reports concerning International Terrorism include information based in whole or in part on section 702 collection. And this percentage has increased every year since the statute was enacted. The law expressly prohibits the target of u. S. Persons or the targeting of persons located in the United States. 702 is a foreign content Collection Program. I also believe its equally important that reauthorization include reforms to ensure the Program Continues to operate consistently with the statutes original intent and our constitution. Perhaps the most important among these reforms is the issue of u. S. Person queries. U. S. Person queries refer to the process by which the government searches the 702 databases for the content of u. S. Persons communications. U. S. Persons cannot be targeted understand 702 under 702 but they can be collected incidentally if the individual is communicating with a nonu. S. Person located overseas that is targeted under section 702. If an Americans Communications are collected incidentally, they are added to the 702 database. The government can later search or query that database for any american and gain access to the contents of any phone calls or emails that may have been swept up in the section 702 collection. Each of these queries results in the government accessing the contents of a u. S. Persons communications without ever going before a judge or securing a warrant. The Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before accessing those communications. And the Supreme Court has been clear. Americans have a right to privacy in the content of their phone calls and emails. The same standard should apply to communications incidentally collected under section 702. During the senate Intelligence Committees markup of section 702, i offered an amendment with my colleague from california, senator harris, that would require the government to obtain a warrant from the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court prior to accessing the content of any u. S. Persons communications collected under section 702. Unfortunately, our amendment did not succeed in the committee. I have also filed our warrant requirement as a floor amendment to the bill currently under consideration. This amendment has been cosponsored again by senator harris as well as senators leahy and lee. And i really do believe that a warrant requirement is eventually important as people become more concerned with the need to reform some of these longstanding provisions. The housepassed bill currently before us has a number of positive reforms. First, it does have limited warrant authority that would require the f. B. I. To obtain a warrant from the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court prior to accessing the contents of the United States persons communications associated with a query that was not related to important intelligence or National Security. The warrant provision in this bill is not as strong as the one i offered in committee, but it was the result of bipartisan compromise in the house. And i do believe it is a step in the right direction. The house bill also includes other important reforms. It establishes a required congressional review process before the government is permitted to restart a collection. It requires the d. N. I. To declassify minimization procedures. It provides greater flexibility to the privacy and Civil LibertiesOversight Board to meet and hire staff. And it directs the Inspector General to assess the f. B. I. s section 702 practices so that we can continue, mr. President , to provide oversight of that program. In conclusion, mr. President , section 702 by its numbers and by its cover is our nations most important foreign content collection authority. I would like to see more reforms to this program and perhaps something thats something that those of us in the Intelligence Committee can strive for, but i believe this is the best that were going to do at this time. And i look forward to supporting its passage. I thank the chair. I yield the floor. And i note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call a senator mr. President . The presiding officer majority whip. Mr. Cornyn mr. President , is the senate in a quorum call . The presiding officer the senate is indeed in a quorum call. Mr. Cornyn id ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Cornyn mr. President , last week the house voted to reauthorize for a period of six years section 702 of the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act, a vital tool in tracking Foreign Terrorists abroad. And yesterday we had a very important vote, last night actually, a cloture vote in this chamber which allowed us to proceed to a final vote on this legislation perhaps as early as tomorrow morning. Congress enacted section 702 in 2008 in direct response to the enduring threats that our country posed threats to the country posed by radical islamic extremism and the ever expanding use of the internet and social media by terrorists and foreign operatives. The law authorizes the attorney general of the United States and the director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance on foreigners who are outside of the United States so that the u. S. Government can effectively acquire that intelligence information. As the director of National Intelligence and many others have stated, former f. B. I. Director james comey is another one, section 702 is the crown jewels of our foreign intelligence collection and a critical weapon in the defense of our nation. The law expires this friday. Thats right, just two days from now. So the clock is ticking. Thats why im glad the senate took the first step in the right direction last evening and i trust my colleagues will soon make sure that the law is reauthorized so that the u. S. Government can continue to collect information thats vital to the protection of the nation. Because the law requires targets of section 702 to be foreign citizens to the outside the United States, those targets are not covered by the Fourth Amendment of the United States constitution. Clearly, people who are inside the country, american citizens, are all protected by the Fourth Amendment but not foreigners under Supreme Court precedence. And because of that, the government isnt required to obtain a warrant before initiating surveillance. But thats where the misconceptions and confusions start to rise and i want to talk a little bit more about that. Despite the strong bipartisan vote in the house of representatives last week and the strong bipartisan support for the provision here in the senate, some critics want to delay reauthorization and engage in a never ending lamentation about the demise of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, of course, is the guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. Again, that applies to american citizens, not to foreigners abroad. But these critics have mischaracterred the aim mischaracterized the aim of the many democratic and republican proponents of this law and frankly their concerns are misplaced. They ignore the enduring value and core protections in section 702 and the merits of various proprivacy reforms in the house bill. And as i said, it is truly a bipartisan bill. Critics have expressed three concerns, and i want to address each in turn. The first is that under 702, that millions of bits of information are collected on americans. Not just foreigners. And we dont know the exact amount. Thats more or less a quote from one of those critics. What theyre referring to of course is what the Intelligence Community calls incidental collection. When intelligence officials monitor the communication of Foreign Terrorists and the information of any american whos in communication with those terrorists sometimes gets included in the mix. But of course if even an american is talking to a foreign terrorist, certainly the Intelligence Community would want to know that. But there are additional protections for u. S. Persons who are incidentally collected based on a target of a foreign national. All this would be a legitimate worry were it not for the fact that there are safeguards built into the statute that ensure that no more American Communications are collected than is necessarily to safely monitor foreigners with suspected terrorist ties. For example, section 702 already explicitly prohibits the u. S. Government from intentionally targeting a foreign person if the real purpose is to target a particular known person in the United States. Thats illegal. There are also socalled minimization procedures that limit the dissemination and use of the information required, and scrupulous practices at our intelligence agencies the n. S. A. , the c. I. A. , and the f. B. I. On how that information is dealt with in order to protect u. S. Persons. Under the bill, several additional features should be acknowledged. Of course the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court must review the f. B. I. s so call querying procedures and certify that they are consistent with the Fourth Amendment. I know of no Government Program that has as much oversight and protection for the privacy rights of american citizens as the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. Its actually supervised by all three branches of government. By the executive branch internally, by the Judicial Branch through the foreign Intelligence Surveillance court and other courts who decided that there is no constitutional violation in any of the procedures laid down in the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. And of course the oversight that we conduct here in the senate and in the house on the senate and the house Intelligence Committees. But to protect, to make sure that all of this is scrupulously adhered to, a record must be kept of each u. S. Person query term used and far from ignoring americans privacy concerns related to incidental collection, the bill requires that the Intelligence Community hire and employ Civil Liberties officers, people whose explicit job is to look out for our privacy rights. In sum, those who would misleadingly paint the Intelligence Community as renegade as deliberately surveilling millions of americans with no checks in place is simply wrong about the facts of this bill and the protections, the layered protections that have been put in place. Let me reiterate, the Intelligence Community is expressly prevented from targeting americans under section 702. Directly or incidentally. In fact, the only americans who might be worried about their communications being swept up under section 702 are those who are deliberately communicationing with Foreign Terrorists. But all americans will benefit from a host of additional protections under the law. The critics second and related concern is that incidental collection could be used in domestic criminal prosecutions. In other words, their concern is that the u. S. Government could collect information without ever having to obtain a warrant and then use it to investigate and punish americans for crimes. Again, this fear is misplaced under this bill. Its mitigated by analysis done by the privacy and Civil LibertiesOversight Board in 2014 who after a comprehensive review found no evidence of intentional abuse. Concerns of the critics are also mitigated by the f. B. I. Which under this bill has to obtain a court order before it can access the contents of 702 communications in support of a purely criminal investigation as opposed to an intelligence gathering visitor. And its mitigated by the fact that section 702 intelligence could be used as evidence against americans only in instances of the most serious crimes. Apart from obtaining a court order it can only be used if the attorney general determines that the criminal proceeding involves National Security or other heinous crimes like murder, kidnapping, or crimes against children. The critics preferred approach, and they introduced bills to this effect last year, would prohibit the government from using any 702 collection to investigate these dangerous violent crimes. And, therefore, it would potentially protect dangerous criminals engaged in some of the most egregious behavior imaginable, something that i would think we would not want to do. That brings us to the skeptics third problem which deals with oversight. They fear that the reauthorization of this legislation could spell the end of congressional monitoring of the program that chastise this possibility as one that is in callous disregard for our cherished bill of rights. Well, theyre entirely correct to insist, in light of recent events, that congress should continue to engage in rigorous oversight of the Intelligence Community and make sure that our surveillance tools arent used for political ends. But we already have oversight in spades, and under this bill we have even more. First of all, the house bill authorizes a program for only six years, not indefinitely. So at