Obama Needs to Act Decisively to Stop Domestic Spying

Press Release

Today Rep. Todd Rokita released the following statement in response to recent remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry pledging review and reform of the National Security Agency's intelligence gathering related to foreign officials and citizens.

"With revelation after revelation emerging about the NSA spying on Americans' phone calls and electronic communications, it is far past time the Administration take responsibility for abuses and invasions of Americans' privacy. The Administration needs to affirm to the American people that it will act swiftly to end invasions of our privacy like Secretary Kerry did last week in regard to the NSA's surveillance activities abroad," Rokita said. "Meanwhile, I will continue my work on a bipartisan basis to rein in the NSA's domestic surveillance operations and protect Americans' privacy.

Rep. Rokita has been leading on addressing NSA abuses of Americans' Fourth Amendment protections. Most recently he co-authored bipartisan legislation called the USA Freedom Act to address NSA abuses. The USA Freedom Act makes reforms to end the dragnet collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and ensure that other authorities cannot be used to justify similar dragnet collection. The bill also provides more safeguards for warrantless surveillance.

In September, Rep. Rokita introduced legislation to establish a Select Committee to investigate and report on the surveillance operations of the National Security Administration.

Earlier this year Rep. Rokita, along with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), introduced the Ending Secret Law Act, to require declassification of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) decisions.

Source