AMASH AMENDMENT TO HR 2397 – Requiring a Warrant for NSA Seizure of Phone Records: YES.
This amendment ends NSA’s warrantless seizure of Americans’ phone
records. The Fourth Amendment requires that before the government may
seize a person’s private records, it must first show there is probable
cause to believe that person has committed a crime and specify what the
government is looking for. Yet this critical tenet of our Bill of Rights
has been pushed aside in the name of national security. Yes, it would
be easier to catch terrorists without the Fourth Amendment -- still
easier if we could station a soldier in every home without the Third
Amendment. But we draw some very clear Constitutional lines beyond
which the government is forbidden to tread, lest we start down a very
slippery slope – as Franklin warned, trading essential liberty for
temporary safety until we end up losing both and deserving neither. The
requirement of a search warrant BEFORE seizing a person’s records is
one of those lines. This amendment restores it.
** The amedment failed by a vote of 205 to 217
