Washington, D.C. — Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-09), issued the following statement after voting against H.R. 7888, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, legislation to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, for two years.

“Congress purportedly wrote Section 702 of FISA to protect our national security by allowing the intelligence community, including the FBI, to spy on non-American threats without a court order.  However, FISA was never intended to spy on U.S. citizens.

Unfortunately, since its inception, the FBI and the federal intelligence community have abused FISA by collecting the communications of American citizens without a warrant, raising serious concerns about the indiscriminate and broad nature of the surveillance program and further infringing on the rights of Americans.

For example, the FBI has abused Section 702 to conduct warrantless searches against American citizens more than 278,000 times.

Several good amendments were offered to improve and reform FISA, including a commonsense amendment offered by my friend, Representative Biggs, that would have prevented warrantless searches of Americans.  Sadly, 86 Republicans and 126 Democrats inexcusably voted to allow the deep state to continue spying on Americans without a warrant by voting down this amendment.

As a result, I could not support the warrantless surveillance of Americans allowed under section 702 of FISA and voted against its reauthorization. It is a clear overreach of authority and is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

While everything must be done to prevent future terrorist activities, it should not come at the cost of the privacy and civil rights abuses of innocent American citizens,” concluded Congressman Gosar.