BILL NUMBER: SR 16INTRODUCED BILL TEXT INTRODUCED BY Senator Lieu AUGUST 12, 2013 Relative to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST HOUSE OR SENATE RESOLUTIONS DO NOT CONTAIN A DIGEST WHEREAS, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act (50 U.S.C. Sec. 1861) authorizes the government to collect "tangible things" that are "relevant" to an authorized national security investigation; and WHEREAS, The National Security Agency (NSA) has reportedly used Section 215 to collect metadata on every telephone call made or received by every American over the last seven years; and WHEREAS, This metadata collected by the NSA was not limited to dialed numbers, but also included the telephone numbers of incoming calls, the times of calls, and call routing information; and WHEREAS, Many legislators who voted for the USA PATRIOT Act, including the past chairman of the authorizing committee of that law, have stated that the NSA's blanket surveillance program goes far beyond what the USA PATRIOT Act was intended to do; and WHEREAS, The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, Jr., has admitted to misleading Congress about the actual scope of the call record surveillance program; and WHEREAS, Section 215 is silent as to how the government may use these records once it has obtained them; and WHEREAS, The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"; and WHEREAS, The United States Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, applies at all times to all government agencies and all government employees; and WHEREAS, All Americans cannot reasonably be considered to be suspicious simply for making or receiving telephone calls; and WHEREAS, The NSA's seizure of the telephone records of all Americans is therefore an "unreasonable seizure" by any definition of the term; and WHEREAS, The bipartisan Amash-Conyers amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 2397) would have ended the NSA's blanket seizure of the telephone records of Americans, but was narrowly defeated on July 24, 2013; and WHEREAS, On August 1, 2013, United States Senator Al Franken introduced legislation, the Surveillance Transparency Act of 2013 (S. 1452), that would expand and improve ongoing government reporting about programs under the USA PATRIOT Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and make it easier for companies to voluntarily disclose information about the data the government requires them to collect; now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate of the State of California,That the Senate urges the President and the Congress of the United States to pass legislation to end the NSA's blanket, unreasonable, and unconstitutional collection of Americans' telephone records and specifically to bar the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to collect records, including telephone records, pertaining to persons not subject to an investigation under the USA PATRIOT Act; and be it further Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States, and to the author for appropriate distribution.