Senate Resolution No. 16

Introduced by Senator Lieu

August 12, 2013

Senate Resolution No. 16—Relative to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

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.