Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (April 8, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered opening remarks at the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance hearing on government surveillance and the protection of Americans’ sensitive personal data.

Below are Ranking Member Raskin’s remarks at today’s hearing.

WATCH Ranking Member Raskin’s opening statement.

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin
Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance 
Hearing on “A Continued Pattern of Government Surveillance of U.S. Citizens”
April 8, 2025

Thank you very much, Chairman Biggs, and thanks to our distinguished witnesses for joining us here today. 

The Fourth Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. That right is the same today as it was when it was written centuries ago, but the facts on the ground have obviously changed. Members of Congress didn’t have cell phones in their pockets. We didn’t have Zoom. We didn’t have email. The times have changed, and while the constitutional right to privacy has not changed, new technologies make it a lot harder to rein in government intrusion in the lives of the people. 

Artificial intelligence turbocharges surveillance capabilities by sifting through mountains of personal data in seconds. Data brokers aggregate and re-identify so-called “deidentified data” bought from apps and then sold to others, including the government, allowing them real-time access to Americans’ location, purchasing habits, and healthcare needs. And cameras equipped with facial recognition technology can scan a crowd and instantaneously pick out specific people, whether law enforcement targets or undocumented immigrants, you name it, all without a warrant. 

In an 1829 speech at the Virginia Constitutional Convention, James Madison said to his colleagues, “The essence of government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” The U.S. government has broad surveillance authorities. When properly implemented, they keep us safe from terrorists and foreign adversaries and gangs. But such broad grants of power are also fertile ground for abuse.

I believe Congress has a duty to balance the government’s need for Americans’ private data with our rights. I have voted in favor of government surveillance authorities when they do not trespass on our constitutional rights, I voted against them when they do. We obviously need to keep ourselves safe, both from criminals and fraudsters who would do us harm as well as those in power who would violate our freedom.

When we last reauthorized Section 702 of FISA, which allows warrantless collection of the communications of non-U.S. persons located overseas, including when those people are interacting with Americans, our solution to that tension between privacy and security was to establish more checks on the government. Congress previously imposed rules dictating when the FBI can search for Americans’ identifying information in the 702 databases, but we know those rules had been honored only in the breach. Rather than review a sampling of those U.S. person searches, the FBI’s National Security Division now must audit every search for the communications of an American. 

These watchdogs within the FBI and in other government agencies are an essential line of defense against government overreach, but the problem today is that President Trump has fired all of those people.

A week after he was sworn in, President Trump fired every Democratic member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This is the board created by Congress in 2004 to make sure the government does not violate Americans’ civil liberties in the name of keeping us safe. The work of these Democratic members have been lauded even by Republican Members of our Committee who recognized and shared their commitment to protecting our rights against government overreach. 

Trump has left the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board with only one member, a single member who’s been stripped of all authority because the Board needs a quorum, which is three, to act. She cannot issue recommendations on Section 702 U.S. person searches. She cannot hold public meetings. Without the fired members, it’s as though the board simply doesn’t even exist, but the president did not stop there. Remember those monthly audits of every single U.S. person search of the 702 database? He removed the individual responsible for managing that and rescinded offers extended to those who had been recruited to help her. So, Congress cannot receive the audit reports required by law because there’s simply nobody left to audit these warrantless searches, much less provide the mandatory report to Congress, which is why I’m also concerned about all the other things that have been done to remove the safeguards around Americans’ right to privacy against government invasion. 

The President fired at least 17 Inspectors General, dismantled the Cyber Safety Review Board and removed the director of the NSA, the person in charge of collecting 702 data responsibly and within statutory limitations. Just last week, he fired the 4-star general in charge of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command with other high ranking security officials because according to reports, Laura Loomer told him to do that. 

In a system that works, surveillance and privacy are inextricably tied and made consistent. Those conducting surveillance understand the threat both to the country and the civil liberties and thus apply the rules in a precise and disciplined way. Ben Franklin famously said that “those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Well, Trump has defied even Ben Franklin because in 78 days, we have lost both, privacy and safety. We are less safe and we’re less free than we were on January 19, 2025. 

President Trump and those he’s placed in charge of the FBI like Kash Patel talked about using the power of government to visit retribution on anyone the president sees as an enemy. Over the last 78 days, we’ve watched the Administration attack journalists, the free press, colleges, peaceful protesters, members of Congress, lawyers and law firms, even federal judges because they have countered his assault on the rights and freedoms of the people. 

Never have I felt more concerned about the extremely broad, warrantless surveillance powers that have been entrusted to the executive branch. 

Chairman Jordan and I have disagreed about various things in the past, but I must say he has shown commendable and strong leadership and worked across the aisle to ensure that Republicans and Democrats alike understand the dangers of unchecked government surveillance, and the times bear him out. I’m looking forward to working with him closely on a bipartisan basis in this set of hearings in the lead up to the expiration of FISA Section 702 next year, to stand up for all Americans’ civil liberties. 

I thank him for his leadership, I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.