Blumenthal Welcomes Senate Passage of Amendment to Reform FISA Court Process

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, welcomed Senate passage of an amendment he co-sponsored to help reform the FISA Court process:

“This amendment significantly strengthens the advocates who argue on behalf of privacy and civil liberties before the FISA Court. Americans deserve to know that when their privacy is at stake they will have a strong, effective advocate working to protect their rights. As a former U.S. Attorney and Connecticut Attorney General, I am quite familiar with how law enforcement needs and seeks warrants for surveillance that can be challenged for their inadequate justification on facts and law. This amendment implements similar adversarial scrutiny and transparency in the FISA Courts.”

Blumenthal first introduced legislation to reform the FISA Courts in 2013, seeking to properly balance the need to protect national security with constitutional and statutory requirements to safeguard individual rights to privacy and liberty.

Blumenthal’s FISA Court Reform Act was the basis for a provision in the USA FREEDOM Act creating the FISA Court amicus process and installing an amicus with the power to argue in the FISA Courts on behalf of the right to privacy and other individual rights of the American people. The amendment approved by the Senate today builds on this effort by expanding the powers of the amicus created by the Blumenthal-authored provision.

-30-