From FourthAmendment.com:
From the Rand Paul website, him speaking on the PATRIOT Act extension in the Senate, which has video and a transcript, even invoking James Otis who warned and vigorously litigated against the Writs of Assistance a quarter of millennium ago.
Here’s part of the transcript of his statement yesterday, when he rose to vote against cloture on the renewal of PATRIOT Act provisions. That the Senate has needlessly, shamelessly, and foolishly cut a deal to extend the provisions for four more years defies the political rhetoric of liberals, Democrats, Conservatives and Tea Party members who believe that the government has over-reached. When a junior Senator has to be the one to remind elder statesmen in the Senate that they’re doing it wrong, it speaks volumes about how far Congress has sunk in terms of protecting our constitutional rights.
Those who argue you have to have the PATRIOT Act, to do this or we will not be able to stop terrorism, they need to explain why the FISA court did tens of thousands of search warrants and never turned any down.
In fact, the history before the PATRIOT Act was no search warrant had ever been turned down.
Do we really want to give up our liberties in exchange for more security?
Franklin said those who give up liberty in exchange for security may end up with neither.
Right now if you have a Visa bill that’s over $5,000 and you choose to pay for it over the phone which is a wire transfer, the government is probably looking at your Visa bill.
They don’t have to show probable cause and they don’t have to have a judge’s warrant. And this does apply to U.S. citizens. Often they’ll tell you it’s only foreign terrorists we’re looking at.
They want you to feel good about allowing the spying, but this spying is going on by the tens of thousands and even by the millions.
With regard to these suspicious activity reports, we’ve done over 4 million of them in the last 10 years.
We’re now doing over a million a year.
These suspicious activity reports, all the trigger is you don’t have to have anything to do with terrorism.
The trigger is you have over $5,000 that you transfer by bank account.
You say, well, the courts have decided that your bank records aren’t private.
Well, the hell they aren’t. They should be private.
Watch his whole speech here:
The Senator subsequently introduced 8 proposed amendments.