Rep. Hillary Scholten voted for bill that will allow the US Government to spy on US residents

Last Friday, the US House of Representatives voted on H.R. 7888, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. This bill was passed in the US House by a margin of 273 – 147, with 11 members of Congress opting to not vote.

The vote was evenly split between both parties and 3rd Congressional District Representative Hillary Scholten voted for the bill. Scholten did not post anything about her decision to support US Government spying on US residents, both on social media or her Congressional page. 

One response from a progressive organization stated: 

“The first amendment would put in place the largest expansion of domestic surveillance since the Patriot Act… and I don’t say that lightly,” Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote on social media late Thursday. “It would hugely inflate the universe of companies required to assist the government in conducting surveillance.”

The ACLU also released a statement highly critical of the vote, which read in part:

When the government wants to obtain Americans’ private information, the Fourth Amendment requires it to go to court and obtain a warrant. The government has claimed that the purpose of Section 702 is to allow the government to warrantlessly surveil non-U.S. citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes, even as Americans’ communications are routinely swept up. In recent years, the law has morphed into a domestic surveillance tool, with FBI agents using Section 702 databases to conduct millions of invasive searches for Americans’ communications — including those of protesters, racial justice activists, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, journalists, and even members of Congress — without a warrant.

The ACLU statement also made the following point: 

In the last year alone, the FBI conducted over 200,000 warrantless “backdoor” searches of Americans’ communications. The standard for conducting these backdoor searches is so low that, without any clear connection to national security or foreign intelligence, an FBI agent can type in an American’s name, email address, or phone number, and pull up whatever communications the FBI’s Section 702 surveillance has collected over the past five years.

How can any politician, especially those who claim to protest the rights of US residents, vote in favor of legislation that will promote US Government surveillance and spying? Shame on you Rep. Scholten.