Philadelphia, Pa. – Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick (IL-16), Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Intelligence Enterprise, led the latest installment of the House Intelligence Committee’s “Beyond the SCIF” series with his panel on reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in conjunction with Holy Family University, with campus locations in Philadelphia and Newtown, Pennsylvania.
What Was Discussed
· The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the reforms needed to responsibly reauthorize Section 702
· The House Intelligence Committee’s report titled “FISA Reauthorization: How America’s Most Critical National Security Tool Must Be Reformed to Continue to Save American Lives and Liberty”
Notable Quotes
“Thank you for joining us today to discuss this critical topic. I thank Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick for inviting us to host this panel discussion and for bringing this conversation to the forefront…The security of our region, and in particular, cybersecurity, which the Congressman and I have been talking about for a few years now, is a top priority at Holy Family. Since launching our undergraduate program in cybersecurity last year, we already have 32 students majoring in that particular program…We will continue to play an important role in this conversation and advancing our region to secure ourselves.”
– Anne M. Prisco, Ph.D., Sixth President of Holy Family University
“Section 702 was one of the many recommendations that flowed from the 9/11 Commission…Section 702 is a very limited program that applies only in two cases – you have to be a foreign national and outside of the United States…America has a huge advantage in the national security realm, essentially a home field advantage, with all the servers that are being used...There is nothing more important in Congress; nothing that I’ve voted on that’s going to be more important than this.”
– Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick
“As we are thinking about connecting the dots that may have been the gap for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, we are really focusing on building those partnerships and collaborations between the Intelligence Community and the law enforcement community.”
– Dr. Patricia Griffin
“Not only does roughly sixty percent of the President’s Daily Brief come from 702, but I would go so far as to say that if 702 had been in place on September 10, 2001, the attacks on 9/11 might not have occurred…One of the things that 702 allows us to do is to jump forward to a point where we can highlight national security threats – in particular, overseas national security threats – in a way that we couldn’t prior to 702.”
– Dr. Claire Finkelstein
“The U.S. is the telecommunications hub of the world. As Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick eluded, it is what makes 702 singularly advantageous to the United States…A substantial part of worldwide communications either transit the United States or reside, as Congressman Fitzpatrick said, on U.S. servers.”
– Dr. George W. Croner
“To abolish this program removes a very important tool that is protecting U.S. citizens every day – protecting the United States. When these leads are developed, if a criminal case is going to proceed, then it is handled according to the law and according to the protections that we’re all afforded. So, criminal information is never obtained without a warrant in these instances…We certainly don't want to go back to pre-9/11 posture on our ability to collect and use the intelligence that we are collecting.”
– Dr. James J. Klaver
Panel Speakers:
· Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, Chairman, National Intelligence Enterprise Subcommittee, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
· Dr. Patricia Griffin, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, Holy Family University
· Dr. Claire Finkelstein, Algernon Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy; Founder and Faculty Director, Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL)
· Dr. George W. Croner, Senior Fellow in the National Security Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
