------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 10:01:03 -0500 From: Al Thompson <alt@iquest.net> To: Multiple recipients of list NEWS <NEWS@AEN.ORG> Subject: (Check out this excerpt from the recent committee report on S735. Here's the header info. -AT) [Congressional Record: April 17, 1996 (Senate)] [Page S3454-S3478]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT--CONFERENCE REPORT The Senate continued with the consideration of the conference report. (A bunch deleted. Here's one of the interesting parts -AT) Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, what I would like to speak to in an indirect way covers this. We have had several votes on wiretaps, and I know people are asking why am I introducing the other wiretap provision that was taken out of the Senate bill. The reason I am is I refuse to believe that, if you all hear this enough, you will not eventually decide to do the right thing on this. The provision that I have proposed is not original with me. It was in the Senate bill that we passed. The provision would add a number--the bill we have before us, the conference report--would add a number of terrorism-related offenses to the law. I will go into those in a minute. What I have sent to the desk, if adopted, would instruct the conferees to add the same number of offenses that we are adding to the bill, to the law, to those categories of things for which the Government, with probable cause, can get a wiretap. It was in the Senate bill as introduced by Senators Hatch and Dole. It was part of the terrorism bill reported out of Representative Hyde's Judiciary Committee. Unfortunately, by the time the bill had made it to the House, the provision was dropped. I think it is worth talking a moment about how a wiretap statute works, the one that is in place now in the law, for it seems there is a lot of misunderstanding about it these days. I am repeating myself again to eliminate the misunderstanding. As some people tell it, you would think the FBI and BATF and the local and State police are tapping our phones left and right, that they are riding down the streets in vans with electronic devices eavesdropping into our windows and houses--which they have the capacity to do, by the way.