NSA critics hail votes to limit surveillance as game-changers
By Kate Tummarello – 06/22/14 03:00 PM EDT
Lawmakers and privacy advocates who are fighting to restrain the National Security Agency (NSA) say the tide is turning in their favor.
Votes in the House last week limiting government surveillance “will change the trajectory” of the debate as the Senate takes up surveillance reform legislation, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a vocal NSA critic.
On Thursday, the House passed two amendments to the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill that would keep the NSA from using its funding from Congress to spy.
The first amendment from Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Lofgren and Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) would require the NSA to obtain a warrant to search for information about people in the U.S. when searching collections of communications involving foreigners.
The provision would also keep the NSA from requiring tech companies to build “backdoor” security vulnerabilities into their products and services.
That amendment passed 293-123.
A second amendment, offered by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Calif.), would keep the NSA form working with the Commerce Department’s digital security agency to create faulty cryptography standards.
That amendment passed by voice vote.
Supporters of the NSA amendments say the are aimed at restoring some of the surveillance reforms that were stripped out of the USA Freedom Act, which passed the House last month.
The original bill — introduced by Sensenbrenner, original author of the Patriot Act, and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) — had multiple provisions aimed at reining in the NSA and ending sweeping “bulk” surveillance activities, such as the program that collected information about U.S. phone calls.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/technology/210138-nsa-critics-hail-votes-as-game-changer#ixzz35PV5Baud
