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Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) walks through a basement tunnel to the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, for the vote on his amendment to a Pentagon spending bill that would cut funding to the National Security Agency’s massive phone surveillance program. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The House today narrowly defeated an amendment to a defense spending package that would have repealed authorization for the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of phone-call metadata in the United States.
The amendment to the roughly $600 billion Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2014 would have ended authority for the once-secret spy program the White House insists is necessary to protect national security.
The amendment (.pdf), one of dozens considered, was proposed by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan). “The government collects the phone records without suspicion of every single American of the United States,” he said during heated debate on the measure.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), in urging a no vote, said “Passing this amendment takes us back to September 10.”
The vote was 205-217. Here is the vote count.
The Obama administration lobbied hard to stop the amendment’s passage.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said ahead of the vote: “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.”
Carney did not mention that the massive surveillance program was itself not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process, but rather the product of secret court rulings and classified government memos, which came to light only through leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander and James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, also lobbied lawmakers, urging them to vote no.
The amendment was in response to a disclosure last month by the Guardian. The newspaper posted a leaked copy of a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion requiring Verizon Business to provide the National Security Agency the phone numbers of both parties involved in all calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls.
The government confirmed the authenticity of the leak and last week suggested many more, or “certain telecommunication service providers” are required to fork over the same type of metadata. The government says it needs all the data to sift out needles in a haystack.
“This takes a leaf blower and blows away the entire haystack,” said Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) in urging against the vote.
The law that has been authorizing the surveillance is the Patriot Act — adopted six weeks after the 2001 terror attacks.
The amendment substantially alters one of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act — Section 215 — that allows the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize broad warrants for most any type of “tangible” records, including those held by banks, doctors and phone companies.
Lawmakers have repeatedly voted to prevent the act from expiring or against altering its language.
Under the Patriot Act, the government only needs to show that the information is “relevant” to an authorized investigation. No connection to a terrorist or spy is required. The amendment would effectively gut the dragnet phone-metadata program that commenced following the 2001 terror attacks by only authorizing the metadata snooping against specified targets that are “the subject of an investigation.”
The vote came days after Obama administration told a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit about the program that the wholesale vacuuming up of all phone-call metadata in the United States is in the “public interest,” does not breach the constitutional rights of Americans, and cannot be challenged in a court of law because no individual Americans have legal standing to sue.
