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Whats happening? Why the sudden rush of common sense? Sincerely hope that good sense prevails and continues to move forward.
In a surprising vote late Thursday night, a strong majority of the House of Representatives voted to cut funding to NSA operations that involve warrantless spying on Americans, or involve putting hardware or software "backdoors" into various products. The amendment to a defense appropriations bill was offered by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY), passed 293-123.
The amendment ( http://repcloakroom.house.gov/uploadedfiles/massie.pdf ) [PDF] specifies that, with a few exceptions, "none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1881a) using a United States person as an identifier."
In addition, "none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency to mandate or request that a person...alter its product or service to permit the electronic surveillance...of any user of said product or service for said agencies." Since Edward Snowden began leaking documents about the NSA's tactics in June of last year, security experts have worried about reports of intentional weaknesses left in widely-used cryptography specifications.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 20 2014, @03:53PM
The only funding this prohibits is searching the database for names of US residents. Just how much do you think it costs to search the database? There's still plenty of funding to collect, maintain, and enlarge the data store, NSA just won't be able to use federal funds to pay for specific queries. I have little doubt they will easily find alternate funding sources.
Hell, agents might even be willing to pay the penny out of their own pocket. I can see it now: every computer will have a Search Jar next to it, like the jar where you're supposed to put a quarter when you take a cup of coffee from the break room.