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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: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 23 2014, @05:33PM
There's your problem right there. This vote is standard political theater, nothing more. They're not defunding the NSA. They're passing a couple sentences cutting off a portion of funding provisioned through a single bill, for a limited time, with enough loopholes to float a freakin' oil tanker though. And it's only the House -- gonna be even more watered-down IF it ever passes the Senate (as is standard practice.)
At most -- Congress is telling the NSA not to screw with Congress. That's all.
Even if this passes, the NSA can simply redirect other funding sources (this bill's money just pays for the electricity; that OTHER bill's money paid for the actual spying equipment!) or hire independent contractors (It wasn't government employees who did the spying; it was Microsoft! We just bought the data!)
Nothing to see here; just the usual games...