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US House of Representatives Votes To Cut Funding To NSA
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. House of Representatives voted late Thursday night, 293 to 123, to approve an amendment to the NSA's appropriations bill that cuts all funding for warrantless surveillance and for programs that force companies to create backdoors in their products. The success of this vote in the House is attributed to the fact that the amendment did not have to go through the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and also to the increasingly apparent unpopularity of NSA activities among voters. Although privacy advocates laud the vote, there are those who note that the amendment specifically applies to the NSA and CIA while remaining silent on other agencies such as the FBI. The appropriations bill in its entirety will now proceed to the Senate for approval."
Well, NSA's bust! Let's failover to NSB (N.S.Bureau) and continue without any problems. But - hey, sssh - noone needs to know, right?!
From the news:
"he amendment would block the NSA from using any of its funding from this Defense Appropriations Bill to conduct such warrantless searches."
It only covers THIS appropriations bill. They'll just sneak funding into another one to make it up.
You have to pay careful attention to the language these people use.
" In addition, the amendment would prohibit the NSA from using its budget to mandate or request that private companies and organizations add backdoors to the encryption standards that are meant to keep you safe on the web."
So, money that is NOT budgeted, as in part of planned spending, as in slush fund money, is fair game.
Any time an amendment talks about what they cannot use particular money for, as opposed to simply prohibiting the action, it will be full of loopholes.
When there is an amendment that prohibits the ACTION, then we'll have something to be happy about. Nothing in this amendment prohibits the spying.
It has been known for decades that the CIA has developed sources of income that are automated and unstoppable. Various agents were charged with setting up businesses that paid into the CIA on a regular basis and it was so covert that if the agent and his superior both dropped dead the income continues. For example a car dealership may pay a "supposed loan" back to a bank once a month for 30 years. Even if the business is sold the payments will continue. The agent that set it up need no longer be involved. By repeating this process with investments and covert accounts the budget of the CIA could never be revealed with only the tax dollars known as income. One would imagine the NSA has done something similar. Such projects help to shield new weapons development as the public expenses do not report the excess income and weapons development can continue without foreign scrutiny.
At the very least the representatives still have to pay me some lip service. Hell, some of them may have retained the ability to care.
Either way, it's a small victory for the Republic.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I wholeheartedly support this initiative of shifting money from a known three letter entity to a different unknown three letter entity that will now conduct our surveillance state in complete secret.
The NSA would need a logo and branding for such a large advertising and PR campaign as you suggest.
I know! How about Big Brother is Watching You! And the face should, of course, have a smile and a pleasant, re-assuring image.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Taking a break from repealing obamacare and re-affirming "in god we trust" on the currency, Its hard to imagine Republicans are doing anything in the interest of their constituents. Republicans under bush authorized and evangelized this warrantless wiretapping. shit, they even passed retroactive immunity for telecom companies forced to do it. And now after 2 terms of sitting on their obstructionist do-nothing arses they've suddenly gotten around to saving america from their monster? Give me a break.
We have to have some form of populist legislation, anything really. We cant have gay marriage, immigration reform, tax reform, campaign finance reform, gun crontrol, climate change policy, or minimum wage because we as the republican party are strapped inexorably to a vocal minority of elderly bible thumpers ginned up on glen beck and sean hannity who have loudly stated, "Moderates arent allowed or we will end you politically." Every issue facing americans is toxic to us so the best we can do is dial down the crazy on a policy we voted for and approved and hope its enough to get us into the whitehouse in 2016. And the sad fact is, no amount of wayback machine legislation is going to help. Once the republican party quietly dropped immigration reform they basically conceded to drop any chance at the presidency.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They should made it illegal for companies to be gagged from making public comment when served with such warrants. They're a violation of the first amendment at the very least.
Freedom of speech. You silence me and make it illegal to even say I was silenced... how is that not a violation?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
When the law said they couldn't do it in the first place and they did it, what makes you think asking them not to spend money on it would stop them ;)
Since when did the Law matter to this Administration?
There WILL be another 9/11. This stuff happens, and it CAN NOT be 100% avoided.
You can do some things that could help (hint: the issue with 9/11 wasn't a lack of info, but a lack of communication. We still have this problem regardless what the NSA does), but you can't stop it from ever happening.
So, no matter what things you do to prevent 9/11, something like it will happen again. The Boston Marathon bombings, while much less severe, show that even with the super surveillance, people dedicated to cause death can do it, and always will be able to.
What makes for more interesting discussion is if there are ways of preventing the root causes for wanting to cause death. Perhaps that can be more effective than ignoring what the cause is & trying to stop the effect?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I *want* the authorities, with proper warrant, to be able to access any digital/analog communication
if you were the victim you'd expect it
Emphasis mine. That's really the key, isn't it...proper warrant? Having a proper warrant also means they have to show probable cause. This law is about defunding warrantless wiretapping. But, like was pointed out, it doesn't name the FBI. Did you know that the FBI is officially no longer a law enforcement agency, but is instead now an anti-terror agency? This pretty much means that the FBI can use it as an excuse to be the ones doing domestic warrantless wiretapping. However, even though this law may just shuffle things around (even if it miraculously passes the senate), I see it as a Very Good Thing because it's a step in the right direction: Pushing back against blatant constitutional violations.
Actually, the amendment doesn't defund warrantless wiretapping directly, at least as I read it. What it specifically states is "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 identifier."
My interpretation of that amendment is that nothing prohibits the NSA or the CIA from collecting that data, but it disallows them from directly requesting any information from that data tied directly to a US citizen. More specifically, it says that no one funded by that appropriations bill can do that. Since the data is collected by the NSA and its funding comes from that bill, it legally bars them from performing any similar query for any other agency as well.
There are still a lot of loopholes that could be used to try to evade this amendment, assuming it passes, but it does seem to indicate that outside of the House committees that are directly involved with intelligence oversight, there is strong political will in both Democratic and Republican circles to curtail this type of activity. That's a necessary first step to making any long term changes. But it is only a first step.