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US House of Representatives Votes To Cut Funding To NSA

Posted by Soulskill on from the congress-threatening-to-actually-do-something dept.

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."

4 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Next! by M3.14 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?!

  2. Calm down - it's not a real prohibition by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Calm down - it's not a real prohibition by ZenMonk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bah. Congress can prohibit ACTIONS until they're blue in the face, but those prohibitions rely on an executive branch that is willing to enforce them. This executive in particular has a history of declining to enforce laws that it doesn't like. (Yes, Bush did it too with his "signing statements". Two wrongs don't make a right.)

      The true power of Congress is the power of the purse. If they don't want the executive doing something, the surest way to prevent it is to deny them the money to do it. This amendment is about the strongest form of prohibition they can make, short of cutting funding for NSA entirely (which would be pretty stupid).

      Agreed it doesn't prevent them from doing it anyway with money from other sources, but then that money can't be used for whatever they were planning to do with it before. At least Congress is trying to do something about it.

    2. Re:Calm down - it's not a real prohibition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Technically, the Vietnam War didn't START.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States

      The table below lists the five wars in which the United States has formally declared war against eleven foreign nations.
      War of 1812
      Mexican-American War
      Spanish-American War
      World War I
      World War II

      After WWII presidents just stopped asking congress to declare war for them and just 'sent troops'.