The US House of Representatives has voted to limit the National Security Agency’s ability to search US records, after a similar provision was stripped out of a bill intended to rein in the agency.
The House, by a 293-123 vote late Thursday, approved a bipartisan proposal to limit the NSA’s surveillance programs by requiring the agency to get a court-ordered warrant to search U.S records in its possession.
The proposal, offered as an amendment to a Department of Defense funding bill, would close the so-called ‘backdoor search’ loophole in the FISA Amendments Act, a law allowing NSA surveillance of overseas communications. The final vote on the defense bill is expected Friday, with the bill next moving to the Senate if it passes the House.
The FISA Amendments Act authorises overseas surveillance of online and telephone communications and prohibits the agency from intentionally targeting US residents. But the law does not prohibit the agency from querying US communications inadvertently collected under the foreign surveillance programme.
Intelligence officials have acknowledged in recent months they do conduct warrantless searches of US records under the program, leading to protests from civil rights and privacy groups.
The NSA amendment, offered by a group of representatives including Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, would also prohibit the NSA or other US agencies from using any funds to request or require a company to build a back door into any product or service in order to allow surveillance. News reports based on leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have suggested the agency has approached tech companies about building back doors into products.
Warrantless
The warrantless search of US records violates the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches, Massie said on the House floor. “The American people are sick of being spied on,” he said.
The warrant search provision was originally part of the USA Freedom Act, a bill aimed at limiting the NSA’s bulk collection of US phone records, but negotiators stripped out the provision under pressure from President Barack Obama’s administration in the days before the House passed the bill in late May.
The amendment drew support from several liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. The amendment’s point was, “yes, we need to protect our country, but we also need to honor our Constitution,” Lofgren said.
Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican and chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, opposed the amendment, saying it didn’t relate to the defense funding bill it was added to. “There’s nothing in this amendment about funding,” he said. “The goal is to change policy.”
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