The Massie-Lofgren amendment to the appropriations bill just passed, 293-123.
The amendment would prohibit funds to be used to do either of two things:
- Conduct back door searches on US person selectors
- Require companies to put back doors into their products
The vote total was similar to that the National Security folks have been crowing that USA Freedumber got a few weeks ago.
Leadership on both sides of the aisle will attempt to find some way to kill this, so the battle is not won yet. But the vote makes it very clear that a bipartisan majority is not okay with some of NSA’s worst abuses.
Update: Here’s the roll call. I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.