This June 6, 2013, file photo, shows the National Security Agency's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. Congressional leaders have quietly deleted a measure meant to stop the National Security Agency's "backdoor" surveillance of American communications from a major spending bill. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

Congressional leaders have quietly deleted a measure meant to stop the National Security Agency's "backdoor" surveillance of American communications from a major spending bill.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in June to ban the NSA from searching for Americans' communications in surveillance collected while targeting foreigners. But the omnibus spending package unveiled Tuesday night -- a piece of legislation that must pass to avoid a government showdown -- chucks that NSA safeguard.

"I'm watching the will of the people be subverted. Our representative democracy has been short-circuited with this omnibus," said Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), a Republican who co-sponsored the original NSA reform measure with Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.).

In place of the backdoor surveillance ban is language that states the NSA must not "target" American citizens' content for surveillance. But the agency's highly specific definition of targeting would still allow it to collect and search Americans' emails as long as they are sent abroad.

"It is a complete placebo. It is restatement of existing law," said Massie. "I'm almost embarrassed that they put it in the bill, because it does absolutely nothing."

Part continuing resolution and part omnibus, the so-called cromnibus incorporates the defense appropriations act the Massie amendment was attached to and was designed by House and Senate leadership. That includes House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Massie previously told HuffPost that McCarthy wrote a slanted description of his amendment that was distributed in the House cloakroom before the June vote. The leadership also includes Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who represents thousands of NSA employees.

Massie said he didn't know who blocked the NSA reform.

Senate Appropriations spokesman Vincent Morris did not weigh in on who stripped the backdoor spying ban, but said the alternate language about targeting that Massie called a placebo "has been in the bill for a year and is not new." A House leadership spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Massie-Lofgren amendment passed the House on a 293-123 vote in June, with majority support from members of both parties. Its quiet death underscores the obstacles to surveillance reform in the face of deep opposition from intelligence agencies. A Senate NSA reform bill sponsored by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) died in November when it got 58 votes, two short of the number needed to end debate under Senate rules.

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Congress this week quietly passed a bill that may give unprecedented legal authority to the government's warrantless surveillance powers, despite a last-minute effort by Rep. Justin Amash to kill the bill.

Amash staged an aggressive eleventh-hour rally Wednesday night to block passage of the Intelligence Authorization Act, which will fund intelligence agencies for the next fiscal year. The Michigan Republican sounded alarms over recently amended language in the package that he said will for the first time give congressional backing to a controversial Reagan-era decree granting broad surveillance authority to the president.

The 47-page intelligence bill was headed toward a voice vote when Amash rose to the House floor to ask for a roll call. Despite his effortswhich included a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to all members of the House urging a no votethe bill passed 325-100, with 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans opposing.

The provision in question is "one of the most egregious sections of law I've encountered during my time as a representative," Amash wrote on his Facebook page. The tea-party libertarian, who teamed up with Rep. John Conyers last year in an almost-successful bid to defund the National Security Agency in the wake of the Snowden revelations, warned that the provision "grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American."

The measure already passed the Senate by unanimous consent on Tuesday, and it is now on its way to the White House, where President Obama is expected to sign it.

The objections from Amash and others arose from language in the bill's Section 309, which includes a phrase to allow for "the acquisition, retention, and dissemination" of U.S. phone and Internet data. That passage, they warn, will give unprecedented statutory authority to allow for the surveillance of private communications that currently exists only under a decades-old presidential decree, known as Executive Order 12333.

"If this hadn't been snuck in, I doubt it would have passed," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who voted against the bill. "A lot of members were not even aware that this new provision had been inserted last-minute. Had we been given an additional day, we may have stopped it."

A spokesman for the Senate Intelligence Committee pushed back on claims that the section will strengthen NSA surveillance authority.

"Nothing in Section 309 authorizes any intelligence collection/acquisition at all," the spokesman said in an email."The only thing the section does is require new procedures governing the information the [intelligence community] already collects. The purpose of the section is to limit the [intelligence community's] existing ability to retain information, including U.S. person information."

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Lucas Mearian | Dec. 16, 2014

Survey shows 83 percent believe Internet access should be a basic human right.

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An international survey of Internet users has found that more than 39% have taken steps to protect their online privacy and security as a result of spying revelations by one-time NSA employee Edward Snowden.

The survey, conducted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), found that 43% of Internet users now avoid certain websites and applications and 39% change their passwords regularly.

The survey reached 23,376 Internet users in 24 countries and was conducted between Oct. 7 and Nov. 12.

The countries in the survey included Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the United States.

Cryptographer and computer security specialist Bruce Schneier lamented how the survey's findings have been portrayed, with some pointing out how few people were affected by Snowden's actions or even know his name.

"The press is mostly spinning this as evidence that Snowden has not had an effect: "merely 39%," "only 39%," and so on," Schneier wrote in a blog.

The news articles, "are completely misunderstanding the data," Schneier said, pointing to the fact that the survey found that 39% of Internet users in the world have heard of Snowden.

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After the Snowden leaks, 700 million move to avoid NSA spying