Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs
June 19, 2014 - Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) speaks in support of an amendment she co-sponsored to prohibit funding for the NSA spying programs that illegally t...

By: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard

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Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Supports Amendment to Defund Illegal NSA Spying Programs - Video

NSA Spying Rebuked By The House
The House of Representatives sent a strong message to the National Security Agency via the power of the purse strings Thursday night. By 293 to 123, the House voted in favor of an amendment...

By: Secular Talk

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NSA Spying Rebuked By The House - Video

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - Lord Acton

If we were to try to identify the most corrupt of the U.S. government agencies, we would be hard pressed to find any more vile and destructive than the Drug Enforcement Agency led by Director Michele Leonhart, a holdover from the Bush administration renominated by President Obama in a gesture of goodwill to the Republicans and his homage to Abraham Lincoln's tradition of bipartisanship.

Now, Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, brings us news that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been operating as a front for the National Security Agency to spy on foreign governments, corporations and individuals in Latin America - in fact, the DEA and NSA are operating as a "two-way street." In The Hill we learn the sordid details Another US spying problem in Latin America: The DEA.

From the Intercept: DEA is actually one of the biggest spy operations there is, says Finn Selander, a former DEA special agent Our mandate is not just drugs. We collect intelligence. ... Selander added that countries let us in because they dont view us, really, as a spy organization.

This is potentially an even bigger breach of diplomatic trust than the NSA spying that Rousseff denounced at the U.N. Governments allow the DEA access to military, police and intelligence resources sometimes including phone-tapping -- as part of a collaborative effort with the United States to fight organized crime. They do not expect that by doing so they are unwittingly assisting the NSA and the enormous U.S. intelligence apparatus with unauthorized spying for political or commercial purposes.

Our U.S. relationships with Brazil were already in rough waters after documents leaked by Edward Snowden inidicated Brazil was one of the top targets of NSA spying including the personal phone calls of President Rousseff and the computer systems of Petrobras - Brazils national oil company. President Obama apologized on our behalf and we promised we would not do this anymore.

Are we learning now this may be a promise our President can not keep? Are the spying and surveillance habits of our vast intelligence system even known, and knowable by our political leaders?

Last year, among the documents released by Snowden, and published in the New York Times, was an inconspicuous memo that received little attention, but I noticed it because I'm obsessed with the idea that the DEA has become so corrupt the only solution is to abolish it, and spread any legitimate functions it has among the 15 other federal law enforcement agencies.

The memo was from an NSA operative to a DEA investigator. The NSA operative had obtained information about a non-terrorist drug dealer spotted by the NSA in this massive illegal terrorist data mining operation, that we've been assured is only used for to identify terrorists.

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NSA using DEA as a cover to spy on government ...

A rally in 2013 against NSA spying. (Photo: Stephen Melkisethian/cc/flickr)The House of Representatives on Thursday approved an effort to rein in government surveillance by passing an amendment that attempts to block so-called "backdoor" searches by the NSA.

The late night vote on the amendment, whose main sponsor was Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), passed 293-123 with overwhelming bipartisan support and little debate.

Massie and amendment co-sponsors Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called their proposal "a sure step toward shutting the back door on mass surveillance," and stated that it would "reinstate an important provision that was stripped from the original USA FREEDOM Act to further protect the Constitutional rights of American citizens. Congress has an ongoing obligation to conduct oversight of the intelligence community and its surveillance authorities."

Specifically, the amendment to the 2015 Department of Defense Appropriations Act would "prohibit use of funds by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under FISA using a United States person identifier except in specified instances."

In other words, as a group of privacy advocates and tech companies wrote in a letter (pdf) to House members,

the amendment would address the backdoor search loophole by prohibiting the use of appropriated funds to enable government agencies to collect and search the communications of U.S. persons without a warrant using section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (50 U.S. C. 1881a), a statute primarily designed to pick up communications of individuals abroad. Although section 702 prohibits the government from intentionally targeting the communications of U.S. persons, it does not impose restrictions on querying those communications if they were inadvertently or incidentally collected under section 702. Moreover, as a result of an apparent change in the NSAs internal practices in 2011, the NSA is now explicitly permitted under certain circumstances to conduct searches using U.S. person names and identifiers without a warrant.

The amendment would block the Defense Appropriations Bill from funding the NSA to conduct this kind of backdoor search.

Mike Masnick writes at Techdirt that the vote marks

the first time that Congress has overwhelmingly voted to defund an NSA program. Last year's Amash Amendment came very, very close to defunding a different program (the Section 215 bulk records collection program), but by passing by an overwhelming margin, this vote is a pretty big sign that the House (on both sides of the aisle) is not happy with how the NSA has been spying on Americans. [...] it's also a big slap in the face to the White House and certain members of the House leadership who conspired to water down the USA Freedom Act a few weeks ago, stripping it of a very similar provision to block backdoor searches.

EFF said the vote marked "a great day in the fight to rein in NSA surveillance abuses." Mark Rumold, staff attorney fir EFF, said in a statement:

More here:
House Moves to Rein in NSA 'Backdoor' Spying on Americans

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks at her weekly news briefing on May 9, 2014, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Image: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-06-20 15:24:18 UTC

The road to NSA reform took another unexpected turn.

In a surprise vote late Thursday night, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly sided in favor of an amendment that would stop two key NSA surveillance activities: searching government databases for information on U.S. citizens without a warrant the so-called "backdoor searches" and ask hardware and software makers to build backdoors for surveillance purposes.

The amendment was introduced as part of the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill, the annual bill to fund the military, which includes funds for the NSA. Representatives passed it after just 10 minutes of debate, with 293 votes in favor and 123 against.

Strictly speaking, the measure doesn't prohibit the NSA from conducting backdoor searches or asking companies to introduce backdoors in their products but it cuts funding for both these activities. If it becomes law, the measure would effectively prevent the NSA from doing that.

The vote, which was bipartisan (among its supporters were 158 Democrats and 135 Republicans,) shows that Congress isn't done with NSA reforms after passing the USA Freedom Act, which critics labelled as "watered-down," and "weak."

"Tonight's overwhelming vote to rein in the NSA's backdoor access to Americans' data signals widespread discontent amongst House members over how the USA Freedom Act was watered down by the House leadership in secret negotiations with the intelligence community," Kevin Bankston, the policy director for the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, said in a statement.

The amendment is just a first step, however. The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and then signed into law by President Barack Obama. However, the vote shows how much has changed in terms of how Congress views the NSA after a year of Snowden revelations. Last summer, a similar amendment to defund the NSA's phone surveillance was rejected by Congress in a close vote. Months later, lawmakers seem to have changed their minds.

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U.S. House Votes to Limit NSA Spying