House Urged To Support Massie-Lofgren Amendment, Defund Warrantless Government Surveillance
More than 25 groups, including privacy advocates, wrote to House leadership and Appropriations Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee leaders Wednesday urging them to support an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2016 (HR-2685) offered by Reps. Zoe…
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Lofgren, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. The amendment would “defund warrantless government searches of the database of information collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 using U.S. person identifiers, absent certain circumstances,” the letter said. The amendment would also “prohibit the use of appropriated funds to require or request that United States persons and entities build security vulnerabilities into their products or services in order to facilitate government surveillance, except as provided for by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act,” the groups said. The amendment proposed this year is “identical to the Massie-Lofgren amendment that passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming 293-vote majority in 2014, although it was not included in the omnibus appropriations bill that ultimately was enacted into law,” the letter said. Groups that signed the letter include the Center for Democracy & Technology, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Restore the Fourth, Sunlight Foundation and TechFreedom.