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Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan tried to attach an amendment to the Department of Defense funding bill for 2014 which would have limited the government’s authority to collect our telephone records. The amendment failed but not by much; the episode highlights the debate.
Links to Information in This Episode
Text of the Amash Amendment
At the end of the bill (before the short title), insert the
following new section:
Sec. __. None of the funds made available by this Act may
be used to execute a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
order pursuant to section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861) that does not
include the following sentence: ``This Order limits the
collection of any tangible things (including telephone
numbers dialed, telephone numbers of incoming calls, and the
duration of calls) that may be authorized to be collected
pursuant to this Order to those tangible things that pertain
to a person who is the subject of an investigation described
in section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861).''.
Who Voted for/against the Amash Amendment?
The FISA court
The death of Thinthread: The system that could have stopped 9/11
- Obama’s War on Whistleblowers by Tom Shorrock, published by The Nation, March 26, 2013
- The Secret Sharer by Jane Mayer, published by The New Yorker, May 23, 2011
Total Information Awareness
- Wikipedia
- The NSA is Building The Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) by James Bamford, published by Wired, March 15, 2012.
- The Secret War by James Bamford, published by Wired, June 12, 2013
- NSA Slides Expain the PRISM Data-Collection Program, Washington Post, updated July 10, 2013
Edward Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, not the U.S. government
- “Company filings show that 99% of Booz Allen’s revenue comes from various levels of the federal government” from Booz Allen Hamilton In Spotlight Over Leak by Charles Riley, published by CNN, June 10, 2013.
Representatives Quoted in This Episode