Loading ...House Advances Modified FISA Bill After Conservative Revolt
The House advanced a new version of a bill to reauthorize American’s use of warrantless surveillance, opening the measure up for debate, amendments, and a final floor vote after a previous iteration of the bill was blocked Republicans.
On Friday, House lawmakers voted 213-208 to advance the modified legislation, just days after 19 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against advancing the original version of the bill to the floor.
Now, all of the initial holdouts flipped their vote to move the bill forward – after the length of reauthorization was shortened from five years to two, and an agreement to bring Rep. Warren Davidson’s (R-OH) Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act to the floor sometime next week in a stand-alone vote – which would require the government to obtain a warrant before purchasing information about US citizens from data brokers.
Edward Snowden also encouraged followers to vote for the “Biggs Amendment,” which requires the government to obtain a warrant in general (not just when purchasing from data brokers), and against the “HSPCI Amendments,” which “EXPAND mass surveillance instead of reforming it.”
ZeroHedge
Update (1245ET): The ‘Biggs’ amendment, which would have required warrants as part of FISA, has failed following a tiedvote of 212-212.
Update (1310ET): The FISA bill has passed by a vote of 273-147 without the Biggs amendment which would have required the federal government to obtain warrants.
Biggest news of the day ! – The ‘conservatives’ that caved on this are going to find out real quick they are not going to get their stand alone vote on the issue in a week or so and that a few months or 2 years from now, the WEAPONIZATION OF GOV’T INSTITUTIONS against citizens isn’t going to change. Traitors who indulge in lipservice and then leave office. The whole ZH article is worth reading.
The only good news is that they reduced the effective period from five to two years. Trump can kill it, although they will continue to use it to keep him out of power in the mean time.