CD037: NSA Spying Debate

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 () 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 ().''. The FISA court The death of Thinthread: The system that could have stopped 9/11 Total Information Awareness 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 Representatives Quoted in This Episode