In a rare brilliant move by the House of Representatives, they have submitted a defense spending bill with an attached amendment that would prevent the NSA spying program from existing in its current form. The law would require that an individual be under investigation for the NSA to search through computers.
From Fox News:
The White House is raising the alarm over a congressional effort to terminate the government's authority to collect phone records of millions of Americans in an amendment attached to a $598.3 million defense spending bill.
The proposition to end the National Security Agency's authority under the USA Patriot Act would prevent the secretive surveillance agency from collecting records unless an individual is under investigation, and has exposed sharp divisions among members of Congress.
The White House response was somewhat comical given the stances the administration has taken on spying as well as drone policy.
"This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process," wrote White House press secretary Jay Carney in a late-night statement.
I imagine there are many civilians in Yemen who might argue the same point when seeing drones fly by, let alone every American citizen who just found out a few weeks back that their entire internet search history and cell phone usage had been potentially recorded. The public was hardly informed on either subject, and the approach was more than blunt.
And now, the White House gets to enjoy how it tastes, even if the scale of damage still seems one-sided.
