Vote fell along a much different axis than typical party line

by Brian Leubitz

The Amash amendment to the Defense Appropriations went down to defeat last week 205-217-12. The measure would have greatly reigned in the NSA, requiring the data to be only collected from people who are actually being investigated rather than pretty much everybody as it stands.  

Among the California delegation however, the vote total was 30-21-2 (if I counted correctly). You can find a table of the California delegation over the flip. At the time, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-SF/San Mateo) had this to say of the vote on Facebook:

Yesterday, I voted for Rep Justin Amash’s amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act to limit the NSA’s surveillance of Americans. The NSA’s collection of Verizon phone records and other such invasive actions cannot be taken lightly. We need to balance the needs of national security with the right to privacy.

Indeed, the bulk sweeps of metadata shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, as the Snowden leaks seem to keep spreading, we learn that the NSA isn’t confining themselves to the metadata. Check out this article about the NSA’s XKeyScore (H/t the Verge):

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.(The Guardian)

While the data is apparently not stored permanently, mostly because storing that amount of data would likely even sink the NSA. However, the NSA keeps anything they think would be remotely interesting and stores all of the metadata. That is a lot of information, enough to pretty much ensure that the internet is pretty much a world without privacy. Oh, sure you can use a VPN or something like that, but your data is pretty much out there at this point.

The question then remains as to what level we give up our privacy in the fight for security. It is an ages old question, but apparently the answer these days is tilting ever more towards security.

1	Aye	Doug LaMalfa	Republican
2	Aye	Jared Huffman	Democrat
3	Aye	John Garamendi	Democrat
4	Aye	Tom McClintock	Republican
5	No	Mike Thompson	Democrat
6	Aye	Doris Matsui	Democrat
7	No	Ami Bera	Democrat
8	No	Paul Cook	Republican
9	No	Jerry McNerney	Democrat
10	No	Jeff Denham	Republican
11	Aye	George Miller	Democrat
12	No	Nancy Pelosi	Democrat
13	Aye	Barbara Lee	Democrat
14	Aye	Jackie Speier	Democrat
15	Aye	Eric Swalwell	Democrat
16	No	Jim Costa	Democrat
17	Aye	Michael “Mikeâ€ Honda	Democrat
18	Aye	Anna Eshoo	Democrat
19	Aye	Zoe Lofgren	Democrat
20	Aye	Sam Farr	Democrat
21	No	David Valadao	Republican
22	No	Devin Nunes	Republican
23	No	Kevin McCarthy	Republican
24	Aye	Lois Capps	Democrat
25	No	Howard “Buckâ€ McKeon	Republican
26	No	Julia Brownley	Democrat
27	Aye	Judy Chu	Democrat
28	Aye	Adam Schiff	Democrat
29	Aye	Tony Cárdenas	Democrat
30	Aye	Brad Sherman	Democrat
31	Aye	Gary Miller	Republican
32	Aye	Grace Napolitano	Democrat
33	Aye	Henry Waxman	Democrat
34	Aye	Xavier Becerra	Democrat
35	Not Voting	Gloria Negrete McLeod	Democrat
36	No	Raul Ruiz	Democrat
37	Aye	Karen Bass	Democrat
38	Aye	Linda Sánchez	Democrat
39	No	Edward “Edâ€ Royce	Republican
40	Aye	Lucille Roybal-Allard	Democrat
41	Aye	Mark Takano	Democrat
42	No	Ken Calvert	Republican
43	Aye	Maxine Waters	Democrat
44	Aye	Janice Hahn	Democrat
45	Not Voting	John Campbell III	Republican
46	Aye	Loretta Sanchez	Democrat
47	Aye	Alan Lowenthal	Democrat
48	Aye	Dana Rohrabacher	Republican
49	No	Darrell Issa	Republican
50	No	Duncan Hunter	Republican
51	No	Juan Vargas	Democrat
52	No	Scott Peters	Democrat
53	No	Susan Davis	Democrat