UPDATE: The House approved Rep. Massie’s amendment this afternoon. The measure prohibits the National Institute of Standards and Technology from working with the National Security Agency or the CIA to weaken cryptographic or computer standards. Headline has been updated to reflect passage. Article continues below.
NSA reformers who argue that the USA Freedom Act didn’t go far enough are readying a new salvo of measures to rein in the surveillance state.
“This is not over,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Wednesday morning, announcing that he has introduced an amendment to prevent the US government from weakening encrypted consumer telecoms services.
“The amendment I’m going to offer today is to prevent the government from putting backdoors in your software that allows them to spy on you with out a warrant,” he said on CSPAN’s Washington Journal.
Massie said he hopes to attach the measure to a must-pass Justice Department spending bill that the House will consider this week.
He argued that the administration’s stance on encryption—vocalized in recent weeks through fear-mongering by FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, among other top officials—is bad for privacy, security, and for American businesses that have been trying to offer more security features after reports published over the last two years that revealed widespread government spying.
Documents provided to journalists by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s efforts to subvert cryptographic systems that consumers depend on to secure online business transactions, and send medical records and other private communications.
Massie acknowledged that Republican leadership in the House had already ruled his encryption amendment out of order on Tuesday, but that he “refined” the measure since. He also foreshadowed plans to take on other NSA abuses beyond the phone dragnet.
“I can tell you that this discussion is bigger than bulk metadata collection,” Massie said.
“There are sections like 702 of the FISA laws that allow collection of your content. And those are still going—those haven’t’ stopped,” he added, Massie also referred to authorities that allow the government to conduct foreign intelligence that also results in the “incidental” collection of vast quantities of Americans’ communications as well.
“There are opportunities to refine these programs and restore our civil liberties every time a program expires, or its funding is about to expire,” Massie said, noting that Section 702 expires in 2017.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that other lawmakers in the House, including Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Ted Poe (R-Texas), also plan to carry the surveillance reform fight forward in the wake of USA Freedom Act passage.
“We will continue to make efforts to attach those improvements to every vehicle that moves through the body,” Lofgren told the paper.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) made the same commitment last month, vowing to use the power of the purse to defang dragnet surveillance programs.
On Wednesday, Massie added that he would also like lawmakers to consider new whistleblower protections for employees of the intelligence community, calling the incumbent safeguards insufficient.
“We’d like for the next Edward Snowden not to have to go public, if he could just come to congress and tell us,” he said.
