95 People Learn to Love the Dragnet
Earlier this morning, the House passed HR 3361, which I call the USA Freedumber Act.
The bill passed by a large margin: 303 to 121.
That means that somewhere in the neighborhood of 86 people who voted for Amash-Conyers less than a year ago voted for a bill that in some ways expands what the government can do with phone records. For example, today’s bill endorsed the chaining of identifiers “connected” to a chain seed, rather than just chaining on actual phone calls. The FISA Court had endorsed this kind of chaining back in 2012, but it only recently became public, and the government is likely to be able to do far more of this connection-based chaining with the phone records in telecom custody. That surely includes the use of geolocation to make connections, something the government could not legally do under the current program.
In addition, those 95 people who voted against the dragnet last year today endorsed language that seems to permit — and immunize — the Internet dragnet, which has been found to be illegal. If the government chooses to use this new language (and I doubt they would have stuck it in the bill at the last minute if they didn’t intend to use it), then this bill represents a vast expansion of domestic spying off what those 86 people voted against last year.
To be fair, I doubt most of the people who flip-flopped on the dragnet understand this. Mike Rogers and Bob Goodlatte both made misleading comments during the debate, with Rogers outright lying. Even John Conyers and Jerry Nadler (and especially Sheila Jackson Lee) made comments about the bill that are only narrowly true.
That’s all another good reason to call this thing USA Freedumber.
From the roll call, here are the people who voted against the dragnet (by voting for Amash-Conyers) but voted for this bill today. Note, there are good faith reasons to do that, and I suspect a lot of these people were ill-informed about how bad the bill is now. But I do hope the people who learned to love the dragnet put some thought into what they just bought off on.
- Amdoei
- Bachus
- Rob Bishop
- Black
- Blackburn
- Braley
- Bridenstine
- Buchanan
- Capps
- André Carson
- Cassidy
- Chabot
- Chaffetz
- Chu
- Cicilline
- Clay
- Cleaver
- Clyburn
- Coffman
- Cohen
- Connolly
- Conyers
- Courtney
- Cramer
- Rodney Davis
- DeLauro
- DeSantis
- Deutch
- Dingell
- John Duncan Jr.
- Farenthold
- Fincher
- Fleischmann
- Fudge
- Garamendi
- Gowdy
- Gene Green
- Tim Griffin
- Hall
- Huffmann
- Huizenga
- Hultgren
- Jenkins
- Bill Johnson
- Kildee
- LaMalfa
- Lamborn
- John Larson
- Loebsack
- Lujan Grisham
- Luján
- Lynch
- Carol Maloney
- McDermott
- McHenry
- McMorris Rodgers
- Mica
- Michaud
- Moore
- Moran
- Mullin
- Nadler
- Napolitano
- Nugent
- Pascrell
- Pastor
- Pearce
- Perlmutter
- Petri
- Pocan
- Rahall
- Rangel
- Rice
- Ross
- Roybal-Allard
- Linda Sánchez
- Sarbanes
- Scalise
- Schiff
- Schrader
- Bobby Scott
- Sensenbrenner
- Sherman
- Jason Smith
- Chris Smith
- Southerland
- Stewart
- Glenn Thompson
- Tsongas
- Vela
- Waters
- Williams
- Joe Wilson
- Yoder
- Don Young
Do you happen to have a link for how each member voted? I want to make a note of each and everyone member of Congress that betrayed their oath of office today (that bit about protecting the CONSTITUTION). Funny how they so rarely manage to squeeze that into their busy fundraising schedules…
Huh, just noticed the link to the roll call in your twitter feed, thanks!
I hope Sensenbrenner wakes up unemployed for this. And while we’re at it, Nadler is welcome to go find himself a new hobby, too. Bastards. Those two know better, maybe not the majority of Congresscritters, but those two sure as hell do.
On a cheery note, nice to see our shiny new Rep. Clark in the No camp. That’s one vote on the side of the angels that our former Rep. Markey would not have cast — he was always a reliable pro-Obama voter, no matter what his constituents thought. I just wish he hadn’t been upgraded to senator. Sigh.
I see my former congresscritter voted against it, but my current one voted for it. I’m not surprised: the current one is far more conservative than he needs to be (and way too ready to believe what he’s told).
“that’s it”, miss civilrights&liberties cried. “i’ve had all i’m going to take of your deceit and betrayals. i’m leaving”.
“now, now, darling”, said mr. reps, “it’s not what you think. i love you, really, i do.”
“you’re a lying, weak-willed cassanova,” she screamed, reaching for the door.”
she wrenched it open, stormed thru, and violently slammed it shut as he shouted after her, “no, no, it’s not what you think.”
but the sound of that door had not fully quieted before a smile began to grow about his lips.
“man, those sweet, sincere types are really hard to shake,” he thought as he reached for his phone. “i want a woman that doesn’t wear her constitution everydamnedwhere.”
this being the written internet where tone of voice, facial looks, et al are missing, a part of my comment could be misunderstood.
to clarify:
“miss civilrights&liberties” refers to the collectivity of organizations originally supporting the sensennbrenner bill before the whitehouse began finetuning the bill just prior to the final vote.
a trojan horse for helen.
Thanks for the update with the list, EW. Right at this moment, I’m having a hard time mustering up any sympathy for Conyers and his ballot woes. I bet Amash had some choice words about Conyers on this… ah, to have been a fly on the wall…
If they didn’t know what they were voting for, then they are disqualified based on stupidity or lethargy. Vote everyone out locally, and never support anyone listed here (or more generally in Yay column) nationally.
emptywheel: Thanks again for your work. I would like to get Edward Snowden’s public, technical comment into the dialogue on any pending legislation. Maybe you can reach out to him through your network.
I was wondering how many might have changed their vote after a visit from nsa showing the congresscritters their file? You know mistress, bag of cash, and etc. Just a thought;)
With Sherman, all they had to do was whisper that it will help Israel.
Today is not a day to be self-congratulatory… https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/statuses/469440101404397568
So the only legislation Congress enacts now lines the pockets of donors and/or retroactively sanctions the government’s illegal and unconstitutional actions. If I actually believed there was a democracy that could still be salvaged from this great American clusterfuck I might be pretty pissed off today…
Last time (Amash amendment), Obama had to send out the big guns to salvage the vote. 6 months later, when all involved should be even better informed, everybody crumbles. I’m not a hardboiled conspiracy theorist but still, remember Russell Tice? Seems suspicious.
Here’s a good article that shows more detail about the bills co-sponsors, and final votes.
http://irregulartimes.com/2014/05/23/amash-usa-freedom-act-was-flipped-so-badly-a-majority-of-cosponsors-voted-against-it/