Key Vote YES on the Massie Amendment to End Warrantless Surveillance of Americans

As one of our over 6.9 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to vote YES on the Massie/Lofgren/Sensenbrenner amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2685) that would end warrantless “backdoor” surveillance of Americans.

Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act was written to only allow the government to collect the communications of foreigners, but a large quantity of American communications are scooped up with them. The Director of National Intelligence has admitted that once these communications – not metadata, but actual content – are collected, the government has searched through them for Americans’ content without a warrant. This amendment would prohibit this backdoor spying.

Massie’s amendment also prohibits government agencies from requesting that U.S. companies build security vulnerabilities into their hardware or software in order to make it easier for the government to access them. Security weaknesses that the government can exploit can be exploited by hackers and foreign governments too, and building in these security back doors undermines consumers’ trust in American tech products.

This same amendment passed last year with an overwhelming 293 votes, but was stripped from the omnibus funding bill that eventually passed into law. Given the massive bipartisan support for protecting Americans’ right to due process and privacy, the amendment ought to pass by an even greater margin this year – and be enacted into law.

Please contact your representative and ask that he or she vote YES on the Massie/Lofgren/Sensenbrenner amendment to H.R. 2685. FreedomWorks will count any vote on this amendment as a Key Vote when calculating our Congressional Scorecard for 2015. The scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress who consistently vote to support economic freedom and individual liberty.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and Founder,
FreedomWorks