Rep. Justin Amash loses fights to limit government spying on Americans

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday rejected U.S. Rep. Justin Amash's attempt to curtail government use of surveillance data against Americans.

The House voted 182-233 to reject the proposal by Amash, R-Cascade Township, who has long fought to limit the government's ability to collect information about Americans through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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That act was created after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but was designed to allow for collection of data involving suspected foreign terrorists, not Americans. Amash and other members of both political parties have argued that a court order should be required before any data collected incidentally is used against Americans.

Opponents of the amendment, including Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., argued that the Amash amendment puts up too many barriers to data collection and could result in terrorists going undetected in the U.S.

Amash countered that his amendment was "consistent" with the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects Americans from unreasonable search and seizure.

Both House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke against Amash's measure and in favor of the overall bill, which reauthorizes the surveillance act through 2021. That bill was passed on a 256-164 vote and now returns to the Senate for consideration.

Supporters of the reauthorization bill said it makes several changes that enhance the privacy of U.S. citizens, including requiring a warrant to be issued by a judge in most instances if data already collected is to be used in non-national security, non-terrorism-related cases. In cases where a warrant is not issued, information in the surveillance database could not be used in court against an American.

Amash and others, however, said that did not go far enough and that there should be prohibitions on government access to any electronic surveillance of American citizens inside the U.S. unless a court order for that specific surveillance had been granted or in the case of specific emergencies. 

They also wanted to end what they called "reverse targeting," in which government officials appear to use their warrantless surveillance powers to target a foreigner when the real object is an American citizen.

President Donald Trump had called on the House to pass the reauthorization bill but only after sowing confusion on Twitter by saying the surveillance act "may have been used ... to badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration."

"With that being said ... today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land," Trump said in a second Twitter message Thursday morning. "We need it! Get smart!"

Following the defeat of Amash's proposal, he sent a message on Twitter thanking the members who voted in its favor, adding, "We fell short today, but a large, growing coalition is standing up for the American people. We’ll never stop defending the #4thAmendment, our #Constitution, and all our rights."

Contact Todd Spangler at 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.